Gather around kids, join me on the laptop-ordering adventure :)

So I ordered a replacement battery for my workhorse. Vendor said ok. Then they said 'hold on, send me a pic of your batt connectors. We have 2 similar ones". I said I can only on weekend - didn't plan to destroy me session until easter. Day before they say: 'all good, we've figured it out'. Fine. Battery sent

track-n-trace [tnt] link shows malformed address [building and apt No not separated]. Week(s?) later tnt says it's delivered. I did not receive anything. Ask vendor wtf - they say it's been returned. Next day they say it's because LT customs do not allow importing batteries [wtf, first time I hear this.. Been ordering batts all the time]. Wtv.

Vendor says they can't ship it. Perhaps we could try another way, but it's unlikely to work and requires more effort from my side.

Fine. They offer a discount on my next purchase. I say fuck it, let's. Order the beefiest 14" ultrabook they have with extra resources [amd ai9 cpu, 128g ram, 4+4g ssd].. With discount. Not much, but still. Nice, waiting eagerly. The ordering was not easy too, they kept forgetting this or that, mixing up my accounts.

1-2 days later I receive tnt link. Address is still wrong, altho I pointed this out with the batt already. They take a few days to correct. New tnt number. Tnt stuck at some point for 2 weeks. Then - 'delivery failed'. Laptop is returned to the vendor. Next day they reply - its because laptop is classified as dangerous goods and they forgot a label declaring this. Omg.. I am about to change my address soon, so I say so to hurry 'em up. They say 'fine, we'll shed another 100€ for ups next-day shipping via a plane'. Fine, wtv, I need my ai-eligible laptop.

Today, 1 month after the order, I FINALLY received the package. And it was not the laptop I ordered...

What a fun ride. A couple of months later this cpu will be obsolete.

I'm not mentioning vendor specifics in hopes to come to an agreement for a refund, prepaid return shipping label and a solid discount on their next model of this laptop.. If no luck - I'll prolly try another vendor. 3.4k reasons to have someone more reliable and professional..

Gather around kids, join me on the laptop-ordering adventure :)

So I ordered a replacement battery for my workhorse. Vendor said ok. Then they said 'hold on, send me a pic of your batt connectors. We have 2 similar ones". I said I can only on weekend - didn't plan to destroy me session until easter. Day before they say: 'all good, we've figured it out'. Fine. Battery sent

track-n-trace [tnt] link shows malformed address [building and apt No not separated]. Week(s?) later tnt says it's delivered. I did not receive anything. Ask vendor wtf - they say it's been returned. Next day they say it's because LT customs do not allow importing batteries [wtf, first time I hear this.. Been ordering batts all the time]. Wtv.

Vendor says they can't ship it. Perhaps we could try another way, but it's unlikely to work and requires more effort from my side.

Fine. They offer a discount on my next purchase. I say fuck it, let's. Order the beefiest 14" ultrabook they have with extra resources [amd ai9 cpu, 128g ram, 4+4g ssd].. With discount. Not much, but still. Nice, waiting eagerly. The ordering was not easy too, they kept forgetting this or that, mixing up my accounts.

1-2 days later I receive tnt link. Address is still wrong, altho I pointed this out with the batt already. They take a few days to correct. New tnt number. Tnt stuck at some point for 2 weeks. Then - 'delivery failed'. Laptop is returned to the vendor. Next day they reply - its because laptop is classified as dangerous goods and they forgot a label declaring this. Omg.. I am about to change my address soon, so I say so to hurry 'em up. They say 'fine, we'll shed another 100€ for ups next-day shipping via a plane'. Fine, wtv, I need my ai-eligible laptop.

Today, 1 month after the order, I FINALLY received the package. And it was not the laptop I ordered...

What a fun ride. A couple of months later this cpu will be obsolete.

I'm not mentioning vendor specifics in hopes to come to an agreement for a refund, prepaid return shipping label and a solid discount on their next model of this laptop.. If no luck - I'll prolly try another vendor. 3.4k reasons to have someone more reliable and professional

Hmm.. Turns out I'm probably on the spectrum 😁 with high probability 😁

so.. We're building an AI agent (severe understatement, but ok). It utilizes the MCP to leverage tools, obviously. A (non-developer, but techy) colleague has been working on analysing Agentic Memory patterns, solutions, tools, read some articles, scientific too, spoke A LOT with LLMs about it, kept throwing links at me telling basically "read this. We definitely need this, I feel very strong about that. We must have a very strong memory layer", etc. - even prepared a 22-pages long draft for what this memory mechanism must look like, data structures, database schemas, etc.

fine.. I keep on stashing those, deferring for later reading.

Today I noticed that I have a fairly clear MCP isolation, so I figured.. why not.. And asked him to implement that memory mechanism as its own MCP server, so our agent could leverage it.

Turns out, now we need to do more research, perhaps the current patterns and solutions are not the best approach, we need to discuss more about that, think more about it, and this type of thinking is not for him

:)))))

At this early age of AI now everyone and their uncle is a developer :)

P.S. If you're reading this - sorry buddy :D But that's what it looks like :D I'm sure we'll work smth out ;)

Lads.. I think I've cracked it.
I had an idea [and over the years I've learned that when I get an idea like that - I should go for it, they are usually quite sound] and I started implementing it. And I think I'm not far from the finish line.

The point is, if it works out as planned, I will harness AI [llm] to rule most of the professions trully rudimentary. The rest - only a matter of time until they are out the window as well.

I know this sounds dumb, but I was trying to challenge this claim for 2 weeks now and it just gets stronger.

I always was 'the guy who resents ai'. A couple of weeks ago I had a click and saw a perfect use-case for it with a couple of nuanced [but core] additions. So I'm definitely not an ai-fanboy :) I used to be on the other camp.

Ssooo.. Apologies in advance if I ruin your careers 😅 the world as we know is about to change anyway. Question is: who will be behind the helm..

The client in the agreement asks us to be very strict about what we do, i.e. only do what's in the ticket description, the way it's detailed in the ticket description, otherwise we won't get paid.

okay..

Ticket description: "Perform database configuration analysis". We had a call where the client elaborated on what's expected from us (a full-blown DB configuration and security analysis). All good.

Ticket description: ChatGPT-generated, with all the unicode emoticons et al, bullet-pointing us what's expected. Basically, database auditing configuration analysis.

My guess is they never reviewed what ChatGPT wrote. And the service agreement is very clear and strict -- only do what's in the description. So yeah, 2 days worth of effort and I guess the result is not what they wanted, but definitely what they asked for (w/o them even bothering to read what they're asking...).

IDK, it feels like the GPT is making people too optimistic, too lazy.

Beep beep

Today I'm fishing in the client's server.

They have a vulnerable app, I've restarted it and monitoring closely to see which payload exploits the known RCE. While I'm waiting for THE fish, load of other tiny ones keep trying their luck and swimming away after a single shot at it.

It's actually quite fun to just sit and stare at the terminal, waiting for that single fish to bite. IDK why :D

I said it many times, I'll say it again: this advent of AI is the beginning of the IT seniors' golden age

HR positions are being replaced by AI [I know it for a fact]

Junior positions are getting replaced by ai in LT as well now.

I wonder.. Where will they get sr devs after 5-7 years from now, if noone new can get into the field any more 😁 ofc rehire from others.. But how will you attract them? With high salaries ofc :) I foresee a salary growth in IT in the next 5 years :)

It's such a mess, I honestly don't even know where to begin, what's lacking the most and what's got higher priority...

Soo.. I bought a Transcend SSD and I wanted to make a backup of my _current_ backup ssd.

Bought it, plugged it up and fired up rsync. Although Transcend declares the SSD seq writes are up to >1G/s, it was at least x10 slower than that. Eventually all was copied. Wat surprised me was the disk usage.

Here are both the filesystems: the source and the destination (Transcend)

P.S. damn, imags are down.. attaching plaintext

```
netikras@netikras-green: /media/netikras/Transcend/bkup$ df -hPT /media/netikras/*
Filesystem Type Size Used Free Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1 ext4 458G 355G 80G 82% /media/netikras/c5b18d59-7769-4241-9a54-df1c6ca97850
/dev/sda1 exfat 1,9T 830G 1,1T 44% /media/netikras/Transcend
↑21:50:43 [0]
```

It's the year when I did not renew domain I bought for my project.

Feels weird to stop bleeding money for a project I haven't finished

So tomorrow is my last day of my 9 year long commitment to this company.

It was hell of a fun ride! I told myself ~5 years ago that this is the last company I will be working for. And I stand by it. I'm starting [continuing?] my own thing srarting next week.

I wish you all to find an employer [and be employed by] as amazing as I had [technically still have]. There's really nothing else a technitian can ask/wish for :)

client generated our goals and guidelines with Claude
Had a 2 hour meeting trying to understand what they want from us
Now we're using ChatGPT analysing the meeting's transcript to explain to us what the client wants from us

STOP USING AI IN HUMAN-HUMAN COMMUNICATIONS FFS

Mfa is all nice and smells good until you lose your fingerprints and can't even biometrics-unlock your phone, let alone mfa-auth okta or ms authenticator app.

How the f do I explain to the client that I didn't do anything today..

It makes no sense to cheat on your SO, esp with someone who also is committed, and then down the road hope for a trustworthy and strong relationship with your lover. Why? Because you cheated on your current SO / he/she cheated on his/her SO, so who's to say you/he/she won't go sideways in new relationship. There is a tendency to, it's no longer a taboo, so trust cannot be built on it.

Same applies to work matters. If your sidegigs/clients/potentional new employer urge you to work less for your 9-5 and spend more time on their matters, they cannot expect you to NOT do the same thing with them -- if you budge and do as told, you might as well 'steal' time [overcharge] from them and spend it for other clients.

Trust is fragile. Don't ask me to quietly break my current agreements to work for you more if you expect me to be a reliable asset in your endeavours

you know how all these annoying body hairs pop up on your laptop in various places? Looks tedious. So the first instinct is to blow them away or remove with fingers.

So I'm sitting w/ my lappy on my lap, writing terraform resources, when I notice 2 short hairs sticking out of the hinge. Sure enough, I try to remove them. But they seem to be stuck. Probably got somehow tangled in the fan or the radiator.
What a stubborn pair of hairs.. okay, let me get a good grip on those buggars and PUUULLLL....... AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

FUCK! THESE WERE MY LEG HAIR! STILL ATTACHED TO MY LEG!

#unintentional-depilation

Autocad is freaking expensive. Freecad is difficult to use and had weird quirks [eg how the hell do I close wall gaps created by removed windows?? How to position windows at fixed distance from a corner??]. Librecad seems to be the weakest of the three.

Soo.. Pencil, ruler and paper it is then, I guess

Yesterday we had to do a demo for the client. Burned the whole day trying to fake, mock, and prettify things. And boi was it a crunch!

I don't remember sweating this much while working mentally.

After EOD, my shirt was literally reeking, my butt was sore, and I barely had energy to walk to the bed.

debugging a colleague's bash script written by copilot.

fun
/s

Comments are down?

Took me 1 week to deploy a Pet-Store app in AKS (and build the AKS ofc, in Tofu).

that doesn't look good.

should I stay or should I go...

that's the question.

I think I know the answer, but some reason I'm still dragging my feet, searching for reasons not to

is it just me, or is reading LLM-generated text really annoying?

It feels like I'm reading the same thing over and over again, in different contexts about different things.

TIL: mechanical click of a touchpad is now managed by os in new lenovos. Suspend os and you can no longer click your touchpad.

Not tap. Click.

Wtf..

why... WHY do I always attract all sorts of weird problems...

I feel like it makes me look incompetent :/

Like this side-gig. I had a client who brought us essentially half a rack (20 blade servers, 7 units of network equipment) and asked us to spin it up. No passwords, no topology - nothing. It was my first such "project".

So I'm setting it all up, using chatgpt and notions of vlan theory from college years ago. I managed to make smth work. Went away for the rest of the day. Hours later I come back -- no longer can connect to ovpn running on a MikroTik router. wtf... connect to office router's vpn, winbox via mac to the router to see wtf. Everything seems alright, except when I try to `/ip route print` it just hangs there. Tried a few times. -- same result. As if routes just got borked while noone was touching it. Found someone who's working with networks wtf, he said he's NEVER seen this happening. A router reboot sorted this out. That's weird problem #1.

I finished reverse-engineering and re-setting up the networking, sketched a topology with patching scheme and asked colleagues to take it all to the DC. They did it, connected it all up. 5 nodes aren't accessible via network. So I connect remotely to the router's openvpn and try to see what's up. Indeed, some servers are reachable, others aren't; even though MT switch (router's downlink) sees those servers plugged in with link up, servers don't see the link. I noticed some ports aren't trunking some VLANs. I started adding those ports when the winbox connection dropped out of the blue. 5-4-3-2-1-reconnecting... it reconnected. Yayy!! But wait, where is everything...? All interfaces -- gone (physical ones too). All IPs -- gone. All routes -- gone. Everything's gone. Half a minute later I'm disconnected again. The switch IP is no longer pingable. Servers plugged into it aren't reachable either. That's weird problem #2.

Then I figured I might try to see whether I can see anything from the router level. Try to ssh to it -- attempt was dropped, as if 22/tcp was closed. wtf? It was working in the office. winbox into it -- yayy, that works. Try to open a terminal via winbox -- a dialog pops up "Terminal <1> - not permitted (9)". wtf..? I Google this error up, it says that user is a member of group that does not have telnet and ssh permission. Indeed, I loog into groups -- the group 'admin' does not have them. Try to add them -- also not permitted. And I'm the 'admin' user, a single user in the router after a factory reset. How the hell else do I change permissions if even admin is flipped a finger.
That's weird problem #3

And now I look like an incompetent prick with two left hands who is only breaking shit.
And it's been like that my whole career

Why... How... ffs, that's getting annoying. Maybe I should downgrade myself to a QA. Problems find me themselves, I don't even have to look for them

Had 1 beer in a pub. Had difficulty walking back to hotel.

You can tell I'm not a big drinker.
2 more weeks to pass here, in Dublin. And not get run over while crossing a street [u know, opposite traffic].

Somehow...

All for the sake of that promising project.

killall != killall5

that was a close call

```
root@srv1:~# ipmitool user set password 2 train-hopper-apple-watermelon
Password is too long (> 20 bytes)
root@srv1:~#
```

hmmm....

Ssooo.. Turns out, I'm starting a new project in less than 2 weeks. Gotta go to Dublin for 2 weeks.

Fuck.
I'm not a traveling kind of a person...