A couple of years ago, I was working in a computer shop as a "technician", I was 15, first job I ever had.
One day an elderly lady came into the shop, probably 50'ish, she and her whole family "suffered" from electromagnetic radiation, and the mother had the worst suffering. She complained about her TV box that just had died.

I accept the tuner and see it's wrapped with 10 layers of aluminium foil, with a tiny hole for the IR receiver.

The whole box smells like burnt electronics, and the foil gets darker for each layer I unwrap. I try explain to her that the box gets warm and overheated by wrapping it like this, and she's lucky that it didn't catch fire.

I further explain to her that she will not get a new box, because the warranty does not cover _this_. The mother tells me she has to wrap it like this, because she gets headaches when she's watching the news.

She then proceeds to go into a rage mode and gets her whole family into the shop, where all of them starts yelling at me, the younger kids start throwing stuff down from the shelves and touching the TVs with sticky fingers (literally, sticky, like yuck!).

Unsure what to do, boss is in a meeting, and my colleague is busy in the back.

So I calmly tell them that in this building there's 4 wireless networks, 3 wireless phones, high voltage cables run in the wall behind me, there's factory tracks 20 meters behind the building, next door business is an electrician, you're standing in front of wall with 30-40 TVs, 5 HDMI splitters, 3 TV boxes and a Blu-ray player. And they've all been standing in front of them for the last 10 minutes.

They all suddenly feel really sick and run out of the store, never to be seen again. From that day, I decided I'll never work in a shop again, and pursued my dreams to become a developer.

TL;DR: Family is "sensitive" to electromagnetic radiation, almost put burnt down their house because of stupidity, yelled at me. I decided to pursue my dream as a developer.

In the Ruhr area (Germany) we have some very old, very strange words with strange meanings. One of those words is ‚Prutscher‘.
A Prutscher refers to a person who does things but never gets a good result, due to lack of knowledge or simple carelessness. Most of the time, Prutschers are people who are interested in certain subjects and often work in the related jobs, but who lack the motivation to properly train themselves, learn what there is to learn and to always keep up with their technologies .
Here are a few examples I've stumbled upon so far in my career:

- Developers in their 60's who read a book about PHP 25 years ago and decided to become a software developer. Since then haven't read anything about it. Who then now build huge spaghetti monoliths for large companies, in which they prefix every function, every variable and constant with their initials and, of course, use Hungarian notation.

- People who read half a fucking tutorial about <insert any fancy js framework here> and start blogging/tweeting about it

- Senior web developers who need to be told what the fuck CORS is and who can't even recognize CORS related errors in their browser console.

- People who have done nothing else for 18 years than building websites for companies on Wordpress 1.x and writing few lines of PHP and Javascript from time to time. Those who are now applying as a frontend dev due to the difficult economic situation and are surprised that they are not accepted due to a lack of experience.

- Developers who are the only ones working on Windows in the team and ask their Linux colleagues for help when Windows starts bitchin.

- People who have been coding for 30 years, have worked with ~42 languages ​​and don't know the difference between compiled and interpreted languages ​​in the job interview.

- Chief developers at a large newsletter-publisher who think it's a good idea to build your own CMS (due to a lack of good existing ones, of course).

- Developers who have been writing PHP applications for multinational corporations for 25 years and cannot explain how PHP is executed. They don't even know what the fucking OPcache is, let alone fpm. FML

- People who call themselves professional developers but never ever heard of DRY, KISS, boy-scout rule, 12-Factor App, SOLID, Clean Code, Design Patterns, ...

- Senior developers wondering why the bash script won't run on their fucking Windows machine.

- Developers who consider Typescript to be a hindrance and see no value in it.

- Developers using ftp for deployments in 2022

- Senior Javascript Developer applying for a job and for whom Integer is a primitive data type in JS.

- Developers who prefer to code without frameworks and libraries because they are only an unnecessary burden/overhead and you can quickly code everything up yourself.

- Developers who think configuring their server(s) manually is a good idea.

You fucking Prutscher. What you have already cost me in terms of work and nerves. I can't even put it into words how deeply I despise you. I have more respect for the chewing gum that has been stuck in my damn trash can for the past 3 years than I do for you guys. You are the disgrace of our profession. I will haunt you in your dreams and prefix every fucking synapse of your brain with MY initials.

As a well-known german band once sang in a very fitting song: I wouldn't even piss on you if you were on fire.

If you recognized yourself in one of the examples here: FUCK YOU!

The British summer results in restless nights and broken sleep filled with nightmares.

One particular dream last night involved my friends messing around with a ouija board and they begin asking in questions. I remain sceptical and tell them to ask it to reveal the solution to the issues I'm having retrofitting a legacy web app with a new design.

The board disconnected itself. Hell had no answer.

Last night I had a very strange dream. I should point out in advance, all of this is fictional and none of it really happened.

I was looking at an answer I posted on Stack Exchange.. for the sake of argument, let's say it was Super User. I remember the question being about volume limiting, which is actually an issue I and many other iOS 14.2/14.3 users have been facing in the last few months. Apparently it has been partially addressed in 14.4.

In the real world I fixed the issue by jailbreaking the phone and unloading the healthd service, while in the dream that was the answer I had documented on Super User. In reality I have documented it in several other places, but not there.

Fast-forward a couple of days in the dream where the answer was posted, and I was now looking at a reply. I don't remember the exact details of it, but apparently in the answer I had posted something about my network.. a screenshot from the iPhone? And the comment on it basically said something along the lines of "your answer is shit, and you probably have a very basic internet connection with default settings". I was really upset by that, as my network is actually quite advanced (on account of being a sysadmin).

Then I woke up and realized that it was all just a dream...

"Man Of Steel"
Many men was I
before I was the man I am.
And each a stranger had I come to know
In a strange land.

In every man there is a nation
of dreams, in every spirit, like a flame
Many visions, many plans.

How do I choose, how must I choose
the destiny of all among the one
united by our pain, and hopes, and blood
and beneath this eternal sun, and the rule of petty men
learn to stand tall, to walk, to run.

If I could stand upon the shoulders
of giants, and stride for but a minute
in great men's shoes, forever and a day
All the world would be mine to gain, mine to lose
And bend the course of mankind
To a better way.

If I could stride full measure in that minute
And take it like the reigns
Of a chariot that could cross the sky
What a man they would exclaim, for generations,
fathers unto untold sons.
And speak in solemn words setting new foundations,
a truth greater than any lie
It is every man's will to fight.
And it is to rogues to do and die.

!dev
Had a strange dream. I was in some place where I looked at some people or maybe one person I don’t know now making some ritual. Some sort of forming a new life being from white piece of modeling clay of something. Telling some spells. Standing in front of big jar. Like you see some old pictures of the witch or something in front of big jar telling spells and this white piece of clay was forming but I didn’t saw it to the end. Those people or person didn’t see me and I was very absorbed by the whole ceremony. I was alone ? I don’t know now but probably. Maybe I was in some sort of jar in the room of this witch as one of her trophy watching it behind the safety glass. So me was very small and this ritual was made by some giant.
As my mind start becoming aware what I am watching suddenly I heard voice of my mother that was screaming to me to get the fuck out of here.
I saw her running and someone was running toward me with big knife to kill her before she reach me.
I didn’t saw his face, before my mother reached me I turned around so he didn’t know my face either. I covered my face with my hands to don’t see him stabbing me with his big knife made of steel. Then I woke up lol. When I woke up I felt like I am slowly going back to my body.
I still have thrills 40 minutes later when I am writing this.
I probably didn’t suppose to see this ritual.
I slept for about 2 hours and I am fully awake and feel rested.
Well some of my dreams are really fucked up.