The OneNote saga continues.

The Project Manager woman is back from holiday and lo and behold I get a DM telling me to update my notes. I have done so already, but OneNote didn't sync it. I open it again only to see half of what I pasted in is gone, so is the checkmark for my name.

She tells me I am the only person experiencing this. I feel like I am being gaslit. I ask a coworker if they also have sync issues with OneNote, and yes they do. I am being gaslit.

She made me submit an IT support ticket for this shit and now I am sitting here waiting for the technician to finish and leave the remote session so I can do my fucking work. This is so pointless, there's nothing to fix for IT support, it's a shit piece of Windows software.

man I wish people would stop trying to fix people problems with stupid processes and even dumber software.

Maybe I should just threaten them with resignation.

Got nagged again at twice in an hour to update my notes, when I have done so before 9am. We're adults, not toddlers.

Stupid fuckin OneNote doesn't sync. I'm losing my fuckin mind here.

The stand-in for the person who normally runs the daily standup meeting (who is currently on leave) asked me today in front of everyone in standup if I've updated my notes. Fuck. Off.

So, I decided to be cheeky and add a comment to the daily standup notes automation task in our project management software that we should just include all of the recipients of the daily status update email in our standup meeting every morning, this way we don't require a OneNote space to update as well as an email.

If they tell me that's not the purpose of standup, then hopefully someone will realise what they've been doing all along.

Let's see how that goes lmao.

In standup I talked about how I am blocked on two tasks and what I need from the people who can unblock them.

Business Analyst who runs the standup/acts as some type of scrum master thing then asks me what I need to unblock the tasks.

I JUST FUCKING TOLD YOU, HOLY SHIT.

Why can't we move standup to a little later in the day? Like, just before lunch?

I can't seem to get going with any work before 9am standup, takes ±20mins to get into it and focused, then another ±20mins afterwards to get into it again.

I miss the days when I only had one 30-minute weekly progress check-in with my manager which involved weekly tasks, larger project updates, all of the stupid agile ceremonies in one 30-minute session. Got a lot of shit done.

It's kinda nice to have a long weekend for a change to work on my endless list of unfinished side projects and code what I want to code, and not having to use fucking Windows 11 on a slow-ass work laptop.

In my quest to try to understand this ridiculous daily status report to management (yes, it is micromanagement, but why ), so I asked the business analyst who is running the project management office the purpose of it in a very non-chalant manner.

"It's to show status and progress of work." Right.

"The content of the update should meet the following criteria: 1. Business language 2. Project/system specific 3. Person specific"

She then names some management people who want to know certain progress with a specific project. Such as "Jane Smith wants to know if there's progress with report failure investigations".

It is supposed to tell people proactively what's happening with a project before they ask. It also apparently shows transparency and how much time we're working on a thing. It also apparently helps senior "peeps" align priorities for work across companies (we're one of 4 companies part of a larger company, we do the software and IT stuff for them).

I said thanks and concluded with "So, our daily output is more important that outcome. I'll continue working with the project management software api to see if I can get appropriate output."

I'm sure some people in the team are not doing what they're supposed to be doing, management have trust issues, or both.

I now know the root cause of this daily pain that is being inflicted on us, and I want to do something about it, but maybe I should just stop, before it drives me over the edge.

Senior Business Analyst wants to buy one of the company directors a portable synthesizer keyboard for her 40th birthday and is asking all of us for donations.

The fuck, these things are expensive in my country, I'll buy her a nice bottle of wine, that's it.

The madness of corporate life.

What's the point of retro if nothing that we're saying should improve is actively being improved and problems being highlighted is constantly being shoved under the rug?

The daily standup notes thing has now been moved to a shared Microsoft Word document, because OneNote is so shitty.

Another dev and I talked about building a web app to collect monday.com ticket updates for the day, so that the project manager person can just click a "Send email" button to send to management.

This shit is so annoying, the entire process. The note-taking is for management so they can know what we're up to. As far as I know, standup is not supposed to involve management at all, they should only be updated in sprint reviews, burndown charts, etc.

Why the fuck do we have to update our project management software, then talk about it for 30 minutes, and then again write it down in a dumb fucking Word document, just because management is too retarded to learn how to read a fucking kanban board?! They all have access to the monday.com boards. I'm sick of having to repeat myself day in and day out.

Why do we even have project management software?!

I hate Scrum. It is micromanagement.

Fuck OneNote. I use it at work, because I am too lazy to just download Notion, and the whole company is a Microsoft customer.

I was busy writing some pointers for a presentation just now and it decided to sync my notebook. It changed the name for some reason (maybe I changed it somewhere else, can't remember doing this though).

Fuck you Microsoft.

They refuse to stop using OneNote for daily standup notes and it's irritating the living shit out of me.

It has terrible sync issues and the scrum master keeps nagging the same folks to update their notes ever single fucking day.

I update mine before standup and then she sends a general message tagging people who seemingly haven't updated their notes and every day I must waste my time by telling her I have done so before standup, it is done.

Yesterday OneNote made a huge fuckup with sync, the notebook was gone for some reason for many of us.

There are better tools and methods for this. UGH.

Irked by people who download the biggest images they can find on Unsplash for their blog posts and uploading them as is on the website.

I even showed them how to use squoosh.app to make them literally 70% smaller. It's THAT easy.

Lazy, much?

I've complained about this friend who I help out with a side project before and I don't know how to deal with this anymore.

He decided he wants to send out a free weekly newsletter with content that takes a lot of time to create.

He got burned out from all of the work. I tell him to only do it bi-weekly. Still doesn't listen.

He doesn't work, whereas I have a full-time job, his mom feeds him and does everything for him.

Someone on the newsletter said they didn't receive a newsletter they signed up for and now he's dumping that on me. I refuse to deal with it. I have paid a lot of my own money for the website he uses to post stuff. He knows more about the newsletter software than I do. The least he can do is deal with the people on Discord and the email newsletter issues, because I honestly don't have time. He has a solar generator at his house, so he can work through the power outages we have on a daily basis, I do not.

He keeps wanting to give out free shit to people, whereas I told him this side project needs to start making money to make it worthwhile for me. He's always making excuses that he doesn't have money, blah blah blah. We designed a cool magazine and it's pretty much finished, but now he's stalling with things he needs to do to get it published on Drivethrurpg.

He just hassled me again to check this gmail I made for him to use for the newsletter and this YouTube he wants to start. I told him, no I haven't had time.

The other day I went to his house to hang out, he gave me a taste of his home made ginger beer and I said it's great, but then he went and drank a pint of it without even offering me some, right in my face. His mom came out and asked me an hour later if I wanted tea. These people are weird. Maybe I am weird.

He also doesn't use the project management software I showed him how to use, so I don't know what's going on. And I told him this a couple of times.

Think I should tell this dude that I don't have time to work on this stuff? And how do I do it politely, yet sternly?

Fuck Microsoft.

Laptop BSODs on me.

Azure deployment continuously times out.

Can't build a Power Automate Flow because of permissions and then it tells me the user doesn't exist when it does.

Some Udemy courses are super cringe.

Can tell this guy isn't formally educated nor a professional programmer.

His code is so badly formatted and his naming conventions reeks of inexperience.

Spaghetti everywhere.

The same person who nearly drove me insane last year still doesn't know what Google Chrome's Incognito mode is, after several people showed her what it is and how to use it. Also sent her screenshots of how to open a tab in Incognito mode.

She was hired for tax benefits to the company, nothing else. Dead weight.

Start my Monday by trying to decipher non-tech people's "bug" reports whee they submit a small portion of a web page where some problem occurs, when I asked them to include the ENTIRE browser window including the URL of the page they're on.

Business Analyst says most of the forms aren't working, because they're not creating leads in the CRM system. I made a column in the form list where I explicitly mention the form submission destination, such as email, CRM, newsletter, or some combo of these. Forms work, she just can't read.

Just can't win.

Why do people always start new projects a month before the company closes for Christmas?

I told them how tired I am, plus they know I've just come out of final year computer science degree exams, and at the end of a massive code and infrastructure migration. My brain is absolute paste.

Friend has great idea for a software project built on top of OpenAI's API.

He wants it to be freemium, littered with ads.

He doesn't code. I think he's hinting at me to build it for him and I'll continue acting aloof.

I will not build software that's funded by ads.

Fuck ads. I hate ads.

Moved to Azure because my country has massive electricity stability problems and company is worried about hosting providers' reliability.

Host static web app in West Europe. West Europe goes down for a couple of hours because of power outage in Europe.

I feel properly dumb right now.

I should have pasted the public key as plain text from the start, but noooooo. Google it, they say, someone else will have had the same problem they say.

Can you disable a VPN VNet gateway service on Azure when you don't need it?

Getting conflicting info from our cloud provider (who I no longer trust to assist because they don't know what they're doing) and forum posts about the same question on Microsoft and I don't know what to believe.

I can't experiment, because it'll probably cost the company money and I can't do shit without getting permission and submitting some kind of business case for things that will potentially cost money.

Your amazing SEO means nothing if that traffic doesn't convert into some form of actual revenue.

If he has to ask me one more fucking time if I've updated my daily standup notes in that dumb fucking OneNote notebook, I will burn this fucking country down. I do it every time, on time. Sometimes even before the others. And the box next to my name is checked. Sync your shit, dude!

Friend and I work on some side hustle. He does most of the content work, I just manage the tech stuff and pay for infrastructure. Domain renewal is upcoming too, so yeah...

He has refused to adopt project management methodologies and task tracking tools multiple times and it's becoming a real problem since I am paying for infrastructure and there are no plans for generating income. There was, but it's vaguely defined and I have no fucking idea what he's working on. I ask, but it's always vague AF.

I have no idea where this thing is going and I barely have time to work on it. Two weeks before I am writing exams, he asks me to urgently help with a project he's behind on due to power outages. I just fucking can't, I have too much other things on my plate right now.

Gonna have to have a sitdown, I can't keep spending money like this and not have a damn roadmap for planning things.

What a week... I feel like I am on here ranting more than usual.

The Marketing Director and Project Manager keep telling me to let them know when I am stuck on tasks so they can unblock for me, but I FUCKING DO. I don't understand why they keep telling me to speak up, because I use multiple channels to tell those who are the blockers that I need an update.

I add comments on my Monday.com tickets and @ the relevant people, I send MS Teams chats to them, we even have a daily standup where I mention that I am stuck, as well as a OneNote daily update that gets sent to management where I mention that I am stuck and tag the people who need to help me out.

I have been stuck on a task for two sprints, which should have taken me a couple of days to do.

I really feel like I'm talking to brick walls, am I that unimportant? This is supposed to be "agile scrum kanban blah blah blah sprints story points people over process bullshit". I hate it. Y'all are doing it wrong... Fuckin robots.

I need a fuckin drink, thank God it's Friday.

I'm fucking tired of having to explain to boomers why scrolling on the web isn't a problem anymore and why you shouldn't just shove every pixel of content above the fold. And people seem to really hate whitespace on web pages.

I am NOT going to fill up every fucking pixel on your screen with stuff just because you are too lazy to put your finger on your mouse wheel. Don't know why people just get a fucking WordPress site because they clearly don't listen to expertise from a professional with 10 years' web dev experience. I learned this shit so you don't have to, boomer!

fuck it, I'm gonna send them NNGroup research on this.

OneNote sucks, don't know why it was chosen as a daily update tool. It doesn't sync properly with some people's poor connections, then some junior (who isn't very proficient with computers) decides to create a new update page every once in a while and nobody knows WTF is going on. I suggested some better tools for daily update notes before, but it gets shot down every time by the other lead programmer in a different squad. I can't even complain about it in retro, it has gotten shot down there too before. I give up.

Is there something wrong with me for trying to make work experiences a bit less frustrating and efficient?