Author: David K.

Typical IT

From here.

It’s not “insane.” And, in fact, 100 days seems like a short request.

In my Fortune 250, I recently spent 4 months asking for a change that took literally 30 seconds to do. I wasn’t confused. They eventually did exactly what I asked to be done. But the email chain eventually included 52 people, and required a meeting to finally get the people responsible for doing the thing to actually DO the thing.

This is a perfectly-predictable result of the 40-years-out-of-date “best practice” of how to do “IT,” driven by the accumulation of selfish motivations present in any large collection of people.

Internal “product managers” with zero technical ability make requests to outsourced “product managers” with zero technical ability, who relay the request to internal teams which take a month to figure out who has the very specific knowledge of how to, say, move login buttons around on web pages — and ONLY that specific knowledge — and then middle managers with no technical ability have to schedule that activity with the activities of all the other people who have one, very-specific thing they know how to do. And after it’s finally changed in dev, then it has to be pushed through QA, staging, and finally prod.

This is how Fortune 500 companies do “IT,” all day, every day, and the very same incentives that have led to this climate are present in government, just writ larger.

Elder Scrolls Online Subclassing

Well this is actually exciting. Over and over, I see suggestions of how to fix “pain points” in ESO and Fallout 76 go unheeded for years and years, and then something gets announced that is better than any of the things people have suggested. I can’t think of an example off the top, but it’s happened several times. I think we’ve just seen another.

For years and years, people have complained that they wanted to be able to change a character’s class, like you can their race. Being a full-stack developer for decades, their reaction always felt like the class was a high-order property of the character, which was tied into too many things to ever change.

Well they’ve just announced “subclassing.” A character is defined by 3 skill class lines, but subclassing will allow you to swap out 2 of those lines for lines from any of the other 6 classes (but not both from the same one). To me, this is even better. This is much more interesting than just changing classes.

The best part is that it’s free for all players as a base-game feature. It won’t cost $15 per toon in the monetization shop, which, given prior history, is what I would have guessed if no one had told me otherwise. (That’s what the “race change token” costs.)

At this point, people are worried about 2 things with this change: that class identity will be wiped out, and that there will be significant power creep. First, yes. Class identity is basically going to be a thing of the past. No one is really going to care what class a toon is. It will only matter as far as there are a very limited number of class-specific sets which will still be class locked, but no one uses them anyway.

Second, oh, my, yes! There is going to be power creep. The subclassing feature is already live in the PTS server, and people are already posting dummy parses.

155K Beam

They’ve already pointed out that some of the hoped-for things won’t come true, like how the sorcerer’s Daedric Prey — which boosts all pet damage by 45% — will only apply to sorcerer pets, so it’s not going to boost the warden bear or the necro blast bones. However, that being said, it looks like we’ll be able to make builds capable of more than current god-tier level (~130K) with this system, without needing to be a sweaty try-hard at light attack weaving and animation cancelling. (Which the purists say are different things, but I can’t figure out the difference. Maybe this is why I suck at it.) This isn’t some perfect weaving build that requires 10-millisecond timing for 200 button presses in a row without missing. More than half of this guy’s damage on the parse came from the arcanist’s beam, which is an easy thing to manage.

131K Heavy Attack

Oh, dang. Hyperioxes is one of the current prominent ESO streamers. He’s getting 131K with a heavy attack build, which is nothing but holding down the attack button and occasionally pressing a skill button. I can get 93K with this kind of build currently, but it absolutely maxes out around 98K if you manage to land a lot of crits. So this is a big upgrade. I mean… that’s almost 50% more, for the sake of replacing one skill line, and using one of the new mythics. This is veteran trial hard mode DPS numbers in the easiest build configuration possible. (OK, to be fair, the new mythic he’s using will require light attack weaving in order to restore resources, but the exact timing won’t be an issue for the build, and that’s the hard part.)

The oakensoul ring and the arcanist class opened up the vet trial scene to a lot more people in the game, including me. I think this move is intended to give people a shot at running hard modes and trifectas who wouldn’t have stood a chance before. There was a 4-man prog group in my main guild of people who were all awesome at the game, and they got stuck in their runthrough of the dungeon trifectas. When that happened, I knew then that I was never going to get on in that scene because I’m not even as good as them. If ZOS doesn’t nerf this too much — and the studio lead has been clear that they’re happy with how these DPS numbers are testing internally — this is going to open the end-game content to another strata of people. Maybe I’ll finally be able to manage a perfect Veteshran Hollows run; who knows!

Of course, everyone who was really good at weaving is hating all of this, and I love that part too. I’m bitter that I can’t do it well, even after all these years, and those that gatekeep the game over it can suck it. I’ll take the achievements anyway, thank you very much.

I retired from ESO back in December. I’m thinking I may un-retire when all of this lands. It seems like it’s going to be a blast.

Capabilities of Current-Gen “AI”

There are 2 schools of people on Twitter on using AI in programming. One states emphatically that they are producing fully-realized projects through nothing but “vibe coding,” and the other states, well, what DHH says here.

John Carmack had this summary, and he should know.

This put into words my feeling that LLM’s are just another tool — an advanced tool, to be sure — but “just” another tool, like source code managers, diff-er’s, IDE’s, debuggers, and linters. In fact, writing code is the least interesting or important part of creating software to do something non-trivial and useful. It’s the understanding and translating that need into an application that’s the magical part, and it’s my contention that LLM’s will never be able to fill that role. If you can also make the program work well and be fast and look nice, that’s the fun part. Maybe a future version of AI built on a different technology will be able to do these things, but not this version.

Our Future is Becoming Clear

Engaging with Corporations as well as Nations

Sigh. Add this to the list of datapoints that show we are headed towards a cyberpunk version of our inevitable dystopian future — rather than a post-apocalyptic one — where the company you work for is more important than the country you live in. Corporations and oligarchs are running our governments. Are they really going to put up with their governments nuking each other?

I suppose the ones in concrete and steel wouldn’t mind, as we try to rebuild, but the majority of manufacturing now is in consumer and luxury goods, which no one would be buying after a wide-spread nuclear exchange. How does Apple sell people a new phone when they’re too busy planting food in their backyards and building chicken coops? How does Microsoft move more “seats” of Office when people are building windmills and damming up streams to generate enough power to listen to the local co-op radio station?

I suppose reality — as usual — will wind up somewhere in the middle between a single strike that knocks sense into everyone and a full exchange that would set us back 1000 years.

Time Stand Still, by Rush

I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath,
Before I start off again.
Driven on
Without a moment to spend
To pass an evening
With a drink and a friend

I let my skin get too thin
I’d like to pause,
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim —
Who learns to transcend —
Learns to live
As if each step was the end

Time stand still —
I’m not looking back —
But I want to look around me now
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now

Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away…

I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes,
Let my defences down —
All those wounds
That I can’t get unwound

I let my past go too fast
No time to pause —
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain,
Whose ship runs aground —
I can wait until the tide
Comes around

Make each impression
A little bit stronger
Freeze this motion
A little bit longer
The innocence slips away…

Summer’s going fast–
Nights growing colder
Children growing up —
old friends growing older
Experience slips away…

The innocence slips away…

Death by Software: Let’s Review

This morning, I woke up early, so I played Fallout 76 before starting work. It’s buggy. We all know that. In fact, it’s famously buggy on the Playstation, especially. But this is a game, and I have two options: take it, or leave it. So I continue to “take it.”

This morning, I was trying to do a story mission on a second character — a really annoying story mission — buried in the most labyrinthian “dungeon” in the game. A half hour into the very lengthy mission, and almost at the end, I couldn’t click “the thing” to do the next step. It was right in front of me, highlighted with a mission quest marker and everything, but I couldn’t interact with it. The only thing to do was kill the game and start over.

After traveling back to the spot, and loading into the “dungeon,” getting most of the way through the labyrinth, I followed the quest marker — the single marker, after turning off all other markers — through a door. The marker then showed that I needed to go right back through the door that I just came out of, and then I got hit with the infinite load screen bug.

So I traveled all the way back, all the way in, all the way down, found the button again, and was finally able to click it. That was 22 very frustrating minutes.

Then I sat down to work.

My Mac wouldn’t show up on my external monitor. I cycled my monitor a couple times. I unplugged the breakout box that connects to it (along with many other things) from Mac (because it’s easy to reach). I unplugged the TV from the breakout box. I finally REBOOT MY MAC, and it can see the screen.

I NEVER reboot my Mac, so now I’m seeing programs auto start that I don’t want. I can’t kill one of these. So I force quit it, and remove it from the system. Then I notice a whole bunch of startup programs I don’t want — Microsoft, etc. — so I try to kill these. I reboot to see if they’re gone.

First, I can’t connect to my monitor again. Second, once I re-persuade it, I see I have NOT, in fact, removed those startup programs. I go on a hunt, rm -rf‘ing lots of stuff. I reboot. My Mac can’t see my external monitor. I don’t know if those things are gone now, and I don’t want to reboot for the fifth time this morning, and deal with my external monitor again.

While I’m doing all of this, my manager asks me to submit my time. I couldn’t because I was waiting on him to approve a vacation day, which I see he’s just done 26 minutes ago. I still don’t have 40 hours, and I finally notice that I submitted the vacation day for FEBRUARY 27th, not MARCH 27th, which both just happen to land on a Thursday, so it escaped both of us.

We use the infernal Workday for this nonsense, and I see there’s no direct way to get at this. Of course. Why would there be? I finally find the indirect way, and see there’s no option to delete, so I try to set the old day’s vacation hours to 0, and request the correct day. That was about an hour ago. I have no idea what hassles my manager is having to go through to make this work now, and I’m sorry.

Note that, I’m not talking about the hassle of trying to use a Mac “cleaner” application — which wants to charge me $40/year — and still can’t see the startup items I’m trying to remove. Nor am I talking about the popup in Teams on my work computer that wants me to stop what I’m doing and “profile” my voice.

It’s been 2 hours or so since this all started, and I still have crap on my Mac, I’m scared to reboot it again, I don’t know if my timesheet is going to work without further hassle, and I know that Teams is lurking to hassle me over more useless, privacy-invading AI nonsense.

And I’m just starting the day.

Now I need to restart a very long-running process on my work laptop because 1) it wanted to install updates, 2) the service I need to interact with is somehow shut off on the weekends, and 3) we lost power last night. So there were 3 ways I couldn’t keep this process going if I’d have wanted to do. Oh, that’s right. I did, in fact, want to.

UPDATE: I wanted a new image of a brain for this site. I load ChatGPT. “Something has gone wrong.” I reload. I ask, “Can you generate images.” Nothing happens. I hit enter again. Nothing happens. I do something else. I notice that ChatGPT is bugging me asking if there’s anything it can do for me. I retype my question. “Something has gone wrong.”

I really did get up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Giving Up

For all of my adult life, I’ve been convinced that the right thing, the correct thing, the moral, ethical, or “good” thing would prevail on its own merits. I’ve been under the spell of the notion that the world was a just place, and if people could just be shown the right way to do things, they would accept them and want to do them in that way. I now realize this is a complete and utter delusion which has been foisted on me because of my personality and, if we’re being honest, a bit of neural atypicality.

I have often rued the days where I blundered through meetings at work, pointing out why certain decisions sucked, and how we could make things better, and in the process, making everyone mad. It took a couple of decades to even work out that I was, in effect, calling everyone stupid, and no matter how right I was, people got their backs up and worked against my ideas just out of spite over a wounded pride. I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and that’s not hyperbole.

What I’ve finally figured out is that the same thing has been happening in churches. Indeed, why should church have been any different? It’s filled with selfish, stupid people, just like everywhere else. Well, to be fair, we’re supposed to care more about “rightness” than the working world. But, no, when push comes to shove, people abandon correctness for feelings, and hide behind sentiment and platitude, because holding people to account is hard.

Maybe those other people already understand that holding out for the right thing is too much trouble, and therefore accept acquiescence more quickly and easily. Maybe they don’t want to get involved to save their sanity. Maybe. In Christian theology, there’s an infinite supply of forgiveness, so we must always be willing to forgive. There’s always an opportunity to take the high(er) road, because there’s always a higher road. Perhaps at the expense of sanity, but, sure, it’s always available. So at least in church circles, the fallback position not only saves time and sanity, it also makes you look “holier than thou.” Win-win!

Realizing that my own attitudes work against me in business, I’ve tried to reset and work WITH people in moving them towards more correct positions, but that hasn’t worked very well either, so I’m doubly screwed. Turns out most people aren’t even open to thinking that whatever it is they’re doing could be improved. After being in “leadership” of a church beset with spiritual abuse for 30 years, and suddenly being able to speak directly to a game-changing crisis, I skipped the pleasantries and went straight for the “correct” approach again when it mattered most, and lost again. And no one wants to hear it. No one cares. No one else is bothered. Everyone just wants to move on. Everyone just wanted to roll over. I guess they have that choice, but then they don’t get to complain to me when the barking dog they’ve turned their back on bites them in the rear again.

So I’m done. I’ve already removed myself from that situation, but now I’m also removing my concern about it. I can’t change anything. I never could. Turns out, I couldn’t even budge the needle. I’m sick of trying to point out ethics and morality to a bunch of people who shouldn’t need the lesson in the first place. I’m tired of trying to hold people accountable for things when no one else will. So they all get what they’ve accepted, and I don’t want to hear any more complaining about it. Ever. Congrats, everyone. You win. I’ll shut up now.

Pain

Pain is realizing this is true, not just for society, or the world, but for our personal lives as well: family, friends, church, hobbies… everything. Sure, growing up and growing older should involve maturation and changes in direction and perspective, but no one told me I would be betrayed by my own body and my closest friends and mentors.

I’ve had two personal, related “911’s” — events that shook me to my core and changed everything — that struck at the same time 4 years ago — and I’m still trying to figure out how to get through it all and get better. The medicines I take for my health problems keep me continually off-balance, and make it nearly impossible for me to marshal my inner fortitude to make the changes and do the work to address the long term issues.

It’s just… hard, man. Really hard. No one really understands, nor do I really want them to. I don’t want to put that on them. There’s nothing they can do about it. I’ve never been stoic. I’ve moaned and bellyached to everyone who would listen my whole life. This time, though, there doesn’t seem to be anything ANYONE can do about it, because there’s no one thing that’s wrong. If there’s a way out, it’s through a dozen small things done with a measure of discipline that I have never been able to muster, even at my best.

The outlook is bleak, and we’re on the precipice of a second civil war, and at the verge of the End Times.

Windows Bluetooth Power Saving

I just “upgraded” my gaming PC to the latest big Windows patch, and wouldn’t you know it? They turned this infernal setting back on.

Because of this, I have to get up, and remove a USB device, and plug it back in to wake up my Bluetooth mouse. WHILE I’M SITTING HERE USING IT! On what planet does this make any sense!?

Before I figured it out, this is the same problem that almost made me return the computer a week after I bought it.

What moron at Microsoft is responsible for this? Wait. Don’t tell me. Because I think I’d drive to Seattle, and kick them in the balls.