My boss is technically restricted shall we say.

As the cto I have also been designated office IT guy. Which means apparently fixing the printer. Which is ok I guess. I mean it's bullsh*t but hey.

Anyway, about 6 months ago he said he needed a new laptop. He lives his life in excel and outlook, and even though the whole company uses google docs for everything he still exports everything to excel, makes a copy, then saves it back to drive so everything gets out of sync.

It's a fun problem that I have banned everyone from doing obviously but he continues.

Anyway, anyway, he wanted a new windows laptop naturally. I said to spend about £700 on a decent machine rather than buying something cheap that will frustrate and not last long.

He doesn't listen and gets some old windows 7 machine for £300. It's an alright spec for 2009; he must not have got the memo about it being 2017.

4 months go by and he says he needs a new laptop because this one is too slow (not least because he opens 400 chrome tabs and never reboots his machine). Anyway, I fix the problem of uninstalling all his bloatware and it runs quicker but he has his heart set on a new machine.

He insists.

I suggest he spend the money this time so he literally doesn't buy a new one in 4 months. I suggest the surface book that's £1200. A little overpriced but he will love the touch screen, it's powerful enough and it's windows. Ticks all the boxes for him.

He suddenly decides he wants a Mac.

I tell him it will be a nightmare for everyone if he does that.

He insists.

I suggest the Mac book pro as I've had mine for 6 years now and it's still going strong. It's a little more expensive than the surface but it will last.

He then says he wants the air.

I say they haven't updated them in ages and they aren't actually that powerful.

He insists.

That night he just buys an air from the Apple Store.

WHY THE FU*k ARE YOU ASKING ME FOR ADVICE IF YOURE NOT GOING TO LISTEN YOU MOTHERFUC*er. WASTING MY TIME AND YOURS.

Was very close to rage quitting when he wanted me to back up his old machine but didn't bring in his hard drive and didn't want to put it in the cloud. #whatDoYouWantMeToDoWithYourOldPornCollection

To top it all off I ran some benchmarks and my 6 year old Mac book pro is more powerful than his "brand new" air.

Linux sucks.

Now now, chill. I'm using it as my main OS for a few years now. I know what I'm talking and this title is a bit click-baity, but this just has to go out there:

1. It's usable as a Windows replacement just fine - FALSE. XFCE4 is years old and buggy as hell especially on multi-monitor set-up, Gnome3 gets stuck more often than my Windows 98 machine used to, KDE is like a rich kid on meth. Plug in Bluetooth headphones? Well no, sorry, you have to research that online, since you'll probably need to install some packages for it to work. Did I say "work"? Well no, because after more research you realize that Debian on Gnome3 on gdm3 launches pulseaudio on its own, so you have 2 instances of pulseaudio, and one of them is stealing your headphones sometimes and you either have no sound or shitty sound. How do I know that you ask? The same way I know everything else - every time you try to do something new on any Linux, it involves a ton of research. Exciting research, don't get me wrong, but at this point it looks more like a toy than a reliable desktop computer operating system.

2. And why am I using pulseaudio? Why not alsa? years ago people were discussing on forums that pulseaudio is old and dead, yet here we are with new LTS release of Ubuntu still shining with Pulseaudio. How about several different service management systems being deprecated by new ones, each having different configurations and calling methods? Apparently systemd is old and lame now. It's a mix of 10 year old software that works badly, with a 5 year old replacement that works worse, somehow trying to live under the same roof. Does it work? Ask my headphones who sound like a fucking dial-up modem.

3. Let's talk about displays, shall we? xorg is old and deprecated, right? We got Wayland that's mostly stable. Don't know what that is? That's just basic knowledge for Linux. And when you try to install network-manager, it also tries to install Mir toolkits. Because why the fuck not install 3 display managers when you want a network manager, of which one is old and dying, one is young and stupid, and another is an infant that died of cancer?

4. Want to integrate with Google Drive? Yeah, there's a tool that mounts the drive as a local directory. Yeah only for Ubuntu. Want it on Debian? You need to compile it. Oh wait, it's on Ocaml, because fuck mainstream languages, we're hipsters. How do you compile Ocaml? Well you need to have Ocaml on your system, dummy. How do you do that? Well you need to compile Ocaml. Ok, how do I do that? Well, git clone, download and install some dependencies, configure, make... oh sorry, you're using libssl1.0.2g when you need libssl1.0.1f, nope, sorry, won't work. Want to install libssl1.0.1f? Why? You already have the "g", stupid! Want to remove libssl1.0.2g? Bye-bye literally everything that you have on your PC. But at least you got the "f". Does it work now? Well no, because you need libssl1.0.2g for another dependency to work.
And all I ever wanted was to get a fucking document from google drive (not nudes, I promise).

5. Want to watch a movie? Let me tear that screen in half and make the bottom half late by a couple of frames, because who needs vertical sync, right? Oh you do? Well install the native drivers maybe. Oh you have? Welcome to eternal Boot to Recovery mode, motherfucka!

---------------------------------

Yeah, most of the times things work just fine. But the reason I know what those things are and how they work is not curiosity. The reason that I know the inner workings of Linux much better than the inner workings of Windows, is because in those few years that I've been using it full time, it has caused me 10 times more headache than I have ever experienced with other systems. And it's not the usual annoyances like "OMG it rebooted when I didn't ask it to", but more like "Oh, it won't work and I need 2 days to find out why" kind of stuff, because even if you experience the same thing again, it's always caused by some new shit and the old solution won't work any more.

I still love it, and will continue to use it. I don't know why really. Maybe because I'm not afraid of fucking it up any more? Maybe because I can do what I want in it and recovering will be easier than on Windows?
It's a toy for me, after all these years. And I also use it for professional reasons.

But whenever someone presents it as a better alternative to Windows, I just want to puke.

Was lead developer at a small startup, I was hiring and had a budget to add 3 new people to my team to develop a new product for the company.

Some context first and then the rant!

Candidate 1 - Amazing, a dev I worked with before who was under utilized at the previous company. Still a junior, but, she was a quick learner and eager to expand her knowledge, never an issue.

Candidate 2 - Kickass dev with back end skills and extras, he was always eager to work a bit more than what was expected. I use to send him home early to annoy him. haha!

Candidate 3 - Lets call him P.

In the interview he answers every question perfectly, he asks all the right questions and suggests some things I havent even thought of. CTO goes ahead and says we should skip the technical test and just hire the guy, his smart and knows what his talking about, I agree and we hire him. (We where a bit desperate at this stage as well.)

He comes in a week early to pick up his work laptop to get setup before he starts the next week, awesome! This guy is going to be an asset to the company, cant wait to have him join the team - The CTO at this stage is getting ready to leave the company and I will be taking over the division and need someone to take over lead position, he seems like the guys to do it.

The guys starts the next week, he comes in and the laptop we gave him is now a local server for testing and he will be working off his own laptop, no issue, we are small so needed a testing stack, but wasnt really needed since we had procedures in place for this already.

Here is where everything goes wrong!!! First day goes great... Next day he gets in early 6:30am (Nice! NO!), he absolutely smells, no stinks, of weed, not a light smell, the entire fucking office smells of weed! (I have no problem with weed, just dont make it my problem to deal with). I get called by boss and told to sort this out people are complaining! I drive to office and have a meeting with him, he says its all good he understands. (This was Friday).

Monday comes around - Get a call from Boss at 7:30am. Whole office smells like weed, please talk to P again, this cannot happen again. I drive to office again, and he again says it wont happen again, he has some issues with back pain and the weed helps.

Tuesday - Same fucking thing! And now he doesnt want to sign for the laptop("server") that was given to him, and has moved to code in the boardroom, WHERE OUR FUCKING CLIENTS WILL BE VIEWING A DEMO THAT DAY OF THE PRODUCT!! Now that whole room smells like weed, FML!

Wednesday - We send P a formal letter that he is under probation, P calls me to have a meeting. In the meeting he blames me for not understanding "new age" medicine, I ask for his doctors prescription and ask why he didnt tell me this in the interview so I could make arrangements, we dont care if you are stoned, just do good work and be considerate to your co-workers. P cant provide these and keeps ranting, I suggest he takes pain killers, he has none of it only "new age" medicine for him.

Thursday - I ask him to rather "work" from home till we can get this sorted, he comes in for code reviews for 2 weeks. I can clearly see he has no idea how the system works but is trying, I thought I will dive deeper and look at all of his code. Its a mess, nothing makes sense and 50% of it is hard coded (We are building a decentralized API for huge data sets so this makes no sense).

Friday - In code review I confront him about this, he has excuses for everything, I start asking him harder questions about the project and to explain what we are building - he goes quiet and quits on the spot with a shitty apology.

From what I could make out he was really smart when it came to theory but interpreting the theory to actual practice wasnt possible for him, probably would have been easier if he wasnt high all the time.

I hate interview code tests, but learned a valuable lesson that day! Always test for some code knowledge as well even if you hate doing it, ask the right questions and be careful who you hire! You can only bullshit for so long in coding before someone figures out that you are a fraud.

Dear Misinformed idiots,
Just because you watched Silicon Valley doesn't mean you actually understand how Software Development works.
-We don't sit in front of a screen in an AC room googling funny pictures
-We don't think of new Algorithms by pretending to be jerking.
-We don't "get lucky" with our code, it takes hours of studying and research to come up with a solution which actually works.
-And we definitely can't just "create the *next* Google", THAT is not how it works.
I swear to the God ya'll love and cherish, the next person to approach me to turn their shit idea into "The next big thing", I'll leave everything aside and drive a screwdriver through your neck.

- An Engineer tired of everyone's never ending shit storm.

We were talking about harddrives at work when someone was wondering if filling them with helium would make them spin faster... Then imagination took over!

"But helium balloons float, right... So would helium filled hard drives float..? Probably not due to weight but imagine dropping a hard drive and seeing it float towards the ceiling.."

"John, the delivery guy has a box with new harddrives downstairs, could you go get them?
*shouts* John did you get them? Just don't open the box outside!! No, no, NOOO DON'T OPEN IT OUTSIDE! JOHN, THE HARDDRIVES, BE CAREFUL, DON'T OPEN THE BOX OUTSI.....
*harddrives floating by the window into the air*
NOO, JOHN, WHAT DID YOU DO?!

"*walks into the office, harddrives floating against the ceiling* goddammit John, not again"

"John, why are you putting one kilometer long cables on those harddrives?
*John let's them float into the air towards the clouds*
We offer cloud storage!"

(We have a usual office building ceiling)
"John, I need a 1tb harddrive, where are those?
Uhm... C12!

*takes a ladder and walks towards c12 to pluck one from the ceiling*"

😆

6pm - arrive home from work, log into my computer and start working on side projects.

4am - Finally go to sleep after staying up all night setting up arch in a vm.

7am - Start drive to work in the snow and ice.

7:20am - car runs out of wiper fluid.

7:30am - round corner so that I’m driving towards the sun, windshield is covered in mud and I have 2% visibility.

7:35am - take off ramp towards gas station so I can buy fluid and wash window.

7:36am - Car mysteriously parked in center of off ramp, nearly smash it but have a narrow miss.

7:40am - can’t find the freaking pully in new car to pop hood

7:41am - found it.

7:50am - drove the back way to work because it cuts out traffic, but includes many steep hills that I forgot existed, come to a skid at bottom of one and am pushed out into the main road, luckily nobody is coming and I’m able to continue on my merry way.

8:01am - sit down in desk, lead staff person comes over evoking Lumbergh from Office Space and lets me know I need to be on time to work and that the snow doesn’t give me an excuse. I agree and smile and suck up and he leaves.

8:02am - pull out phone to write down notes about personal project that I thought of on drive here, phone dies. I forgot to plug it in last night.

8:04am - found power bank charger thing in desk but it uses a micro-b type usb and I only have usb type c on me.

8:10am - borrow usb from old headset in office surplus.

8:11am - writing notes. Have sudden realization that I didn’t shut down my vm and that when my computer went to sleep and subsequently locked it probably halted virtualbox and everything would be lost for the second time.

8:12am - got on devRant.

Got my new workstation.
Isn't it a beauty?

Rocking a Pentium II 366 MHz processor.
6 GB HDD.
64 MB SDRAM.
1 minute of battery life.
Resolution up to SXGA (1280x1024)
Removable CD-Rom drive.
1 USB port (we like to use dongles, right?)

Also it has state of the art security:
- No webcam
- No Mic
- Removable WiFi
- I forgot the password

And best of all:
It as a nipple to play with!!

So my actual job is being a nurse at the local hospital, with coding being just a hobby. However, the way some IT–Related things are treated here are just mind-blowing. Here are some examples:

Issue: Printer is not recognized by network anymore due to not being properly plugged in

Solution: Someone has to tell the house technician, if the house technician is currently not available, ask his assistant who only works part time and like twice a week. House technician took the printer (God knows why), came back 2 days later and plugged it back in.

Issue: Printer 1 of 2 on ICU has run out of ink and since all computers default to printer 1, nobody can print.

Solution: Call the house technician, blah blah, house technician comes, takes ink cartridge of printer 2 and puts it into printer 1.

Issue: Public WiFi is broken, can be connected to but internet access is missing. Probably config issue as a result of a recent blackout.

Solution: Buy a new router, spend 5 days configuring it and complain about how hard networking is.

Issue: Computer is broken, needs to be exchanged with a new one, but how do we transfer the data?

Solution: Instead of just keeping the old hard drive, make a 182GB backup, upload it to the main file server and then download it again on the new computer.

Issue: Nurse returns from vacation, forgot the password to her network account.

Solution: Call the technician who then proceeds to open a new account, copies all the files from the old one and tells her to pick an easier password this time. She chooses "121213".

*tries to convert a Windows drive into btrfs*
*copies the whole 1.4TB of data back from server*

Windows: Wait, you expect me to do more than browsing the Phasebuk and playing games? Over a million files?! No no no, can't do that.
*reboot after BSOD*
Ehm, a hard drive you say? A drive that I just fucked up? What are you talking about? I don't see any hard drive :/

Piece of shit.

Crappy Arch Linux laptop: ah, I see a new hard drive connected here. Limme mount it real quick for ya :3
Me: eh, not now. I want to format it first.
Linux: oh, cool! Your wish is my command <3
*formats hard drive to btrfs*
Me: alright, now please copy all that 1.4TB onto the drive and please don't overheat _/\_
Linux: Gotcha! On your commands sir!

See the difference? The mental communication level? Windows is like talking to an obnoxious grade schooler that just does whatever the fuck they want to. Linux on the other hand is so much more mature and capable. Guess which one I like the most.

Storytime!

This customer comes in and practically throws a computer on the counter.

Customer: This computer isn't working. I've ran the diagnostics and it says it's software. *places a dvd case with a 32 bit Windows 7 disk in it on the counter* It had Windows 10 on it, but I want Windows 7 on it.

Me: Well, you may have issues with the drivers if you put Windows 7 on it--

Customer: I don't care, I just want Windows 7.

Me: You SHOULD care. That means no wifi, no display, no mouse... Windows 7 doesn't like Windows 10 hardware.

Customer: Then... check to see Windows 7 compatibility!

Me: Alright.... *makes notes to check for Windows 7 compatibility*

Me: So has this Windows 7 been used before?

Customer: Yes, it has.

Me: On how many computers?

Customer: I've installed it on two computers and it works just fine.

Me: That's weird because Windows license keys are for one computer only. Are both of them connected to the internet?

Customer: Yes.

Me: Well, okay then... *finishes up ticket*

Customer: I work in this field and I just don't understand why they don't come with the disks anymore. How much is a Windows 10 disk?

Me: *gives price*

Customer: And do you have any?

Me: Let me check *I go to where they are, find some and come back out*

Me: Unfortunately we're out at the moment and would have to special order some back in.

Customer: OK. So then how much to fix this computer?

Me: *price of installing Windows and backing up data*

Customer: That's halfway to the price of a new one of these!

Me: Well yes, an HP at Walmart... But you do have that option if you want to take it.

Customer: Well, why does it cost that much?

Me: Well, it's $labor1 to install Windows, $labor2 to do some basic setup and drivers, and $labor3 to backup and restore data.

Customer: Oh, well I don't want data.

Me: Okay, well then it would be $total - $labor3

Customer: ...Okay, fine

Me: *updates the ticket*

When she finally left I put it on the bench and the first message said "SMART ERROR." I then did 4 different tests that said "lol, the hard drive is failing."

If you "worked in this field," you would know that a SMART error is hard drive related.

If you worked in this field, you would know that Windows is only a 1PC license, so why are you lying about installing it with no issues on other computers?

If you worked in this field, you would know you would want a 64bit Windows on your computer.

If you worked in this field, you would know how to find a Windows 10 installation media online.

If you worked in this field, you would know that HPs are not good computers to get.

IF YOU FUCKING WORKED IN THIS FIELD YOU WOULDN'T BE SUCH A FUCKING CUNT.

Me: Want to copy this file to another computer
Bluetooth: Use me!
Google Drive: I'm better!
USB: I can help
Network shared folder: I'm in position!

Me: Let me add it as an attachment to a new email and download it on the other computer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Last year I got an Acer notebook from a guy that stated that "it isn't working". "Okay" I thought, let's boot it up.

> Screen turns on, no splash screen, no hard drive activity
> Well fuck
> Tries to enter BIOS, nothing
> Openes case to reset CMOS
> Nothing
> Okay I think I need to flash a new BIOS
> Acer support site
> "Download the exe to flash the BIOS"
> What
> Spend two hours researching
> Find out that you can flash via USB and by pressing a key combination
> Extract the BIOS binary from the exe file
> Flash it on the notebook
> Splash screen and working BIOS
> Yay!!!
> No bootable devices found
> Fuck
> Connects hdd with test bench
> Completely fucking dead
> WTF
> Order a new hard drive
> 3 days later
> Install hdd
> Install Windows
> Finally working

WTF did you do to this notebook to not only mechanically break your hdd but also fuck up the BIOS completely??!!

Where do I even start?

Personal projects?
So many. Shouldn't count.

Unpaid game dev intern?
Unpaid game dev volunteer?
Both worthwhile, if stressful. Shouldn't count either.

Freelancing where clients refused to pay?
That's happened a few times. One of them paid me in product instead of cash (WonderSoil, a company that [apparently still] makes and sells some expanding super potting soil thing). The product turned out to be defective and killed all of the plants I used it on. I'd have preferred getting stiffed instead. Their "factory" (small, almost tiny) was quite cool. The owner was a bitch. Probably still is.

Companies that have screwed me out of pay?
So many. I still curse their names at least once a month. I've been screwed out of about $13k now, maybe more. I've lost track.

I have two stories in particular that really piss me off.

The first: I was working at a large robotics company, and mostly enjoyed my job, though the drive was awful. The pay wasn't high either, but I still enjoyed the work. Schedule was nice, too: 28 hours (four 7-hour days) per week. Regardless, I got a job offer for double my salary, same schedule, and the drive was 11 minutes instead of 40. I took it. My new boss ended up tricking me into being a contractor -- refused to give me a W2, no contracts, etc. Later, he also increased my hours to 40 with no pay increase. He also took forever to pay (weeks to months), and eventually refused to pay me to my face, in front of my cowokers. Asshole still owes me about $5k. Should owe me the the difference in taxes, too (w2 vs 1099) since he lied about it and forced me into it when it was too late to back out.

I talked to the BBB, the labor board, legal council, the IRS (because he was actively evading taxes), the fire inspector (because he installed doors taht locked if the power went out, installed the exit buttons on the fucking ceiling, and later disconnected all of said exit buttons). Nobody gave a single shit. Asshole completely got away with everything. Including several shady as hell things I can't list here because they're too easy to find.

The second one:
The economy was shit, and I was out of a job. I had been looking for quite awhile, and an ex-coworker (who had worked at google, interestingly) suggested I work for this new startup. It was a "reverse search engine," meaning it aggregated news and articles and whatnot, and used machine learning to figure out what its users are interested in, and provided them with exactly that. It would also help with scheduling, reminders of birthdays, mesh peoples' friends' travel plans and life events, etc. (You and a friend are going on vacation to the same place, and your mutual friend there is having a birthday! You should go to ___ special event that's going on while you're all there! Here's a coupon.) It was pretty cool. The owner was not. He delayed my payments a few times, and screwed me over on pay a few more times, despite promising me many times that he was "not one of those people." He ended up paying me less than fucking minimum wage. Fake, smiling, backstabbing asshole.

The first one still pisses me off more, though, because of all the shit I went through trying to get my missing back pay, and how he conned me every chance he got. And how he yelled at me and told me, to my face, that he wasn't ever going to pay me. Fucking goddamn hell I hate that guy.

One day I developed a simple website for a goldsmith who I already new for a year or so.

We discussed everything and agreed on a feature set, price and a deadline when it should be ready. Based on this we signed a contract and I started my work.

Unfortunately at the same time I lost most of my childhood friends. I moved to a new city and started to study computer science, which was awesome on the contrary.

This is where the horror began.

I was totally occupied by the studying, my partner, myself and by the shit of life.

It knocked on my door. The horror decided to pay me a visit.

"Had a look at your calendar recently? Just saying..."

Shit! The deadline came closer and closer everyday and the pile of work undone grew with it. At that point I had to do something. I don't know what it was or how I did it, but somehow I managed to finish the project just in time. I was totally not proud of it, but it featured what was required.

The day before I contacted my client, the horror knocked on my door again. He said:

"You really should have a look at your hard drive."
"Why? everything seems allright."
"Well, then look closer."
"Fuck."
"Right."

Well, there are backups at least, I thought to myself. I'll just recover the last state. That was an annoying thought, but nothing serious. That's just one or two days of w... - Wait, what? Where are my backups? What the actual fuck? Why is the zip file broken? Why doesn't the flash drive work anymore? FUUUCK!!

I was lost. It was a complete nightmare.

Each time my telephone rang the following days, my heart skipped a beat. Finally my client's name appeared on the display. I answered the call, my hands shaking.

"Hey there! I'm calling to discuss the website project with you."
"Well, about that..."
"Yeah, I know you put a huge amount of efford in it so I'm really sorry to say that I on the other hand can't effort the money. Actually I'd like to simply forget about this whole idea."

Seriously? What the fuck just happend? I suddenly noticed a sticky note infront of me reading:
"It was really fun to see you suffer, but I have to go! See ya
- The Horror"

"Hello, are you still there? Do you hear me?", yelled a voice through my phone.
"Uh, yeah. You know, that project was a lot of work and... but you know what? It was actually a pretty fun exercise and I'm doing well over here, so because it's you I'd agree."
I heared a reliefed sigh from the other end of the line.
"Really good! I owe you something! Bye!"

What. The. Fuck.

Well, here's the OS rant I promised. Also apologies for no blog posts the past few weeks, working on one but I want to have all the information correct and time isn't my best friend right now :/

Anyways, let's talk about operating systems. They serve a purpose which is the goal which the user has.
So, as everyone says (or, loads of people), every system is good for a purpose and you can't call the mainstream systems shit because they all have their use.

Last part is true (that they all have their use) but defining a good system is up to an individual. So, a system which I'd be able to call good, had at least the following 'features':
- it gives the user freedom. If someone just wants to use it for emailing and webbrowsing, fair enough. If someone wants to produce music on it, fair enough. If someone wants to rebuild the entire system to suit their needs, fair enough. If someone wants to check the source code to see what's actually running on their hardware, fair enough. It should be up to the user to decide what they want to/can do and not up to the maker of that system.
- it tries it's best to keep the security/privacy of its users protected. Meaning, by default, no calling home, no integrating users within mass surveillance programs and no unnecessary data collection.
- Open. Especially in an age of mass surveillance, it's very important that one has the option to check the underlying code for vulnerabilities/backdoors. Can everyone do that, nope. But that doesn't mean that the option shouldn't be there because it's also about transparency so you don't HAVE to trust a software vendor on their blue eyes.
- stability. A system should be stable enough for home users to use. For people who like to tweak around? Also, but tweaking *can* lead to instability and crashes, that's not the systems' responsibility.

Especially the security and privacy AND open parts are why I wouldn't ever voluntarily (if my job would depend on it, sure, I kinda need money to stay alive so I'll take that) use windows or macos. Sure, apple seems to care about user privacy way more than other vendors but as long as nobody can verify that through source code, no offense, I won't believe a thing they say about that because no one can technically verify it anyways.

Some people have told me that Linux is hard to use for new/(highly) a-technical people but looking at my own family and friends who adapted fast as hell and don't want to go back to windows now (and mac, for that matter), I highly doubt that. Sure, they'll have to learn something new. But that was also the case when they started to use any other system for the first time. Possibly try a different distro if one doesn't fit?

Problems - sometimes hard to solve on Linux, no doubt about that. But, at least its open. Meaning that someone can dive in as deep as possible/necessary to solve the problem. That's something which is very difficult with closed systems.

The best example in this case for me (don't remember how I did it by the way) was when I mounted a network drive at boot on windows and Linux (two systems using the same webDav drive). I changed the authentication and both systems weren't in for booting anymore. Hours of searching how to unfuck this on windows - I ended up reinstalling it because I just couldn't find a solution.
On linux, i found some article quite quickly telling to remove the entry for the webdav thingy from fstab. Booted into a root recovery shell, chrooted to the harddrive, removed the entry in fstab and rebooted. BAM. Everything worked again.

So yeah, that's my view on this, I guess ;P

More sysadmin focused but y’all get this stuff and I need a rant.

TLDR: Got the wrong internship.

Start working as a sysadmin/dev intern/man-of-many-hats at a small finance company (I’m still in school). Day 1: “Oh new IT guy? Just grab a PC from an empty cubicle and here’s a flash drive with Fedora, go ahead and manually install your operating system. Oh shit also your desktop has 2g of ram, a core2 duo, and we scavenged your hard drive for another dev so just go find one in the server room. And also your monitor is broken so just take one from another cubicle.”

Am shown our server room and see that someone is storing random personal shit in there (golf clubs propped against the server racks with heads mixed into the cabling, etc.). Ask why the golf clubs etc. are mixed in with the cabling and server racks and am given the silent treatment. Learn later that my boss is the owners son, and he is storing his personal stuff in our server room.

Do desktop support for end users. Another manager asks for her employees to receive copies of office 2010 (they’re running 2003 an 2007). Ask boss about licensing plans in place and upgrade schedules, he says he’ll get back to me. I explain to other manager we are working on a licensing scheme and I will keep her informed.

Next day other manager tells me (*the intern*) that she spoke with a rich business friend whose company uses fake/cracked license keys and we should do the same to keep costs down. I nod and smile. IT manager tells me we have no upgrade schedule or licensing agreement. I suggest purchasing an Office 365 subscription. Boss says $150 a year per employee is too expensive (Company pulls good money, has ~25 employees, owner is just cheap) I suggest freeware alternatives. Other manager refuses to use anything other than office 2010 as that is what she is familiar with. Boss refuses to spend any money on license keys. Learn other manager is owners wife and mother of my boss. Stalemate. No upgrades happen.

Company is running an active directory Windows Server 2003 instance that needs upgrading. I suggest 2012R2. Boss says “sure”. I ask how he will purchase the license key and he tells me he won’t.

I suggest running an Ubuntu server with LDAP functionality instead with the understanding that this will add IT employee hours for maintenance. Bosses eyes glaze over at the mention of Linux. The upgrade is put off.

Start cleaning out server room of the personal junk, labeling server racks and cables, and creating a network map. Boss asks what I’m doing. I show him the organized side of the server room and he says “okay but don’t do any more”.

... *sigh* ...

To my ex manager

you left to berlin, and left me to rot

my new lead sucks, i kid you not

it was ok if I slacked off, You used to be chill

But my new lead is uptight, he's on my list to kill

I wanna run errands in work hours, is that so bad?

was doing so for years, now i lost what i had

I cant drive in peace, coz i know he'd call

so i had to cancel plans to go to the mall

its like 10 to 6 is now constant work

I hate my new lead, he is such a jerk

My team handles infrastructure deployment and automation in the cloud for our company, so we don't exactly develop applications ourselves, but we're responsible for building deployment pipelines, provisioning cloud resources, automating their deployments, etc.

I've ranted about this before, but it fits the weekly rant so I'll do it again.

Someone deployed an autoscaling application into our production AWS account, but they set the maximum instance count to 300. The account limit was less than that. So, of course, their application gets stuck and starts scaling out infinitely. Two hundred new servers spun up in an hour before hitting the limit and then throwing errors all over the place. They send me a ticket and I login to AWS to investigate. Not only have they broken their own application, but they've also made it impossible to deploy anything else into prod. Every other autoscaling group is now unable to scale out at all. We had to submit an emergency limit increase request to AWS, spent thousands of dollars on those stupidly-large instances, and yelled at the dev team responsible. Two weeks later, THEY INCREASED THE MAX COUNT TO 500 AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN!

And the whole thing happened because a database filled up the hard drive, so it would spin up a new server, whose hard drive would be full already and thus spin up a new server, and so on into infinity.

Thats probably the only WTF moment that resulted in me actually saying "WTF?!" out loud to the person responsible, but I've had others. One dev team had their code logging to a location they couldn't access, so we got daily requests for two weeks to download and email log files to them. Another dev team refused to believe their server was crashing due to their bad code even after we showed them the logs that demonstrated their application had a massive memory leak. Another team arbitrarily decided that they were going to deploy their code at 4 AM on a Saturday and they wanted a member of my team to be available in case something went wrong. We aren't 24/7 support. We aren't even weekend support. Or any support, technically. Another team told us we had one day to do three weeks' worth of work to deploy their application because they had set a hard deadline and then didn't tell us about it until the day before. We gave them a flat "No" for that request.

I could probably keep going, but you get the gist of it.

A quite normal Windows day:

Bios to Windows: "Go now! Get up!"

Windows to Bios: "Always slow with the young circuit boards."

"I've got something weird on screen."

Windows' answer: "Ignore it first."

Hardware assistant to Windows: "The user puts pressure. He wants me to identify this thing. Could be an ISDN card."

Windows: "Well, well."

Unknown ISDN card to all: "Will you please let me in?"

Network card to intruder: "You can't spread out here!"

Windows: "Quiet in the case! Or I'll cut both their support!"

Device Manager: "Offer compromise. The network card is allowed on Mondays, the ISDN card is on Tuesday."

Graphics card to Windows: "My driver retired yesterday. I'm crashing now."

Windows to graphics card: "When will you be back?"

Graphics card: "Well, not at first."

CD-Rom drive to Windows: "uh, I would have a new driver here..."

Windows: "What's ich´n supposed to do with it?!"

Installation software to Windows: "Leave it, I'll mach´ that already."

Windows: "That's nice to hear."

USB connection to interrupt management: "Alarm! Just been penetrated by a scanner cable. Request response."

Interrupt management: "Where are you coming from?"

USB connection: "I was in the computer right from the start. I'm joined by another colleague."

"You're not on my list." - "Say something."

Windows: "Hopefully there won't be another printer."

Graphics card: "The new driver twitches."

Windows: "We'll just have to get the old one out of retirement."

Uninstall program to new driver: "Go away."

Unwanted driver: "Fuck you."

Windows to Norton Utilities: "Kill him and his brood!"

Utilities to driver rests: "Sorry, we have to delete you."

Important system file: "Arrrrrrgghh!"

Windows on blue screen: "Gib´, the Norton Boys are over the top again."

Blue screen to user: "So, that's it for this week."

Excuse me for stealing your time

And I know it's way too long

What I did wrong during my home office cleaning session this morning:
- put soap on my mouse mat
- snapped my enter key
- vacuumed up my F8 key
- absent-mindedly cut my ethernet cable
- lost my zero key
- dropped my backup hard drive (data was recoverable, but I need a new drive)
- lost one of the nose pads on my glasses
- got a cocktail stick stuck in a USB port
- exploded my mouse by using the wrong type of battery

Things I did good:
- nothing

Today was bad day.
- only had 3 hours of sleep
- 1.5h exam in the morning
- work in the afternoon until 8pm
- 1 drive crashed in a RAID5 array
- wasted hours of data copying
- my hands and arms got really dirty from all that nasty trump-face-colored dust in the server room
- nothing new in the west
- I have to get up in 4 hours again to start a new copying task
- I only knew it was friday today because the devRant meme game was reaching the weekly peak
- lists can save lives
- good night 😴

My first internship was unpaid. "For the experience" and shit. My first task was to clear out an entire office full to the literal ceiling with the phones of people who had been laid off or quit. There were now just three old guys in the entire office. And me. Go figure. I need to find that picture, it's truly unbelievable.
My next task was to sort cables in the store room. Mind you, this was supposed to be a software dev internship.

I consistently had to ASK for work to do. If I didn't, I would just sit in my new office all day doing homework and playing with linux liveCDs and nobody cared.

So the third task they gave me was to try to restore a very old (like XP old) computer that had a broken hard drive, literally broken. Said they wanted to "repurpose it." As busy work I guess.

So I scrounged around the cleptomaniacal cesspool of dated and neglected tech and found a hard drive. Pop it in, chkdsk, fdisk, good to go. Spend hours installing XP while sorting more random cables and doing my homework because honestly writing a history paper is more valuable to my dev career than this complete bullshit. Finally get the thing working and go to report the miracle of rebirth to my higher-up. He says "oh cool," doesn't smile, and hands me a list of software to install.

I come back 20 minutes later - "Hey, most of these require corporate licenses."

Guy says "yup" and goes back to ignoring me. Never gives me a company card to buy licenses, or a list of ones already bought. I've revived the computer equivalent of Moses from the computer equivalent of permadeath just for this asshole to completely disregard that and give me an(other) impossible task, just to get me off his back. Excuse me for imposing with free (then-child) labor, you ass.
I spend maybe another week there doing homework in the office I cleaned and contemplating stealing everything of value. I guarantee they wouldn't have noticed though, which somehow made the idea less appealing.

I quit by texting my boss.

He never replied.

I wish I had stolen their laptop RAM.
It's probably still sitting on boss's shelf collecting dust and being a miserable, outdated fucking waste of space, just like him and his two remaining coworkers.

Google Drive says I've modified a file on... "January 15, 2021".

😐😐😐

Wow. Google is the new oracle.

Two years ago I moved to Dublin with my wife (we met on tour while we were both working in music) as visa laws in the UK didn’t allow me to support the visa of a Russian national on a freelance artists salary.

After we came to Dublin I was playing a lot to pay rent (major rental crisis here), I play(ed) Double Bass which is a physically intensive instrument and through overworking caused a long term injury to my forearm which prevents me playing.

Luckily my wife was able to start working in Community Operations for the big tech companies here (not an amazing job and I want her to be able to stop).

Anyway, I was a bit stuck with what step to take next as my entire career had been driven by the passion to master an art that I was very committed to. It gave me joy and meaning.

I was working as hard as I could with a clear vision but no clear path available to get there, then by chance the opportunity came to study a Higher Diploma qualification in Data Science/Analysis (I have some experience handling music licensing for tech startups and an MA with components in music analysis, which I spun into a narrative). Seemed like a ‘smart’ thing to do to do pick up a ‘respectable’ qualification, if I can’t play any more.

The programme had a strong programming element and I really enjoyed that part. The heavy statistics/algebra element was difficult but as my Python programming improved, I was able to write and utilise codebase to streamline the work, and I started to pull ahead of the class. I put in more and more time to programming and studied personally far beyond the requirements of the programme (scored some of the highest academic grades I’ve ever achieved). I picked up a confident level of Bash, SQL, Cypher (Neo4j), proficiency with libraries like pandas, scikit-learn as well as R things like ggplot. I’m almost at the end of the course now and I’m currently lecturing evening classes at the university as a paid professional, teaching Graph Database theory and implementation of Neo4j using Python. I’m co-writing a thesis on Machine Learning in The Creative Process (with faculty members) to be published by the institute. My confidence in programming grew and grew and with that platform to lift me, I pulled away from the class further and further.

I felt lost for a while, but I’ve found my new passion. I feel the drive to master the craft, the desire to create, to refine and to explore.

I’m going to write a Thesis with a strong focus on programmatic implementation and then try and take a programming related position and build from there. I’m excited to become a professional in this field. It might take time and not be easy, but I’ve already mastered one craft in life to the highest levels of expertise (and tutored it for almost 10 years). I’m 30 now and no expert (yet), but am well beyond beginner. I know how to learn and self study effectively.

The future is exciting and I’ve discovered my new art! (I’m also performing live these days with ‘TidalCycles’! (Haskell pattern syntax for music performance).

Hey all! I’m new on devRant!

so here's a little story:

yesterday i decided to buy a shiny new gtx 1070 since my pc is getting very old, i come back from the store and i realize that my case is slightly too small to fit the card.
'No bg deal' i think to myself, i run out to buy a saw and after some work i made some space to fit the card in by sawing off some hard drive bays i was not using. I plug in the card, i wire up the pc, and it does not boot: after some asking around (i have never really built a pc before), i relaize i need more power to the card and wire a second PCIE connector. low and behold, i power of the pc and it works! Once logged into windows tho, i realize none of my HHDs are detected...

To cut a long story short, i **did not think to unplug the hard drives before i started sawing off bits of the case and the vibrations killed both of them!** i lost ~1TB of data in the process: a lot of it was games and programs, but i have yet to tally up the damage.

I am completely bamboozled by what the fuck just happened, i think i'll go hand myself in to the nearest police station for crimes against technology... or maybe a mental clinic would be best?...

PS: my system drive was spared since its an SSD, but i may as well re-install windows at this point since i lost 90% of my software

My new workstation. i7-4790k, MSI h81m-p33, 16gb DDR3, AORUS RX580, ADATA 128gb SSD, WD 1tb Black Drive, CoolerMaster V1000 1000W PSU.
OS: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS and Windows 10 Pro

Customer care guys are stupid
Me : yeah, OS crashed. It keeps getting into bios setup saying there's no hard drive detected on this system and no recovery file found as well, what do ?
Him : "well sir, your OS has been corrupted and now you have to buy new licensed one, if you can just give me your location I can help you locate out nearest service centre which will help you install a new licensed instantly"
Me : *WHAT THE ACTUAL TRIPLE FUCK* atleast try to understand the problem first.
Him : No need sir, I already come across this problem and now you have to pay, as I was saying *beep*
*I smashed the phone*
After that I fixed it myself
These low level shit licking faggots need to get themselves fucked in the ass by horses and then apply the same conversation when the intercourse begins with the horse.
Also, if I could be placed in the same customer care cell, I would do better.
So wk62 too I guess

A friend bought a new PC and asked me to help him set it up. He said he got everything working except the CD drive. He said it took him forever just to figure out how to get the keyboard and mouse to work. "I mean, have you ever owned a computer where the keyboard and mouse had to plug into the monitor instead of the computer?"

He bought a desktop PC, and and all-in-one thinking it was a monitor. He had the HDMI going from the all-in-one to the desktop, and was trying to use the CD drive on the desktop.

Wish you could've seen his face when I unplugged the desktop computer and his "monitor" didn't shut off. He looked at the desktop, and then the all-in-one, and said, "Wait... How is it still on?"

He also had his old USB wifi plugged into the desktop thinking that's what was providing him with an internet connection.

For fucks sake, corporate IT has locked a database application for new entries because it will be phased out by the end of the year. However, the new application is not yet working.

The interim solution? An excel sheet on a shared network drive. In fucking 2020! Unbe-fucking-lievable!

Colleague started a slack channel for our team, management wanted nothing to do with it. We used it to work and have a bit of fun.

Some push / drive came form somewhere and now all the managers are on it. Yesterday I was told my screenshot and "snarky comment" are not appropriate for the workplace and to delete my slack message.

My comment was a joke about about a new app the company has to use "to increase efficiency" that broke and wouldn't let me do what I needed. It wasn't offensive, demeaning, sexist to anyone or even contain any bad language.

How petty and childish to be monitoring a private channel making sure everything is positive. We all joked that from now on our meme's must be about how awesome the company is and how much time we are saving on a daily basis.

God forbid we're allowed to speak honestly and openly or have a bit of fun.

I am fucked.... 😫😫😫My new custom build pc is not starting up after lighting strike 😭😭 ... I had unplugged all the plugs from the socket but i forgot to unplug the wifi from the broadband cable.... So when lighting hit my building the current came through broadband cable and burned my wifi then through there it got to my pc... My motherboard, gtx1070 graphic card, ram everything is gone.... Except my hard drive and psu...

!code

I literally cannot get this computer to boot from ANYTHING other than its hard drive.

I want to boot from a usb flash drive, but the bios doesn't support that. it supports standard and 120mb floppies, ZIP drives, usb floppies, usb cd drives, etc. but not a generic USB drive. You'd think the bios developers would have heard of them back in 2012, but they also refer to Windows as "window os", so who knows.

I changed the boot order multiple times to include everything that might possibly include a usb flash drive, and then just tried all of the other options as well. No luck. Everything just booted straight to Windows.

Okay, that's not exactly unexpected, so I found a boot manager that allows booting to usb drives, and burned that to a cd. I made sure the boot order included "CDDRIVE" first (and "USB-CD" second just to be sure), and tried again. The bios refused to boot from the cd because it's in a cd/dvd drive, and cd drives are VASTLY different beasts than dvd drives, apparently. Like, it didn't even ask the drive to spin up! It just booted straight into Windows.

After a few more reboots (and quite a few middle fingers), my dvd drive magically appeared in the list of allowed boot devices. Why did it just show up now? No clue :/ I'm just happy it's there.

So, I pick that, save and exit, and wait for my shiny new boot manager to pop up. The cursor flashes a bit, moves around, and flashes some more. Then Windows starts loading.

what the crap? why?

So this time I disable booting from the hard drive altogether. In fact, I disable everything except the dvd drive, because screw this, and save/restart for the twelfth time.

Windows greets me.
Again.

What the hell?

At this point I'm tempted to unplug the friggin' drive. If Windows still greets me after that, I'm just going to check myself into an asylum and call it a life.

But seriously.
Either the boot manager in question is triple-faulting and the bios is transparently failing-over to the previous boot config (Windows), or said boot manager is just like "yolo!" and picks Windows anyway.

If a different boot manager doesn't work, I'm totally out of ideas.

Edit: disabling HD boot entirely and removing the boot manager cd also results in Windows loading. It's like the bios is completely ignoring my settings. :/

Fuck that fucking company three way while dozens of homeless HIV crack junkies puke and shit their diarrhea on the three bosses!

I can't put it in words how stupid they are!

Let me try to tell you the latest story while I try not to get multiple strokes.

Backstory: We are three devs, all with a TCCI certification. One has been working for us for almost a year, the other one has been working for us since one and a half year. Both are good friends of mine, btw. I have been working there for almost three years.

Fortunately, I am allowed to work on a reasonable computer. The other devs work on PC's with Windows 7 and 8!

One has just 400 MB space left on his drive and has to delete every month some shit because he does not want to be able to call up websites anymore... How awful?!

The PC of the other great Dev Crashes three to six times a day and needs about 30 minutes to start up!

We can be so productive, but...

We told that in February one of our bosses and asked him to buy new hardware. His answer: yes, of course, I understand that, it's my turn (he always says that "ich bin da dran")

We got a new colleague in the middle of this fucking month. She is responsible for conception.

She works on an old notebook, but today she gets a fucking new PC to work on while the devs are trying to weld with a sparkler! Better hardware than every other Dev PC!!!

Guess what? She is the daughter of a friend of one of our bosses!

We are the only devs at this company.

Fuck that fucking company! Fuck that fucking bosses!

I think we don't go to work for that fucking company anymore!

Around 27 hours at new customer location.

They had a server failure due to incompetence.

They had fired their own IT guy and called us 6 months later because the server stopped responding.

First diagnostic. 2 drives are dead in a raid 5 with one hot spare. Raid controller then proved to be broken once the disks was replaced.

Waiting for new raid controller and installing.

Backup non existing, no one changed dat tape during the 6 months without IT. The tape was just a transparent plastic band, no media left.

Raid config is stored in static ram on controller, no backup!

Several hours in tech support to find out how to rebuild raid config from existing disks.

Proves to be impossible to rebuild raid set due to some checksum failures.

More hours with support to enable some diagnostic read only mode to mirror low level content to external drive.

Then many more hours to copy parts of the tree until it gets an error, restart after that and go on.

In the end we got around 70% back.

During this time I manage to be in contact with the raid manufacturers all support centers, one in europe, one in the us and one in Taiwan, switching each time one if them closed for the night.

The customer later declined a steady support contract due to us being to expensive ;)

Some just don’t want to learn.

I did the thing and stuck it out at my shitty job. Tomorrow, I get to quit the most abusive place I have ever worked. I got a new job at a shop that's a 15 minute drive away vs an hour commute. No more SCRUM with a gun to my head. No more getting yelled at for learning on my own and not working fast enough. No more making Grindr, but for CEOs. I have never been so happy. Thank you for the encouragement to find something else. Thank you for giving me hope. Thank you for being there, and being my sanity, my safe place.

It hasn't even been two weeks since quitting the clowns and I've:

- recorded and edited a new React TypeScript course
- released a new SaaS product (in alpha)
- cleaned up and optimized the home page of an existing SaaS app
- started a mobile app version of said SaaS app
- started working with an agency to drive more traffic to same said SaaS app including guest posts and content creation.

I guess I always had it in me but needed to be broken by the rate race system one final time before venturing out on my own.

Refreshing.

After returning back from the company we were purchasing a new phone system (hardware+software, $100K+, kind of a big deal)
VP: “I need the new phone system software integration for our CRM by next week. I need to demo the system for the other VPs”
Me: “No problem. Were you able to get their API like I asked?”
VP: “Salesman didn’t know for sure what that was, but he said all the developer software documentation is on their site.”
Me: “Did he give you a URL? Their main site is all marketing mumbo-jumbo. I assume there is another one specific for developers.”
VP: “Yea, he might have said something, but I don’t understand why you need it. The salesman said the integration would be seamless. He showed me several demos.”
Me: “No, I mean I need to know, is the API a full client install? a simple dll? is this going to be a web service integration? How will I know what to program against?”
VP: “I think I heard him say something about COM? Does that sound like an API?”
Me: “It’s a start. Did he provide you anything, a disk, a flash drive, anything with the software?”
VP: “No, only thing he told me was our CRM integration would be seamless and our development team would have no problems.”
Me: “OK..OK…I get it…he’s a salesman. Is there an 1-800 number I can call? A technical support email address? Anyone technical I can reach out to?”
VP: “Probably, but I don’t understand what the problem is. I need the CRM integrated by next week. I gave the other VPs a promise we would get it done. I do not break promises.”
Me: “Wait…when are we installing the new system?”
VP: “Well, the purchase order will be cut at the end of the month’s billing cycle, the company has about a two month turnaround time to deliver and install the hardware, so maybe 3 months from now? Are you going to be able to have the integration ready for next week?”
Me: “If we won’t see any of the hardware for 3 months, what exactly am I integrating with?”
VP: “That API you wanted or whatever it is. COM…yea, it’s COM. I was told the integration would be seamless and our developers would have no problem. I don’t understand why you can’t simply write the code to make it work. Getting the hardware installed is going to be the hardest part.”
Me: “OK, so I have no documentation, we have no hardware, no software, and no idea what this ‘seamless integration’ means. I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can do right now. ”
VP: “Fine!...I’ll just have to tell the other VPs you were not able to execute the seamless integration with the CRM.”
Which he did. When the hardware+software was finally installed, they hired consultants (because I “failed”). I think the bill was in the $50K range to perform the ‘integration’ which consisted of Excel spreadsheets (no kidding). When approached with the primary CRM integration, the team needed our API documentation, a year’s development time and $300K. I was pissed off enough, and I had the API documentation, I was able to get the basic CRM integration within 3 days. When an agent receives a call, I look up the # in our database, auto-fill the form with the customer info, etc. Easy stuff when you have the documentation.
The basics worked and the VP was congratulated by ‘saving’ the company $300K. May or may not have been bonuses involved, rumors still out on that one, but I didn't see em'. Later my manager told me the VP was really ticked that I performed the integration ‘behind his back’, but because it was a success, he couldn’t fire me.

My older brother just moved out today. For 18 years I've shared a room with him, and now he's gone. I have a ~30x10 foot room all to myself (it's the entire second floor of my house).

I do love that now I'm able to play music anytime, and with his stuff gone, it'll be less space taken up in general, that type of thing.

I've been in this room with him for over 8 years now, after my oldest brother moved out, and I've always had this feeling that one portion of the room was mine and the other portion was his. Now it's just...weird. I have both portions now. I have this whole big room to maintain myself. I don't have to worry about my stuff conflicting with his for whatever reason.

The past few weeks, when he's talked about moving out, I've always told him that I was looking forward to it, to having the whole room to myself. Now that he's gone, I just...can't. I can't bring myself to move his stuff that he hasn't taken over to the new house yet, or clean his part of the room.

When we were kids we didn't really get along, and I HATED sharing a room with him. But over time, as we grew up, we started to get along better, and for the past couple years, we've always just talked in the middle of the night when we were both awake. And now he's gone (the new house is maybe a 10 minute drive away), and I know he's not coming back. I know that this whole space is mine now.

I'm gonna miss the talks in the middle of the night, and us keeping each other in check (whenever one of us isn't home in the middle of the night we tend to text each other like "bruh where the fuck you at"), and waking up in the middle of the night (when I'm able to actually fall asleep kinda early) to see him playing Skyrim or Fallout. Hell, even coming home from work or wherever to see him passed the fuck out.

I know that I'm gonna have to clean the whole room soon, and that I'll just have to get over it. I've always been the one in my family that doesn't really show emotion very often, unless I get angry, so when people were crying earlier, I just sat there with an emotionless look on my face. But that's also because I wasn't really feeling much at the time, it didn't really hit until I got home and came upstairs to my room. Hell, right now I'm sitting here just expecting to hear his car alarm as he locks his car like I normally hear every night.

In a moment of boredom I decided to pen test the new system I've been writing on the live server. Ran sqlmap but forgot to proxy my connection.

DDOS protection kicked in and blocked the entire offices connection to the server, had to drive home quickly to use my home internet to un-blacklist my office ip. 😂

So my in-laws got a new computer 😑
Yup you know where this is going. Ok so after I transferred all of their data set them all up etc.
They wanted to use "word" and could I set it up for free for them. I said no Microsoft office is not free you lost your license and disk and your old computer is trashed so the better choice would be Google services . So I explained the value of using Google drive, docs,sheets etc.. today and told them how much better it is everything would be on their Google drive so if I got hit by a bus they could get a new computer again and still have access to their data etc... So they said great and so I did.

Two weeks later... Can you set up word for us on our computer. Me annoyed at this point " sure no problem"

I made a shortcut on their desktop to Google docs. Them: oh boy this is great see John all you have to do is click on google docs to go to word! Thanks so much!

🤫🤓

How to make your employee suffer, drive them insane and having suicide tendency 101.

Delay the paycheck for 18 days but still asking about task progress like a normal day. Like nothing happened.

I can't pay water and electricity bills that due in 3 days, can't buy medicine,
can't buy gas for the bike,
next week i'm not gonna be able to buy food

The good thing is, i still got the internet, i can look for new jobs and play some games to forget how shit my life right now while the electricity lasts.

Disclaimer
I have no suicide tendency, just to make it more hiperbolic 🤣

Ok so a very quick background: I didn't get a job until I needed one after my phone broke and I didn't have the money to buy another one. (I'm a student still for those who don't know lol.)

>> Phone randomly breaks.
>> Don't have the money for a new one
>> Searches for low skill jobs (ie cashier) that would work with me in terms of how many hours I work and whenever those hours are.
>> Apply to like 15 (not even exaggerating either lol) jobs
>> Wait for responses
>> One day goes by. Nothing
>> Two days go by. Nothing
>> Three days go by. Nothing
>> Fourth day rolls around and I get a call about one. I answer, tell him I'm available starting that Monday.
>> (Keep in mind I'm on an old temporary phone)
>> Next day I buy a new phone (didn't have to pay anything up front aside from the taxes on it, as it's on a payment plan)
>> Reset old phone after usage
>> Monday rolls around and I drive to the location of the job, and walk in the door asking for x.
>> "I'm sorry sir, who? We don't have anyone here by that name."
>> I panic and hop in my car, and try to find the address of the store I applied to. I find out it's different than where I went.
>> Start driving there and call that phone number. I ask to speak to x.
>> "I'm sorry sir, there's nobody here by that name."
>> Call literally every other location in the city and ask for x, but nothing.
>> Since I'm already on the way, I drive to the location of the store I had applied to. Whenever I get there, the manager spends half an hour on the phone trying to figure out where I belong. Nothing.
>> By this point, it's well over an hour past whenever I was supposed to show up, so I gave up because I figured they probably wouldn't have hired me anyways.
>> I get home determined af to figure out who the hell called me.
>> I remembered that Verizon has call logs you can look at online.
>> I go back through it and find the number. Google it.

Here's where the story gets a lil funny now.

>> Number shows up for a store that I applied to who's name sounds a LOT like the first store.
>> Called them and explained what happened, and told them I'd be there asap if they still wanted me.
>> That was like 6 months ago and I'm still here lol

The hardest thing that I've had to overcome in my career is the fact that I dropped out of college and do not have a degree. In addition to the personal shame and stigma I felt around being a 'dropout', it also brought along with it a raging case of imposter syndrome. The one benefit those feelings gave me was an almost obsessive drive to constantly improve my skills, which in many ways has proved to be an advantage in a competitive and rapidly changing industry.

After a decade of development, I feel like I've finally accepted that I'm more than qualified and capable of being in my position, and that I actually deserve the success that I've earned. I'm still mildly embarrassed about my lack of a degree, and I generally avoid bringing it up around my colleagues, but overall these feelings take a backseat to the confidence I've gained with each passing challenge and new role.

Fucking windows! I am so fucking done with this microsoft bullshit!

Hear me out here, i am a gamer. I need windows because it has the games (and software to aid those games) unlike any other platform. But windows 10 is basically already phishing andmalware at this point. I stuck to win 7 because it had a start menu and didn't totally drive me up the wall.

Just a short list of their bullshits: ads in the explorer window, ads in your taskbar reminders, data mining like it is nobodies business and trying to hide it, sharing my wifi access with friends (wtf), the fucking retarded new start menu, the crappy fullscreen apps which have less functionality than the actual proper desktop applications that you need to config what you want, and even then pushing multiple updates that simply broke peoples pc's. Fuck that, ill stick to 7.

They are making win10 worse by the week making it unlikely i will ever join that hell, and they are also aiming to force me there. Making windows store exclusives and dx12 only games. What am i supposed to do against that?! The current releases don't bother me much but fuck i figure it is a matter of time until the newest katamari game is their exclusive and i nanananana katamari damacy all over their platform.

And well all alternative os's are just out of the question unless vulkan rendering gets the upper hand. Then i'd switch to whatever stable distro and learn about our new penguin based overlords languages.

For now i will just stick to win7, suck on my thumb while in fetal position and hope it just all goes away.

So instead of using the budget of 7k$ to buy all the plugins the old developer needed, he torrented more than half of them and deployed the system

which ended up in 20 thousand users including companies reporting a breach, because avira etc reported some kind of drive-by scripts on the new website

what a fucking buffoon, the most annoying thing about this is, that all the plugins had a "license file", so I didn't even first get, where all that shit is coming from

Today, I reached a new level of laziness.

I lied down to watch a movie and I was too lazy to copy the movie from my external hard drive which was in the other side of the bed.

What did I do? I've downloaded the movie once again and watched.

I wrote in a rant here that I couldn't access my 1TB external hard-drive anymore because I refused to "Safely remove" it from my computer.

My brother sent me today an image with it, showing me that he managed to open it.

I can't tell you how happy I am!

The solution: if you encounter the same problem (it takes forever for windows to scan it and you can't open it/ on linux it tells you to go to windows and and properly eject it), just go to `Device Manager` and `Scan for new hardware`. This should find it & solve it

Programming Languages are Like Cars:

Assembler: A formula I race car. Very fast but difficult to drive and maintain.

FORTRAN II: A Model T Ford. Once it was the king of the road.

FORTRAN IV: A Model A Ford.

FORTRAN 77: a six-cylinder Ford Fairlane with standard transmission and no seat belts.

COBOL: A delivery van. It's bulky and ugly but it does the work.

BASIC: A second-hand Rambler with a rebuilt engine and patched upholstery. Your dad bought it for you to learn to drive. You'll ditch it as soon as you can afford a new one.

PL/I: A Cadillac convertible with automatic transmission, a two-tone paint job, white-wall tires, chrome exhaust pipes, and fuzzy dice hanging in the windshield.

C++: A black Firebird, the all macho car. Comes with optional seatbelt (lint) and optional fuzz buster (escape to assembler).

ALGOL 60: An Austin Mini. Boy that's a small car.

ALGOL 68: An Aston Martin. An impressive car but not just anyone can drive it.

Pascal: A Volkswagon Beetle. It's small but sturdy. Was once popular with intellectual types.

liSP: An electric car. It's simple but slow. Seat belts are not available.

PROLOG/LUCID: Prototype concept cars.

FORTH: A go-cart.

LOGO: A kiddie's replica of a Rolls Royce. Comes with a real engine and a working horn.

APL: A double-decker bus. It takes rows and columns of passengers to the same place all at the same time but it drives only in reverse and is instrumented in Greek.
Ada: An army-green Mercedes-Benz staff car. Power steering, power brakes, and automatic transmission are standard. No other colors or options are available. If it's good enough for generals, it's good enough for you.

Java: All-terrain very slow vehicle.

Had 2 days of vacation. Theoretically (plus weekend, plus 2 days) 6 days.

Worked today… At Saturday.

Some administrators forgot to properly check bandwidth limitations....

*rolls eyes*

We had a major version upgrade of some server software at Monday.

Guess why I got called...

Of course it MUST be the software upgrade.

It couldn't be the new hardware that was setup 2 weeks ago and on which a lot of "important" VMs were migrated.

*eyes roll inside till only white is visible*

The even more annoying thing is that it wasn't that hard to figure out.

Looking at monitoring, we had spikes on 20 Gbit/s (roughly 2.x Gigabyte/sec - Ethernet) connection of some server at roughly 1.9 plus Gigabyte/sec.

IO latency spikes that made the graph look like a heartbeat EKG with severe tachycardia...

*additionally to white eyes starts cursing in reverse latin*

Incompetent admin answer: Booboo that can only be your fault - the developers must investigate.

Me (just a tad more polite): Meep Meep mother fucker, get your shit together. If the software would eat that much, the network would be a niece chunk of charcoal. Plus the time (sending instead of links to monitoring pictures… guess the lazy fucktard who's brain is a vacuum didn't even bother to check it)...

NOTICE SOMETHING?!

Incompetent admin: It starts at the same time. Always.

After wasting roughly another hour of time discussing with him, I just hanged up the video call.

Called someone I knew from the admin department and turns out that - drumrolls please - the incompetent admin was someone who got recruited 3 months ago…

*turning into antichrist*

I then had a not so polite discussion about how the only competent people could take days off (all except incompetent admin were on vacation) and the seemingly incompetent fresh recruit - who by the way NEVER mentioned this - was the only one left of the admin department. Which would be bad alone, but no - he even got the 24/7 emergency support role for the whole weekend.

Sometimes this company and HR especially notoriously drive me insane...

Guess next week there will be some HR barbecue.

But yeah. After a lot of raging around we nailed it down to the traffic of backups and could fix it.

Roughly 4 hours of analysis, communication, raging and hatred.

Just one hour implementing shit.

*goozfraba*

Programs are like humans. First you need to do baby steps and make it work like you want it, and teach it how to work. Then after the release the youth brings a lot of bugs and swearing. Finally it's grown up and can handle itself. Then it gets old and no one are so attracted to it anymore. It rests in peace on a old storage drive, and gets replaced by a new generation. 👶🏼👦🏽👨🏽👴🏽

New computer! I named it P.E.A.C.H. which is supposed to be an acronym, but I couldn't find a satisfying meaning.

Mind the stickers. I'd love to put a devRant sticker there too.

Components:
- Gigabyte AORUS GA-AX370-Gaming 5
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700
- Scythe Mugen 5 "PCGH Edition"
- 16GB HyperX FURY DDR4-2666 DIMM CL15-17-17
- 500 Watt Cooler Master B500 ver.2 Non-Modular 80+
- 275GB Crucial MX300 2.5" (SSD)
- 1000GB Seagate BarraCuda ST1000DM010 (HDD)
- Sharkoon BW9000-W Midi Tower
- Some video card and DVD drive I removed from an old computer

It still needs a good video card and internet connection.

With the dual boot and my MacBook Pro I cover Windows, Linux and MacOS.

So probably about a decade ago at this point I was working for free for a friend's start-up hosting company. He had rented out a high-end server in some data center and sold out virtualized chunks to clients.

This is back when you had only a few options for running virtual servers, but the market was taking off like a bat out of hell. In our case, we used User-Mode Linux (UML).

UML is essentially a kernel hack that lets you run the kernel in user space. That alone helps keep things separate or jailed. I'm pretty sure some of you can shed more light on it, but that's as I understood it at the time and I wasn't too shabby at hacking the kernel when we'd have driver issues.

Anyway, one of the ways my friend would on-board someone was to generate a new disk image file, mount it, and then chroot to that mount path. He'd basically use a stock image to do this and then wipe it out before putting it live.

I'm not sure exactly what he was doing at the time, but I got a panicked message on New Years Day saying that he had deleted everything. By everything, he had done an rm -fr /home as root on what he had thought was the root of a drive image.

It wasn't an image. It was the host server.

In the stoke of a single command, all user data was lost. We were pretty much screwed, but I have a knack for not giving up - so I spent a ton of time investigating linux file recovery.

Fun fact about UML - since the kernel runs in user space as a regular ol' process, anything it opens is attached to that process. I had noticed that while the files were "gone", I could still see disk usage. I ended up finding the images attached to their file pointers associated with each running kernel - and thankfully all customers were running at the time.

The next part was crazy, and I still think is crazy. I don't remember the command, but I had to essentially copy the image from the referenced path into a new image file, then shutdown the kernel and power it back on from the new image. We had configs all set aside, so that was easy. When it finally worked I was floored.

Rinse and repeat, I managed to drag every last missing bit out of /proc - with the only side effect being that all MySQL databases needed to be cleaned up.

New password cannot be one of your four previous passwords.
Password must conatin upper and lower case characters, at least two numbers and two special characters
Password cannot contain five or more consecutive letters of username.
Password cannot include any _illegal patterns_.

Locked out of your system? Drive over to HQ and ask the admins to reset your password in person.

My humble work setup. I took this a while ago and never posted it, figured I should get it up for this week's rant.

The extra touchpad and keyboard was for training the new girl and allowing her to drive while still giving me access to my box.

Me: *downloaded wordpress for first time*
Me: *opens folder in Atom*
.php file: Hi there! Welcome to your new bl-
Me: *delete wordpress folder and reformats hard drive*

Connect a pen drive, format it successfully. Connect to a new machine to copy data and see the data exists.

Crap! which drive did I formatted :(

I need a new 'main' language to do all my projects in as java is kind of grinding away at my psyche.

Golang I liked quite a lot when I used it for my job a year ago, I'll give that a try..

Golang installed and up and working fine.

Oh, I know lets see if there are GLFW bindings for golang. And sure there are lets go!

Oh I need gcc and mingwex + mingw32 which I will acquire through cygwin.

hmm.. mingwex + mingw32 not found and my drive is almost full. I'll reinstall on my D:\ drive before continuing troubleshooting.

> Delete C:\Cygwin Access denied.
> cmd rmdir c:\test /s /q Access denied.
> Change permissions Access denied.

No problem I just don't own this object!

> Change to be the 'object owner' Success!
> Change permissions Success!
> Delete C:\Cygwin Access denied.
> cmd rmdir c:\test /s /q Access denied.
> takeown /F C:\Cygwin /A /R /D Y Success!
> cmd rmdir c:\test /s /q Access denied.

At this point it would be more efficient to manually open up my ssd, and using a fridge magnet change every single bit to be exactly what I want it to be.

Or install linux.

Son a fucking bitch!
I ordered a brand new shiney SSD for my Inspiron 7573 which came in today. I was all set up with system backups just in case and install media for Debian and Windows standing by. I pull out my tools and realize that the laptop isn't going to have a screw inside to hold the drive in since it didn't come with a SSD. No big deal, I pull out the magnetic bowl of extra screws from all the previous repairs I've done and start looking for the screw I need. I can't find the screw I need so I go online hoping maybe I'll find someplace in town that will have one single screw with no luck.

Now I get to wait 2 more days for the screw I need to arrive from Amazon.

So when I was working for a web dev shop, one of the clients asked us to have a drop down of all the different combinations you can have for street types to appear on the address form of their shopping cart. So stuff like "Street", "St", "Drive", "Dr", "Lane", "Ln" etc. We told the client that it wasn't possible since the possible combinations and how some street don't all end with a type.

But the client was adamant about having this so we ended up building a section in the administration section to allow the client to add any new street type to a database table that will populate the dropdown.

Soo I am the only tech-guy in my family and it's a bit like:

Other: You do program?
Me: yes?
Other: pls repair my printer!

And you guys know how awful that is, aren't you? But in my family it gets tougher...

Today my older sister asked me how to save data from a broken HDD. I said I know a guy who's doing forensic on HDDs and he could make that.

She's like: "but a friend of mine said it could be done easier with software"

And yes, it is! But not that successful...

Now's the point she killed me instantly!
She said: "he opened the HDD and said the disks look fine they could be easily added to a new HDD"....

WHAT THE ACUTAL FUCK I SAID NOW YOUR DRIVE IS BROKEN FOREVER! AND THEN SHE INSULTED ME AND BLOCKED ME ON FUCKING WHATSAPP! SHE IS LEARNING WEBDESIGN WHY THE FUCK DON'T TEACH HER THE BASICS OF FUCKING COMPUTERS! Oh for fuck sakes....

I had security reopen our test-user last week. I could run the tests once, then they started failing with "blocked user due to too many attempts at logging in". Huh, that's weird. I go through everything, every script, every scheduled task, every nook and cranny of every drive on every machine I could reach, and make sure the password is updated everywhere. Reopen account. Same shit.

I email around to some people, they don't use it, one guy asks if I checked x, y and z, I did. Then he's sure we don't use it anywhere else.

It's one of our fucking contractors that took one of our scripts (that they're supposed to have duplicate copies of) and forgot to change to their own credentials. That's literally the agreement, take our scripts and change the user and run them on your machines.

Afhfjdkdhdjdbd stop locking me out of everything with your incompetence. I email them, some cunt gets back to me asking for the new password. NO. USE. YOUR. OWN. CREDENTIALS. I KNOW YOU HAVE THEM, THEY'RE HERE IN THE LIST AND BEING USED IN ALL OTHER SCRIPTS AAAAAAAAAHHH

Had a LinkedIn recruiter contact me a few months ago, I usually get one of these a week at minimum and usually more frequent the moment a start a new position. I hate that!

Anyway, story and rant:

The recruiter sent me a position that was pretty good, lots of benefits, not too far to drive, some remote days. With the usual list of responsibilities that they themselves dont know what half of them are but put them on anyway, I would automate those anyway if I wanted to work there.

All looks great, I ask if they can send me more details and the budget they company has for the position.

This was for a Senior position so I thought they would know what industry standard is.

The recruiter replies with a budget: $2000

I actually couldn't believe that they thought that was acceptable amount of money for the amount of responsibilities they wanted this new senior guy to do, no wonder the previous guy left.

I respond and told her that the amount is extremely low for what they want and I dont think they will find someone with the skills they need at that amount. I would be willing to talk for a minimum of $4000 and thats not guaranteed until I can go for a formal interview to find out exactly what the company needs.

The recruiters replay was probably the rudest anyone has ever been to me online, lol! She insists its industry standards and any Senior would be lucky to get such a great paycheck, the company has been in business for years and their developers have always been happy and paid industry standards.

I respond again and tell her that im getting $3800 at this small company where I currently am and if the "international company with clients all over the world" wants to have my skill set why is it that they cant pay premium salaries!? As well as the graphs for my Country on what the current industry standards are for salaries in my industry.

She never replied, but I kept tabs on the company she was recruiting for. They are still looking for a senior dev, its been 8 months now and no one has applied.

I am so happy more developers are standing up for themselves and not taking agencies bullshit with low salaries, crazy overtime and bad technical specs.

Note: Amounts are made up, was just to show comparison.

var m = Me()
var f = Friend()

f.speak("I just wiped my whole disk drive with everything on it and I just realized how much I didn't care about all those movies I didn't watch or the TV shows that I'm keeping on the side...... It's like a clean new PC and I feel so free")

m.speak("Stop with the spiritual bullshit. You were installing Windows and it was a mistake right?")

f.cryAndNod()

m.sigh()

One of my hard drives S.M.A.R.T. said it could fail anytime and I should backup my data. I cut all the files to a new hard drive.

Later that week the new drive fails with the needle falling into the magnetic disks... Fml. 

Should've saved those files on the cloud...

My new motherboard (MSI Z170 GAMING AC) reports temps for the memory, CPU, GPU and hard drive in °C. And the motherboard temp in °F.
Almost had a fucking heart attack the first time I opened Speccy for benchmarking.

Who are the people who are pushing for phones, laptops and desktops to be even thinner? Do they actually exist?! Or are that mythical creatures invented by Apple engineers so they can get paid to invent new stuff?

"Yeah, we need to invent a new keyboard design as customers are complaining how fat our pro laptops are."

I don't think I've looked at a laptop built in the last decade and wondered how I'll carry it with my tiny frame.

Just give me a Mac Pro that is a solid chunk of aluminum with a removable drive and access to the RAM. It'll look fine and it's going to sit quietly on my desk. I promise not to move it without hiring at least two men with appropriate safety equipment.

I want someone to stand up at an Apple keynote and say, "We made this thicker---you're welcome."

So, the uni hires a new CS lecturer. He is teaching 230, the second CS class in the CS major. Two weeks into the semester, he walks in and proceeds to do his usual fumbling around on the computer (with the projector on).

Then, he goes to his Google Drive, which is empty mostly, and tells us that he accidentally wrote a program that erased his entire hard drive and his internet storage drives (Google, box, etc.)...

I mean, way to build credibility, guy... Then he tells us that he has a backup of everything 500 miles away, where he moved from. He also says that he only knows C (we only had formally learned Java so far), but hasn't actually coded (correction: typed!) in 20+ years, because he had someone do that for him and he has been learning Java over the past two weeks.

The rest of the semester followed as expected: he never had any lecture material and would ramble for an hour. Every class, he would pull up a new .java file and type code that rarely ran and he had no debugging skills. We would spend 15 minutes trying to help him with syntax issues—namely (), ;— to get his program running and then there would be a logic issue, in data structures.

He knew nothing of our sequence and what we knew up until this point and would lecture about how we will be terrible programmers because we did not do something the way he wanted—though he failed to give us expectations or spend the five minutes to teach us basic things (run-time complexity, binary, pseudocode etc). His assignments were not related to the material and if they were, they were a couple of weeks off. Also, he never knew which class we were and would ask if we were 230 or 330 at the end of a lecture...

I learned relatively nothing from him (though I ended up with a B+) but thankful to be taking advanced data structures from someone who knows their stuff. He was awful. It was strange. Also, why did the uni not tell him what he needed to be teaching?

End rant.

I just remembered something I did like freshman year of high school lol

So our school system had just adopted a new site blocking program. It did even better than the one we had used before it.

Literally every good site to play games was blocked, and it really pissed me the fuck off. I had an easy class that was in a lab, and I finished my work early literally everyday, so I played the games to kill time.

Finally I got fucking fed up, and I made a site using weebly where I put the games I wanted to play on it. This way I was in control of it, and I had all the game files on a flash drive, so if it got blocked, I could just keep making new ones.

It actually got to the point that after a week, a few of my friends were using the site daily as well, and they kept asking for games to be put on it.

Simpler times man, simpler times.

!dev

My toxic father. Seriously man. It's my 4th day of learning to drive with an instructor. He sits besides and never knew how to drive. I think I am driving good wrt to being very new in it. He thinks just because I slow myself down on the road and cannot take a turn properly, let me say it again, on the 4th day of driving a manual car, he thinks I can never drive. What a fucking douchebag. What a fucking coward, impatient human says that. I am in rage because now I'm like 27, but in my childhood he was at his worst behaviour. That's why I was always scared of doing complex things, I stick with easy because I will make no mistakes. He has fucking no right in being proud of me. He's so fucking bad, I hate him. But more than hating him I want to find a way not to give a fuck about his fucking small discouraging shameful opinions. Fucker cannot do anything by himself. He's the most messed up fucking person I have ever seen. And oh god I fucking resent this guy.
I should start calling him a fucking retard that way I can devalue him as a person. I could never thought that I will think about a person like this but this retard left me no choice.
The thing is even a person is a retard I will try to understand them so give me a good word that just devalues a person instantly.

I love programming.. I really do.. But sometimes bugs drive me crazy... Long story short.. I'm getting a new laptop don't ask what happened to the other one

I'm the only one working on this anymore and every toolchain supporting the system (remember, we're using an ARM9 [initial strap CPU] AND an ARM11 (give or take an ARM7 slaved to the ARM9 that we don't have support for yet), all in tandem, and the only toolchain that remotely works is for ARM6 for some reason) hates the Linux kernel. Current goals: SD R/W support (currently RO), X, GNUTools, maybe a better fucking softkey driver (i'll have to find whoever made this one and fucking beat him), and a working joy2mouse/touch2mouse driver. Oh, and figure out if Swap would work either with the New 2DS/3DS' Bonus Drive (unused 64MB partition on NAND) without killing the NAND as the SD access is max. 1.2 MB/s read/write speed or so, which isn't fast enough for swap AND other things.

Currently working:
Busybox
Read-only SD support
Weston (term only, can't click)
Standard 3DS/Standard 2DS/New 3DS (Models before 2017, the non-foldables, rebranded standard 2DSes) features only, not yet New 3DS/New 2DS-enhanced

Currently failing final compile because toolchain:
Preliminary custom R/W SD support