Dells XPS are made of magic. [long story, major fuckup, 10k+ damages]

It all started in December. One morning I was late to work, drove there as fast as possible. (I live like 3 minutes away so me being late really meant *late*) Parked my car in a secluded car park, grabbed my backpack and ran to work. The car park is like 100 meters away from work so I took my feet into my hands and ran. Next thing I know my heels loose all grip while I go down a small slope and I drop on my back full force. On a sharp edged stone. With only my 1700$ XPS in it. Fuck.

I paniced, but got up and ran to work. I checked on the notebook, praying it would boot. It booted! Holy shit. I flipped the notebook and saw two small dents in the aluminum shell. I was thorougly impressed. I later discovered that it left a small shadow on the display, but given what a hit that was (I am not exactly a lightweight), impressive would be a massive understatement.

Fast forward to February, I am weighing my options to get the screen replaced maybe, as damage on my hardware (even if neglectable) triggers some sort of OCD and makes me feel bad 24/7. Also my laptop tends to shut off from time to time, looked into the Event Viewer and saw kernel panic. I figured that the battery probably still took a hit and that it drops voltage from time to time and the kernel assumes a critical situation, thus shutting off.

It stayed quite snowy in Austria up until March, so occasional snowing wasn't rare. Got out of work one day, saw it snowed a bit. Whatever. I had my moms car at the time, so I tried if it would slide a bit if I donut on the now (5pm) empty parking space. Nothing. Drove done a small hill, ABS triangle lit up red (board computer can't outbalance the snow). I drove out to the main street where everything was salted and drove along towards my house. Took a turn into my street, accelerated for a bit and then went off the gas so the car would smoothly drive along with the speed slowly degrading. So I went off the gas and noticed I was a bit to the right, no wonder, centrifugal forces.

*steers left*
"Huh seems like I need a bit more"
*car still doesnt move much*
"What the- go to the left!"
*steers left hard*
"Fuck that wall is coming closer"
*Breaks*
*car doesnt break*
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"

Everything got quiet in seconds, me waking up to an open airbag, ripped pants, a hurting wrist, the radio somewhere on the ground and fumes that smellt like burning wires. I grabbed my backpack that was now somewhere on the floor instead of on the seat and ran outside, tears in my eyes and the phone on my ear calling my mom. I walked inside as she walked outside, hearing a weeping scream that I haven't heard from her since I am alive. While walking inside I noticed my backpack was wet on the bottom, my 2 litre water jug shattered when my backpack hit the dashboard. I tried to stay calm and act rational, knowing that every second counts when It comes to water damage. I hastely searched for some rice and a bag to put my laptop into, stuffed the bag with both and went outside. The car was totaled, my mom pissed and crying. And I was in shock, sad, angry and hurting.

I kept the laptop on my heater for a few days, bagged in rice. I dared to try a boot after a while and you wont believe me, it fucking booted. Even the keyboard backlight worked, just the screen was obviously broken in the back (no color distortion or bad pixel rows though!!) and the aluminum shell had a dent on the front. I talked with Dell Support a few days later, asking if it would be ok to open the XPS up so I could drain all of the water. She said yes thats fine, as long as I dont touch anything or screw around with it.

She said I can send it in and get it checked, but the pickup and analysis will cost 150$ and I can go from there.

I sent it in and estimated that, because battery, screen and other things probably needed changing, it will be around 900$.

Got a call a few weeks later:

"Hello beggarboy, the repair team reported back to us and said that they will have to replace everything, which will be 1700$."

"Fuck... Buying a new one is cheaper.."

"Yeah I know I am sorry about that, I can offer you a voucher so you can buy a new one for 250$ off if you would prefer that"

"Sorry but I will need some time to consider"

"I understand."

The agent clearly noticed I was bummed about it.

After going back and forth what to do I got another call a few days later.

"Hello beggarboy, we talked a few days ago. I have good news"

"Hello, yes, speak up?"

"I was able to get a special offer for you after putting in a few words..."

The next thing she said seemed unreal to me.

She was able to cut 600$ (!!!), making the new offer 1100$, instead of 1700$ or a new one for 1500$. I figured the reason she probably did that was because I am always very polite with support members. Always.

My XPS is back and healty again.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Dells XPS are made of magic.

!dev, more about social media
(and suicide)

ugh. social media.

recently a girl from a nearby high school committed suicide. it's sad, and i know what i'm about to say is going to be controversial, but i think it shouldn't be on social media. maybe her close friends posting it on instagram, to remember her, but that's it.

of course, that's not what happened. people started posting "❤️" on their snapchat stories, and theyre saying they are raising awareness. (they don't know this girl or why she did it or anything, they're just doing it because their friends did it.)

this awareness, is well, temporary.

the point of snapchat is that all the pictures go away, so why would they talk about suicide prevention on there? do they want suicide prevention to go away? this is most prevelent on snapchat, but on others, too.

trend after trend after trend.

thats what people turned her death into. a trend.

just like #prayforparis, and others, but on a local scale.

the problem with social media is that things go away. in a day or two it'll be like this never happened. she won't be remembered like she would if she weren't on social media.

i know what you're thinking. they're just "raising awareness." but for how long?

well, until another trend comes.

people disagreeing with me are extremely welcome to comment.

and any ideas on how this problem can be fixed?

Heard about that developer thats was involved in a car accident and went to hospital for brain surgey?

Doc said he need to remove half of the brain but he will survive. His developer friends was happy with the news that he will survive but sad loosing a great developer.

The surgey went as expected and now he is one of the best Project managers in the business.

me: hey dad i finally installed linux on my laptop
dad: whats that? nvm, what i want u to do is set up a server for emails
me: *slowly backs out*

dad doesnt acknowledge the fact that im diving into linux :(

When I was in college I had to code a piece of software for use on the college Intranet.

When it came time to deploy, I went to the network admin to set the package up for distribution.

His first reply, "oh, it's only 8mb, thats so sad".

WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER AS LONG AS IT DOES THE JOB!

Attention: incomming resentful boiled up for months rant.

Hands down G2APAY is the worst because:

Merchant account aproval takes fcking months. It starts with unreasonable delays in documents approval. I mean insane nitpicking. They want to see merchants name surname and address on every god damn document that you submit even if for example bank statement doesnt include these details. I had to manually edit pdf’s just so that they would fck off and approve the merchant application. Insane requirements for document check also combined with their email only support answering only once a week you will have to wait one month just to get your account approved.

Then you get to the fun part, approval proccess for vendor gateway and webhook integration. They are nitpicking everything you can imagine: about website not having https, website forum missing some icons, merchants phone number being from another country then he is, and bunch of other hundreds of problems imagined only by them. Again combined with their one email reply per week policy you will waste atleast one month to finish up your integration.

Now finally you are their client and you think you can chill and go back to focusing on your business? Nope bro. Prepare for threatening emails. Last time I got a request to install https or my merchant application will be shut down. I was given 3 days notice on a fcking friday and had to do it.

Then g2a backend is crashing quite often. Combined with their one email per week policy you are fcked in the ass if your users were not able to pay through g2a and you will get no compensation.

Their backend documentation is shiet. Not clear how to integrate everything and after you integrate they make changes without publishing any changesets. Your integration is working? Good luck if it will still be working tomorrow.

And the very worst part is that they stopped proccessing credit cards like month ago with zero notice. Its been weeks and still zero news about bringing card proccessing back. They sad that they were acquired by some other company so shitty support got even shittier now while they are in a proccess of handover.

So yeah thats the worst vendor I have ever seen in my life. For example integrating paypal took me 30 minutes. Integrating stripe and getting all documents reviewed took me one business day. Same with paymentwall integration and document approval took 1 business day. Support is amazing and even have a phone number that I can reach if urgent problems arise. Thats how it should be. Thats why I can pay percentage of my transactions with a smile for them.

Sorry for the typos since im typing on my shiet phone while driving.

Eat a bag of dicks g2apay. I hope you go bankrupt and shutdown.

How do I help my colleague in fighting harrassment?
This is the story of a helpless employee facing everyday harassment. Im trying to help. Seeking for your thoughts

Backstory fast forwarded: My company acquired another company. So we handle all their projects and clients now, but its a completely new domain. So we needed new people. Hired 4 employees + 1 team lead to start with. But the project process got delayed and they were free for a month. So i took 2 of them in my project and gave them some small tasks to help us over. They loved working with my team and were learning new stuff apart from what they usually did. And we were also happy of their contribution. We became good friends. All of this was in March 2020 before covid-19 was taken seriously.

About my company: I love this company. I have been in this company for more than 4 years now. People are really nice. Parties and fun events. Lot of smart and ambitious people. So company and people are awesome.

Coming back to the story. Lets call the team the 4 and team lead T. The 4 were happy that someone like T was in their team. This T had all the best knowledge about stuff and life was going to be awesome for the 4. Or was it?

Story starts: So I talk to one of these 4 on daily basis. Lets call this friend F. F is a real gentle person. Intelligent and dedicated to work. F is awesome to work with. And always enjoyed working. F is a team player and very very soft person. F is fking workoholic. So few days after project starts, F tells me work was not going well. F is getting real frustrated at work and not able to deal with it or find solution.

What happened:
This person T, who was supposed to help these 4, is real piece of shit. He is impatient, arrogant and MFing dick head. Aaaarggggg.
All the good qualities of a leader like supporting the team, boosting confidence, guiding team when they make mistakes, teaching them, were all missing from this person. T was a machine with no emotion and only clock working jerk. I have no idea how T cleared interview process, because one of the interview round is also about cultural fit into company. I know this because i take interviews for other domains. We have rejected lot of such well qualified but arrogant candidates.

So whats the problem now: this team of 4 are learning new tools and taking over the clients requests from old company. Most of the stuff is new for them. So in tat case people need lot of time to understand and figure out shit. people make mistakes while learning and you know have to deal with it. Person T abuses these 4 when something goes wrong. That's one.

Second, the T definitely knows more than these 4. So if these guys dont understand certain stuff they ask T. But T does not help them learn. T will either say busy or run away by saying thats simple and ull know when time comes. REALLY MF???

Third, T does not talk nice. T is rude and does not listen to team members. For eg, If F says some task cannot be done for some reason T will say, "y cant u do it? U r capable of doing it. Tats y u r in this job". And then point number one and two happens. Never responds to emails and messages. But if someone else does the same will not tolerate that and abuses them. List goes on.

So y not escalate and deal with that T:
This person F and other 3 are still under probation and they think complaint or escalation will back fire. These people do not want to lose job in between all this pandemic shit. They are scared.

So this was happening for a while. And i was giving lot of tips on how to handle certain situations. And how one should communicate these.

But being a gentle, soft and workoholic person, F focussed on work and assumed things will get in place as time goes by.

Today, F could not meet a requirement. So T told some shit which got F all sad. and F called up me late night and started crying explaining what happened. I felt real bad. I asked F to file harrassment case. F refused saying it was F's mistake on not completing requirement. WHO THE FK CARES. PEOPLE CANNOT TALK SHIT. I told ill file harrassment case against T. (We have a policy where others can also file if person is not courageous enough). But F did not allow me.

Then after calming down, I told F that telling the problems to me wont solve them. You have to talk to T directly and tell him on face not to talk like this. Or tell the manager about whats happening. Or tell the the HR about this. F said tat cant be done. I was like Y THE FK NOT.

Because the other 3 are not ready to talk about this to anyone as they fear they'll lose job. So if F talks and people question other 3 they might bail out. WAT THE HOLY SPIRIT.

so after lot of convincing F is still not going to
Talk to anyone about this.

So i have decided ill write an anonymous email to HR, the manager and other senior people in the organisation about whats happening.

I really dont know how itll go. Ill keep updating you guys. Feel free to share ur thoughts.

*use windows, ms office, vsc, skype probably code in ts, ... *
*rant about microsoft buying github*
I'm not a microsoft fan either, but thats the sad truth.

Our fucking life is short, we all going to die sooner or later, thats sad. To make the matter worse, every fucking software will eventually be written in Javascript. Fuck.

[Fairly existential career question] How fulfilling would you say your career in development has been?

[Long rant] for years I had been planning on becoming a rabbi, majored in religious studies etc, until I realized there would be no way out of my rapidly growing debt if I chose to continue on that path. i had to drop out 3 years into my undergrad due to financial issues, and as it is now working full time im barely holding my head above water. I spent a lot of time being sad about it until i decided to change things and started getting into accounting before I discovered coding. I am SO GLAD I discovered coding cause accounting was so boring...Now I'm excited to be going back to school for software development and I'm in a bit of a pink cloud having discovered something thats both exciting/fun/challenging AND lucrative... But i do worry about 5, 10 years in the future, will i still be as stoked about it? Religious leadership was and is something I know i would feel ~fulfilled~ over a lifetime, and while my newly discovered passion for coding literally keeps me up at night getting fired up on solving problems and writing my little newb programs, i think I'm afraid of burnout?

[Tl;dr] I'm making an education+career switch to software development and i wanna know how folks feel about their career years into it, do you still love it just as much? Feel jaded? Regretful? Happy?

Went to meet up last night. I was there acting like I have no experience and was just starting to learn programming. Suddenly this guy turns and faced me he said non verbatim “don’t use JavaScript thats the worst programming language, its used by wanna be software engineer. Use c# they have blazor so you wont have to code using JS”. My blood pressure went up guys. I understand this because hes kinda old and dont want to learn new things but i got caught off guard. To be honest im not mad, im just sad though, imagine if i was really new and had no experience and just started few months ago. All the hard work and studying will be nothing. Btw hes nice he offered me free food and beer its just JS.

If you’re learning any language specifically JS. Dont mind the naysayers. Just learn it and be good at it. Languages has its use cases. Conversation with whats better programming language is useless and a waste of time thats what my professor said and its true.

I realized that my mood swings based on how my gf behaves. She is one of the few triggers

If she is sad depressed angry or disrespectful towards me i am no longer in a positive mood, it kills the whole vibe. On the contrary if she is happy acts feminine behaves normally and is respectful towards me i also become happy and in a better mood

Bad mood does not stop me from doing my work, but depending on how terribly bad it becomes, it may or may not impact my coding and work life. Since the main and central tool for coding is my brain and mental state, not physical muscles, Once the central part of anyone's tool (thats used to get the job done) is attacked or threatened, it weakens the person's ability to perform as good as they have been, or worse, completely blocks them off from performing well

This is one of my biggest fears; Anyone who's capable, intentionally or not, of weakening the central part of my tool for work (in this case mind and mental state), begins to gain power and leverage over me (hold on this is actually a brilliant idea to have in mind, a malicious way to exploit and leverage the target victim is by attacking the central tool they use to get the work done)

However i am a mentally strong person (due to way too much trauma from school, solving extreme difficulty coding problems, hoes and financial struggles), but it does not help if i am attached to a person who i have feelings towards, a person who became the second half of me, "the better half". It is difficult to reject or all of a sudden stop loving the person who you loved for years or months. Such person can more easily attack my central tool

My question is--does anyone know how to protect the central tool from anyone being able to exploit or weaken it? For example if my gfs bad behavior puts me in a bad mood, how to prevent that from happening? How do i not care? Or how do i care but still not let it affect my mood in a negative light? If that makes sense