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Search - "useless units"
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What the hell is "4k mAh battery"? Come on guys, you know what that little 'm' means, please tell me you do.
You wouldn't say "4k miligrams". You wouldn't say "4k milliseconds". You wouldn't say "4k milliliters". So don't use "4k miliampere hours". It's dumb.
Just to be sure - everyone, repeat with me:
👏 0.000004 👏 MAh 👏 eqals
👏 0.004👏 kAh 👏 eqals
👏 4 👏 Ah 👏 eqals
👏 4000 👏 mAh 👏 eqals
👏 4000000 👏 nAh 👏
Thank for giving me 5k ms of your attention.20 -
As I already said on devrant, I'm a freelance web developer and I also often sell my services for teaching, loving that. Currently I'm teaching PHP with 30 students and it's going very well.
But yesterday, I received an offer for giving another course next month, this time on HTML and CSS, for a company I don't know yet. Almost every line of this email is wrong, outdated by 20 years, or just basically meaningless...
So I thought I could do my best to translate this as close as possible to the original, preserving the wrong formulations too, just for you devranters fellas.
"Hello,
I have an offer for a 2 days course for 5 people (level 1+ and/or 2), on HTML5 and CSS3. Below, the program :
1. XHTML AND CSS2 INTRODUCTION
Advantages and benefits of change
Understanding compatibility for different versions of browsers
HTML, XHTML, CSS edition tools : presentation of the different tools
The CSS language : different types of selectors : class of selector, identifier of selector, contextual selectors, grouped selectors
Blocks of text, boxes of text
The CSS1, CSSP, CSS2 properties
Relative and absolute measures units
2. LAYOUT TECHNIQUES
Full CSS, XHTML websites demo
Positioning with the position property, positioning with the float property
Columns creation
Layout for forms
Layout for data tables
Layout for menus
3. INTRODUCTION TO SVG (SCALABLE VECTOR GRAPHICS)
Role and importance of SVG
Using SVG on client side : basic shapes
SVG structure of document, tags examples
Using CSS styles with SVG
Different integration methods for SVG in a XHTML document
4. OPTIMISATION OF JAVASCRIPT CODE
Introduction to DOM and Javascript
Access to document objects : different access techniques, using this keyword, create elements dynamically
Positioning elements with the help of Javascript : positionning elements relatively to the mouse, move elements
Show/hide elements for creating hierarchical menus
Code optimisation techniques : using objects, objects litterals, loops optimisation
Can you please give me your availability ?"
Seriously...
CSS-fucking-1 ! Is it a course for dinosaurs ?
...And if only my rant was just about the program...
It's totally impossible to cover all these subjects in only 2 days with people of different levels and experience.
The guy exactly said to me : "don't worry about the program, it's an old text but they agreed to it anyway. They just want to learn HTML and CSS, some of them already know it but want to learn more, and the others are total beginers.".
And here is the meaning for the "(level 1+ and/or 2)" part in the email.
So... Surprizingly, I accepted the offer, but asked for at least a 3rd day. I'm waiting for their answer, but I'll do it anyway, adapting the course content to the actual students knowledge. I need the money, after all.
Wish me luck...
It's just sad that these formation companies are selling bullshit to clients that just want to learn something useful. It's too often like that, they sell shitty/useless programs and we have to catch up in real time with students that don't understand why they don't learn what was told to them.3 -
I grew up in Russia. We don't use imperial units in any way, shape or form: we're fully metric. Every single person who taught me at school and whatnot was born and raised in Soviet Union that was also fully metric, and science was worshiped. We used to laugh at imperial units.
Given all that, I... don't hate imperial system. Inches, feet, miles, Fahrenheit degrees, gallons, all units based on human proportion. Just think where the word for "feet" came from.
Zero C is meh, nothing in particular. A hunge boils your blood kills you instantly. It's useless: it's a "shit ton of heat" in human scale.
Zero F is chilly, a hunge F is toasty. It's based around human perception. To me, there is no difference between 100 and 90 C, but the difference between 100 and 90 F is more perceptible, and thus more useful to a human being.
Same with every other unit. What's a gallon? A gallon is enough for an average Joe to get drunk, that's what a gallon is.
Where it all falls apart is when you're trying to create something. When you're trying to get some calculation going. When you're making — not consuming — you need your units to add up, e.g. to have the SYSTEM in place. Imperial system is not a system.
Imperial units are perfect for _consuming_ stuff: a gallon of milk, a pint of beer, a (real) footlong sandwich, a pound of meat. Six foot high dude with seven inch dick.
Metric units are indispensable when you're _making_ stuff, at any scale. That's the difference. Imperial units are the tool of consumption, metric system is the tool of creation.
Only the time units seem to be the same for everyone on earth right now. Time itself in its mercilessness gives the same treatment to all entities, doesn't matter if you're a human or a grain of sand.23 -
Proper rant tonight... I was getting an upgrade to my home entertainment today. It needed an engineer visit. What a useless clown he turned out to be.
2 hrs after arriving, he left and things weren't working remotely right at all. But it was Saturday and he was off the clock so I had to suck it up. No option to back out either - it was all activated and I had to accept it.
He spent most of the time arguing with me about my home network was set up and how it was wrong and how it was important for the overall system to work. Being a geek and having done research, I couldn't understand this - that wasn't how it was meant to be, I knew. I accept my home wiring is a bit odd, but I've had a working system for years because it's all necessary.
After all the faffing about and purchase of some new powerline units (which I accept I needed anyway but where unrelated to this set up), looking more into it myself, it is now up and running correctly.
I am thoroughly pissed at the ineptitude of the engineer. He clearly doesn't understand how the system works. He doesn't understand how powerline works and how it's a life saver for people with awkwardly shaped houses or thick walls where Wi-Fi is useless. If he had, we would have had far fewer issues and I wouldn't have had the stress of thinking I'd killed our home entertainment and internet and there was nothing I could do about it.
I don't blame the provider (besides them clearly not providing adequate training). But this was arrogant uselessness. At least I had the knowledge to understand how it was meant to work and get it sorted myself.
Maybe it could be a useful sideline job if I get fed up with developing.7