I Don't Get It

I have a little game on my personal C.V. website.

Had someone accuse me of stealing the entire game from someone else.

Then to prove this, they linked to the github repo, which was a fork of my own github repo.

And then after I pointed this out, they doubled-down and came back with the vague “well I’m sure you put something in there that isn’t originally yours.”

And then two days later came back with “So you’re ghosting me? Fine. I guess I won’t be moving you forward in the application process.”

Seriously dude, chill. I didn’t even apply for this position. You approached me, remember?

The past few weeks I’ve been wrangling some knotty algorithm that is to do with Elixhauser comorbidity calculations for the new 2022 rule set in the healthtech startup space. And the code I’ve written is very procedural, and hopefully easy to read, but also kind of like wading through thick mud in terms of understanding how values drop out of the bottom of the algorithm.

Let’s put it this way, this shit’s so arcane and weird that even the SAS code provided by the governing body that demonstrates the algorithm doesn’t adhere to the spec, and that point is even called out in the scant amount of documentation for the code. And let’s face it, SAS source code is bad enough as-is at the best of times, a 4GL language from the 1970’s that has grown warts in its old age, where any program written in SAS winds up looking like a 2,000 line DOS batch file, and I am thoroughly convinced that whoever wrote this particular chunk of SAS source code not only hates his job but also hates every person on this planet that doesn’t have to use SAS to get their job done.

Now once you explain the rules of how the Elixhauser algorithm works to someone, yourself having waded through three PDFs and the aforementioned SAS source code, the algorithm makes sense, in a roundabout fashion, but there’s still these “rules of exclusion” where “if the patient has this comorbidity, but it didn’t present on admittance, then this other rule applies instead.”

I think if I were implementing this multi-stage procedural algorithm all over again, I’d jettison all of my code that I’ve written over the past three weeks and implement the entire shebang as a filter trie, AKA a Bloom Filter Trie, about 25,000 inputs at the trie root, and about 7 outputs as the trie leafs.

I’ll say this, my years of studying the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook across all the editions of D&D, looking for exploits and rules that could work in my favour, have gone some way to helping me decipher DRG (Diagnosis Related Groups) and Exlihauser algorithms over these past two months.

Me: “I need to transmit about 8K of data…”

The Helpful Plugin: “I think you mean 8 kilobits.”

Me: “I need to transmit a little over 8 kilobytes of data, which is around 8,000 bytes.”

The Helpful Plugin: “It’s 8,192 bytes actually.”

Me: “I’m going to use a for loop here.”

The Helpful Plugin: “You should use a for each loop.”

Me: “I’m going to use a for loop here that will iterate, not enumerate, from index 0 through 8,200…”

The Helpful Plugin: “That looks bigger than 8KB of data, also, zero is a hard-coded number, you should consider a named constant!”

Me: “As I iterate over the bytes, I will perform a Fast Fourier Transform on the data.”

The Helpful Plugin: “Have you considered parallelizing it to make it run faster?”

Me: “Over a very slow, serial connection that is prone to timing issues. But it appears that my math is off…”

The Helpful Plugin: …strangely silent when it comes to a real bug…

Me: “Ah, here is my math error, let me make a note in a git commit…”

The Helpful Plugin: “You should put a comma after the word ‘and’ to make it more grammatically correct.”

Me: “Shut. The. FUCK. Up!”

I got sent a PDF that covers salary information for #softwaredevelopers and other #software related roles for a whole bunch of companies across the #uk, from Junior Developer through to #CTO. I can only describe the numbers as “stagnant.” The average Senior Software Developer #compensation in the survey hadn’t moved by more than 15% in 27 years. I can only conclude that the salary information was gathered across all of the UK, from a random two-person non-tech company in Nowheresglen, Scotland all the way through to Fortune 500 BigCorp in #London #FinTech, and then all those salaries were averaged.

Back in the 80’s the UK government was prescient in striving to put a computer in every classroom and almost every home. The initiative bred an entire generation of technology literate people and budding software developers. And looking at numbers of immigrants in the US and Canada (data available from various govt sources and websites) for the period 1990 through 2010, who have a country of origin of the UK and also list themselves as software developers, I would say a high percentage left for the US and Canada to get paid more. Talk about squandering opportunity.

The sad thing is, I don’t think that UK companies have learned anything from that, and the best and brightest continue to be drained from the country.

Regarding the sorting out of fonts, I am using a .NET function called GlyphTypeface that lets me access the typeface information, such as family, point size, etc. There is a glaring bug in GlyphTypeface.

hooray

I have a few options; I can fix the bug in GlyphTypeface but that would entail getting hired at Microsoft, getting assigned to that team, fixing the bug, then quitting immediately after my pull request is accepted. Alternatively I could build my own GlyphTypeface just for this problem. I could use other libraries that implement a workable solution. Or I can brute force it by the shortest path. I am going to brute force it.

The process, due to GlyphTypeface, that inspects the font puts a lock on the file, and also, because of the bug, will crash when you inspect a second font immediately afterwards. This is a hell of a bug. My solution is to have a parent process which simply enumerates all of the fonts, but a second process that does the actually inspection and renaming of the font files. And that child process immediately exits after processing precisely one font file. The parent process will loop over the font files, invoking a child process to do the actual work needed.

I am not real happy with that solution. It is “inelegant.” But the solution takes care of the problem, and I only need the solution to run for a few hours before the code is thrown away. I cannot imagine any scenario in the near future where I will need to rename several tens of thousands of font files…

This is one of those “this should only take me 20 minutes to bang out the solution” problems which has kept me occupied, off and on, for the better part of a weekend.

I have a slew of fonts we have licensed for various purposes over the years. Lots of those “1,000+ fonts” DVDs you could buy. I want to rename obscure files such as “garla_n.ttf” into something like “Garland City Regular.ttf” so they at least make sense to someone browsing the directory.

I could use a font manager package, but this needs to work on multiple machines, and I have yet to find a font manager application that will happily batch rename thousands of files.

I banged out a little PowerShell script to do it for me. Get the font info from the ttf/otf, determine a “sane” filename, and rename the file.

Unfortunately “GlyphTypeface” puts a lock on the file, and refuses to let go, and there is no way to destruct the object.

The line:
$fontobject = (New-Object -TypeName Windows.Media.GlyphTypeface -ArgumentList $fontfile.fullname)

Puts a lock on the font file, with no way to release it. There is no Dispose or destructor or Release.

Neither “$fontobject = $null” nor “Clear-Variable fontobject” work. The file lock stays stubbornly fixed until I exit PowerShell. And force invoking the garbage collector fails to yield any different result.

Today I learned that software developers get bent out of shape if you are capable of writing three lines of code to solve a leetcode easy or leetcode medium in under a few minutes.

There is nothing humble about this brag.

No, my solutions are not “optimal.”

But if you claim to have 10+ YOE and cannot “remove the nth node from a singly linked list” or “rotate an image” (transpose a matrix) or “give the correct change in the fewest coins” in under two minutes and a half-dozen lines of code, you might question my claim on how fast I can bang out the solution, but at the same time I very much question your ability.

Look, I am not the brightest coloured cookie in the knife drawer, I know that. And I don’t have any great insight in to computer science problems. I consider myself a below average developer with a mediocre education, but…

There’s always a “but.”

But what did you do with your 10+ YOE.

Imagine that you hire a plumber. You need him to do two jobs for you. One job is very expensive, very difficult, will require months of planning, discussion and a complete reworking of some major aspects of the plumbing in your home and cost many tens of thousands of dollars. The other job is small, a few hundred dollars, you need a new sink and garbage disposal installed.

You agree on a price for the smaller job, and what needs to be done. And the plumber gets to work. When the new sink is installed and the garbage disposal is replaced you look over the work.

“What’s up with the faucet?” you ask, noticing it’s installed backwards.

“Pipes under the sink were too long, only way I could get it installed.” replies the plumber.

“There’s water running out of the garbage disposal and on to my floor!” you cry.

“Well, you see, it would have meant replacing some pipes, and I would have had to send off for a special tool.” says the plumber, looking at you rather exasperated.

“The garbage disposal ejects vegetable matter all over the ceiling when in use!” You’re shielding your face from poorly chewed vegetable matter as the plumber demonstrates how to use the new garbage disposal.

“It would have taken a lot of work to not get it to do that.” counters the plumber, like obviously you are asking too much.

Today I went to the dentist.

On the drive home I said to a friend “I think I need to find a new dentist. One that will listen to me, and fix the problems.”

“Why?” she asked.

And I explained the reasons.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that bad. Give him a second chance, explain what you need. I’m sure he’ll fix it. I really like him.”

The faucet is backwards.
The garbage disposal spews vegetable matter
Water all over my kitchen floor.

“So when can we start that big job, eh?” asks the plumber.

So after pondering a while, I think…

What am I missing here?

Today is “tired and frustrated man with kitchen greasy hands shouts angrily at incorrectly shaped cloud” day.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t believe that Samsung makes a “Samsung Galaxy Microwave.”

Which if that is the case, let’s talk about how completely shite Google search has become.

Microwave seems to be stuck. Huh. Pretty sure I loosened all visible bolts. In which case, I am missing something, so let’s debug the problem. Let’s see what the installation instructions say and that will give me a clue as to overlooked mounting bolts.

“Galaxy Microwave Installation Instructions” I googled.

Well I obviously fucking meant Samsung Galaxy tablets so here’s two pages of SERPs on how to fix the WiFi connectivity on your tablet.

“Galaxy Microwave Installation Instructions -samsung -tablet” I googled.

No! You’re wrong! Here’s how you update your Android OS on your Galaxy tablet!

Three pages of results, only one link was relevant, and for a different model microwave. Mostly spam results that want me to download their driver installer fixer for Windows — I’m on Linux which automatically makes me a better person than you.

Incognito browser. Even worse results.

Decide to randomly try Microsoft’s “Here are the exotic birds of Paraguay whilst searching for hotels in Chicago” Bing, and boom first link, “Galaxy Microwave Installation Instructions” PDF in all its glory.

Should have just searched the Sears parts website directly. And maybe it is time I re-evaluate my search engine habits.

Job requires three years of experience in a technology? But you only have two and a half years?

You get to “an advanced age” you are in your fifties, or you are in your sixties, or you are in your seventies.

I don’t have 40+ years of experience in software development that has left hundreds of scars. I have “20+ yrs of competent technical mentorship, leading teams to succes.”

When you are between your twenties and your forties, you are “I am years old.”

When you are in your teens, you are exceptionally particular at being considered a very specific age, and you are almost “the next year older” even if that is 9 months away. “You’re commiting code to github using that framework, young lady?” “I can write in whatever programming language I want Dad! I am almost 17!”

When you are under 10 years old, months matter; “oh yeah, well I’m six years and ten months old, so I’m older than you, so you have to do what I say and I say we’re using brainfuck!”

The same kind of thinking should be applied to your C.V.

2 yrs and 2 months? = “I have two years and two months of experience in this technology, but it feels like forever.”

2 yrs and 4 months? = “I have two and a half years of experience in this technology, but it feels like forever.”

2 yrs and 6 months? = “I have almost three years of experience in this technology, but it feels like forever.”

2 yrs and 8 months? = “I have three years of experience in this technology, but it feels like forever.”

20 yrs of experience in a technology? = “I’ve forgotten more about that than you will ever know. It seems like only yesterday I was wringing the oil from the dinosaurs to power the generator that would let me feed punch cards in to the computer.”

The primary rule of salesmanship is to never give the prospect a chance to say “no” before you’ve talked to them in person.

You ask me for a stupid laundry list of technologies with numbers of years in each technology and I can get very creative in my book keeping.

 

Walgreens (a US-based drugstore/convenience store) replaces refrigerator doors with video screens.

I just want Haagen Dazs ice cream. But I cannot see which freezer it is actually in until the ad stops, then it states it is in this particular freezer. But it isn’t because they ran out and an employee hasn’t restocked. I don’t need “education” on how to appreciate being advertised too, I need my fucking ice cream. This shift makes an onerous part of life materially worse.

I am sure the next update will have the doors on the freezer lock until the ad has finished playing all the way through, and the ad will stop playing if you look away in distraction.

Also, the gas will stop pumping if you don’t look at ad on the screen on the pump at the gas station and you must also verbally engage with the ad when it asks a question otherwise it stops pumping. If you answer enthusiastically it will waive the $2 surcharge because you had the audacity to use a debit card.

I am so glad I am getting old and will die soon so I don’t have to live in this dystopian hellhole the new generation are creating for us.

“We’re losing out to on-line retail! Quick! We need to figure out other revenue sources that don’t entail selling anything to the consumer! While we’re at it, let’s make our in-store experience worse!”

You think that’s bad? Check out the hellscape that is the MTA in NYC where the THC ad covers 95% of the screen. Where the ad is so big the useful information is clipped off.

 

Yay! I can suck on my cannabis vape whilst I stand dangerously close to the edge of the platform waiting for the uptown train contemplating the future of our world.

This one was vandalized. Not sure if it was in response to the utility of the screen or just general protest.

Idiocracy was not meant to be a “how to” manual…

Footnote:  How to confuse looters – All the video displays on the front of cabinets and vending machines switch to pictures of low value Kraft cheese single slices, hiding the higher value products inside the cabinets when the store closes for the evening.

I like my code completion tools that helpfully suggest a nearby variable name to use, or the parameters of a function I am calling.

But…

I tried out three of those artificial intelligence code completion tools…

And they’re about what I expected.

I guess they serve their purpose if your kung-fu is weak sauce or you’re a junior programmer cranking out boiler plate code all day long for yet another mobile crypto wallet CRUD app, something that your manager should have just outsourced to someone on Craigslist or Fiverr for 25 bucks an hour.

I guess these tools are supposed to get better as they watch you work and analyze your code base, but I don’t have time to wait for a brain-dead, mentally retarded “programmer’s helper” to get up to speed and still have a lower IQ than my cat.

The code completion is distracting, like pair programming with someone who wants to helpfully suggest things that don’t actually solve the problem. “Oh, thank you for suggesting code to iterate over the array I just declared, I guess that saved me the trouble of putting in the curly braces myself.”

It’s like having a workshop assistant that moves your tools around. The assistant thinks you might need the push stick to move the stock through the blade of the table saw, and so he puts it on the far side of the blade, so you have to reach over to get it, and you have to glance away from the spinning blade because the push stick isn’t where it is meant to be, where you would naturally reach for it. And no matter how many times you tell him not to do that, he continues to do it.

I always look at these tools and think “Okay, what are we doing here other than wasting my fucking time?” They are the programmer’s equivalent of a website’s chat bot, except with curly brackets and indentation.

All of the code completion tools state “We won’t siphon off your code to our servers, we pinky promise!”

Right.

Except the preferences/settings on many are “stored in the cloud” and you have a metric fuckton of telemetry to track everything I do via the plugin.

Of course I would trust any plugin that immediately stops working the moment you block it from the internet. FFS.

AI code completion is yet another over-promise, under-deliver developer tool category.

I guess we wait for these code completion tool companies to get bought by someone like Atlassian where they announce that “well ackshually we have been siphoning off your code for the past few years, if you send in a form, signed in triplicate, we’ll delete all of your code from our servers in 90 days. oops! data breach!”

The summary of the article from Fortune’s website: “Goldman Sachs’s CEO demands employees RTO. Only half of them show up.”

This was my last company, in June/July ’21, just before Delta smacked us upside the head.

Execs say “Everybody RTO! No exceptions!” even if you were hired in to a permanent remote role, which I was.

More than half of the people (all software developers) refused throughout a few different teams. Within days HR fired the refusers for… well, refusal. I am sure there were negotiations, cajoling and conversations that happened behind closed doors that I was not a party too, even as team lead. We went from a team of 60+ developers and about a dozen managers, to a team of four develoeprs and a dozen managers.

My director came to me and asked “You’re sticking around, right?”

“For as long as I can.” I replied.

I quit four weeks later, at the tail end of August, after landing a different job.

He knew I was interviewing. But what could he do? Convince me to stick around in a hot market when being paid below market rate? Without a raise in 18 months after being told that all raises were frozen across the board for the duration of the pandemic? After the company posted record breaking profits for the past six quarters? After everybody at director level and above got bonuses and raises for outstanding company performance? And then change the rules of being hired remotely?

After the company let the software developers go, and the few remaining developers bailed out shortly afterwards, then the company had a round of lay-offs of managers and directors because… there’s nobody to manage and you cannot pay below market-rate — below market-rate even for Summer of ’21 before hiring of software developers went thermonuclear — and also enforce RTO in a HCOL area in the middle of a pandemic just as the market for hiring of software developers is heating up.

The market for software developers right now is super hot. But what I am noticing is that a lot of companies are struggling to grasp the reality that you cannot hire developers for the same amount of money that I was making 23 years ago as a senior developer in the games industry, an industry which is notorious for underpaying people.

I read the complaints on a few private CTO/HR/recruiter forums about the difficulty of hiring and the compensation required to get someone interested.

And I sit and think “Am I missing something here?”

Why would you believe you could hire a Senior Developer, Lead Developer or Principle Developer for $100K to $120K in California of all places?!?

Even the higher compensation at $150K to $160K is admitting that compensation on offer has not kept up with a 4% inflation rate for the past 23 years.

I got pinged today on LinkedIn. The job requires a laundry list of qualifcations and duties that should really be covered by three separate positions, has full-time on-site in an open office, no possibility of work-from-home, and is in the range of $140K (not including bonus) for a Senior/Lead AI/ML developer.

All I can say is “HAHAHAHA! Good luck on that.”

Meta, Google and Apple are going to Thanos snap your competent staff away from you as soon they find them.

A while back I was interviewing for a new position.

“What got you in to gaming?” asked one of the people on the Zoom call.

“Well years ago,” my eyes staring off in to the middle distance, “when the world was simpler, and I was much, much younger I used to take apart old electronic toys, back before CPUs were cheap and common, and I learned to build new games out of pure logic circuits.”

“How old were you?” asked one of the interviewers.

“9, going on 10.” I responded

The interviewer looked a little skeptical “That doesn’t sound plausible.”

I smiled that forced, tight lip smile that I have, that people that know me have come to understand to mean “fuck you. This conversation is over.”

“And then I got into traditional game programming on 8-bit home computers…”

“So not real game development then” someone interjected.

“… before moving to console dev, and I also whiled away a few years of my misspent youth designing board games and playing D&D.”

“I hate D&D, it is such a waste…”

*click*

_Justin has left the Zoom meeting_

Three strikes, I’m out. Life’s too short.

Of note, no paraphrasing or recalling from memory needed. I record all my meetings, and I let the people on the other end know that it is being recorded so I can refer back to notes later on.

Delusional US company attempting to hire a US-based “part-time software developer” on an hourly rate of $30 without benefits. Up to 39.5 hours per week of work. At that point your LinkedIn talent hiring outreach is simply spam.

At the woodworking store, browsing for a new finish nailer.

On the box: “Small parts. Not suitable for children under 3 years of age.”

I mean, I know there’s a labour shortage and places are willing to hire people still in school, but are we going that young now? Does the income scale with the age? Does the child know not to load 15 degree offset brads in to a zero degree nailer like I did that one time?

Reading through the manual: “Do not use underwater. Do not use to light gas ovens. Do not use to clean out electronic devices.” And this wasn’t just generic safety warnings. They had little line art drawings of the finish nailer being used to do these tasks with a big X drawn through them.

Okay, I hadn’t really thought of these as viable usages for a finish nailer, but that does give me some ideas…

But mostly, I want to know what situations arose that called for the manufacturer to put such warnings on their finish nailer.

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations: “I insert a mystical 10 second delay between OS start and when apps can be loaded to ensure a smooth user experience.”

Me: “You run on a machine with 112 cores & 768GB RAM that boots directly from a 512GB battery backed high-speed RAM cache that sits in front of 30TB of RAID0 flash. Why are you inserting a delay?”

“Y’all got any more of them “block this user” on LinkedIn slots?”

Decades ago, in the “scene” (that would be the warez trading scene) there were the “summer crews” that would crop up like clockwork.

“Summer crews” or “summer groups” were the teenagers home from school on their summer break who got together, formed a warez trading group, spammed the crap out of the scene with their repackaged releases, and then folded within a few months as school went back in session.

You would also see the same cyclic explosion of griefers, noobs and summer guilds on the MUSHs, MOOs, MMOs and hack-n-slash CRPGs with every Summer break. And just as quickly, within a couple of months, it all died down to the usual slow simmer within whatever game you were into at the time.

There was a similar, though tangentially different problem in higher education too as each freshman class rolled in and started accessing the shared online social spaces, but the n00bs lacked the social moires and graces of the local environment which lead to the usual friction between the old hands (people who were in their 2nd year) and the freshmen.

LinkedIn, for the past 18 months, as so many became WFH, turned in to a perpetual “Summer group”/Freshman class, but with adults. At least, I think they’re adults, they get offended by words like “shit” and “fuck” in a professional setting, but then act like entitled, spoiled children when you block them because you aren’t interested in their CRM automated messaging systems they have deployed where it is nothing but pitch, pitch, pitch with every interaction.

The problem with LinkedIn is that everyone is trying to optimize, optimize, optimize. Blast that pitch at as many connections as you can. Use up all your InMails for the month to extract maximum value. Invite as many connections as possible. “It’s a numbers game!”

More.

More.

Faster.

Faster.

Slow down my dude. We’re all going to the same grave.

Don’t measure your productivity in how many connections you spammed, measure it in how many lives you touched in a positive way. You’ll be happier for it. And so will your connections.

Why the fuck would I want emojis in IntelliJ/Pycharm/Webstorm/etc?

Just piss off already.

Go spend all those hours you took implementing this stupid feature and dedicate it to fixing the bugs that prevent the IDE from working properly, you know, like that super important one where Jetbrains search is totally fucking broken.

According to the San Jose Convention Center a dish such as Chicken Soulvaki consists of…

Iceberg lettuce.

Raw onions

Cilantro

Lots and lots and lots of cilantro.

And some steamed chicken.

No yoghurt and cucumber dip.

No pita bread.

It is a bit like describing the music of Mozart in the written word.

Nothing conveys the experience of the music except the music itself.

Who the fuck let the six year old with the box of rainbow Crayola run loose in the Skype offices and scrawl all over the UI diagrams?

With the new version of Skype I feel like all of the colour has been sucked out of my world…

And placed in to the user interface of the application.

What kind of moron sends a recruitment email with 28 separate images attached to it?

Why the fuck do I need to be informed by every fucking device in the house that I signed in my Google account from a different computer?

And no way to turn it off.

Sorry Amazon & Mr Bezos, but I want notifications in my app that a package has been delivered.

I do not need a notification every time this goes on sale or that goes on sale or an item I looked at in curiousity goes on sale or that there are only N shopping days left to Christmas.

Too many notifications gets the app blocked completely from sending notifications.

And I don’t really use the app except to get the notification that a package has been delivered which reminds me to get up from the desk and open the front door.

Too many trivial notifications becomes annoying.

I guess my next step is to uninstall the app because apparently I never actually use it except to dismiss notifications.

A child doing perceived as dangerous activities outdoors?

Or a child swaddled in cotton wool, growing up in front of a TV?

I’d rather have a child with a few broken bones than an adult with a broken mind.

I do not understand why Microsoft Windows 8 & 10 and Ubuntu need to include web based search results as part of the standard, local desktop search.

“Hey, you searched for something in your documents, so here’s some results from Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, eBay, Amazon, an online music store, Netflix, another video streaming store, and a few other sources that we think might be relevant.”

Frankly I think we should also, by default, include results from Tinder, PornHub, KickAss Torrents, Match.com, and whatever child porn, fetish porn, gay porn and shock image websites anybody might be interested in, as a default, and let people turn off (but not completely remove) the ones they don’t need.

Then turn them all back on again in another software update for all users on the system.

I don’t think I need to be “sold too” in my desktop operating system.

I don’t need to be told “that’s an integral part of the operating system” when it clearly isn’t.

If we are going to allow one online service to show results I believe all online services, websites and companies should have an equal opportunity to shove shit you don’t need down your throat 24/7 in the privacy of your own home.

Or am I just stuck in my ways and this is the new economy?

If you enjoy Pokemon Go, and I cannot fault you for that, here’s a useful tip for prolonging the battery life of your phone.

Put your fucking phone in your fucking pocket when you come in to the meeting.

But I repeat myself.

I do not know why we need five different conditioners, three shampoos and four types of bubble bath.

Is this like a “wine” thing where people pontificate on nose, mouth feel, regions and varietals?

Is there such a thing as a soap sommelier?

 

On the one hand, I must count my blessings that my wife is willing to make me a cappuccino and take care of me.

On the other hand, I must question how she has the capacity to turn out the foulest tasting drink from a Jura J9 that requires you to put a cup under the spout and press one button.

But I still count my blessings though.

And cherish every cup she brings me.

Best proposition I ever got was when I was (much) younger.

I played in a small-time punk band and we were about a week away from going on tour in Germany.

Somebody I didn’t know very well at all who was in my Tang-Soo Do karate class, whose band played free gigs of cover songs at local student bars, said “If you write this software for free for my Dad’s business we’ll let you play a few sets with our band sometime.”

Awesome!

Not only do I get to do free software development work for the Dad (which I already get paid really well for), but you’ll let me play in your shitty student band for free too!

Double win!

Neighbourhood car alarms are much like the average idiot on Facebook.

They make a lot of noise to attract attention but generally do fuck all that’s useful to society.

I cannot decide if I am being trolled or these twits are actually serious.

“We’re recent graduates from [redacted.] We’re seeking an experienced CTO who has launched a few startups of their own and seen multiple successes and possibly a couple of successful exits. This CTO is a rockstar [sic] of cutting edge hardware design, robotics, machine learning and machine vision, capable of designing, building and writing a new operating system and developer tools for the hardware they design based on our ideas. A verifiable genius. A real hustler. We will put you in front of investors and you have to be good at pitching our company. You must have deep connections to multiple investors and venture capitalists. Do you think you can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us [the idea people]? You should also be willing to inject your own investment money of at least mid-six figures to demonstrate commitment. Do you honestly think your [sic] good enough to work with us? We are willing to put you on our calendar next week.”

Okay… so you want a naive version of Tony Stark then.

Yes I hustle.

Yes I can pitch to investors.

Yes I can put in my own money.

Yes I have deep connections to VCs.

Yes I can write the software and tools.

Yes I can do robotics.

Yes I can do machine learning.

Yes I can do machine vision.

Yes I can design the hardware.

Yes I have launched startups.

Yes I have had an exit or two.

Can I do all that at once to launch a business? No.

And no, I won’t be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you.

“If it hadn’t been for that gorilla, I never would have figured out which bathroom I should use.”

A zookeeper shoots an animal and suddenly we forget about which bathroom to use.

This is the mob mentality at work.

Wisdom of the crowds my arse.

 

“Ah, Aesop’s Fables. I read that when I was about your age, back in the 80’s. You don’t really appreciate his teachings until 20 years later.”

“I think you’re lying. The publication date…” flips to inside front cover, “…says 2012.”

“I’m not lying. And you’re an idiot.”

Oddest comment I’ve encountered when I mention I don’t own a TV: “You don’t own a TV? What do you watch?”

“We can’t give you access to the database because that would pose a security risk and expose all of our customer data to you.”

Instead, I was provided with an SQL dump, attached to an email in plain text, with all of the user accounts, passwords and credit card numbers stored un-encrypted.

Perhaps they were thinking of a different security risk I am not aware of.

During a technical interview from my past: “So dictate the code over the phone of how you would solve this algorithm and I’ll tell you whether you are correct.”

Ummm… how about no?

“I am surprised you are making an apple pie, you hate apple pie.” said the in-law.

“No, I fucking love apple pie.” I replied. “I hate American apple pie.”

“What’s the difference?”

“American apple pie is an overly sweet confection with no depth of taste and utterly lacking in character ruined by that most accursed spice of American households everywhere.”

“Oh that’s right, I forgot you hate cinnamon.”

“No, I fucking love cinnamon. I just don’t think it should be used in every dessert, dish or drink between Oct 1st and January 1st as though the entire country simultaneously forgot how to cook.”

Two weeks later. Same in-law.

“Don’t eat that, you won’t like it, it has cinnamon in it and I know how much you hate cinnamon.”

“You seem like a job hopper” said the potential client at the networking meeting on Monday.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“You’ve had a lot of jobs.”

“What would you consider a lot of jobs?”

“More than 2 or 3.” He replied.

“I’ve had a 38 year career in the video game industry. I cannot name a single person who has ever had 2 or 3 jobs and been in this industry longer than five years.” I countered.

“We’re really looking for someone who demonstrates commitment.”

This gentleman was concerned I would “job hop” out of a two month long, part-time contract.

Life is just too short to deal with that special kind of stupid.

You’re giving me a heads up that you will be adding me to your mailing list so I am more receptive to receiving them. Well that is awfully generous of you.

I insist on reciprocating by giving you a heads up that in about 18 seconds I will be disconnecting on LinkedIn from you and in about 37 seconds my script that automatically adds your personal email address to over 500 no-opt-in mailing lists will have finished running.

“I need an RMA for the LED bulb you shipped me.” I said to the CSR. “Two out of the four of the LED ‘filaments’ don’t work and there is visible damage to the circuit inside.”

“If you opened the device to inspect the damage, that voids your warranty.” responded the CSR.

“No, I didn’t open it, I just looked inside the bulb and can see the damage to the circuit on the inside.” I countered.

“How did you determine there was damage inside if you didn’t open it up?” asked the CSR.

“Because it’s a bulb…” I replied, my voice trailing off.

The CSR repeated their question: “So you haven’t opened the bulb up?”

“No.”

“But you’re certain there is internal damage?”

“Yes, because it’s a bulb…” again, my voice trailed off

Most people’s approach to their career and getting what they want out of life is the same one your spouse will use when trying to find something they have misplaced.

“It did not fall in to my open, outstretched hands, therefore I cannot find it. Can somebody else do this for me?”

The issue over the Occulus Rift pricing is not even a radar blip in the grand scheme of things. But it speaks volumes about how people interact with brands.

Perhaps this is the new state of being: “I am upset because a faceless corporation failed to manage my emotions for me and I am so socially and financially impotent that all I can do is vent about how unfair it is.”

I see a long, dark road ahead for people so shallow that they will permit a corporation to indirectly dictate that person’s mental state.

What unadventurous spirit must you possess to travel 3,000 miles from home (and still be in the same country) to then only desire to eat at a chain restaurant?

I think there are far too many people in this world looking for free work and hold the mistaken belief that I stepped off the boat just yesterday.

“We’ve got a kickstarter and everything!”

Omigosh! You must be a serious client, let me drop everything right now for you.

“Hey! We didn’t hire you to build our website. We went with lowest bidder. But the developer buggered off. We were wondering, could you fix it? For free.”

Hahahahahahaha!

Met a developer today on our team at eBay who is still using Vim for his code editor.

Has been for several years.

I believe it is because he hasn’t figured out the command to exit.