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Search - "lie and die"
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So the ceiling in our (upstairs) laundry room started leaking. After some troubleshooting, we determined it was the A/C, and not the water pipes. (The house is cheap as hell and fucking stupid.) We did some troubleshooting and research, and tried fixing it ourselves; no luck. Cleaning the pipes from outside: no joy. Cleaning the pipes from inside: no access. The attic is ... small. Maybe half a small closet? and doesn’t give access to fucking anything. The builders must have installed everything before putting up the walls and ceilings, sealing everything off, because there is no access. It’s fucking stupid. Also, the usual maintenance openings aren’t even there either because why the fuck would they be?
But fucking whatever.
We called an a/c repair guy, who never showed. We assumed he was busy (it’s fucking hot), so we called him again the next day; two days later he showed.
Busy. Whatever.
Guy didn’t bring a ladder. Whatever, we have one right there in the hallway because we’ve been trying in vain to fix it.
Guy didn’t bring a wrench of any kind. Guy didn’t bring a screwdriver. Guy didn’t bring a bucket. Guy didn’t bring any pipe. Or any pipe sealant. Or fucking anything but his sagging fucking pants, fat belly, and fat stench. We had to supply everything, which fortunately we had on hand as we were already trying to fix it. Hoorah for being proactive.
Guy said he drained both primary and secondary pans. Somehow. Without access. I’m not even convinced it HAS a secondary pan. Guy said he cleaned out the pipes, too. From inside the house. Without access. Somehow. Maybe he did that from outside, without tools, while I was chasing the brats and someone else was watching the fat bastard. Who knows; I wasn’t with him most of the time.
When he was done, the guy said “pay whatever you think it’s worth” (or whatever). Fine, if he actually cleaned the pipes out and it isn’t leaking anymore, that’s great.
Guy leaves.
We go up to check. AND THE FUCKING A/C IS STILL LEAKING. BUT NOW IT’S FROM BEFORE THE PIPES, TOO. AND HALF AN HOUR LATER, THE LAUDRY ROOM CEILING IS ALSO LEAKING, WHICH MEANS THE PIPES ARE STILL LEAKING.
It turns out the asshole broke the pan.
We call him back, he goes blah blah blah, we send him a video. Drip, drip, drip.
His response?
“The pan must be rusted.” IT’S FUCKING PLASTIC.
“Oh, in that case, it’s probably a rusted coil that’s leaking.”
a) HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW IT WAS FUCKING PLASTIC IF YOU DRAINED IT?
b) THE COILS CARRY FREON, NOT WATER, AND THE A/C IS STILL WORKING. IF THERE WAS A LEAK, SHIT WOULD BE HOT. AND RANK. FREON SMELLS NASTY AND DOESN’T CAUSE IT TO RAIN IN THE FUCKING HOUSE.
REPLACING A COIL IS ALSO A $2000 FUCKING REPAIR.
THE FAT BASTARD PROBABLY BROKE THE PAN INTENTIONALLY JUST TO UPSELL. I WANT TO FUCKING MURDER HIS LYING FUCKING FACE OFF.
It’s possible he didn’t break the pan intentionally, so I’ll tentatively remove that from his charges. BUT TO FUCKING LIE?
LIE AND DIE, FUCKER.rant i can’t wait to move lie and die reasons why i’m a misanthrope lying fucking people everyone lies7 -
that one legendary guy who cranks out code and builds insane features. PMs (product management) love him because he builds features in several months which 10 devs together couldn't have built in the same time (so they say), features that are loved by customers as well, become their new standard and that have saved our company's asses in the past.
features are really awesome, performant and have very few bugs (compared to the rest of the software シ).
but this guy seems to live for this job. he also works at weekends, at unholy times of day and night and even in his holidays (he doesn't care that this is actually illegal, in terms of employee's rights, and he wouldn't listen to his superiors, no matter what they tell him)
so far, so good - except that he will probably die of some stroke or something very soon due to this lifestyle.
but it must be an absolute pain in the ass to work with him, as long as you're a developer (or his superior).
he lives in his own world and within the software, his features are also his own world. since the different modules interact with each other, sometimes you would be assigned a bug that might have its cause in some interaction of your and his module. talk with him about it? forget it. he wouldn't answer most devs who contacted him for some reason. ever. fix it in his module yourself? might happen that he just reverts your changes to his module without comments. so some bugs would lie on your desk forever because theoretically you know what would need to be done but if you cannot reach out into HIS world, there's no way to fix it. also - his code might be good in terms of performance and low bug numbers. but it seems to be hard to work on that code for everybody else but him.
furthermore, he is said to be really rude. he is no team player, but works on a software that is worked on by a huge team.
PMs think he's a genius, just a great dev, but they don't understand that other devs need to clean up the mess behind or around him.
everyone who's been his superior so far recommends to get him fired, but the company wouldn't fire him because they don't want to lose his talent. he can just do what he wants. he can even refuse to work on certain things because he thinks they are boring and he is not interested in them. devs seem to hate him, but my boss said, they are probably also a bit jealous because of his talent. i think, he's not wrong. :)
i haven't actually met him so far or was actually "forced" to deal with him, but i've never heard so many contrastive things about one person, the reputation of his, let's say vibrant personality really hurries ahead. he must be a real genius, after all i've heard so far, like he lives in the code. i must say i'm a bit curious but also somewhat afraid of meeting him one day.
do you also have such a guy at your company?12 -
There's this thought that keeps popping up in my head more frequently recently.
We are people who do heavy mind work. Our quality of life directly depends on our ability to come up with solutions. We've been training our minds for years, for decades, to get to the point where we are now.
Now stop for a moment. And imagine. You wake up one morning and you realize you can no longer code. You forgot all of it. You still can copy-paste answers from SO, but you don't know what questions to ask to get to those answers.... Your mind has pulled the DROP TABLE PROGRAMMING;COMMIT; stunt. From hero to zero in just 1 night.
You have no clue what happened, no idea whether you will recover. How does that affect your identity? Would you still try to climb the programmers' tree to the sweet spot you are in now? Would you choose some simpler profession instead, considering your age and time required to master that other profession? If you choose another profession - what would it be?
What would you do with your personal projects? You can't continue them yourself obviously... Would you let them die with the loss of your skills?
How closely is your profession related to your identity?
Now that I consider myself a person who's quite good in the field, this is becoming one of my fears. Sadly, it'll most likely come true someday. Either some accident or just old age, or even diseases/conditions at younger ages - there are so many things that could mess up your mind - the sole tool critical for our profession [to the picky ones: lumbers can't swing axes w/o hands, postman can't deliver mail w/o legs, politics can't lie without tongues, and we, engineers, cannot build with our minds even slightly off].7 -
The source engine is interesting, because it has reached that stage of life where it's old enough to be remarkable-- in the sense that it could be called 'legacy', a sort of milestone in development practices and thinking, both in software, and design.
That said, a better look at it might be from the lense of *uses today*.
A lot of former source engine (SE) devs are now going to unity or unreal, I don't blame them.
But it's interesting to examine examples of games that haven't.
One such game is the freeware "No More Room In Hell". A couple online play throughs shows a wealth of well designed maps (and an even greater horde of shovelware maps, but hey, you take the good with the bad).
The age of the engine itself shows. Even in games like Left 4 Dead the engine's age can be seen. This, in some respects has been a drag, but also a blessing. Where other games could rely on their effects, shaders, and other tech, modders, map makers, and designers have had to rely on wit and creativity.
Enter "situated environments."
In an age where many people desire to travel, to go places, and have grown up doing the exact OPPOSITE, there is a great desire for variety of locations in games: not merely 'environmental' in the shallow sense of a 'theme' such as 'lava', 'tundra', etc. But in the sense of setting in general.
We want places that are both out of reach and yet familiar. Fire-fights happen in city streets. Apocalypses happen in neighborhoods where the skyline is both broken and at once something we know by sight. Open air markets, grocery stores, neighborhoods, all of these provide the back drops of popular games and series such as COD, Battlefield, The Last of Us, and yes, the example game, NMRIH.
I call this idea of 'familiar but out-of-reach level design', "situated environments", because familiarity with them, but *lack of real life experience* with them, on a day to day basis, allows people's expectations to fill in the gaps.
No one for example would argue the layouts of 7 Days To Die are familiar, but most of us don't spend all day in a junkyard or a high rise hotel.
So they *feel* familiar. Likewise with Skyrim, the villages and towns, both iconic and strange, our expectations formed by cultural inheritance, hollywood films, television shows, stories, childrens books, and yes, other games.
In a way, familiarity-without-real-in-person-experience is a shortcut for designers, one that lets them play with the player's head-space, the players subconscious idea of how a space and setting *should* work, what to *expect* out of the area, how to *operate* within the area. And the more it conforms to expectations, the more surprising an overdesigned element appears to be, rather than immersion breaking. A real life example of this is people's idea of chernobyl. When they discover the amusement park and ferris wheel they're blown away by the juxtaposition of the wasteland that surrounds them and the associations ('nostalgia' as it were) that such a carnival ride carries for many of us. It simultaneously *doesn't belong* and is yet all at once *perfectly situated in the environment*.
It is to say 'surreal', which is adjacent to the idea of *being real*, in terms of our "perception of what is and isn't plausible, if not possible."
This is at the heart of suspension of disbelief, because in essence, virtual worlds are a lie, like fiction, and good fiction violates expectations in order to tell us truths about reality. As part of our ability to differentiate bullshit from reality, there is to say an element in our bullshit detectors (doubtless evolved over many 10's of thousands of years), that is designed to not merely detect what is absurd in our limited experience, but to incorporate absurdity into everyday experience. In that sense part of our rationality is the acceptance of irrational experiences, learning from it, and discovering 'a proper place for each thing' in the "models of the world" we all carry around in our heads. Eventually we normalize the absurd, it becomes the new reality, and what remains unassimilated becomes superstition (real or otherwise), a figment, or an anomaly.
One of the best examples I've encountered is The Last of Us: Left Behind, a good chunk of which is spent in a mall. And they nailed the environment perfectly I would say.
Or for those who don't own a PS4, a more accessible example is a map in NMRIH aptly called "the museum", and few words better do it justice than to go play it yourself--that is, if you really want to know what I mean by a 'situated environment'.
What better way, during this pandemic, to get out of the news cycle and into your own head? Sometimes the best way to escape isn't outside, it's within.3 -
"Man Of Steel"
Many men was I
before I was the man I am.
And each a stranger had I come to know
In a strange land.
In every man there is a nation
of dreams, in every spirit, like a flame
Many visions, many plans.
How do I choose, how must I choose
the destiny of all among the one
united by our pain, and hopes, and blood
and beneath this eternal sun, and the rule of petty men
learn to stand tall, to walk, to run.
If I could stand upon the shoulders
of giants, and stride for but a minute
in great men's shoes, forever and a day
All the world would be mine to gain, mine to lose
And bend the course of mankind
To a better way.
If I could stride full measure in that minute
And take it like the reigns
Of a chariot that could cross the sky
What a man they would exclaim, for generations,
fathers unto untold sons.
And speak in solemn words setting new foundations,
a truth greater than any lie
It is every man's will to fight.
And it is to rogues to do and die. -
I am sitting here fixing some asshole's fuck up (he went and fucked around with the certificates on the Sonic Wall - now DPI SSL doesn't work anymore and people are wondering why things aren't working as they used to).
I have been offered an opportunity to work in a place that is about 1000 miles from where I currently work. The pay is a bit better, and I get benefits (like health, pension, etc - where here I don't get shit).
The issue is that my family and what not are this side. They are begging me not to leave. They don't know that I have been considered for the job.
Not going to lie, the last time I moved away, I nearly died because I have a family to support, and I was porting all my funds back to them (yeah - the one who cheated).
I am anxious as fuck, and today I have an interview.
I don't know if going is the right thing to do. There is so much opportunity, and I might stuggle for about a year - but is the struggle worth it.
I cannot take it where I am now. They appointed a new guy, and he is monumentally fucking everything up. He also doesn't shut up. Even if you ignore him, or tell him that you are busy - he just goes on and on talking. Fuck my life.
Anyways, will see how things go - I don't know what is right - perhaps it will come to me.
I'll let you guys know what happens, not that anyone might directly care - which is fine.
Time to go fix CA, and then code until I die.1 -
Why is there evil in the world?
"Because of free will 🤓🤓🤓"
---
🌌 Universe A (ours):
❌ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to imagine a new color
❌ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to grow wings and fly
❌ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to create a new planet
❌ today i can "use my free will", but if i use it for something God doesn't want me to, ill burn forever
---
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to commit evil
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to rape, kill, start wars
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to lie, deceive, suffer
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to get diseases
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to die of starvation
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to die of natural disasters
✅ today i can "use my free will", but I NEED TO suffer so i can build my character
---
What does this tell us about the creator of the existence?
By analyzing this, you can clearly see how:
The most HARMLESS things, are disabled for us to use with our "free will",
while the most HARMFUL things are allowed for us to use with our "free will"
What do YOU think:
What IF, An all-good, all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful GOD of the existence created a universe:
---
🌌 Universe B (imaginary):
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to imagine a new color
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to grow wings and fly
✅ today i can "use my free will", but it IS POSSIBLE to create a new planet
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to imagine doing evil
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to rape, kill, start wars
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to lie, deceive, suffer
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to get diseases
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to die of starvation
✅ today i can "use my free will", but its IMPOSSIBLE to die of natural disasters
✅ today i can "use my free will", but i do NOT NEED TO suffer and still build my character
✅ today i can "use my free will", but if i use it for something God doesn't want me to, i do NOT burn at all
---
Please tell me, non biased, rational objective answer, is Universe A or Universe B better?
Tell me why, and give a very Very good reason, why couldnt Universe B exist?
If God exists, why didn't God create Universe B? Why did he CHOOSE to create universe A?
"if God exists, he is either Not-All-Powerful, or Not-All-Good"
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
Im having a midlife existential crisis.
If God is real, WHO said he HAS TO be All-Good?
If God is NOT All-Good, would you believe in such God? Would you worship such God?
What if God is NOT All-Good? This would explain why Universe A was chosen over Universe B.
What do YOU think, why would an ALL-GOOD ALL-LOVING ALL-POWERFUL GOD CHOOSE TO CREATE UNIVERSE A, WITH PAIN, SUFFERING AND EVIL?13