I grabbed a fresh beer and stopped playing Red Faction to write this

So, since it seems to have died down a bunch by now, I feel OK about writing about gamergate.
No, I ain't capitalizing or "hash-tagging" any of that.

From the distance where I'm viewing it, the whole thing is the natural fallout of a bunch of internet shitbags getting clobbered for being the same horrible fuckjobs they always have been online.

I'm a gamer. I've been doing this since the NES came out, I hacked my way into E3 back when it was still cool, and I've written for more gaming publications than you. I still hold world record scores on a few games. I also absolutely hate gamers. I play everything offline, because the online community has ALWAYS sucked. Every goddamned minute being exposed to those fucking goblins drives me up a wall. By now, I have been called a faggot in game chats about four hundred thousand times, and again: I Very Rarely play anything online.

So. My initial response when hearing about this garbage was "Oh? Well, yeah. That's what they do. They're assholes." At this point, I imagine that I feel a lot like a Log Cabin Republican. I really like this one thing, and everyone else involved with it is an overstuffed dumpster of cocks that I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire.

There ain't shit going on here about "games journalism", it's just doxxing, slut-shaming, and the bog-standard violent stupidity of the entire fucking community. People online are monsters, gamers are not exempt, and we've been doing this for a long time. Except now, it's all about death and rape threats with directions to people's homes. Progress!

The cost of entry for the new media is zero, ya'll want a better "games journalism" platform? Fucking start one. But, because it's more fun to move the goalposts and harass women online, we get gamergate. Going back to my offline games now, where I don't have to be associated with any of those idiots.

Yet another reason I hate everyone in my profession

Because, truly, programmers are awful, awful people. Web developers are the worst, but I could be biased here, since I get exposed to more of them.

Anyhow. This article recently went up on Model View Culture. It's penned by a recent college grad whining that technical interviews are "bullshit." They are bullshit because they are confrontational, and they make women uncomfortable, and "There are so many questions that technical interviews can’t answer: Are they able to work on a diverse team? Are they passionate about the job they’re interviewing for? Can they read and debug pre-existing code? How quickly are they able to learn new technologies? Are they a jerk?"

Technical interviews, you see, require you to write code on a whiteboard, in front of people.
As a Crotchety Industry Veteran, if I was interviewing someone that struggled with the concept of writing code, they would be out the door so fucking fast their own personal universe would red-shift. I don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock if you're a really nice person or get along well with others, or have a super-cute kitten calender for your office if you can't write code: You Do Not Get to be a Programmer.

These interviews exist because so many people can't fucking code. I have worked with these people. I have fired these people. They keep fucking applying to jobs that they cannot do. So Now: we have to check. If I hurt someone's feelings by expecting them to demonstrate the core skill for their job, I get warm fuzzy feelings all day long. You're a shitty test taker? The test is called Employment, and you just got an(other) F.

All code is awful. I don't care if someone writes a really ugly function on the spot, or if they forgot a semi-colon, I just need to know that this person does, in fact, know how to write code at all.
I know that this will sound insane to anyone in a real profession, but this is actually a serious problem that our young graduate above appears unaware of.  Go read that article, it is short, and it's about a very simple programming problem frequently used in "technical interviews." The interview-ee manages about 2 pages of crazy person scrawl before crashing and burning.

For reference, here's a solution in C#:

for(int x = 1; x <= 100; x++) {
 string output = "";
 if(x%3 == 0) output += "Fizz";
 if(x%5 == 0) output += "Buzz";
 if(output == "") output = x.ToString?();
 Console.WriteLine?(output);
}

For all I know, that interview-ee was a super-duper guy, and always buys a round for the team at the bar. The next time your computer crashes or app freezes? Think of that guy. Technical interviews are a Good Thing.

Internets browser stuff

A side effect of doing a lot of work on the Inter-Tubes is that I tend to have a lot of browsers installed and use them all frequently, just to make sure things are behaving. I do a lot of dev-type stuff, so the built-in tools and available extensions are also pretty important to me, although admittedly most people aren't going to care much.

Since I'm a few drinks into the evening, here's where I give my picks along with why. I do realize that with the uber-frequent release cycle on Chrome and FireFox, this is all going to be irrelevant in a month, forward your hatemail to Google and Mozilla if none of this makes sense by the time you read it.

The Duke of New York, A #1 is still Opera. I am not a patient man, when I click a browser icon, it's because I have Shit to Do. Opera starts up a hell of a lot faster than anything else, and hauls screaming ass when loading sites and pages that aren't written by morons. Right-clicking and hitting Inspect Element on anything on a web page gets you access to the fantastic Dragonfly tool, and if you've ever needed to debug some CSS, JavaScript or network issue, this thing is indispensable.
There are a good chunk of sites that don't work quite right, but the keyboard shortcuts and overwhelmingly awesome performance keep Opera as my favorite day to day thing I use.

The number 2 spot is a tie. Chrome and Internet Explorer 11, to be exact. If anyone wants to talk shit about I.E., go get a modern version first. I started using the thing back when Netscape Navigator was the new hotness, and fucking Lynx was the installed browser on the terminals at my college's C.S. lab. The latest version of I.E. is robust, and has an overhauled and surprisingly sexy set of onboard tools for the dev kids out there. The current team working on I.E. knows all the cool kids hate them, and they're kicking some serious ass to make all those people look pants-on-head retarded.

Chrome is a solid piece of work, and I don't really hate anything about it, but there's nothing that makes me love the thing. It performs well, shit generally "just works", and there's not a lot I have to complain about. On the other hand, I loathe most Google stuff, and the UI never, ever fucking puts stuff where I can find it quickly since Google Knows Better. I imagine Apple kids would be right at home with this one, it's just not a great fit for me.

#4 is FireFox. When I installed FireFox 1 point something-or-other, I thought it was the coolest fucking thing ever. 2 was good as well. When 3 came out, it started feeling sluggish and bloated, and by then tabbed browsing was no longer the shiny new reason to lose 3 hours on wikipedia. For the last couple years, FireFox has limped along by having a kick-ass set of extensions (Greasemonkey! Firebug!) to let me get shit done, but the UI changes in the last few versions have started to hobble even those benefits. Mozilla, if I wanted a shitty version of Chrome, I would use Chrome. If I wanted to be a hard-core open source hippy, I would use Konqueror or Ice Monkey or any of the dozen other shitty versions floating out in Linux-land. These days, I ain't got much time for FireFox.

Everything else? I don't care. Safari is hot garbage. Lynx is old and busted. wget is used by Stallman and like 5 other people. I kinda miss Off By One, but only after a lot of drinks and I can't configure Opera to do the same stuff even better.

It has been below freezing all week. I am still glad that I do not live in the South.

I dunno if there's something in the water cooler over at rawstory, but jesus christ the feed today reminded me how much I hate the idea of living anywhere below the Mason-Dixon.

First up: A bunch of Missouri high school girls played a game in blackface! We are assured that "they didn't mean anything by it" and "they just weren't thinking".
By the time you make it to high school, if you still think that there's a time and place for blackface, this isn't an "oversight" issue anymore. It means that your parents and community did a shitty job, and that you are a piece of human garbage.

Next! Kentucky fire chief tells a deputy "We ain't takin no niggers here." Seeing how they'd just been in a car accident, and that the deputy and crew changed a tire for the other (white) person involved in the accident, and gave him an escort to the fire station, this gets bonus points for being racist and also a total dick move.
When questioned about being a racist dickhead, the chief then asked an asian reporter if she spoke English. Multiple times.
Stay classy, Kentucky! Also, die in a fire, you sorry cumbags.

Next! In Houston, a customer wrote "Don't want to listen to a faggot through my whole meal" on their receipt to complain about having a gay server. Wisely, the restaurant manager chose to apologize to the customer, and the server was fired/quit. He also came out to his parents, so they could at least hear it from him before seeing in on the 9 o'clock news.
I'm sure that went splendidly.
That something like this went down at a place as high-class as "Kelley's Country Cookin'" will be a shock to you all, I am sure. But it's comforting to know that Houston homophobes have a place where they can have a meal without being exposed to the queers. If I had a way to create salmonella outbreaks using the internet, I would have a busier weekend ahead of me.

Last for now: Virginia school officials tweet that interracial dating is every father's worst nightmare. This one I have some experience of, in a reverse kind of way. On multiple occasions, parents of various girls I have dated have accused me directly of being the anti-christ. I also have a bunch of racist shithead family members, that, while they hate the blacks, didn't have any problem with me dating asian, mexican, or indian women.
Attention Virginian stumble-fuck school officials, there are plenty of good reasons to hate people you god-damned troglodytes. Spend 10 minutes talking to someone, and you can probably come up with something. You're just being shiftless lazy stupid assholes by continuing with the skin color thing.

Bobbing for apples in a latrine

I've been busy having a very relaxing and pleasant weekend before moving to the new employment-place, so naturally, something had to come along and rectify that situation.
Recently reported by CNN and others there's a slew of rape allegations towards Bill Cosby for many, many incidents going back for the last 20 or so years. A couple of these have been 'settled', but that's a whole mess 'o rape to be accused of.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but given how under-reported rape is, things ain't looking great for the Coz.
Rape is generally considered a fucking horrible thing, so let's check in with the Republican mouthpiece of record to see their take on things. You know, what with their "tough on crime" plank as a party.




This goes about as well as you'd expect. If you don't have 3 minutes, skip to the 2:30 piece in that video. "It's not like he did it yesterday."

Yeah. That isn't some quote mining either, that means exactly what you think it does IN context.

At first, I thought "What the unlubricated fuck? Is Rush seriously declaring that there's a statue of limitations on sexual assault? Is he OK with sodomizing kids if you can keep it on the down low for a couple decades?"

And then I remembered that he is a Republican, so shit's all good if you're wealthy and/or famous.
Lest we forget, Rush got picked up for a (minimum) class 3 felony, and ended up doing a stint in rehab rather than spending the mandatory minimum 15 years in Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison.
2,000 fucking pills is only worth rehab? I have regular migraine headaches, and I'll say that 2,000 pills is more than I've taken in the last 20 years. If I get picked up tomorrow with 2,000 pills, I'm sure as shit not going to keep MY job since, you know, I'll be in fucking jail for the next couple election cycles.

Tough on crime my black ass. Y'all want to be tough on crime, then start sending criminals to fucking jail.

The process and the procedure

This is the place where I dash off short pieces on whatever is currently on my mind that seems fun to talk about. I don't take what I do here too seriously, which means I agonize over word choice about 15% less than when I'm doing Professional Stuff.

Since I'm making an effort to come up with posts more often, I usually bug people around me for a topic. Any Topic. I absolutely suck at that part, but I'll be damned if I can't take a subject and ejaculate 500 words all over it.

That got . . . weird . . . faster than I'd intended. Tonight, no good ideas were available, so I was instructed to visit Reddit and scan their 'writing prompts', which is something I have specifically been avoiding. If anyone asked me why, I would have been forced to admit that I think random people have shitty ideas, and the internet in general is a cesspool, but no aversion more specific than that.

I went, I saw, I recoiled in horror. Now I have specific complaints. To wit: the posters there are just trying too fucking hard. The stuff I saw on Reddit is the polar opposite of what I like to see in writing, stories, and things in general - flash over substance and technique. One topic was "Imagine you survived a near-death experience, and later received a letter from God that this was an administrative mistake, so please commit suicide within the next few days."

Standing on it's own, this isn't a horrible idea. My gripe is that it's very, very specific. I understand that's what some people may need to get that kick in the ass and start hammering out words. Kudos to them. Their stuff is probably dreck. I don't really need or want someone else to nail down a whole story chunk, I just like hearing different things of interest, that's enough for me to get going. The prompt "Janitors" is enough to get the wheels churning. The rest I can come up with, and will hopefully sound like me (e.g. "Conversations between drunken Janitors cleaning up the cum stains after the DNC and Republic National Conventions", "Janitors as a new priestly order in a post-apocalyptic society after antibiotic resistant bacteria wipe out humanity")

The goofballs on Reddit are trying to come up with an amazing hook so other people can put their stamp on it. To me, writing like that is about as much fun as being in a cover band. As always, I'm a target market of one, so take this with a grain of salt or whatever.

My stuff (here and elsewhere) ain't winning any awards, but it's mine.

Language porn

I am going to be moving to a more programming-heavy job soon, so I've been warming up those parts of my brain that have lain more-or-less dormant for the last few years. Getting back to full time programming is a drastic departure from what I've been doing, but after doing a mental inventory, I'm happy to report that the lights all still work, the plumbing isn't leaking all over the place, and the walls are still standing in those particular areas of my mind.

If this sounds dramatic, or like I'm shifting paradigms without a clutch, then this is the post for you.

As a brief aside, I take a large amount of professional pride in programming. I really do try to do the best I possibly can, even when writing shitty little web apps or simple features. I like it when people see something I've done and say: "Oh! Neat, that is going to make my life a lot easier!" and the code doesn't look like shit to the point where I fear touching it again in the future.

But. Because I was taught by scary hardasses, I have a working industry-specific vocabulary that compares to the MIT hackers of olden tymes. And to me, this is a Good Thing. Programmers have to work with computer languages to get stuff done, which means that begging, crying, and pleading don't do much. You have to hammer raw math into some type of functionality described by a user, and there is very little overlap between the two domains. xkcd has things to say about this. Being very, very specific is important to solving the problem.

One of the things I enjoy is that programmers have a very rich vocabulary to talk about and describe the problems that occur because of the disconnect between code and desired features. Seriously, programmers have more words for "failure" than Eskimos apocryphally had for "snow."

For example, the words "bad" and "wrong" have two very different connotations. "Wrong" means that you fucked up. Someone types in "cat" and your program outputs "dog". "Bad" means that a user types in "cat" and your program takes 3 hours to run, crashes a server somewhere, deletes a couple random files, and then prints out "cat". Either of those cases can occur when the programmer makes an honest mistake. There is an entirely different set of words to use when the programmer is just being a bastard.

Logic errors have their own phrases and classes. Software and Hardware do too. There are modifiers for severity.

What we end up with at the end of the day, is a very expressive set of jargon to describe exactly what is going on with enough detail to figure out the real problem and solve it. Of course, there are a lot of ways to say that the user is obviously the problem.

The link in that last sentence has always been one of my favorite replies to use, so feel free to swipe that for your own, lesser, industries.

I get to be a programmer again. Even though I know that the Web is a shitshow, I am looking forward to it. Because we can talk our way through this.