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Search - "the helicopter"
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During a penetration test, I was dropped off in a Navy SEAL Ranger Black Hawk helicopter on the top of a 300 story building. I repelled to the 150th floor with fishing line, carved out a window, and installed Kali on the office door knob. I then typed out l337 HTML code in notepad and gained access to the mainframe. Then, some guy named John McClane wouldn't stop asking me for advice as I roped down the elevator shaft cable. I then walked outside, got my shoe shined, and the CEOs daughter came up to me saying she wants to take me to dinner because I'm the most l337 of the l337.11
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(tl:dr at the bottom)
context:
my partner programming skills are pretty basic and he does not work in software development. instead he is in the largest (and only) electricity company here.
history:
one day his boss ask him "hey, do you know how to use google maps?"
Partner: "yeah, what do u need?"
His boss: "great! please make 10,000 routes with these coordinates, i need them for tomorrow"
Partner: "WTF!" ,grab his phone and call me, "(explains me te situation) dude, can you make like a script or something?"
Me: "Sure, but we'll need a loooot of coffee"
We spent 18 hours developing a routes generator with java-fx, mysql and JS.
Next day we went to deliver those routes and to "show" the system. They told us that after searching for 6-7 months, they wasnt able to find such a solution as ours.
Next day, I took a plane to this company HQ (My partner was food-sick, so i had to be there by my own), had a meeting with the TOP Bosses (on of them arrived in a Helicopter, lots of body-guards) and after a 3-4 hours, just like that, we had our first Big Contract with a huge ass company.
tl;dr:
we ended making an 8 months national project with the biggest and only electricity company with an 18hrs-developed system.7 -
I can you about one really annoying coworker: Me.
The first thing I did as a sysadmim was to break my colleague's rc helicopter. After that I decided to learn Python, pestering him with questions once every two minutes. I developed, using the word loosely, some scripts that I wrote directly on the production servers, with predictable results.
After a while, I broke less things than I fixed. I learned a lot those years. Today I'm still amazed by the patience and knowledge of this guy; I owe most of my career to him.
These days I have a brilliant job stopping morons such as myself from breaking to many things. I try to be as patient and I hope to be as knowledgeable. -
It was 1987. I was 13. My first dev project started with a $1,300 IBM PC XT clone I bought from a relative who was a “dealer” of PCs for some company. It took all the savings I had from birthday money and mowing lawns for several summers at $5 a pop.
My mom wanted to encourage me to learn it more in depth, and she also wanted to know more for her job as a librarian, so she bought us a bunch of books about DOS, BASIC, and Assembler.
I first got familiar with DOS and then dove into Assembler without realizing what it really was (and how much easier BASIC would be). After hours and hours of typing in what, to me, then, was complete gibberish, I grabbed the BASIC book to see what it had to offer.
I never went back to the Assembler book.
A kid at school had given me a BASIC program he had typed in from a magazine. It was a flight simulator of sorts but with a helicopter, IIRC. I loaded up that bad boy and got to hacking. I didn’t get much done with it but I did build a few other menu navigation programs to explore the language more.
That led to PROLOG, C, PASCAL, Visual Basic, Perl, ASP, ColdFusion, and now PHP. -
Does anybody here know of some sort of blackout glasses? (which cover the entire eyes, not sunglasses which do exist in high filters, but leak sunlight at the bottom, top and sides)
My recent lifestyle has lead me to absolutely dying at the morning when I go sleep, because of the extreme sunlight, peaking through all cracks.
I am just fine during the day when I do my walks or drive to the store etc, but after a long night I just get very light and sound sensitive.
I think a decent amount of years ago, I saw somebody use some sort of small scale welding goggles for something similar, but I can't find any that are dark enough or aren't costing like buying a beach house in malibu.
Also "photophobia glasses", which actually seem to be for that purpose, cost like two malibu beach houses and a helicopter to top it off, because they abuse and cash on the fact that it has remote help to people that suffer from it.
I did also try just using blackout curtains for that purpose, but as said, there's always that one small crack where it leaks through and absolutely flashbangs me.
So it would be nice to have some glasses that filter pretty much 99% of light, but still allow me to navigate through my appartment, without having to break a leg or crack my neck (which would solve the problem atleast)22 -
(in 2008)
my boss in my first job. in general every time when he randomly burst into office. one specific time when he burst i to office and INSISTED that we've got to go to a parking lot to see something.
that something was a remote-controlled helicopter he just bought. (this was before the age of drones).
oh, and he was a chain smoker, always had a cigarette behind his ear (wat), and was dragging me out to have a smoke (i was the only other programmer smoker, but not as heavy as him) every 10-15 minutes under the implied pretense of needing to discuss something about the code, and frowned heavily when i refused (because i was actually in the middle of actual work), because he took it as me refusing to have a work meeting with him.
no, we almost never talked about anything work-related, while on that smoke "work meeting".
also, my boss' boss in my first job, when she entered the office asking "we need a clickable map of our country where clicking each region brings you to a search page with filter set to results from that region. how would we do that?"
i answered "html imagemap linking to the right search url for each region, or embedded flash doing the same, if you want the region buttons to be animated", and turned back to my work.
upon which she proceeded to talk about it with the second programmer, both pretending they're solving some aspects that my answer didn't already solve, INSISTING that i stop doing "whatever nonsense you're doing" and pretend that i'm paying attention as if anything they said was in any way relevant or important. i kept returning to my work because i was solving an annoying bug and their talk was empty and useless.
this second incident was then cited as one of the reasons i was let go, because "he ignores important conversations with his superiors about upcoming tasks"
in general, my first job was a shitshow where nobody had any time or energy to do actual work because they all expended all of it to PRETEND for their superiors that they're working, since the superiors had no clue how it looks when we actually do our actual jobs.
(one month after i was let go (because, in my boss' words, yes, the one with the helicopter, "the IT productivity is very low and I have to hold someone responsible") , the second programmer was let go as well, and one month after that, our boss (head of IT) was let go too. to this day I keep being fascinated how did the company manage to survive long enough for me to even be there, let alone how it STILL manages to survive. i guess being part of a nation-wide conglomerate is very effective in covering your company's losses and uselessness)1 -
When you just figured out a fix for a bug, your on your way to the fix, but suddenly your co-worker asks everyone in the room "Would you rather be on a helicopter or airplane that lost all power". Then you get into a 10 minute discussion about which and why, and now that bug is permanent.5
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!dev
Seriously I suspect something boiling in Germany... I may just be getting paranoid, but lately I have seen an unusual amount of helicopters above Hamburg even at night. And not rescue helicopters or TV or anything, dark ones with all lights off in the night. That one night I noticed a distant hum in the air and looked outside. I may just have been tired but I thought I saw helicopters with only red lights on in the distance above Hamburg. It sounds impossible, but I even heard gunfire (a rattling popping sound) and saw light stripes in the air which looked like legitimate shots to me (and I played Arma so I know what I am talking about👉). But it was too far away to be sure and honestly I cant believe myself because other people should have noticed. But no lie, there is something going on. Just saw a helicopter again.10 -
inside you, there are two wolves
one is a post-it note
the other is composite helicopter armor
you are 3M8 -
TLDR;
When governments started printing money to cure new pandemic and crash current market with great inflation I took all my savings, got a loan and bought biggest property I could afford. Every major news station was talking about end of world, but this was not I was scared of. I was scared of the helicopter money that would wipe my 5 years old savings.
When I was about to sign loan papers to buy my first apartment I got an email that my contract will end in 3 months. I said ok, the contractor company will find me something else.
I asked and they assured me they will do it. After my contract end just before summer holidays there was silence from contracting company and then after 5 years of me earning them piles of money, after finished project and congratulations from customer they offered me most shitty job they had where people resign after a week. I said I don’t want to land in another shit hole bring it back to life for another 2-5 years and kill myself when they offer me same shit afterwards so I resigned.
It was so fucked up that even the boss from the client I was contracting asked me if I lost my job cause I finished all that they wanted. I said it’s not your fault man. I will be ok, but I wasn’t.
I had apartment I couldn’t move in cause I needed to renovate. Loan I needed to pay. Rented apartment, accountant and business that was loosing money cause I was without contract, the world was locked down and everyone was depressed.
I said ok, I still have some savings left so I I started looking for something new but market was dead. Everyone was gone for holidays after winter lockdown. I was burning money and trying to figure out what to do.
After 2 months of nothing, when I started thinking about finding some temporary job to not loose everything I worked for, things moved. I started attending hiring meetings and solving tests everyday, also from big four gang but I didn’t passed trough hr due to how they say I’m to independent and I need to look for consulting business or do something on my own.
People asked why I don’t do something on my own and I politely answered that I want to work there.
I was about to run out of money when I got a call that company is looking for me cause I was doing similar things they want to do. During interviews it was pleasant small talk about what id did over those years and what they want to do, 2 days later I joined small team. I barely managed to survive a month for a first paycheck.
Since then we created new product for a company. Now the person who hired me is leaving and I think I should also leave the ship and find other things to do.2 -
A brain whenever someone is working on a project:
Does the person I control have motivation? If so, I remember the person of another task so he/she/helicopter can't work on it.
Does the person I control have time?
If so, I set the person's motivation level to zero.
After this extremely accurate research I think we are better of by removing our brain.
BTW, I publish this research here under the MIT license.3 -
10 years ago when I started this path I was undecided between computer science and helicopter pilot. I made the right decision!4
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!dev !rant
Helicopter! :3 🚁🚁🚁
If pixels were triangles, instead of squares, would this be considered pixel art? 🤔 actually no, dumb question xD sorry.
(Btw, the game where I created this is called Monogolf. It's a mobile game, it's cool, so check it out if you want! [not sponsored]) 💙1 -
I’m currently working 2 jobs with over 60 hour work weeks in addition to my own SaaS company.
One job is full-time 40 hours, where I am a mid level developer and I just do the waterfall of tickets that is assigned to me. This place is unorganized and has almost no communication within the team.
The second job I am the Senior Dev and project lead. It’s a contract position that I put 20+ hours in on the evenings and weekends. Agile methodology, with a modern tech stack and I promote excellent communication as well as documenting everything.
I’m in a unique position because I’m able to see these differences and compare them side by side. My full-time job doesn’t really know about the second job. I get my work done, and that’s all that matters. This place is a mess. The project lead (CTO) is a helicopter boss that sticks his nose up at any type of formal documentation and practices. No tests are written.. no SIPs or deployment docs.. no stand ups or anything. I must also mention this team has 5 developers and a QA.. my team is only 2 developers and a QA. We get through tickets much faster.. it helps when I go over every single ticket that is created and add requirements and images..
I guess my point is... I’m about to be a full-time contractor because I can’t take this unprofessionalism anymore.
Just because these formalities technical take longer. It does decrease actual time spent developing a project. Spending a couple of hours on tests and requirements can save you days of back and forth in the future. Not to mention... document.. everything.1 -
there's almost no fucking soul outside, but some of these fuckers just have to fly a helicopter over the town.
where are the anti air guns, when you need them smh2 -
Normal people when they see the word 'Helo': Helicopter, misspelled "hello", nothing too complicated
Me when I see the word 'Helo': MALFORMED SMTP GREETING; EXPECTED DOMAIN