You know what's the difference between
- static page written purely in HTML with inline styling
and
- dynamic page generated in PHP, that actually loads data from MySQL database and is correctly styled in separate CSS document
on national level exam necessary to earn a title of technician?
ONE HACKING PERCENT!

Ok, backstory. So, few days ago I got results from that exam. To be honest, it was very, very easy so I wasn't worried at all, unlike some of my classmates who just don't understand programming at all (you need at least 75% to pass). Our task was to create database, write website in PHP that shows contents of that database and use CSS to give it a look that of example web page and run it on XAMPP. I've got result of 96% and while I was wandering what I've done wrong i hear my colleague almost screaming with joy "I passed! And I haven't even touched PHP. I was soooo sure I'll fail." So I asked him what's his result and he says 95%. And then another colleague said he got 95% without PHP. So, in other words what I thought to be the main task was worth 1%. Apparently, what was more important was for the page to look identical to the example, so I guess some examiners didn't even look into the source. And don't get me wrong, I don't wish my classmates had failed. That's not why I'm ranting. But why in the name of Ada Lovelace the task said to use PHP and all that if it weren't supposed to check our knowledge of programming in PHP? Sometimes I think the people who design these tests don't even know what they're doing.

>>> print(whoSaid("OlderFriend"))
About 20ish years ago I was working in IT, and it was about around this time where CD-Roms were hitting the stores and becoming the newest craze. However, Microsoft did not write the drivers correctly for this new hardware.

In a nutshell, the driver would be installed and the user would lose the sound to their speaker.

How did this happen? By altering the way the interrupts worked on the computer. At the time there only existed a few unreserved IRQs or Interrupt ReQuests. The installer package would redirect IRQ 5 which is "User Selectable (Sound Cards)" to work with the CD-Rom. This was fine and all unless you wanted to listen to your speakers.

I had come up with a clever hack through rewriting a config file that would be run during bootup. So at the time of boot up IRQ 5 would be dedicated to the sound card, and IRQ7 (which was usually for the Lpt1 Printer) would be dedicated to the CD-Rom. This worked.
And because I was IT at the time, I would get a lot of calls for fixing this problem.

So, as you can imagine, I've gotten **really** good at doing this. I didn't even need to be at a computer to walk someone through the problem.

I receive a call one day, it was a problem with the CD-Rom and sound card. I walk him through the problem and he reboots his computer. I could hear him on the other side jumping with joy when he was able to put in his music CD and hear sound coming from the speakers.

He asks me, how in the hell did you figure this out!? You're a fucking Genius!

And I said, It's not rocket science it's just a computer.

There was a long pause of silence.

Uhhh... Hello? Did I say something wrong?

Sir, I work at NASA I deal with Rocket Science on a daily basis.

Senior manager calls me at 3pm today. I’ve known about this issue since last Friday, one of her pions told me to hold off until Thursday when he’s back in the office and that I could prioritise other tasks.

I have another task with a deadline of the 21st with the potential for fines if it’s not done.

Snr manager: “I’m calling to see how this is going”
Me: “cool, it’s not, bigger problems in the world”
Snr manager: “waah, this has to be done Monday or we face the potential of a court case, fines, this is the biggest problem in the world”
Me: “I’ve known about this issue for a week, have been told not to worry too much and nobody has mentioned the impact or timeline you’ve just given me.”
Snr manager: “so can it be done for monday”
Me: “no chance”
Snr manager: “why not?”
Me: “because it’s 3pm Friday and I have 1 hour of Work left, good luck”

My manager was in the room, he got an arsey call soon after. I don’t really care how that one went but he’s a good guy so I’m sure it was fine.

I also had the joy of asking: so give me an idea of the potential fine... to which they wouldn’t give me an answer.

I need this to weigh up which of the potentially finable tasks takes priority.

The other team that had trouble told me all the dates, gave me over a months notice and the scale of the problem.

If you want someone to help: be polite, give them as much warning as you have and be absolutely honest.

The job’s done cause I’m a fucking legend. But they’re not gonna find out until 5pm Monday. That’s the dickhead tax, they get the dickhead tax for being dickheads.

I’m gonna spend Monday working from home, incommunicado. Fuck incompetent arseholes.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I will mine.

TL;DR: Fuck you Apple.

10:30 PM, parent needs iPhone update to update Messenger. How hard can this be?
Need to update iPhone from 9.x to latest, which is so outdated it still required iTunes. Fk.

Boot iTunes on Windows 10 pc that is at least 10 years old.
Completely unresponsive
Crash in task manager
Launch and is completely unresponsive. (Also starts playing unrequested music.. Oh joy..)
Fuck this, go to apple.com to download iTunes exe
Gives me some Microsoft store link. Fuck that shit, just give me the executable
Google “iTunes download”. click around on shitty Apple website. Success.
Control panel. Uninstall iTunes. (Takes forever, but it works)
Restart required (of fucking course).
2 eternities later. Run iTunes exe. Restart required. Fk.
Only 1 eternity later. Run iTunes, connect iPhone.
Actually detects the device. (holy shit, a miracle)
Starts syncing an empty library to the phone. Ya, fuck that.
Google. Disable option. Connect phone. Find option to update.
Update started. Going nowhere fast. Time for a walk at 1:00 AM punching the air.
Come back. Generic error message: Update failed (-1). Phone is stuck installing update. (O shit)
1x hard reset
2x hard reset
Google. Find Apple forum with exact question. Absolutely useless replies. (I expected no less)
Google recovery mode. Get into recovery mode.
Receive message: “You can update, but if it fails, you will have to reset to factory settings”. Fuck it, here we go.
Update runs (faster this time). Fails again. Same bullshit error message. (Goddammit, fuck. This might actually be bad.)
Disconnect phone.
… It boots latest iOS version. (holy shit, there is a god)
Immediately kill iTunes. Fuck that shit.
Parents share Apple account
Sign in, 2FA required.
Fat finger the code.
Restart “welcome” process.
Will not send code. What. The. Fuck.
Requests access code on other parent’s iPhone.
No code present. What???
Try restarting welcome process again. No dice. (Of course)
Set code on other parent’s iPhone.
Get message “Code is easy to guess”. Ya. IDGAF
Use code on newly updated iPhone. Some success.
Requires reset of password.
Password cannot be the same as old password (Goddammit)
Change password.
Welcome process done.
Sign in again on same phone after welcome process done in settings. (Nice.)
Sign in again on other phone with updated password
Update Messenger.
Update hangs. Needs more space.
Delete shit.
Update frozen in App Store (Really??)
Restart iPhone.
Update Messenger.
Update complete past 2. Well that was easy.

Apple, fuck you.
Some call Android unintuitive, but I look at the settings app on iPhone and realize you aren’t any better.
This company hasn’t been innovative since 2007. Over 1000 USD for a phone? Are you fucking kidding me?
Updating an iPhone from iOS 9.x is probably uncommon anymore. But this is a fucking joke. Fix your shit.
Shit like this is why I’ll never again own an Apple product. I have HAD IT with the joke of a business.

Thanks for reading.

Hey. This code look broken. What should I do?

It isn't broken. It's doing what it's supposed to.

Well, it's hard to follow, but it certainly doesn't look right. And it isn't doing what I expect. Also, why is it calling method(a_class1_or_class2) with a class3?

It isn't hard to follow, and it works just fine. Let me show you. ... huh. looks like it isn't right. and there's a comment here saying the calls aren't clear. but it works just fine. Just copy it over and do it the same way.

I already did that. and it isn't working.

What are you talking about? Of course it works fine. Did you check your code?

------

Really, dude? It doesn't work fine. but, guess what? It works fine* when I change it to call that method with a class2 like it asks for. (Surprise!) But I can't tell him that. Nope. Bossmang get offended. Still won't admit I was right about anything, either.

Ahh... the continual joy of working with (and for) trash.

* well, more fine; the rest of the feature is still wrong. but nope, i'm not allowed to fix it. because why would they want anything to work properly? Already-accepted wrong behavior is good enough. Can't clean up the code, either, because that "muddies the waters." Bitch, I couldn't see the bottom of this sewer if it was half an inch deep! Which is more important: the last contributor entry beside the code, or that code being readable and maintainable? or it, you know, working?

doot doot.
need to scoot.

I worked for over 13 hours yesterday on super-urgent projects. I got so much done it's insane.

Projects:
1) the printer auto-configuration script.
2) changing Stripe from test mode to live mode in production
3) website responsiveness

I finished two within five minutes and pushed to both QA and Production. actually urgent, actually necessary. Easy change.

The printer auto-configure script was honestly fun to write, if very involved. However, the APIs I needed to call to fetch data, create a printer client, etc... none of them were tested, and they were _all_ broken in at least two ways. The CTO (api guy in my previous rant) was slow at fixing them, so getting the APIs working took literally four hours. One of them (test print) still doesn't work.

Responsiveness... this was my first time making a website responsive. Ever. Also, one of the pages I needed to style was very complicated (nested fixed-aspect-ratio + flexbox); I ended up duplicating the markup and hacking the styling together just to make it work. The code is horrible. But! "Friday's the day! it's going live and we're pushing traffic to it!" So, I invested a lot of time and energy into making it ready and as pretty as I could, and finally got it working. That page alone took me two hours.

The site and the printer script (and obv the Stripe change as well) absolutely needed to be done by this morning. Super important.

well.

1) Auto-configure script. Ostensibly we would have an intern come in and configure the printers. However, we have no printers that need configuring, so she did marketing instead. :/ Also, the docs Epson sent us only work for the T88V printer (we have exactly one, which we happened to set up and connect to). They do not work for the T88VI printers, which is what we ordered. and all we'll ever be ordering. So. :/ I'll need to rewrite a large chunk of my code to make this work. Joy :/

2) Stripe Live mode. Nobody even seemed to notice that we were collecting info in Test mode, or that I fixed it. so. um. :/

3) Responsiveness.
Well. That deadline is actually next Wednesday. The marketing won't even start until then, and I haven't even been given the final changes yet (like come on). Also! I asked for a QA review last night before I'd push it to production. One person glanced at it. Nobody else cared. Nobody else cared enough to look in the morning, either, so it's still on QA. Super-important deadline indeed. :/

Honestly?

I feel like Alice (from Dilbert) after she worked frantically on urgent projects that ended up just being cancelled. (That one where Wally smells that lovely buttery-popcorn scent of unnecessary work.)

I worked 13 hours yesterday.
for nothing.

fucking. hell.

"Mature codebase"
"Our entire team are senior devs"
"Almost everyone that worked on the project is still here and available, so nothing's lost! We can ask whatever we need to."

You would think this would mean the code was clean and easy to read, and you could ask the person who wrote it for help. But. no. It's kinda the opposite.

Here's an example:
I'm trying to write a mailer, and I have no freaking clue how to get it working. I talked with two of the more senior devs, and both assured me it was very straightforward, and then walked me through the quite complicated mailer structure and got lost. The first pretended not to, but glazed over a few holes in his tour, and said I could figure the rest out. The second one ended up admitting that he's totally unfamiliar with it -- his last commit on a mailer was from about 8 years ago -- and doesn't know how to get it working anymore.

So, I'm on my own.

I wrote a super basic mailer for debugging (no idea if/how it actually sends a mail, but I think I can construct one?). But whenever I call the mailer, it gets run twice? Somehow? Apparently I need to start a bunch of daemons to get that part of the system to work. Which is cool because they don't work fresh out of the repo. Got some further help, and now my ostensibly working code throws errors for an undefined var that i'm not even using, and to make it easier: without a backtrace. joy! There's so much inheritence and extending and including going on that it's going to take me hours to track this down. ugh.

I'm keeping my paystub in front of me for some desparately needed motivation.

Root gets ignored.

I've been working on this monster ticket for a week and a half now (five days plus other tickets). It involves removing all foreign keys from mass assignment (create, update, save, ...), which breaks 1780 specs.

For those of you who don't know, this is part of how rails works. If you create a Page object, you specify the book_id of its parent Book so they're linked. (If you don't, they're orphans.) Example: `Page.create(text: params[:text], book_id: params[:book_id], ...)` or more simply: `Page.create(params)`

Obviously removing the ability to do this is problematic. The "solution" is to create the object without the book_id, save it, then set the book_id and save it again. Two roundtrips. bad.

I came up with a solution early last week that, while it doesn't resolve the security warnings, it does fix the actual security issue: whitelisting what params users are allowed to send, and validating them. (StrongParams + validation). I had a 1:1 with my boss today about this ticket, and I told him about that solution. He sort of hand-waved it away and said it wouldn't work because <lots of unrelated things>. huh.

He worked through a failed spec to see what the ticket was about, and eventually (20 minutes later) ran into the same issues Idid, and said "there's no way around this" (meaning what security wants won't actually help).

I remembered that Ruby has a `taint` state tracking, and realized I could use that to write a super elegant drop-in solution: some Rack middleware or a StrongParams monkeypatch to mark all foreign keys from user-input as tainted (so devs can validate and un-taint them), and also monkeypatch ACtiveRecord's create/save/update/etc. to raise an exception when seeing tainted data. I brought this up, and he searched for it. we discovered someone had already build this (not surprising), but also that Ruby2.7 deprecates the `taint` mechanism literally "because nobody uses it." joy. Boss also somehow thought I came up with it because I saw the other person's implementation, despite us searching for it because I brought it up? 🤨

Foregoing that, we looked up more possibilities, and he saw the whitelist+validation pattern quite a few more times, which he quickly dimissed as bad, and eventually decided that we "need to noodle on it for awhile" and come up with something else.

Shortly (seriously 3-5 minutes) after the call, he said that the StrongParams (whitelist) plus validation makes the most sense and is the approach we should use.

ffs.
I came up with that last week and he said no.
I brought it up multiple times during our call and he said it was bad or simply talked over me. He saw lots of examples in the wild and said it was bad. I came up with a better, more elegant solution, and he credited someone else. then he decided after the call that the StrongParams idea he came up with (?!) was better.

jfc i'm getting pissy again.

My laptop started making faint high-pitched noises - I hope I misheard and it's actually just some coil singing inside the power-supply and not one of the disks/something else - also, I seem to have dropped 4GB of RAM suddenly where there should be 8GB.

(Also, I should really wipe the messed up dual-boot still residing on disk from last semester and replace it by a fresh arch-only install. (No time and joy in debugging that right now.) Probably something for tomorrow evening.)

The device is ~8 years old by now and starting to fall apart - nothing duct tape can't fix - but I'm somewhat worried about the rest right now. D:

Meh, I really need that laptop during the next two weeks, I just hope the hardware doesn't die on me in the meantime because I can't wait for an order to arrive, let alone afford some cheap replacement.

Here's a genuine rant for you. Probably the only one I've ever made and ever will..

It's a bit depressing and covers a few topics so just read it, it's important.

*deep inhale*
So, with the help of my friend and my Nana, I was getting VR set up. (Oh, what joy.)

Now, I love everything about VR. But the thing is, I've had this damned headset since may (Dell MMR) and I haven't been able to use it. The reason for that is, something always came up that I needed to buy and this became a huge deal.

But let's start from the beginning.. I'm curentally fighting depression. I have been for months. My only income is what my Nana gives me ($150/mo) and what my friend ocasinally gives me.

Anyways, the first issue was that I couldn't afford the headset. This was find, as my friend would get it for me, and I would pay them back the following month. But, then, once I got the headset that's when the real problems started. First it was that I needed bluetooth, so I bought an adapter. Then I realized my entire CPU was incompatable, so I had to get a new tower and I went ahead and got a new GPU as well. I also got a charging kit for my headset (This ended up making me owe my Nana money). Then after all of that was settled, I learned that the evauation software lied, and my computer doesn't have USB 3, so I need that too but low and behold; both of my graphics cards cover my second pcie slot. So my options are to either try and rig up something, or to buy a cpu and psu for my third AMD PC which I had forgotten about during this whole ordeal..

This was soposed to help me with my depression and stress. Now I don't even want to get out of bed.

With all that said, I might be getting on SSI soon (I'm sure some of you are familar with that, and no I don't want to talk about it) and when that happens I might just leave behind tech (well, my PC and games) and all the stress and pain it's caused me over my life so this was all for nothing.

Honestly.. I'm just done with everything. To all the new faces around here; Hello! How are ya? To everyone else; You know me. I've been around for a while, though I'm not popular because I lurked and commented with Alice. You all probably noticed that I left a while back, and it was because I was trying to get out of tech. My reason for tech was that I was searching for something. I was always looking for the next game to sate me, or fill this gap in my life. I became a programmer because it gave me control were I lacked it otherwise. I made friends online because my anxiety prevented me from doing so in the real world.

But to what end? What have I acomplished? My twenty second birthday is next month. I've no job, I move from family member to famly member because I'm so fixated on becoming someone else to make something of myself.

I have my own ideals, but it seems that I push them aside to try (and fail to) impress others.

It's time for change. Of course, I can't do anything without money, so I'll have to wait for my SSI which I will get news on in August.

I hope this message came through how I meant it to. There is so much I want to say, but I've no words to say them. And btw, the VR thing is just one of manny issue that i've delt with (but certanly the most expensive)

Alice, Zennoe (Alexis, whom is not on devrant); I'm not giving up tech entirely. don't expect to suddenly not hear from me. I'm mostly just giving up my computer and games. More casually so for now, and them more seriously once I get on SSI. I'll still message you every/other day like I have been. <3

When managers look at my code, it’s shit, it’s over complicated, it’s overly difficult to read, it took too long, it’s too much for a simple ticket, i handled too many edge cases, we’ll never need most of it, why did I bother making it extensible when it’ll never need to change, how dare I use “unless”, why did I bother writing all these comments, why did I update the documentation that nobody reads because it’s outdated, etc. They say I should be more like the legendary devs and push janky code quickly, and complain that I don’t have any flops (problems in prod) like those are a good thing.

When my coworkers look at my code, they say it’s clean, amazingly easy to read, a monster feature that’s somehow still a joy to review and work on, it makes their lives easier, that it does exactly what it should in all cases, that they learned something from reading it, and thank me for the comments and documentation. And marvel that I finished it so well in so little time.

Am I bragging? Not intentionally; I’ve heard these things repeatedly since I started here, and the contrast between the above is so stark.

In reality, the managers are just idiots who were promoted far above their competence, and make everything worse. (Gee, who woulda thought?) It’s just so frustrating.

"I keep telling you, I'm not a pilot"
"and I keep telling you, you fly boys crack me up!"

I'm not a developer, but I'm doing some complex things and I need the benefit of computers to work things out, so I know enough programming to get me by. Recently one of the uppers decided that all the amateur spaghetti python programs I'd quickly slapped together should be developed into tools that the clients engineers can use!

"How long do you need!."
" I have no idea how to make something like that",
"but it's all just maths right! you can figure it out",
"probably, given long enough bu.. "
"okay get started and we'll check in in a couple of weeks" "hold o.." "I'll give your pride and joy to the graduate to fuck up while you're working on that" "wai.. " "anyway got take this call, good luck"
┗|｀O′|┛

So here I am.. I have no idea what I'm doing.

So since I have a working knowledge of python, fortran and VBA, someone suggested I learn nim, which was not what he sold it as. Then a software engineer that went to the same uni as me, suggested RUST! you can't mess up rust, and look at this I created (shows me a decent looking desktop application) "I'll help you out". But it wasn't really that easy.

Then I asked some questions... that was my first mistake, that's not acceptable until you know what you're doing apparently. Especially when the answers are in the docs you can't find in a topic you don't understand for a version you're not using solved with a tool you've never heard of for an operating system you forgot existed. Look at this moron asking a question.

Okay to be fair, I went through the rust docs and it was well written, and I do really like this language. But I do not have a degree in computer science, and so many docs for crates are just written with an expectation of a certain level of knowledge. As soon as there's a build error, it's at least 3 -4 days of me faffing about trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

..and the graduate is about to unwittingly commit manslaughter..

I'm sure whoever needs to fix this mess in the future will post a rant about this train wreck.

Commas.
I fix one display, and another breaks.

Now I’m getting “$$1002.99” and can’t figure out why. Where is this popup coming from? Where does the encrypted URL point to? What does this ajax call do? Where does the amount go? When does it change? Why is it a string now? Where does the total get defined? How far down the rabbit hole do I need to go?

Short short version:

I found something to try fixing. I made some changes, forced a crash to inspect, and… Joy! My log stopped updating. How long have I been debugging on stale data?

Skipping a long debugging session…

I discover a suspect instance var in a suspect method, and… i have no freaking clue where it’s being defined. It’s used in the class, but never defined in it. Oh, and the name is pretty generic, so searching for it is even more fun.

Just.
Qxfrfjkalstf.

WHO WRITES THIS CRAP?!
AND WHY DO PEOPLE CALL THEM “LEGENDS”? Like, really. That’s the word they use. “Legends.” I still can’t believe it.

I'm starting to think we might need a global union for developers. I have been reading the comments today and it looks like a lot us getting way underpaid.

New features should be a moment of joy if they are released. So far so good. People really liked the idea of working together on opensource project. The app is updated. But then we encountered a major problem. It looks like some of us are getting so underpaid that they can't pay for the 14 dollar it cost to start the opensource project they want. We must rebel against this.

14 dollar, how much is 14 dollar. How many hobbies cost 14 dollar to start up. From running to collecting stamps. Its going to cost you more And how many hobbies are you as passionate about as your own open source project.

The next great thing is that it is show in the place where developers are eagerly looking to join a opensource project. And will probably join you're product because I'm sure between all of us there are tons of wonderfull ideas just waiting to be build.

And for me personal I do not mind supporting an app that I use almost every day. And just keeps growing without annoying ads.

So you should be more then willing to pay 14 dollars. And are ready to start recruiting your team.

And if you really can't pay. Your house burned down, you needed it for food. Your only pc is beyond saving. You can be a positive force in this community and do pay with upvotes.

But if you are to much a cheapskate to pay 14 dollars well, I think I was clear enough.

The worst part of being a dev

My social dilemma

In a fast paced world where the average human spends at least 6 hours a day with technology, deriving basic entertainment, pleasures and engaging in various activities.

Here we are the developers that have to engage with technology for longer hours for a living , having to keep up with deadlines, immersing our minds in complicated algorithms and then the endless possibilities of entertainment from the machine in so few human hours a day , you wonder how you’d get off, and to top it up, I personally work from home.

And then the dilemma of overcoming different suggestions from various parties in taking a break off, a break off to what you later ask yourself, thus creating the shadow of doubt, splitting the fragile programmer’s mind , trying to solve this imaginary puzzle, “this bug of the mind”.

Then the challenge often arises in creating a balance, telling yourself, just catching up with people with this same technology takes a whole day, or then again quitting my Job, but from my little experience of life, nobody likes a poor visitor, this is actually worse than a “bug” and as I bask in this quagmire, “a little voice in my head keeps singing keep doing what you love doing”.

Like an infinite loop of crazy, spiralling back to these machines, trying the find and fix the balance of normalcy. Always remembered the cool years of college tho, with so much people around and then again that was college.

An then the thought arises, maybe something else might be worth doing, but after so much time spent in building your skills and the enormous joy of programming even typing without looking at the keyboard is a real pleasure, and yeah sure the days are short with the reality of a constant need to survive, remain sane, compete and make the best of life in such short time.

Then how do we know if we have fallen off the so-called “social track”, when we have only lived so little to really comprehend the most parts of life? with such constant stream of unanswered question, you’d realise you shouldn’t have burdened the mind creating such questions in the first place

But then again maybe it gets better, one of the above, the disturbed mind or the situation as whole and yes I try oh I try, I place calls, do some visiting, no relationship tho but with a good perspective in mind.

In this race of life, you sometimes ask yourself would you rather be in a different position, or maybe already put exactly where we belong. For this illusionary fight with self is a fight with reality as a whole and true bliss comes from actually letting go as time and people pass you by.

And my greatest achievement to date aside family and my work is getting into the 1000 club on devRant.

To long to read. So don’t do it.

I feel disappointed. It’s not about job or stuff. I’m disappointed about world in general. I don’t see my future on this planet anymore.

The world more or less looks like that :

Politics are trying to help you by stealing more money from you. The more you’re lucky the more money you will pay for it.

Media punch you with some family stuff from everywhere, give you young rich and far away, beautiful picture photos of places, people and food that you at most could visit once or twice per year during holidays that are break from work concentration camps.

If you’re lucky you’re rich or got rich or wealthy and infamous so you can walk wherever you want and don’t give a fuck what you wear but again your old friends are not so lucky bastards so you need to find new friends that are probably assholes. At the end most of the days you you’re doing nothing except killing time to meet with people you like during weekends or evenings.

Then there are families and everyone want to tell you that’s important. Family is like herd of assholes, if you’re weak they will sacrifice you and tell that you’re looser behind your back but when you get wealthy they will come back to tell you that when you were young and stupid they played with you so now you have to buy them some stuff or get them a job.

At the end there are people with “I wrote that book” certificate of excellence try to sell you opinions on everything starting from sexual positions ending on how to take a good dump. The problem is that the moment they wrote that book it becomes obsolete. Teachers of useless knowledge from last century that forgot about google or wikipedia.

All of them are playing your emotions, cause impulses and hormones are what makes you weak and people are looking for your weaknesses to take advantage of you. Get your money or get your attention and maybe even both at the same time. Cause views matter you know it. So like and subscribe dumb fucks.

If you’re lucky you find couple of them who aren’t doing that. Who the fuck knows why but this shit happens. It doesn’t matter if they’re family or you met them month ago. Those are only to keep and hardest to find. Unluckily those also can change by other people they meet or when they’re young.

If you can’t find a friend get a dog or cat or whatever animal you like. Their love is unconditional and obvious to read.

Well that’s most of the “I want to be spotted” culture that is all boring as fuck. Personalized ass and glamorous pictures and short movies of everything you don’t need but looks awesome. And as you see it’s still growing with more specialized portals like onlyfans, twitch and tiktok. We all need to look at what everyone else have or want to have cause 99% of time 99% of us are boring and is bored as fuck. Most of us can repeat same small amount set of stories all their life cause we’re not created to entertain.

I don’t feel joy looking at this shit fucked full of shit people arguing who’s dick is bigger. Who can post most dumb thing. I think I need a break but how to break from everything ? How to break from culture of money where to live on your country land you need to pay property tax ?

That’s all fucked up. Life’s fucked up.

This morning I turned on my PC at work...
Only to be greeted by a finishing your Windows upgrade message.
It took fucking windows HALF AN HOUR to finish the upgrade.
After that my machine lost its built in cam, mic and speaker. Which I need for my work.
Took me two hours to hunt down the correct driver to install and find the info it must be installed in Win7 compatibility mode or it won't work. It was pure joy to install it plain first and it still didn't work.
Then VirtualBox refused to start. Took me half an hour to upgrade it and get it working again.
Took me half a day to just get the shitmachine working like it did yesterday so that I can START working.

So, dear Microsoft:
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
wait for it...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
FUCK YOU!
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕
sincerely

(And don't give me this "use Linux" crap, I have to use Windows for my work.)

Haven't had such joy as with developing the devrant client in a while. (when things work of course haha)

The js plugin system works now with barely any time added to just loading the rants and in proper order too! (thanks asyncjs) now just need to add a way for the user to download and manage external ones.

The screenshot shows the test plugin linkify, which fetches from the API if there's any links and linkifies them even on the feed (which devrant web doesn't do and always annoyed me) - though since html gets stripped by handlebars I'll have to find a way for them to properly render with other tags to still be stripped (maybe handlebars has that inbuilt already? didn't check yet), plugins currently have access to all values the template would get too, so one could fuck around with e.g. the usernames too lol.

btw: the app is fully responsive even on desktop, which will be handy for me personally, iirc all the other clients I've tried always had some sort of size limit, without which it'd also better fit all our i3 archers out there.

Fuck Homestead.

For the fortune of you not to know, Homestead is a sad attempt at a Wix-like build your own website platform.

However, Homestead is the most unusable piece of shit platform that humans have ever had the misery of interacting with

Lets start off with the login page. The login page is small, unresponsive and half the time just deletes your input whenever you press submit.

It's important to note that unless you're running MacOS or Windows, Homestead will send to an error page on which there's a link to contact support, but pressing that link requires MacOS or Windows.

Fine, I'll fiddle around with my user-agent, and we'll be in soon enough. But now we come to the joy that is the website editor itself.

The website editor is clunky, hard to use, and has enough menus and submenus and sidebars to make the Jira UI shake with fear. Each interface option label is either ridiculously ambiguous or just straight up wrong. The built-in HTML editor doesn't support HTML5, in the name of "browser compatibility".

CSS? Pah! Who needs it! Our psuedo-90s skeuomorphic ugly-as-shit prebuilt styles will work just fine. Responsive design? Bullshit! Nobody uses a smartphone to browse the web, so why do we need to handle it?

Uploading a file? Good fucking luck buddy. There's a complicated dance among the minefield of pop-ups that ask you to confirm some shit or modify some shit and you gotta click the right option each time or else the file won't upload.

Wanna use https like 86% of the entire web and all modern websites? That's a premium feature. Fork over an extra $10 a month

Ok ok, I made it through all that. Dig through the thousands of menus to find the 'publish changes' button, and sigh with relief.

Open up a private browser tab to check my work, and nope. The site looks like shit, even by Homestead's standards. That's because Homestead claims to be a WYSIWYG editor, but it's a damn lie. The site looks like shit, so it's time do dive back into the hellhole that is this damn site editor.

And rinse and repeat. Deal with the shitty editor, publish, and pray it doesn't look like garbage. Be too scared to test on other devices because this flaming pile of dog shit pretending to be a website is bad enough on my device.

Two more months, then I'm done with this client. Someone get me a drink

I learned recently that you can inject SQL lines in some fields like Passwords or usernames on some websites. (Hacky hacky)

At work there is this intra website that is used to manage the parts of the radios and computers we repair.
Each piece has a specific number, and there is a tree with every pieces for each radio/computer.

When we get to repair one, we gotta change the pieces virtualy on the website. Sadly sometimes, the virtual pieces aren't marked like they followed the whole Radio from the place they come to the place we repair (we need it to replace the piece). People are just not doing their job, so we have to send emails and call for them do it so we can repair it. (This is already fucked up.)

Today, I had to replace a piece, but it was marked like it's not there. I called the guy, and it seems like he is on a vacation for weeks. My superior was super annoyed due to the urge of this task.

Guess who managed to change the _mainlocation_ of the _piece_ in the _radiopieces_ table. (Not actual names, you malicious cunt)

I spent 3 hours looking for the name of the fields and table. I don't know how many times I had to refresh the dam page to see I failed once again.
Hopefully I didn't have to guess all of them. Also the joy when I realised I succeed !!!

No one bats a eyes, and I'm here, feeling infinitely superior, as I might get punished for wanting to do my job.
I know it's basic moves to some of you, but dam it felt good.

Conclusion: Do what you have to, specially when it takes 5 minutes and people need it.

2017 has ended and I want to throw this fucking rock of anger with it out of the Window.

I will tell you how my last 3 to 4 years as private IT Guy (IT Dumpster) for everything was.

My Gaming Community:
It was so fucking retarded that I would like to punch everyone there in the face over a thousand times.

Seriously there are over 60 People in that Community and they take every shit for granted and only cry about everything.

I'm Paying since 4 Years over 60 € for our Server every month. Some people donated some small bucks over the time and in the end it was around 150 € Donations over 4 years.

Im thankful for the Donations, but these people really think that they can demand for this Donations private Gameservers for over years for free or think that they now own the Servers. WTF?? FUCK YOU!!

Im managing 2 Linux Server with Web, MySQL, Voice and Gameserver. What did 1 guy donate? 10 € for 4 years, thats around 15% for just a month. You would get our Teamspeak for 7 Days for that price idiots!!

I did all the damn Webdev and am now writing a App in Kotlin for Android man!!

Since last everybody in the Community gets on my nerves, because they are so ignorant and dont appreciate the work of others 😡.

My Association where I support the hole IT with a friend:

We decided in the commitee that we would take on major changes in our infrastructure.

We need to finish the barebone concept in the end of January 18.
Early December 17 I wrote my friend, that we need to have a meeting and plan everything.

Well, now I mostly designed the roadmap by myself and didnt receive any reply from my friend 💀.

I really dont understand why the shit always sticks at me and I need to finish it.

I really love to code something, install or repair PC's with joy or manage Server but the people around me are in my free time like poison and they take out my fun for it.

The only fun and enjoyable IT Part for me is at my fulltime job. Thats the only good place left for me as Safe Heaven and the people there really appreciate my knowledge and work I do.

Today I was debugging some shitty code left by unknown developer whos linkedin account is dead and phone number left in contact card calls local pizza house.

I knew it qould be hard so i've made myself comfortable, gathered 5 redbulls and other items that diabetes people would kill for eating again.

After around 10 minutes i was already frustrated but i kept the pace. "Who is the best, little devie, you!" - I fooled my ego to keep up and shut up.

After around 10 next minutes my attention span has ended. Limbic system started injecting some hormones into my brain, but I remained silent.

First two energy shots were applied. I felt like hero again. Two minutes after I was debugging through some library that was written fo java and found out that it ahots some natives to a c lang lib called "mypreciouslib".

Oh flock, how can i debug it if ita compiled , I cannot do such things, Me be only junior dev. I started swearing, but silently.

Started ollydbg to see what is inside livrary, i searched through but i couldnt match anything it was like mess stirred with fecals of an elephant.

So I opened aida pro " with vitamins" cause obviously, our pm says "but you write in java right " so we dont need those tools right ? Fuck no.

Aida was better at least i could find some funcions calls, but hey, the progress. I was swearing out loud, with earplugs in. And by the time I've sweared all the things in company i got a reminder.

"Hey -insane- stop swearing, the children are here."-sayys pm, it is some kind of " family and work " shitfuck day.

So i asked them: " why wouldnt you buy this fucking tools for programmming for us , you wouldnt have to hear me fucking swearing" . then i realized that , colleagues in room heard all of it, and one of them, total fuckface buttlicker(dev without bit of knowledge) started something like "you are wrong, see how good our software is sellling". Pm was like smiling like he thanked him for buttlicking again. Not to mention he is officially retarded and i know his password to all our services cause he is so smart to put it into text file and then have sharing files in windows turned on.

The other one told aloud, that we would be much better with some debugging tools that are better than fucking eclipse if we have to work without code.

PM told us that he will arrange a meeting. At that point I didnt care any longer. I just fired myself, fuck them.

Please saint Stallman give me hope and joy of programming from my teenage years. Uhhh..

Joy is when you learn that long press on microphone button on your earphone changes the track..
No more need to Everytime unlock the phone to change the track..

Elasticsearch, from the bottom of my heart...

How can one ecosystem be so batshit crazy inconsistent?

Seemingly every agent does the same (e.g. filebeat vs journalbeat vs packetbeat)… yet there are subtle changes in configuration everywhere.

Plus YML. The most shitty markup language one can use and the cockslubbing durps used it fucking everywhere.

Makes fun to have complex stuff and requiring a python Jinja to JSON to YML converter to be able to write the complex stuff without having the fucking migraine to count like a stupid 4 year old whitespace with both hands...

To make it even more absurd: the ingest pipelines which contain a lot of regular expressions / grok and are thus very prone to quoting issues... Yes. Let's do this in YML too.

If you need to add an fucking manual section how to debug YML errors you should have realized what a fucking stupid idea it was, morons.

Now I have the joy of having a python script regex quoting the shit for a Jinja template which then generates JSON which then generates YML.

Why the JSON part?

Yeah... Because ECS and changes in the upstream YML files / GitHub.

To be able to run diffs in a sane way because in YML distinguishing thing is pretty much impossible, so JSON as an intermediary format solely for the purpose of converting upstream YML to JSON to diff it against modified JSON ingest pipelines downstream.

I fucking hate elasticsearch

Recently I have lots of very unproductive days. I m just very tired and even coffee puts me to sleep at work. What's interesting is that as soon as I open something interesting on the web or start working on some new component it all goes away for an hour or so.

So I just wanted to ask you if you have weeks like this.

How can I get myself fixed :(

I just need to vent about how frustrating and terrible Windows is.

It almost seems like consistentsy and attention to detail are completely foreign concepts to Microsoft. Everything from simple text selection (WHY DOES A DOUBLE CLICK INCLUDE THE TRAILING SPACE) to using advanced software feels like a chore.

Any sympathizers here? What problems do you need to vent about when trying to navigate your OS?

FWI I'm not a Mac or Linux user, so I have the joy of using Windows at home. I wish I could switch, but I prefer full access to my Steam library so I'm stuck with this option.

Title: "Wizard of Alzheimer's: Memories of Magic"

Setting:
You play as an elderly wizard who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. As your memories fade, so does your grasp on the magical world you once knew. You must navigate the fragmented and ever-changing landscapes of your own mind, casting spells and piecing together the remnants of your magical knowledge to delay the progression of the disease and preserve your most precious memories.

Gameplay:
1. Procedurally generated memories: Each playthrough generates a unique labyrinth of memories, representing different aspects and moments of your life as a wizard.

2. Memory loss mechanic: As you progress through the game, your memories will gradually fade, affecting your abilities, available spells, and the layout of the world around you.

3. Spell crafting: Collect fragments of your magical knowledge and combine them to craft powerful spells. However, as your memory deteriorates, you'll need to adapt your spellcasting to your changing abilities.

4. Mnemonic puzzles: Solve puzzles and challenges that require you to recall specific memories or piece together fragments of your past to progress.

5. Emotional companions: Encounter manifestations of your emotions, such as Joy, Fear, or Regret. Interact with them to gain insight into your past and unlock new abilities or paths forward.

6. Boss battles against Alzheimer's: Face off against physical manifestations of Alzheimer's disease, representing the different stages of cognitive decline. Use your spells and wits to overcome these challenges and momentarily push back the progression of the disease.

7. Memory anchors: Discover and collect significant objects or mementos from your past that serve as memory anchors. These anchors help you maintain a grasp on reality and slow down the rate of memory loss.

8. Branching skill trees: Develop your wizard's abilities across multiple skill trees, focusing on different schools of magic or mental faculties, such as Concentration, Reasoning, or Creativity.

9. Lucid moments: Experience brief periods of clarity where your memories and abilities are temporarily restored. Make the most of these moments to progress further or uncover crucial secrets.

10. Bittersweet ending: As you delve deeper into your own mind, you'll confront the inevitability of your condition while celebrating the rich magical life you've lived. The game's ending will be a poignant reflection on the power of memories and the legacy you leave behind.

In "Wizard of Alzheimer's: Memories of Magic," you'll embark on a deeply personal journey through the fragmented landscapes of a once-powerful mind. As you navigate the challenges posed by Alzheimer's disease, you'll rediscover the magic you once wielded, cherish the memories you hold dear, and leave a lasting impact on the magical world you've called home.

LMAO

I love coding. I enjoy the clickety-click of my keyboard and the joy of creating code that does something, to help the world be a better place. So why does upper management feel the need to bog me down in process paperwork, tickets to count my widgets, and endless endless emails and spreadsheets to prove that I have work to do. What are the time savings, priorities, cost avoidance... Blah blah blah... #IdRatherBeCoding :)

So at work, there is this class/model thing that's for storing translated strings. It also supports n-level nested macros, cascading lookup (e->d->c->b->a->blank), and I've added transforms too. The code is a bloody mess and very inefficient (legendary dev's code), but it's useful.

You call methods with a symbol representing one of the strings, and it does... whatever you ask, like return text, booleans, expand macros and submacros, pass in data to interpolate, etc.

But I just learned something today.
Its `.html` method... doesn't support html. In fact, calling it strips out all html, takes whatever is left, and attempts to convert that back into html. Because that makes so much sense. So, if you have an html string? Don't call html on it.

Also, macros use the same <angle brackets> as html tags, and macro expansion eats unknown macros, so... you can't mix html and macros, meaning you cannot inject values into your markup. That's a freaking joy to work around. (You end up writing a parser every time.)

So no, if you have an html string, you need to get the raw data out and handle it yourself. Don't reach for that shiny .html method; it'll just ruin your day.

It's the little things that make my day so terribly long.

Well, I am not sure whether this is supposed to be about worst experience as a reviewER or a reviewEE so I'ma do both. First as a reviewer.

So, on my first project in this company, I introduced automated build scripting (read: suggested, was "volunteered" to do it, then had to bust my ads to get it done). Prior to this, our process was run the thing in Visual Studio a bunch of times (don't ask) and package the resulting files. Well, new requirements made this not sustainable.

So after many many meetings in which I assured my co-workers that the script wouldn't cock up and go sideways and format our server (HOW???) and showed them how to work it AND added all the features they requested. I finally send the script out for code review. Oh the joy. Questions like: "why did you implement this?" Came from the guy who told me to implement it. "Can you change the formatting?" I checked and no. "Why isn't this to the code standard?" Because the code standard doesn't include scripting languages.

And here is the piece that takes the whole piss soaked shitsicle pie "I don't understand why we're doing this in the first place. We have a build process already, why do we need a new one?" FUCKING REALLY?!?!? YOU WERE IN THE GODS DAMNED MEETING WHERE WE DECIDED TO DO THIS!!! SET OUT THE REQUIREMENTS!!! LITERALLY EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS SCRIPT YOU WERE THERE AND YOU'RE ASKING WHY WE'RE DOING IT NOW!?!?! Fucking hell. I forced it through anyway because I had the higher ups all signed off on it, but seriously. Just because we're doing something new that slightly inconveniences you, doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done. Stop being afraid of change.

Side note: these people actually would regularly hold up process and product improvement because change is scary.

Yeah, handouts create lazy people I'm not impressed with
You want something in life, then why don't you go and get it?
Actions speak louder than words do, it's pretty quiet, isn't it?
Look at the world we live in, defined by comment sections
Surround yourself with people that challenge how you think
Not people that nod their head and act like they agree
Those people will cut you open just to watch you bleed
Always be yourself, not the person that you pretend to be, no!
These people gon' tell you that you will never make it
Then when you do, they gon' say they knew you were goin' places
That's just how it works, next thing you know you'll be overrated
Hearing people say they miss the "old you, " it's crazy, ain't it?
And perfect people don't exist, so don't pretend to be one
I don't need pats on the back from people for my achievements
When I die I wanna know that I lived for a reason
Anyone can take your life, but not what you believe in, no

Just remember this

Yeah, don't take opinions from people that won't listen to yours
If money's where you find happiness, you'll always be poor
If you don't like the job you have, then what do you do it for?
The cure to pain isn't something you buy at liquor stores, nah
The real you is not defined by the size of your office
The real you is who you are when ain't nobody watchin'
You spend your whole life worried about what's in your wallet
For what? That money won't show up in your coffin, woo!
Yeah, anger's a liar, he ain't got no respect
I fell in love with my pain and I slept with my regrets
Happiness saw it happen, maybe that's why she up and left
Joy called me a cheater, said she ain't coming back
I've always had a problem with relationships
But that's what happens when you see the world through a broken lens
Mistakes can make you grow, that doesn't mean you're friends
Who you are is up to you, don't leave it up to them, no

Just remember this

Yeah, they say you got into music, you signed up to be hated
That's kinda weird cause I don't remember signing my name up
Coming from people that give advice but never take none
I like my privacy, but, lately, I feel it's invaded
I heard that life's too short, don't let it pass you by
We waste a lot of time crying over wasted time
It's not about what people think, it's how you feel inside
My biggest failures in life are knowing I never tried, woo!
I look at the world from a different angle
People change, even Satan used to be an angel
Think twice before you're bitin' on the hand that made you
Don't believe what you believe just 'cause that's how they raised you
Think your own thoughts, don't let them do it for you
Say you want a drink, don't wait for people to pour it on you
Cut out the liars, stay close to the people you know are loyal
Grab your own glass and fill it, don't let your fear destroy you, woo!

The joy when tools do not have machine parseable output.

I'm looking at you SBT. My favorite pile of poo.

Remove the logging level from each line, then trim the line, then stab around inside the line with regexes, fishing for a possible match which hopefully is right...

Then stripping scala information like the object type, cause yeah...
A line can be for example "[info] Vector(File(...),File(...))" where info is the log level, Vector the wrapping sequence type, File(...) the wrapping element type and the string inside File(...) what yours truly needs.

As this is lot of shitty shabby string stabby stabby, we need to add a fuckton of boiler plate validation cause who knows what we just murdered.

To make it even more fucked up, a multi project project can produce different output for the same key.

:-)

Yeah. So we need to fix that too.

By the way, one can set log output to unbuffered in SBT.

Then the output is in random order :-)

Isn't that fun? Come on, you wanna poke that pile of shit, too.

The SBT plugin way is by the way no alternative, as I need a full Java environment for execution.

Which brings me to the last point:

For fucks sake, writing CLI applications in Java is so much bloody boilerplate code.

There's ugly and then there's the "please kill me" kind of level.

50 lines just to write a basic validation of argc / argv with commons cli.

That's 6 lines in python. Not kidding. :(

I currently hate everything.

Moments where the job sucks: When you have to hotwire two electric cables with high currency by giving both cables the blowjob of your life.

Hey. Can I borrow your ears for 5 minutes?

Since I've been out of school, I've often felt that even though I've learned how to code, the education went into a totally direction than the one I want to go. Of course a school can't teach you everything perfectly, but having almost no experience in frontend (mind you we learned the BAREST basics) just makes me feel entirely empty in that regard stepping up to a company. I've been pretty loaded during school, since I was struggling with a lot of things so I couldn't really find myself pursueing the direction of coding frontend apps being fun. I needed the little time I had to blow off steam playing games etc.

So the few things I know are all self taught, but I was never given a hand been shown best practices or solid advice where to look. Sitting down now at my pc trying to learn ReactJS for example feels incredibly draining and difficult, since we've never done JS in school ONCE. All the C# experience barely helps, since with ES6 being rolled out parallel to "normal" JS it's even harder to me to connect the lego blocks that is frontend development. Since many best practices are applied to ES6, I can barely even tell what previous practice they are replacing, making the entire picture even more spongy. In one sentence it's very overwhelming.

I've thought I'd apply maybe as a UX/UI Designer since I've got a great visual sense (confirmed countlessly by many, friends and strangers alike) maybe contributing to the frontend part that way. But as I was applying I've noticed that chances are seemingly pretty low to get accepted since it seems you've got zero reputition if you don't have a degree in Design.

It breaks me apart. I could probably apply as a frontend developer, but I am not sure if I would be happy doing that on the long run. Since just fucking around in Photoshop creating things seems like no effort and brings me joy, as compared to coding out lines for example.

I wanted to make money after school, improve on myself and my quality of life since I've drained that entirely for the sake of my education. Not spiral into another couple years just to eventually maybe get in the direction I want to.

On the flipside going into frontend dev with 0 skills, 0 experience, but being expected to have 2 years of hands on experience with the newest frameworks makes me feel empty and worthless.

I often hand out advice to other people on devRant, but this is the one time where I need some. Desperately. I feel shattered inside, getting out of bed in the morning has no incentive to me since I'll just feel like shit all day, watching YouTube to cheer me up temporarily, only to feel immense remorse not spending the day learning or improving on myself. Barely anything brings me joy. I don't wanna call myself depressive, but maybe I am just dodging the term and I am exactly that.

Thanks If you've read through this monstrosity of a rant/story. I'd be glad if you'd be so kind to give me a different take on my situation or a new perspective.

I am stepping on the spot and I am slowly dying inside because of it.

It dreads me to say it, but I need help.

A conversation that i had with my co-worker today. I was having trouble getting into UAT to troubleshoot.

me
i lost access to UAT again

co-worker
F. So secure we can't even get in

me:
lol

co-worker:
I'll email whoever we did last

me:
i can get through the first phase(where you enter pin+rsa)
it denies me access after that
says bad username or password

co-worker:
Oh ok. Prolly just need to reset your pwd then. I'll find the email for helpdesk and fwd.
At least ur RSA works.

me:
yeah what a joy

co-worker:
If it's locked you may need to try from a Windows box. Horizon is bugged on Mac where the submit button stays disabled even when you type a pwd.

me:
i couldnt contain my happiness that my RSA worked
😃

co-worker:
Yeah it's exhilarating
Whenever I pick up my rsa token my life re-finds it's purpose and I feel like I'm meddling through a field of sunflowers.

I once tried to get my RSA token tattooed but it switched too quick.

me:
lol its faster that Usain Bolt

co worker:
Russia got kicked out because of their RSA tokens

Just got handed a dozen servers. Documentation shows a (Linux) database cluster is using ldap authentication. I try logging in with my creds. No joy. I look up the root password and log in.

Not only is it not configured to use ldap, it's also not clustered.

I need more coffee.

it's been a while since my last rant and coming back after so long made me realize how much I missed here.

at some point i realized that the career I wanted and my current situation wouldn't match, I decided to go in real hard, I moved into the dreaded backend development (you can guess, node and mongodb),

I isolated myself from almost everyone and everything, cleared out my mobile games, social media and for almost two months I wanted something stable(might not be job ready but it had to be reasonable). I have come to love backend development so much, the joy of not having anything to do with css.

dad fought me, mum cried, probably thought I was slipping into some deep end, quitting school in my second year of studying food science(still dont know how I accepted that course lol) to start afresh didn't help matters. really hard decisions, made money on some little freelancing gigs, wasnt constant, I needed something stable and that was a job and a degree to get me one.

nothing special, just some regular hustler hoping his passion will pay him, I have always loved what i do but I need something to keep me going.

My math teacher.

Simple story: His way of teaching was like bible study - he dictates the mathematical rules, the students had to write it down _exactly_ as told.
(Yes. He even dictated spaces / newlines / ....).

Had him for many years....
Since I was the rotten apple in class (I was always very weak regarding math), he had joy in mobbing me specifically.

It was one of the reasons I never thought about programming at all - or to be more precise, I _feared_ programming since everyone told me it would require intense knowledge of math.

Well. Fast forward. I went to university despite my fear, just because I was too stubborn to prove my math teacher right.

He was one of the counseling teachers too - and he made _very_ clear that I would fail in _anything_ regarding mathematics job wise.

I failed university, yes.

I gave up simply because I was too bored to learn and replay stuff by heart you'll certainly never need to remember your whole life.

Math played a role, too. Since I lacked the whole mathematical background, I barely passed the tests (mostly by a point).

But thanks to a lot of friends I learned that mathematics is helpful for programming - but not a must.

After giving up university, I started an apprenticeship.

And while I dreaded the decision for a long time, I couldn't be more happy about it.

I just became the CS tutor for my university...the one thing I have learned:
Don't let them ask questions explain what they need to know and walk away. Let them down and find the joy of problem solving.

Sometimes I get in a mode where everyone is a potential enemy. So my mind will be say, "The fuck you say!?" in a reactionary way. When this happens I sometimes respond badly online. I am noticing this pattern before I respond. It can take great effort to not post shit online at times.

My general goals when conversing online these days:
1. Spread joy through humor. (it isn't my problem if you don't think it is funny)
2. Care for people by telling the truth. (it isn't my problem if you don't think its true. I do like exchanging ideas.)
3. Try to listen and help people if they exhibit a perceptible need. (sometimes a lone voice reaching out can make a huge difference)
4. Restrain myself when someone aggressively challenges my beliefs. (work in progress, the fuck you say?!)
5. Sharing common interests with people. (games, programming, staying sane, etc)
6. Shitting on Javascript. (not because it is true, but because it is funny. see goal 1)

Client be like:
Pls, could you give the new Postgres user the same perms as this one other user?

Me:
Uh... Sure.

Then I find out that, for whatever reason, all of their user accounts have disabled inheritance... So, wtf.

Postgres doesn't really allow you to *copy* perms of a role A to role B. You can only grant role A to role B, but for the perms of A to carry over, B has to have inheritance allowed... Which... It doesn't.

So... After a bit of manual GRANT bla ON DATABASE foo TO user, I ping back that it is done and breath a sigh of relief.

Oooooonly... They ping back like -- Could you also copy the perms of A on all the existing objects in the schema to B???

Ugh. More work. Lets see... List all permissions in a schema and... Holy shit! That's thousands of tables and sequences, how tf am I ever gonna copy over all that???

Maybe I could... Disable the pager of psql, and pipe the list into a file, parse it by the magic of regex... And somehow generate a fuckload of GRANT statements? Uuuugh, but that'd kill so much time. Not to mention I'd need to find out what the individual permission letters in the output mean... And... Ugh, ye, no, too much work. Lets see if SO knows a solution!

And, surprise surprise, it did! The easiest, simplest to understand way, was to make a schema-only dump of the database, grep it for user A, substitute their name with B, and then input it back.

What I didn't expect is for the resulting filtered and altered grant list to be over 6800 LINES LONG. WHAT THE FUCK.

...And, shortly after I apply the insane number of grants... I get another ping. Turns out the customer's already figured out a way to grant all the necessary perms themselves, and I... No longer have to do anything :|

Joy. Utter, indescribable joy.

Is there any actual security reason for disabling inheritance in Postgres? (14.x) I'd think that if an account got compromised, it doesn't matter if it has the perms inherited or not, cuz you can just SET ROLE yourself to the granted role with the actual perms and go ham...

Development: we need Nginx installed on *insert server list*
Me: ok, let me get in tough with the platform team.
Platform team: This should be installed in the userspace, Unix teams don't support this.

And here I am, trying to get a reverse proxy running on servers on which I do not have sudo rights.
Since it doesn't work, it's my fault, both sides block the door.
I installed it locally on a virtual machine, but the compiled or installed code doesn't work once copied.
The joy of being an "application engineer". This job title means nothing!

There is no joy in life

So I finally managed to set up networking on my 3D printer's raspberry pi: now it can connect to my phone's hotspot or to my uni's wifi network, depending on which is available.

Then I set up OpenVPN, using a remote server as a middleman so I can connect to the printer remotely and start/stop/monitor prints from anywhere.

Everything works great, except for one thing: whenever the Pi connects to the uni's network first, OpenVPN fails to start and connect to my server, rendering the printer unavailable (unless I use an ethernet cable, but that's not a viable operation since I need to lift the printer, and it's heavy).
The only for it to work as intended is to either:
a) keep my hotspot active (which kinda defeats the point), or
b) let it connect to my hotspot first (so that OpenVPN can start properly) and then turn off the hotspot, allowing the printer to reconnect to the uni's wifi and reconnect to my vpn.

Why won't things just work the way they're supposed to? 😭

Unlimited time is impossible... But I don't wanna ramble.

The one thing that I absolutely miss in my kind of work is something that does exist in dozens of flavors and each existence promises to solve some thing...

It's "bug tracker" / "time management" / "ticket management" / "board" / "kanban" or what ever pervert method you prefer software.

I haven't seen a decent one.

I'd think I'd want to build one - it would be definitely an all time consuming effort, since I would be in dire need of specialists.

The thing with nearly all of the solutions is that they lack ... an associative mindset.

Simply put, what we humans can.

The longer a project exists, the more it's housekeeping (guess that's a better word for it) turns into maintenance nightmare.

I remember quite well the joy of puzzling together eg Jira / Bugzilla / ... complex search formulars trying to find the needle in a planet of hay.

If you're read so far and have had similar experiences, think about how nice it would be if you had a mixture of AI and BI doing exactly that.

BI / Business Intelligence to get meaningful statistics is possible, but without AI it's a lot of work.

The AI would need to do several things...

- Match information (eg version XY was released at XY, so each bugreport after XY belongs to version XY and higher if no version matched)

- Tag and categorize (crashed / faulted / fried / ... - tag crash)

- "do the mundane work": ask nicely if the marching / tagging and so on was right, ask for missing info, require feedback etc.

There's a lot I could write more about that topic. But that's the gist. ;)

I hate the elasticsearch backup api.

From beginning to end it's an painful experience.

I try to explain it, but I don't think I will be able to cover it all.

The core concept is:
- repository (storage for snapshots)
- snapshots (actual backup)

The first design flaw is that every backup in an repository is incremental. ES creates an incremental filesystem tree.

Some reasons why this is a bad idea:
- deletion of (older) backups is slow, as newer backups need to be checked for integrity
- you simply have to trust ES that it does the right thing (given the bugs it has... It seems like a very bad idea TM)
- you have no possibility of verification of snapshots

Workaround... Create many repositories as each new repository forces an full backup.........

The second thing: ES scales. Many nodes / es instances form a cluster.

Usually backup APIs incorporate these in their design. ES does not.

If an index spans 12 nodes and u use an network storage, yes: a maximum of 12 nodes will open an eg NFS connection and start backuping.

It might sound not so bad with 12 nodes and one index...

But it get's pretty bad with 100s of indexes and several dozen nodes...

And there is no real limiting in ES. You can plug a few holes, but all in all, when you don't plan carefully your backups, you'll get a pretty f*cked up network congestion.

So traffic shaping must be manually added. Yay...

The last thing is the API itself.

It's a... very fragile thing.

Especially in older ES releases, the documentation is like handing you a flex instead of toilet paper for a wipe.

Documentation != API != Reality.

Especially the fault handling left me more than once speechless...

Eg:
/_snapshot/storage/backup
gives you a state PARTIAL
/_snapshot/storage/backup/_status
gives you a state SUCCESS

Why? The first one is blocking and refers to the backup status itself. The second one shouldn't be blocking and refers to the backup operation.

And yes. The backup operation state is SUCCESS, while the backup state might be PARTIAL (hence no full backup was made, there were errors).

So we have now an additional API that we query that then wraps the API of elasticsearch. With all these shiny scary workarounds like polling, since some APIs are blocking which might lead to a gateway timeout...

Gateway timeout? Yes. Since some operations can run a LONG (multiple hours) time and you don't want to have a ton of open connections hogging resources... You let the loadbalancer kill it. Most operations simply run in ES in the background, while the connection was killed.

So much joy and fun, isn't it?

Now add the latest SMR scandal and a few faulty (as in SMR instead of CMD) hdds in a hundred terabyte ZFS pool and you'll get my frustration level.

PS: The cluster has several dozen terabyte and a lot od nodes. If you have good advice, you're welcome - but please think carefully about this fact.

I might have accidentially vaporized people sending me links with solutions that don't work on large scale TM.

been exploring the options for cross platform desktop app, and i found :
java : both awt and swing look ugly, i really like OOP of java, and the way projects are organized is easy to scale, but i need to deploy the jdk, and the speed on gui apps isn't that great
C# : (.net/ mono, i can't grasp F# and vb is stupid) looks native on windows, not so much alien on both linux/mac, and being a java cousin is a pro, i found the Eto library for mono even looks more native on *ix than winforms
wxwidgets: for C/C++ so far this looks like the best option for total native feel and performance, but man i fucking hate C code, and this looks a lot like C code, even with proper native Cpp support, maybe i should dive deeper in it
GTK+ : did any one mention C code ? because this mother fucker is plain C with macros all over the place, it made me realize why wx is promoted as Cpp friendly, i doubt I'll use this
tcl/tk : even tho ive never wrote a single line of tcl in my life, the tk lib is the default ui for both python and ruby on all supported platforms,
and i really love ruby, and Python is Usually a joy to work with
Qt : this by far looks like the best option, proper OOP in C++, bindings for python (ruby binds are outdated), almost native look and feel on supported platforms, and even has a gui builder in xml or json/js (qml) however i bet I'll use such a thing, the building tho depends on an external preprocessor "moc" and some wicked macros, also makes working with templates a fucking mess, and the heavy dependence on QObject inheritance makes integrating external libraries a bit more tiring, the signal slot system makes more sense in python than in C++, since it makes me confused about the flow of the code
lazarus: is a freepascal implementation that looks and feels like delphi, not so much for native look and feel, but good performance and easy language to handle
electron : this fat mofo is fat, it's the slowest of all options, if i want an html app, I'll just compile a stripped down webkit and deploy that
what do you think ? and did i miss something ?

Stitching old frameworks / libraries together...

What a lovely joy.

An override here... Testing if it runs.

Oh lovely, shitty shaded jars.

Creating other project for shitty shaded jar.

An override here, an override there...

Oh we need some system property to unfuck JVM upgrade...

Since it's shaded, need to add overrides for the non shaded and shaded variant...

Done...

Back to framework / library....

Another override, another system property...

Its seemingly endless.

Stitching together old shit with new shit to get JDK 20 plus running.

I hate everything.

Oh the joy of multi-site working and design reviews in bigger corporations...

I try to propose if we could do it on-line with BitBucket commenting etc. Just put your comments there, we discuss it there, each in our own time, and get things closed.

But no. It's nicer to arrange 2-3h conf calls. So that we can really discuss items (and the reviewers don't have to do anything before the call). Nothing can be done beforehand. And the reviewers get to comment not only on design matters, but on system level things too. Like "I wonder if this would be better in place X". Well sure, maybe, but that's system level decision and would require architects etc. And all that work was done 2 years ago, we're supposed to now just check the source code (which you guys wanted me to change).

Ok, so I will arrange a conf call. Our time zones are not the same, so one guy is coming to the office when another is almost leaving. One wants to have Wednesdays meeting free. One has lunch at 11, another at 13. For fucks sake. Some guys have filled their calendar with meetings, most of them which they will not attend anyway, but Outlook shows them as "reserved".

So I spend my day trying to find a free spot that everyone could join. Half of the guys won't read the code and won't give any comments, but still need to be there. And then there are those comments saying "I'd like this variable name to be different" and "it would be cleaner if this was done like I do". Same people produce unreadable mess themselves, but somehow always manage to dodge all reviews of their own stuff.

I have a small NUC-like machine in my home with an old external hdd connected to it. I use it to run my local gitlab, nextcloud and to test a few websites I build for the lolz.
If you too have a homelab, whether it's a single raspberry or an entire room full or racks, you know damn well that everything you have running locally as a web service keeps going until it doesn't, for whatever fucking reason. This time, it was the turn of my nextcloud.
The machine has arch linux running, I chose it since I already use it on my coding laptop and being a rolling release means I don't have to manually upgrade to a newer version, risking various fuck-ups and consequent screaming of profanity.
The downside is that arch is a bleeding-edge distro, so, despite being pretty good for what concerns security, as updates are pushed out some packages may still require legacy software to work as intended, since obviously not all developers for all packages can release simultaneously.
The problem was that php reached 8.2.x but nextcloud couldn't use anything beyond 8.1, so the highlighted solution was to download php-legacy, a package with a set of utilities which the cloud could use instead of mainline php.

Pretty easy, right? fuck my life, here we go.

I edited apache-httpd's configurations to link the new libraries, updated every reference in every virtual host that could possibly screw up the web server.

Done.

Then I went on and disabled the php-fpm mainline, creating a new systemd unit that would instead run the legacy executable and afterwards I edited nextcloud's additional configs so they use that instead.

Done, getting a bit dizzy, but I reboot everything and breathe.

At this point the migration should be complete, but wait, the server returns an error saying that the application is still trying to use php 8.2+...wait, what in the sysadmin Christ?

Back to nextcloud config, everything is set, everything else in every other fucking php-legacy and web server is fine, the old fpm service is disabled, I am confused, and why in the FUCKING FUCK is the new php-fpm unit failing to start at boot with "error 78/config - directory not found"? Hello? Am I being trolled by a shitty dual-core amazon fake NUC?
Maybe yes, cause it turns out that the unit was referencing a directory in the external hdd, which gets mounted at boot time after the unit itself starts, so nothing much, just a matter of tinkering with cron jobs, a reboot and at least this one is off my balls.

But why still isn't the server responding correctly? why? WHY?

After slamming my cock on the keyboard here and there scrolling back through all the config files I think to myself, hmmm, my gitlab is working flawlessly, well yeah, I didn't need to install the whole web stack, everything was nice and easy wrapped in a docker container...so why am I even here, why the fuck am I bothering with all this layered web-app bullshit, why don't I just run the up-to-date docker image that someone else has already set up for me, back up all the data and reupload them on the application?

Oh joy, you can't imagine, after 3...almost 4 hours of pure computer-touching the relief I had from seeing the blue web page with the "welcome to nextcloud" title.

Right now it's copying back all the files, and the external hdd is now linked to include the data folder.
Like really, everything was solved in two lines of bash.

I am still fuming, but at least I learned a valuable lesson, if you want a service up for yourself, implement it and deploy it as fucking easy straight-forward as you can, giving MAXIMUM priority to already fully-working options that are out there just waiting to be downloaded and used. I swing my scrotal sack on web-apps elegance as long as it's MY homelab in MY place.

Eat a fat dick php.

sudo pacman -Rns nextcloud
sudo systemctl disable --now php-fpm-legacy
sudo pacman -Rns php-legacy
sudo pacman -Rns $(sudo pacman -Qdtq)

i need an adult. I know noone who would understand my worries, so you guys need to be it.

i have a nextcloud running on my raspberry pi. performance is horrible, dont ask, but it works.

i mostly use it to backup the photos of my phone sd card every night when my phone charges. Internally this works good. If i am elseplace it wont for obvious reasons.

In my youthful joy of doom i opened port 443 and forward it to my raspi. I get internet via cable and my ip is pretty much static (it was the same for 10 months). So external access is provided.

Now i thought, its stupid that i cannot sign an ssl certificate cause i dont have a domain. Lets buy domain. But before i do that i did some try runs with duckdns to test the principle.

Some back and forth, it works now. Pretty god, i could even make a cron job on the raspbi to renew (that should work right?). Only problem. randoname.duckdns.org doesnt work internally. Or should not at least.

So i googled a bit and it turns out that my router (a cable fritz!box i bought myself) can be a local network dns. Or cannot. Regardless what i try, it doesnt accept the changed config file.

Now the problem.

It works anyway. randoname.duckdns.org points to my external "static" ip and resolves to that from my internal network..so it works on my phone or laptop. if i traceroute the thing it goes via two hops out and finishes in less than 1ms.

Now to the problem:
I have no fokkin clue why. The expected behaviour would be that it shouldnt work. If i do what i intended todo on pc in the hosts file tracert works correctly, directly pointing to the internal ip.

What i cannot figure out, is it the fritz!box being smart? Is it my ISP being smart?

Reason to rant: i have absolutly NOONE to ask, i know not a single person who would even understand what troubles me. I want to learn, i want to know WHY not just some mindless russian patchwork of "if it works its good enough".

thats depressing.

!dev

Personal rant, but as one shouldn't bottle up emotions, probably not so bad idea....

Started with diet and exercise in the vacation, as finally a certain thing starting with C calmed down...

Its maddening how fucked up the world is. Now as a lil private info (that might not be so unknown, shared multiple times here) - my body is a train wreck.

Lungs are fucked, muscle distrophy, some other things are fucked.

I'm the kind of thing every gym trainer dreads - the client that needs not only a lot of ass whooping, but also has a lot of problems that need to be taken care of.

Which is why I rather do exercise at home, cause... My experiences with humans in gyms are bad. Most trainers behave like fucking chimpanzees screaming commands while not listening what one tells them...

First challenge: Find a low impact cardio training.

What one mostly finds is a female chick (which is sad cause I like men more for obvious reasons), that should gain some weight, screaming at ya how great sport is while jumping around like a bunny on ecstasy.
Low impact isn't really low impact when you jump around, lil bunny... And it isn't low impact when you just let yourself fall to the floor and start doing push ups.

If an obese person like me did that, it would end in pain, frustration and an empty fridge TM.

So one has to painfully look and skip through 20 min vids of "Non low impact low impact YouTube / ... vids" to find one that is doable without wrecking the body even further... Yaaaay. That makes one totally not feel depressed :-)

The other thing that I always hate is dieting. Note that I don't have to change much - I'm basically on a diet since years, holding weight the whole time.

The jolly fun is that I can't take off with just an diet. If you never heard that such thing is possible, a lil advice: It is possible. Nothing hurts more than being told that eating less solves all problems magically - cause it doesn't.

What I usually need is added protein, as I suffer from muscle dystrophy in my left side. (hence the low impact vids).

If you go to a grocery store, you most likely find *tons* of protein stuff.

The fun thing is that roughly 80 % of that are - like all things in a supermarket - completely bullshit.

I know one could avoid using protein powder / ... - but that makes dieting a very very very hard task, as one has to not only do a lot of planning, but cooking and eating becomes a depression palooza... It just doesn't make fun when you have to scale components for every meal or force yourself to eat e.g. 250 g of low fat curd cheese to gain the necessary proteins.

Why is supermarket stuff so shitty....

Added sugar / saccharides . When one has been dieting for long for health reasons, one finds out pretty quick that most products (especially those labeled as healthy / fat reduced / "weight loss") are perfectly made to lead to a sugar crisis and binge eating.

I've found protein drinks containing up to 25 g of sugar per drink (330 ml).

A coke has 27 g of sugar per 250 ml...

:) Now isn't that jolly...

I've found my stuff of joy not so long ago (not advertising here, but depending on flavor it has only up to 3 g (!)) of sugar per drink)...

It just annoys me and pisses me off how much money is made - in my opinion deliberately - on the suffering of other people...

Most laws by the way end up being blocked by lobbyists - most nutrient scores etc are just "wrong" or better to unspecific... Making exploitation pretty easy.

It's funny how everyone has an opinion on obese people, everybody is pointing fingers and explaining how stupidly easy it is to take off... And at the same time no one gives a damn about shit like that.

That's all folks. Feeling better now.

By the way, I'm doing fine. I lost 7 kg already, though the train wreck of body was pretty pissed the last two weeks as everything hurts.

Another reason why motivational speeches are dumb in videos: Pain isn't fun. :)

They need to add a new definition of Eclipse to all dictionaries.

Taking away the light and joy of development out of the process.
Synonyms: impossible, waste of time, wishing for Friday.

First and foremost, it's essential to figure out which IRS office is closest to your location. That, in itself, can be a daunting task, especially if you're not familiar with the area. Using the IRS's online office locator is a helpful start, but sometimes, even that leaves you with more questions than answers.

Then comes the joy of trying to get in touch with someone who can provide the specific information or assistance you need. Long hold times, automated systems, and a seemingly endless stream of recorded messages can leave you feeling like you're caught in an endless loop.

And let's not forget the paperwork. Different IRS offices often have different procedures, so finding the right forms and knowing how to fill them out correctly can be a headache.

In the end, it feels like a journey filled with frustration and uncertainty. But, here's a tip from someone who's been there: persistence pays off. Keep trying, be patient, and, if possible, reach out to others who've had similar experiences. Sometimes, a bit of collective wisdom can make this daunting process a little more manageable.

Vertical pressure leaf filter? More like a vertical pain in the neck! Why in the world would anyone think it's a good idea to arrange filter leaves in a vertical orientation? It's like they're begging for inefficiency! And don't even get me started on the maintenance nightmare that comes with trying to clean those things out. You practically need a ladder just to reach them!

Then there's the horizontal pressure leaf filter. Oh, joy! Because arranging those filter leaves horizontally makes all the difference, right? Wrong! It's just another headache waiting to happen. Sure, it might save a bit of space, but at what cost? I'll tell you: constant clogging, uneven flow distribution, and a whole lot of frustration.

And don't even get me started on the molten sulphur filter. Molten sulphur! Do they not realize how dangerous that stuff is? And yet, they expect us to trust some flimsy filter to keep us safe? No thank you! I'd rather take my chances swimming in a pool of lava.

Filter elements? Oh, great! Because we really needed another thing to keep track of in our already cluttered warehouses. And good luck trying to find the right one when you need it. It's like searching for a needle in a haystack, except the needle costs thousands of dollars and could potentially shut down your entire operation if you pick the wrong one.

Pulse jet candle filter? What is this, a science fiction movie? Just because it sounds fancy doesn't mean it actually works! And don't even get me started on the polishing and bag filter. If I wanted to spend all day polishing things, I'd become a shoe shiner, not an engineer!

And as for self-cleaning filters and strainers, don't even get me started! They claim to be self-cleaning, but what they really mean is that they'll clog up and break down just like every other filter out there. It's a scam, I tell you!

Oil field filtration equipment? Yeah, because nothing says "reliable" like trusting your livelihood to a piece of machinery that's constantly exposed to the elements and covered in God-knows-what.

And basket filters and strainers? They're like the ugly stepchild of the filtration world. Nobody wants to deal with them, but we're stuck with them anyway because apparently, we can't have nice things.

Process filtration and equipment? More like process frustration and equipment that's one step away from falling apart at any moment. And don't even get me started on 'Y', 'T', and conical strainers. What even are those? And why do we need so many different types? It's like they're trying to confuse us on purpose!

And finally, the auto backwash filter. Because apparently, we're too lazy to clean our own filters now. What's next? Auto-eating forks and self-driving shoes? Give me a break!

In conclusion, filtration equipment is the bane of my existence. So thanks, but no thanks, to all these so-called "innovations." I'll stick to my good old-fashioned cheesecloth, thank you very much!

All these rubber ducks and here I dont feel like I need one when who ever I allow socialise with me, will do just fine. Maybe I have yet to experiance the joy of one and not its social status in the community :( i feel so out right now

Manager informed me that I need to go on business trip abroad (only 2000+ kilometers, two, perhaps three flight exchanges) in three days at customer's plant for (at least) two weeks. Of course, he only hinted vague details what I should/would do there. I must admit that I'm a bit baffled but ...

Please note that, because of health issues, i didn't leave home town for more than 5 years and didn't leave country for more than 20 years. ;)

Oh, joy ...

So notable international development company who promised changes by 8 days ago but halted dev 2 weeks before delivery and claimed they were shippable but need to meet with us first admits that was a lie without admitting it... Also no longer stressing us for the next payment anymore... Looks like the shit is on the other foot now bruv!

lmao

This means 2 more months of me doing analyst and QA work.... I just want to cooooooooooode. I haven't seen the code for this application and I'll have the joy of integrating all the duct tape into our ecosystem. I can hear them reeling the duct tape off all the way in India at this point.

It's probably gonna be so shit...