Monday, December 13, 2021

My Life: Grinding to New Motivation

After listening a youtube video by HealthyGamerGG ("Why Potential is Paralyzing") with 5 kids struggling with motivation. I cannot fully say that I was ever is such a position, but I feel that I can relate in that I fear that scenario. Perhaps I was fortunate enough to be smart enough where my bare minimum was good enough. Perhaps, I had enough desperation to survive too.

A part of me feels that I was able to get out of this feeling was mid- to late- 20s. In hindsight, I feel this was a long path. 

The first part of what helped me was parts of my life where I just grinded. I did A, B, and C all day, everday for days on end. My thoughts were just finish this and move to the next. Whether this was a game like Tetris, SC, DOTA, Pokemon, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and later work. I worked my second work for about 80 hours a week.

The second part was not recognizing my poor study habits. I learned this in my final year and after college when I was helping underclassmen. Although I was able to do their homework, I struggled explaining the material. I was forced to read the text and then realized how much sense it made in my own understanding of the material.

The third part was my self-competitiveness. In things that I enjoyed, I wanted to have the top score. Mario Kart speed times, Tetris score on each individual's device, Bubble Pop, rate of completing Candy Crush with no cheats or even bonus items even if free. Eventually, I learned that my PB are far from the best. I will still play competitively but losing is not a big matter.

I cannot say when I flipped the switch about personal motivation.


Another part of the video that I enjoyed was the outlook on Hope vs Hopelessness.

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Life: Empathy vs Sympathy

 https://www.6seconds.org/2021/01/20/empathy-vs-sympathy-what-the-difference/


I liked this video. It makes a lot of sense. I am not sure if I totally agree with the definition of empathy and sympathy. I will admit that my definitions may be (probably is most likely) incorrect. But, I understand the point of Brene Brown.

The struggle to help is real. There have been many times where I really just say "I do not know what to say." And I don't feel that it is so easy because while one says it, one still battles the urges to do something. If you say it but don't battle it, then it may come across empty. I feel it is not just words alone but also the expressions that I am also struggling to find an answer... or maybe even to say an answer.

In my mind, there are a lot of questions or "at leasts" but often conclude that it just belittles the feeling or inappropriate for the moment. I think the person who shared the feeling can sense this.

What I like about this video is learning that this feeling is not only normal but the better option.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Scammish: Microsoft listening into personal conversations finding its way in ads (Personal Experience)

On my work laptop, I just saw ads for two items that I have never searched or ordered before on any of my work devices. Both of them suddenly came up on several ads on msn 

I rarely use my work phone. It basically just sits on my desk. I have taken maybe one call in the last month. I use my laptop on a very regular basis.

I am logged into all devices with work identifications, none related to any of my personal identifications.

The scary part is that these were things my wife was talking about just recently. Talking! She never messaged these things to me through text, email, etc. 

I have absolutely no idea which device or app even listened in on this.



Dear Microsoft, stay out of my life!!


There should be some law to force advertisers to publish where they received our personal information!

Friday, November 12, 2021

Review: Jira Cloud (1 month usage after several years with Jira DC)

In summary, DC seems so much more intuitive. After a month, I am still struggling on how to easily navigate between pages. I like to think that I usually one of the faster adopters. Maybe I have reached the age where I no longer can adapt.

Most of my issues are with team-managed projects. For company-managed projects, I do not like that I have even less control than I had in DC. I used to be able to modify workflows. Seems dumb for me to create a ticket just to have our Jira admin rename a flow just because some useless developer cannot read or learn which forces me to create flows to say "(NOT FOR DEV USE)". [[Makes me really question the developer's ability to follow instructions or understand requirements]]

Epic Link

Now there is a concept of team-managed and company-managed. It seemed at first that the only difference is who manages the configuration. But there are lot of differences in the tool itself.

The biggest one is that the concept of Epic is completely different. And I don't even need to use Epic for my use. I just wanted to display the Epic Link in the details of the ticket. The field exists, but I cannot add it to the details. And of course, the web contains all the HOWTO on how to add it (for company-managed).


Board

I created two epics and several stories. After nearly throwing my laptop out the window, I associate the stories with the epics. Then you go to the default board. What would you expect to see?

Something? Yes, I was expecting to at least something but my board is completely empty.

Check my stories. They all have status To Do. Board has a column To Do but empty.

After some research and reading, you have to assign the stories before it shows.



One Board Only

So team-managed can only have one board. At least at the time of this. I found a page that Atlassian that it was coming in "next few weeks" but it was posted in May. It is now a few months.
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17371?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=a5593a0b-d488-4200-9323-c823f430a8c2




Team-Managed Project

This is very misleading. This is not a permissions issue. This is really a completely different solution (as can be seen that it used to be called NextGen). Looks like Jira is trying to assimilate it which does not make sense either. Why not just limit features from company-managed?

My recommendation is not to even try team-managed projects. It is not worth the headache of bypassing Company admins. For me this is kind of a pain because our group is essentially a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the main company. The love from corporate admins is quite robotic in that they are kind of effective but at the same time just feels like using a hammer to swat a fly.

Monday, November 8, 2021

Using Curl to test Jira API


curl -D- -X GET -H "Authorization: Basic [email + key]" -H "Content-Type: application/json" "https://[company].atlassian.net/rest/api/2/issue/[ticket id]"


[email + key] needs to be encrypted

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Life: Am I lonely? Are my friends really friends?

The trigger for this post was caused by a fleeting feeling of sadness when I realized that very, very few "friends" call me to chat or catchup. And by friends calling me, I mean that they call me maybe once a year sometimes even two years.

Even then, the ratio of me calling them versus they calling me is extremely high. Actually as I write this and except for my family, no one calls me more often and not even close to 50/50.

The sad part is not whether they think of me as a friend or not. I feel more sadness thinking that I am kind of a waste of their time. Should I just stop reaching out? Maybe it is their way of saying not interested?

Does this make me lonely? I am not sure. Maybe it isn't really a feeling of sadness but maybe more like a disappointment that I couldn't be of more value to other people. I also kind of starting to sense that maybe they only talk to me out of pity. Pity of what though?

Or is it this lack of sadness that makes it hard for me to relate to people's need to have friendships that is more regular like on a daily or weekly basis? Even with whom I call my good/best friends, I chat with them maybe on a yearly basis.

Or is it normal to have to put in so much effort to maintain friendships? It doesn't seem like it should to me.

Am I lonely? I do not feel sad about being alone. But this is easy for me to say because I have a loving family although could be a insane sometimes. I sense that I could survive being alone. I could find contentment and occasional happiness. Would I get depressed? Probably not.

Are my friends, friends? Yea, I believe my good friends are. I think I just attract others who are more similar to me, maybe even more of a hermit than me. I fully believe that if I am in need that they will try to be there for me. And if they are ever in need, that I would try to be there for them. By "try", I mean with the best of intentions. I would not expect them to put me over their family nor to put them in any financial risks.

I believe I have less traditionally defined friends. And I am ok with that.

I also believe I have some friends that I would really love to be better friends with that I am not sure if it is reciprocated. Which I am ok with too, but just unsure if I should just not contact them anymore. Or is this deemed more like an investment/insurance in case they would need me? My feelings are a bit complicated on this on whether I should just use that time on finding other people.

Or is my feelings complicated because I seem to spend more time with colleagues than people I really care for? I actually spend more time on this blog than most people too...

But in some sense this blog is kind of my way to communicate without being a burden. Only people who would be very interested would find this. I guess the other is that is mostly for my future self. Or is it for hopes that it could help a completely random person? I don't know... 

Re-reading this blog made me think of the Twitch psychologist, Alok Kanojia. I don't think I am even on that level. I can understand from empirical information. But I have to admit that it is very difficult for me to relate empathetically to the more extreme (imo) feelings. Makes me wonder if that is what differentiates the types of friends we have. In that case, I guess it makes sense that I "keep" a smaller circle. But it is not that I am the one limiting my circle size. Or maybe I am because there are definitely some people I did not want to be close friends with.

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Work Life: If you need help, pause to listen (also works for normal life)

A close person had asked what sorts of food to make and was clearly asking me for assistance. 
"What food should I make?"
"There isn't much ingredients."
"It is hard to decide."
"Give me a list of things I can make."
And on and on and on...

I even made some attempts to provide some feedback. I tried using handle signal for a pause or a few seconds. Eventually even trying to interrupt. But she just kept on going for 30+ minutes, even repeating questions/statements.

She is definitely not the first person that I interacted with like that. Even at work there are people who just keep on asking, repeating the same question, talking a mile-a-minute, etc. These people at least you can kind of ignore or build a method to get out.

The worst are people who have an open Q&A to a presentation. They use half the time to present, then uses the second half asking for questions, to be open about questions, etc. There would be people with raised hands or try to get attention, but the presenter just keeps on going.

My Advice

1. Be comfortable with very uncomfortable silence
2. Pauses in your speech. 

Why?

1. Some people do not interrupt out of respect. It is more polite to hear the whole thing before responding.
2. Who's helping who? If you are asking for help, it is not my problem that you run out of time.
3. Respect runs both ways. If you do not respect my time, then I am less likely to interrupt you to help you.

(Bonus Skill) Learn to Empathize and Summarize

I understand that most people are unable to understand this so I will give a pass to some people (but know that I will still be irritated inside).

Empathy is your ability to put yourself in someone else's situation and have an interest to help. You do not need to fully understand especially the emotional part. In this case of seeking help, you need to understand who your audience is. Do they know your situation? Do they know the details? Do they know enough to help solve your problem? The counter-balance to this is to also know when too much information is too much information. The easiest is to listen if they have questions. Part of this is also to understand the person is also trying to come up with a solution within a limited period of time that you have spent significantly more time on.

I have no answer how to practice empathy. One of the common tests to see if someone has empathy is by just listening tell you their day. People with low empathy will commonly just jump from story to story with no context. No identifiers to understand that "he" in story 1 is different from "he" in story 2. And when it becomes clearer that story 2 is in place and I speak up, the speaker actually gets more irritated, frustrated, and/or angry.

Maybe I am not a great listener, but an empathetic person should change their speech patterns to their audience. That is essentially what empathy is. I have had little luck in explaining empathy to less-empathetic people. When I explain empathy to highly-empathetic people, I am not really explaining empathy. I am mostly teaching them other points-of-views that they haven't considered, then they go to town with it.

But on the most basic level, if you are asking someone to solve a problem... they need to have all the ingredients to solve the problem. If you lack an ingredient, then they will either say it is unsolvable or they will assume certain values or defaults (whether it is correct or not because maybe it may still help).

On the other hand, do not overwhelm them with information. So learn to summarize. Give as much ingredients as possible that is needed but not too much more than needed.

All this is just to get information from a person one time with little past negative history. To get continued help is another level of empathy. How is this experience going to help or detract some from help you in the future? Some people may help you this time but if the experience is poor, will they help in the future. In summary, empathy is not just a moment but also multi-level. Fortunately if you are starting to understand empathy, some empathetic people will understand and give some leeway. This is probably one of the few things that I believe hard-work and time will help anyone's quest to be more empathetic.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Buggish: Sharing folder breaks IIS

I do not understand why sharing an IIS directory breaks IIS. The worst part is that I cannot undo this. I cannot unshare the directory and have IIS work again. And when I compare to other IIS directories, the permissions look exactly the same.

There are several resources on how to resolve this which typically boils down to adding IUSR or IIS_USERS to the directory. But what I am interested in is how do I return back to before? How did IIS work before sharing? I can understand that sharing the folder changes the permissions, but what did it change?

I check to make sure all the users are the same under the security tab under the folder properties. Is there another way to apply permissions to a folder? There must be, right? Otherwise, I should see a difference.

I also checked the web.config file which is the main reason that IIS breaks because it no longer has access to read that file. It makes little sense that this would be it because I can always create a new web.config file which happens often with developers because they want to backup the original then drop in the new file.

I also checked IIS Manager, but nothing seems to make sense there. Authentication is using Anonymous Authentication and Application Pools uses IUSR. Oddly, adding IUSR does not fix my problem. I had to add IIS_USERS to fix the problem. Why? I have no clue.

Monday, October 4, 2021

Buggish: Unable to access MS Network Folder (after deleting with net use)

 This is incomplete blog, but wanted to add note for future reference:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24933661/multiple-connections-to-a-server-or-shared-resource-by-the-same-user-using-more



C:\> net stop workstation /y

C:\> net start workstation




Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/05/buggish-unable-to-access-ms-network.html

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Life: Drinking more water seems to help with night time sleep but not perfect

I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night. Drinking more liquids throughout the day seem to help with my restless leg syndrome which in turn helps me sleep better. I definitely had more no-wake nights, and definitely better sleep nights even if I wake up.

Having good sleep habits is still good. Some days when I am too exhausted and I take a nap during the day, I have more difficulty staying asleep. Twice that I did this, I ended up just watching videos at night as lying there did not help at all. With nothing to do actually makes my body feel worse. Watching video distracts me from that feeling and I will eventually drift asleep.

I am not sure if I have insomnia as I usually don't have trouble going back to sleep. Majority of the time, I can just move to the couch and fall asleep. I haven't determined if it is because the couch is more firm or because it is cooler there.

In the past, I tend to sleep much better if I keep the windows open because it cooled my room. Recently, I cannot keep the windows open for reasons out of my control. I am also not sure if sleeping with a blanket helps, as I seem to also lose my blank for reasons out of my control. Although, maybe I can just use a second blanket. I do tend to kick my blanket and even my pillow so this may be a very difficult experiment.

Any case... for a period of time, sleeping was getting harder and my restless leg syndrome was getting pretty bad. Drinking more water does seem to significantly help. I have not been perfect and on/near days that I was more dehydrated (in hindsight), I did notice that I had more trouble sleeping.

How much is enough drinking? I typically can drink 3-4 cups a day on a good day. On bad days, I drink almost no cups of water. I do not drink alcohol often. On the couple days where I did drink a decent amount, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly but the quality of the sleep is not as good. I do get buzzed very easily but I don't get drunk easily. I also never had a hangover... not sure if that is related to me never having a headache. So not sure if my advice on drinking will help anyone else. I don't recall having much issue with restless leg syndrome so maybe having liquids help more with that and that in turns help me sleep uninterrupted, and somehow alcohol lowers the quality of my sleep.

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Interview: Good or Bad? Google, Amazon, Microsoft brain-teaser interview questions

This is a good question to understand a candidate's ability to problem solve.

Super vague and opiniated history of question

Just historically, Google and Microsoft have asked these questions since 2000. And see how much they have grown since then. The extremely vague and generic macro outlook to me rather indicative that something was right during that period of time. My guess why this was more effective in the beginning because the people who wrote the questions knew why they were asking the question.

Now there are too many people who do not understand the intentions of the question.

Not For Interviewers

The biggest problem to these questions is the interviewer. Majority if not all interviewers do not even understand the intention of the question. The main reason is that interviewers just ask a list of questions that need to be answered. The company gives them the list, and they ask it. So like many other questions, they think the right answer is the correct answer.

I've interviewed with many companies who have asked these questions, and none knew the intention of the questions. I know this because I knew the answers to all of them. There were a couple new ones but they were far easier than FAANG. When I answer them, the interviewer are easily impressed and moves on. In many cases, I would even give them other questions I knew of and they would be even more impressed.

Even if the interviewer has some clue to the question, they have no way to score a candidate like they can with technical questions. Also interviewers are not hired to have problem solving skills, so how well can they judge another person's problem solving skills? 

So basically, this is not an interviewer question. This is a hiring manager's interview question to ask and only if the hiring manager understands why they are asking this question.

Why the question?

The point of the question is to understand the candidates problem solving skills. In my opinion, this is one of the most important skills I look for. The main reason is that technology is always changing and I can train information, but I cannot train (or at least have no time to train) problem solving skills. I am looking for the candidate's ability to take the problem, break it down, ask questions, etc. 

The question is actually meant to be nearly impossible to solve for most candidates. That is probably why arbitrary questions became a thing too (like "how many tennis balls fits in a jumbo jet"). Because everyone became so obsessed with the actual answer than the reason why they asked it. And knowing the answer is quite useless for software engineer employees. If there's an answer, it is cheaper for the company just to buy the answer. What the company needs is an employee that can solve the problem that doesn't have an answer to it.

Bad Hires from Traditional Interviews

One example in my life on this difference was this one time that we hired a highly certified employee. He had many, many Microsoft/Cisco certificates. He had a lot of work experience. His projects were never completed. Near the end of his employment, the owner had me help him with a project and he couldn't tell the difference between a class and an object. I told the owner that he wasn't worth the time to train. We could hire a college grad that could do more.

Another example was a college "graduate" that was tasked to setup a computer with Windows. He was provided an install CD. He installed, then got stuck with a video driver. A bit odd for him to ask for help with this, but I answered his question. 6 hours later, my colleague calls me over and we find that he never installed the video driver because he didn't which video driver to install. The PC case was already open, and I just google the video card name and it was the first result that comes up. My colleague told me that he just told our boss to let him go. I learned that he had actually asked everyone how to install the video driver and still couldn't figure it out. We also found out later that he didn't actually graduate but dropped out of school.

Another example was a transfer from another department. He came with a lot of recommendations from his previous group. He was also very good at talking and making others feel good. Although he had the credentials, he was not able to do anything on his own. Every task had to be spelled out, even if it was a repeated task. Not only did it have to be explicitly written down, he had terrible attention to details. This was almost clear to me within the first 5 minutes of interacting with him for the first time.

My final example was a person that we actually hired before and basically fired for incompetence. I did my best to give her the benefit of the doubt. Even then, she was only able to accomplish two tasks of thousands of tasks. The two tasks being to copy a file to another server (which she actually copied to the wrong server... twice). I even had her screen share and watch her do it incorrectly, then corrected her (just to make sure she had access). At the end, I had her delete the file and have her do it again on her own. She was never able to do this for an entire week with a daily reminder. She was hired to be a procedure manager and she could not even copy files (she had plenty of tasks that was to set up meetings or talk to people but none of those were ever done).

My point with all this was that they all passed the interview. I did not interview any of them. To this day, I have no clue how they even lasted 5 minutes. I think firing people is harder than rejecting, and I wanted to fire all of them within minutes. I think the brain-teaser or open-ended questions are great to weed these people out.

Many candidates that I have recommended are either the longest tenured, promoted, or very well-liked.

Other Questions

These brain-teaser / open-ended questions should not be the only question to determine a candidate. This is just to understand the candidates ability to problem solve. 

One type of candidates that do well but are toxic to the company are the ones that are very smart but also have very big egos. So it is important to ask other questions that will determine their ability to work with others. In general, you do not want those candidates. If you do, then you need to make sure they and your existing staff have the right environments to handle such situations.

Another type are those that often cannot stop asking questions or only sees problems. The main problem with these candidates is that they analyze too long. A group could afford maybe one of these candidates if they are very good at identifying critical issues, but it is equally important to have someone that counter-balances to make sure things still move forward.

Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/02/interview-oddball-and-riddle-questions.html
- Almost seems like I contradict myself here but not really. Will have to review that post in more detail.

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Scammish: Samsung S20 FE wifi calling is so faulty

I don't know if this is a Samsung phones thing as I had similar experience with Samsung S7 and S8. For whatever reason, I've always had issues with sending out text messages over wifi calling. For another stupid reason, I always live in a unit that has 0 cell reception so I am forced to use wifi calling.

After I send a text message, the progress circle just keeps spinning. I can even receive text messages while it is spinning over several minutes. I can also surf the internet. Eventually, the message will even get sent with maybe 80% success rate. The other 20%, I just resend and it'll attempt again with about the same success rate.

What is even worse is if I send multiple messages to the same person, the order of the messages is maybe in the correct order about 50% of the time. So the more messages I send, the more likely messages will be out of order.

Not only is it sometimes out of order, the history display of messages of both incoming and outgoing is not the same as the receivers. I've had friends send me screenshots and our messages do not match.

I doubt it is the carrier as I've had this issue with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. I've restarted my phone, restarted wifi (over multiple phones and multiple places), and other online attempts. My friends' phones (iphones and non-samsung) appear to work fine.

Once I connect to normal cell reception data, the messages are nearly instantly completed.

Monday, September 13, 2021

Thought Experiment: Why more good than evil, good over evil, good triumphs evil

The age-old question of whether we are born good, evil, or neutral is one that we ask ourselves some time in our lives as we attempt to figure out who we are and understand others. Depending on what recently occurred, I have swung through each of the options in the past.

For a long while, I have believed that the question is not really a valid question because it was too muddled by what each term meant. Somethings are good to some, evil to others, and lastly the rest do not care at all. But because of all the superhero movies that have been coming out for the last decade, this has gotten me to thinking why does "good" triumph over "evil".

And in my limited reality, I feel that people are good. There is a lot evil events in the world, but when compared to the mass of the people, it really is the smaller percentage. But even then, I think people want to be good so there are even fewer people who are evil to be evil.

I think this is evolutionary because it is easier to survive by being good even though sometimes we believe that good people finish last, but rather good people stay alive whether it is physical, financial, or social. It is easier to be good because we do not have to put as much effort in being helpful to others than being evil.

To be evil takes a lot of energy and time. On the basic level of just pure evil, people seamlessly group together to fight a common enemy. This leaves the evil people who need to fit in with the good people.

These people then need to understand two worlds, one is the lie that they live and the other is hiding their true intent. This also scales down to smaller evil deeds like corruption, self-promotion, or even white-lies.

Even just braving a smile but dislike the person underneath takes more energy than just ignoring the person. If we could tell the difference, we would prefer to be with the person who is more forgiving.

I believe that simply by having good intent is natural because it is fundamental to our ability to survive because we do not waste as much energy as evil people. This would also explain why many of the unsuspecting evil people are highly intelligent. I get tired just remembering who doesn't like to hang out or work with other people. Many times, I believe that I only seem intelligent because I do not waste a lot of time with rumors where I tried to keep up but I became physically drained. I really do feel dumber as I figure things out because it always seem others seem to pick up on social cues and little tidbits so much easier than I do.

So although I have had some evil thoughts, I am probably too stupid to be any good at it. Unfortunately, this does not cover where my good intentions may clash with someone else's good intention. For example, the US presidential election nominee selections.

Well, it kind of does but not as cleanly defined as the prior examples. Although I believe people are well-intentioned, this area points out how lazy we can be. If we believe someone else will do something or if we do not understand which option is correct, we do nothing. On the extreme end, we have the capacity to become silent witnesses where we do not call the police even though a major crime occurred in a somewhat public area believing that someone else would have called it in. On a lesser end, we do not report misbehavior especially in a work-place because we are afraid of our social status of being a tattle-tale.

So the majority of people agree on good-intentions when life and death is the ultimate result, but when it comes to evil activities that are not life and death then our good-intentions become fuzzy even when we know what is right and wrong. If we add in evil activities where people believe they won't be caught or punished, this becomes even more dicey (like speeding when driving).

Then what is good people? Those who have more good-intentions than evil ones? Those who only have good intentions? Ultimately, I think the general population are misguided well-intentioned people. Our conflict is primarily on short-term gains versus long-term gains. Basically, when is good-enough, enough?

Friday, September 10, 2021

My Thoughts: Who Should Give Salary Range in Interview? IMO Companies

Yes, I am very biased as I have only been an employee. And I want to believe that even if I were a manager, providing the salary would be in my best interest too. But until that day happens, my thoughts will always be biased.

First, there is only one reason for a company to request the interviewer's salary range. Purely a power trip to see how much fear someone has in not getting the opportunity. Sure there are plenty of blogs and articles about psychological analysis for one's ego.

Because if the ask is greater than their budget, they can cut all ties even if the candidate could potentially provide greater value than they expected. To me, that means they are not looking for the best candidate.

If the ask is within their range, then they can kind of expect a somewhat amicable interview process.

If the ask is lower than their range, this is the same as within range but now they have the option to offer less. And there are plenty of blogs and articles that suggest that this is not in the interest of the employer. Also there are comments and feedback that candidates were offered more than they expected.

Personally, I have never had an employer give me more than I expected. In most of companies, I have also learned that I was paid much less than my peers even though I did the same work if not better (yes, I know this sounds very biased... perhaps I should write a blog on why I think I was not only better but preferred).

Among all the people I have worked with, I have never heard of anyone within my circle that was offered more than they asked. I don't quite ask, but talking about salary does come up every so often typically around review season. But this is more implicitly implied since I do not ask explicitly.

Back to the point

The main reason I do not believe I should ever share my expectations is that I want to get paid for the work that I will be doing. If they are asking me to work 20 hours per day, I don't mind being paid half the normal salary. If I only have to do half the work of my peers, then I don't mind being paid half their salary.

So until I know how much work I will be doing, why would I give what my expectations are? If I give my real expectations and it greater than the offer, I will never know if they are offering easier work which I may consider.


My other point

What is the big deal with companies not providing the salary range?

Some say they want to save time in case the range is too far apart. If I can see the range, then I can save you the trouble and skip over your job post. I would save you the trouble to even calling me to ask my salary expectations.

They may miss out on some good candidates. Yea, and then you would not be able to afford them and wasted all that time anyways.

Salary expectations do not match all industries and all geographical areas. Why force the candidate to give a static number that means only something in one place and time and industry? Let me decide whether it is worth my time to do that line of work.

If you don't get enough candidates then offer more. If you get too many candidates then lower the offer. 

My conclusion

So I believe a fair negotiation between company and candidate is far greater than the ability to pay less or even the perception of paying less. Even if you were a fair company, I will never know. It will always be over my should that I could have been more aggressive.

The company has the power to replace you. I have no power to change the amount of work I will get after I get hired (except for quitting). 

I think the HR industry has a great potential to be so much better. I think there are still many opportunities for new companies to enter the market purely by hiring the right people. I also believe there are plenty of people who are willing to build a career just to be at a fair and just company for a lower wage. But because we are asked first, the general candidates fear to be paid too low which thus causes us all to fear those who fear. 

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Scammish: Job boards and Company Online Jobs Listings (based on my personal experience and thoughts)

To be fully honest, I am not a fan of the current HR (Human Resource) industry/practice today.

I have used glassdoor, indeed, monster, linkedin, and a couple others in the past. And my experience is that I rarely ever get any response from any online applications (including directly on the company websites). All my work opportunities (nine different employments, eleven if you count contract to hire) have come through a physical person whether that is a friend, acquaintance, or even a recruiter.

Yet when I interview through traditional means, my success rates to get offers are extremely high, nearly 100%. And usually with a day or two of my interview (which makes me think my salary request is on the low end, and never has a company offered more than my ask). So this makes me think there are a couple things I am doing incorrectly with online applications.

The easier and within my control is not using the proper keywords or catchphrases that will get me past the automatic filtering system. I have so many variants of my resume. I tailor my resume to the job positions. So I like to think that I should have been accidentally correct at some point.

The other reason is a bit scammish. I have seen a few of these practices myself.

The simplest one is that some companies are require to post positions publicly even though they already have someone in mind. This typically is with larger corporations and most definitely for contract-to-hire positions. As mentioned above, I have had a couple of these. This transition took time, and part of the reason is that HR has to post the job publicly and it needs to be up for a certain period of time. They will field the minimum candidates with the minimum amount of work. I may have been focused on my work, and I am not one to keep an eye out for what my managers do, but I am pretty sure they did not interview anyone. Eventually, I get transitioned to full-time employee status. Therefore, people saw the post, applied, and most likely never heard back.

Technically, this is not the job boards fault but it kind of is if they scrape these positions from the company websites which most of them do.

A more scammish practice is companies that are not real. They just post jobs to just collect data. I have worked for a marketing group, and there is a lot of bartering for personal information (especially behind the scenes). One of the biggest values to data is how much of their data is legit data. Job applicants on job boards are one of the best and easiest sources of data to be collected. I use a separate email and phone for my job search. After applying to certain unknown companies, I get sudden spikes of spam. Sometimes all it takes is just to publish your resume on the board which I typically get smaller spikes and more sporadic.

A similar practice but more borderline scammish is corporations doing similar practice but only to populate their HR system of records. Because they purchase bulk amounts of job postings, companies that have remaining posts will just use them to post non-existent positions. This has all sorts of implications. The simplest is just to have a queue of available candidates. Second, they can see how desperate the candidates are which can be used to set their expectations on how much they pay their current employees. Last, they can also use that on low-balling other or future candidates.

Suspiciously, even the job boards ads and site metrics seem to avoid how effective they really are. Many states number of users but they don't state how successful they are. Maybe it is also due to users abusing the system too. But if they claim number of users then they must take responsibility that number is somewhat accurate, thus they should have the ability to give some estimate on how successful users are. Otherwise, they should not market how many users they have.


References
https://zerista.s3.amazonaws.com/item_files/ab2f/attachments/458970/original/source_of_hire_2018_pdf.pdf

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Interview: Job Entails More than One Role

Release management is quite time consuming, similar to project management. So I find it odd when companies feel that they need to create a role that is really two or three roles. I can understand if they were much smaller in size, but they shouldn't be expecting people to have all the experiences they are looking for. Sure, I can fake it to land the job but I am still a loser that the company cares that I be more honest but will choose the guy who was most likely faking it.

I actually had an interview with a company that was hiring a release manager but expected that person to also code, deploy, and handle change management. I made the mistake of saying that is a lot of work for a single person (I also confirmed that this is a single person role, and not a team of people sharing all the responsibilities). Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the role is also a management position that will have future direct reports in a year or two (which really means 2+ years), so they are also looking for someone with direct report experience.

In the corporate world (I worked for two fortune 10 companies), each with the responsibilities they listed are handled by multiple individuals at full-time capacity. There are people who does change management full-time and coding full-time and plenty of managers who do not do any of that level of work. Deploying is something some developers have to do if there are not enough resources, and none of them enjoy doing that. Plus, a lot of release management is also during off-business hours.

So, I was honest and explained that it was a lot of work for a single person, and that it would be difficult to find someone that really wants to do all that much less someone who has the experience of each one. Of all the release managers I have met, I think only one colleague and myself had development backgrounds. I have had no RM managers with development background, nor worked with one. We also had to work with a team of change management people.

I think I wasn't selected because I had no direct report experience even though I gave them some of my leadership roles. The reason is that seemed to be the low-energy part of the interview. The interview was at least able to fake excitement over my other skill sets.

The other day, I saw the role was re-posted again on the job boards so I guess they haven't found a person yet. A year and a half later, the position is still available.


Saturday, September 4, 2021

Work Life: (Exempt) My Personal Advice to Avoid These Steps on Your Yearly/Periodic Review or Interview or Status Update or Self-Evaluations

I have been working professionally for 15+ years, and I have coached quite a few colleagues and friends what I have learned the hard-way. Many who struggled with promotions or raises have found success with my suggestions.

For this article, I'm going to use a scale of 1-5. 5: Beyond expectation; 4: Meeting expectation; 3: Sometimes expectation; 2: Well below expectation, possible suspension; 1: Likely to get fired soon. Some companies have more points; some put different names to them; some also in reverse order. In my personal opinion, they all basically boil down to this type of model based on the results of my reviews.

This is also primarily for paying jobs where the work is not very well defined (exempt, no overtime pay) versus most hourly jobs (non-exempt). My experience is also wholly in the white-collared world. This may also work for blue-collared work too.

Give Yourself Full Score if You Do Not Know Your Benchmark

If you do not know your benchmark for scoring, give yourself the full score even if you believe that you deserve a 3 or even a 2. Force your employer to explain to you why you do not deserve a 5. 

The only exception to this is if your employer already gives you feedback on a regular basis. In that case, make sure that you fully understand what is being asked. You should make sure that you do understand when you receive those feedbacks. But if it is too late to fill in your self-eval, then put in a higher score. Don't put it too high as you may appear that you didn't get anything out of your regular reviews.

I have also never experienced nor heard anyone experience any negative effects of giving themselves a 5 even if it is obviously not a 5 work. Still use some judgment on whether your manager is the type to take offense. My work has always been 4-5. I do get some 3s but they are primarily for skills I do not have the opportunity to do. The most common one is improving company core values. Which I believe they default for everyone. But I still give myself a 5 just to hear my manager tell me that it is basically defaulted to 3 for everyone. This is when you learn this is whole exercise is quite pointless. But since it is required, I suggest everyone to make use of this to get as much information as they can from it.

Do not mistake that the score is for you to guess what you think the company thinks of you. This is what you think of yourself. If you believe you meeting expectation, then give yourself that score.

The main reason for this is because most managers also have no clue. Your problem is if you give yourself a 3 and a non-deserving person gives himself a 4, then you lose out. The manager won't even look or reconsider. You are automatically filtered out. HR has even less clue. Most do not even know your name.

Last is that it may even be potential that your work is a 5 but you don't know it! Maybe you thought all that training was normal, but you don't know that you produced the best candidates. Another scenario is that your group outperforms another group. You may be average in your group but still outperform another group top performer. As mentioned earlier, let the company tell you why you don't deserve it because they will happily let you keep your 4 even if they believe you deserve a 5 or even a 5+ because 4 is cheaper for them. 

Keep Track of Your Own Activities

Keep track of as many activities as you can do without impacting your work, because you are bound to forget them by review time. By activities, I do not mean just big projects. I mean meetings you hosted, important meetings you attended, any exceptions to your normal role, people who trained (or partially trained) even if it was only 30 minutes, documentations created. Many people I have coached assume these are small tasks so they do not record these information.

The problem is that some of these small things amount to big things. The difficulty of tracking these is that it is too late by the time it becomes a big thing. For example, I had to do a presentation on our internal processes. Managers loved it and had me present more. My roles have been development or process management, and no one else in my role or level presented. So by the time I had my review, I can only said that I spent significant amount of time training. Which they down-played because what is "significant"? When I started tracking numbers, this became much easier to present and leverage myself to my needs.

Ultimately, you are trying to justify your time. There is approximately 2000 (50 weeks of 40 hours) hours of full-time work in a year.

Also see Give Managers Ammunition.

Give Managers Ammunition

Most managers have absolutely no idea about your quality of work. A decent one will at least vaguely know if you are better than someone else. If you think it is difficult to give yourself a number score, imagine having to give a number score to someone else?

So help your manager fight for you. This is where your self-evaluation and your list comes in handy.

In reality, most managers don't know what to do. So it makes it easier for your manager to stand out if you give him some information that helps him leverage for you.

Start with not lowering your score. If you give yourself a 4 but in reality you are a 5, it is an uphill battle for your manager to explain why you should be a 5 when you gave yourself a 4. The manager also plays a similar game with their managers. Not all managers know where they stand among their peers either so you may be shafted for having a 4 in an outstanding team versus a 5 in an underperforming team. At least with 5's, the discussion can be had.

When that discussion can be had, it is typically pretty easy for managers to impress too with data. For example, 2000 promotions may be normal for me but that sounds impressive to upper management. Especially if a peer group does not provide any numbers at all. 2000 can be a crappy number in reality, but the perception is that my manager appears more prepared. The more data, the harder it is for a competing manager to leverage the benefits. Number of resolved tickets, requests, time-to-completion.

As I have repeated a couple times, this can only be done if that information is provided.

Not Everything Needs to be Monetary Compensation

With large corporations there are limits to a raise, the timing may not be correct. With small companies, they may not have the funds. Or your manager may be weak in fighting for your values.

Negotiate training time, bigger budget (or get a budget) to purchase work related products or software, promotion in name only (even just a jr to sr, or level 1 to level 2; make up a new position if one doesn't exist... this is free to the company), etc.

These are investments that you can use in the future when money becomes more available (whether that money comes from your current employer or future employer). If current employer does not honor your value, then other companies can at least justify the higher salary.

Don't Work Overtime Except for Exceptional Reasons

At least start reducing your overtime hours. You will never be able to reduce your hours until you decide to. Do not wait until you have a new member in your team.

Why? The reason is quite simpler than you think. No one tracks the hours of salaried employees. Most managers barely know the hours. Even if they do, most likely they are also working overtime. Because no one knows, upper management only compares your work to the calendar.

So let us say that you did 100 tickets over 80 hour work week. Because upper management don't know the hours, to them that is 100 tickets per week. If they hire a new person and assume that person is your clone, if you both work 40 hours, you still get 100 tickets completed. To upper management, they do not understand because now you are completing the same amount of work for the double the cost.

Along similar reasoning, if you were given a raise for working 80 hours and you are now working 40 hours, then upper management cannot justify your salary. So it is important that salary is in-line with your base hours otherwise it will be very difficult to ever return to normal hours.

If you are already doing extreme overtime, the path of least resistance is to slowly reduce your hours and let things fail. This requires you to set the proper expectations and "upset" some people.

Business is not perfect so some overtime is acceptable if it is seen as an exception. Once that overtime becomes a household name, then things get more complicated. Even reducing salary is more complicated than you'd think.

Overall, personally, I think it is good for both company and employees that expectations are set properly for the long-term. This is a difficult track because most managers do not know how to overlook short-term gains over long-term gains but it kind of starts with a person. "It's all business" will dictate that if someone is willing to put themselves in position to do more work for same or less pay, they will continue to exploit it.

This was a long round-about way of saying to avoid using overtime as a reason to get a promotion or a raise. Use overtime to get a bonus or other one-time benefits so that it is not tied to your base work. Once it is tied to your base pay then you will have a difficult time separating the two if you ever wish to work normal hours again.

Exception is if you plan to continue to work overtime for the remainder of your tenure of that job. I specifically use job and not employer is because one of the easier methods to get out of the downward spiral is to apply for a new role. The farther the role is from the original, the easier to start over.

Friday, September 3, 2021

Autism Spectrum vs me

I surely do relate to some of the key items of the low-end of the autism spectrum especially when I look back into my past.

I am told that I didn't start speaking till I was four. I do not make eye contact. There are stories that I did not look up at the teacher till second grade. Supposedly, it was such a big moment the first time that I did. The teacher personally stopped by our home to report the "happy" news. I was always very quiet till 15-16.

I probably don't have it, but reading some of the articles help me understand myself in a way where others fail to satisfy my questions. I believe I do a very good job of masking normal behavior.

I believe the biggest factor to my drive to understand to be normal is my insatiable need to understand the world. I ask a lot of questions to that point where people would put their hands up and walk away. Even if I agree with their point of view, I will play devil's advocate to better understand. So this is my drive to go against some of my natural tendencies.

I still struggle with some things like eye contact. When I really get into a conversation, I stop looking... at anything. I couldn't tell the person's facial expression, other conversations, time, place, etc. I get so hyper-focused that I do not sense anything else. Nowadays, I have to conscientiously remember to look at the face. I will naturally look at the mouth at best, but usually will just stare into space. I am really not sure where I am looking at once I am engrossed in a conversation.

The more background noise, the less I am able to understand people. I am terrible when there is noise. Not that it bothers me, but I cannot "hear" what people are saying. Sometimes I wonder if I am deaf but I hear sounds. And I can hear very minute sounds that others cannot hear. But when there any sort of sound, my ability to hear what people are saying drops exponentially while others can hear perfectly fine. I have had little to explain this phenomenon, but the article by Burgess has the best example thus far. On her "spectrum", there is a category for sensory filter. I believe this is where I am rather weak on.

I also struggle with expressing what I feel. I think the problem for me is that I really do not feel anything, especially things to an extreme. I do not really hate, nor do I really love. Things just is. People's fascination with art and music is lost on me. I still go to museums, and I just fail to see what other's see. There is no particular music that I love, none that I hate. I am unable to really mean it when I say that I totally love this song, music, artist, etc. I like the beat, the rhythm, the lyrics, but I approach it more analytically. For me, it is amazing how well they can maintain a beat, how they can change the beat but keep the sound coherent or lyrics that uses limited words that rhyme yet still send a message. Although I do not have extremes, I do have preferences but the reasons seem to still be consistent. If the lyrics is repeated too often (bores me) or distracts me from whatever I am focusing on, then I do dislike the song. But I have not heard anything where I would want to ever consider ripping my ears off. I don't even plug my ears or even change the radio station.

To me bad music is like food that has a bad after-taste. There are food that tastes good and there is food that does not taste good. And that pretty much is the summary of my taste palate. There is very few foods that I dislike. Even fewer where I refuse to eat. But there is nothing I wouldn't try for free, and I would hate to waste money by paying an exorbitant amount of money for something that tastes good. Yes, it tastes better but is it worth paying 2x to 5x the food and labor? I am perfectly fine with eating unsalted boiled chicken. It does not taste great, but not worth $10 for an alternative.

I still consider myself a loner. Ironically, I was told that I was like a social butterfly at the office. This is due to the fact that I go around and talk to people (about work or their social problems). But for me, this activity is extremely exhausting. But I "force" myself because I want to understand. And I learned that people do not share as much information when I do not share some information.

I do get frustrated. This is usually when I am unable to understand more about the situation. But I think the blame really goes to people who do not make very coherent logical steps. Uusually there is still some reason they do things that are more self-centered, for their big ego, etc. I just do not understand why they think that way. I get most frustrated with people who have no interest in self-improvement except to manipulate others for their own life improvements.

From what I have analyzed about people, I find that I have a very different approach to the world. And my biggest worry about this thought is that everyone seem to feel that they are different (like how everyone thinks they are right or good). So how do I actually gauge how different I am?

http://themighty.com/2016/05/rebecca-burgess-comic-redesigns-the-autism-spectrum/

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Notes: MariaDb setup




MariaDb Setup

/etc/mysql/maria.conf.d/50-server.cnf

comment out:

bind-address = 127.0.0.1



Check Configurations

On db server, open shell (mysql -u root -p)

Run query, SELECT User, Host FROM mysql.user



Google Cloud Setup


VPC Network
Firewall Rules

Direction: Ingress
Source Filters: IP Address of device accessing db server
Applicable to instances: permission to users

Work Life: Another way to rename a file is to move it

Sometimes I do not learn my own lessons very well and having to re-invent the wheel each time. The latest example is for renaming SSRS reports. There is no option to rename, so I have just been deleting and uploading with the new file name. I knew this couldn't be the answer, so I kept searching because my initial searches didn't come up with the answer. Eventually finding out that I just had to move the file to the same location with a new name which to my embarrassment, I have also used. It just never clicked.

A palm to forehead moment would occur a few seconds later where I have used this solution elsewhere in my past. I cannot recall at the moment but I definitely had to do this before. Then it just evolves to just shaking my head.


Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Buggish: Microsoft Teams Web Excel slow performance at 7500 records

I use Microsoft Teams Web Excel. There is an obvious performance issue at 7500+ records with about 15 columns that are mostly populated.

This spreadsheet is an audit history of objects that I have promoted since last year. The largest column is the object path which typically would be file paths as they would include server and folder paths. The other columns are simple strings at most 50 characters or date-time fields.

The biggest problem is the copy/paste. I will oftentimes get the error:

Retrieving data. Wait a few seconds and try to cut or copy again.

Before, waiting will sometimes work but now waiting does not seem to work at all. I do not know if waiting will ever work but I've tried pasting a few hours later and I will still get this message.

Copy/pasting rows now take time. Inserting new rows take time. If I keep my browser open overnight, sometimes it takes a minute or two just for the page to allow me to click on something.

Do I know specifically that this is due to the number of records? No. I am only assuming because it seems to be a trend I see with Microsoft products. Also there is weak correlations between the number of records and frequency of issues or length of delay.

Rebooting sometimes helped before. Now, most little tricks to improve performance no longer work.


Update (2021-09-02)

I split some old data to another sheet, and the performance almost seems immediately better. I moved about 2500 records out of the primary sheet. With around 5200 records, performance still has intermittent issues but much less frequent and faster but still noticeable.

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? Second night experiment

I have been terrible with my water consumption since my last attempt about a month ago, and I haven't been sleeping through the night. Fortunately, I do not stay up (for the most part) and can fall asleep after I move to the couch. I'm not sure why changing my sleeping place helps with my sleep.

Yesterday while cleaning my place, I drank more water and again I was able to sleep without any interruption. Odd part is that I actually feel more tired than usually when waking up. The energy catches up soon though and now I feel I have more energy than usual.

So unsure if water is my problem, but seems suspiciously correlated. It may also have to do with the cleaning and possibly racing the neighbor's kids. I am so out of shape that the little "jog" may have been a workout for my body.


Reference

Monday, August 16, 2021

Work Life: I hate IT people who cannot figure things out (vent)

I have spent countless hours of my life showing "IT" people how to do things, especially things that my role is not even supposed to do. 

Currently as a release manager, I also manage:
  1. Entire department wiki (including managing user access)
  2. Troubleshoot defects
  3. "IT" people's IT support desk
  4. Onboarding IT access
  5. Explain, re-explain, re-re-explain processes that are not even related to me
  6. Gatekeeper for managers

#3 is the worst of the worst. At this point of my career, I hate supporting this the most. Why are we hiring IT personnel that cannot figure things out? I do not even mean learning cutting edge technology or tools. I am referring to just getting access to a network folder. In most corporations, this is done through a ticketing system.

The worst culprits of these people are boomers or older. Is it that hard to go to the ticketing system that everyone already uses and looking through the options? It is not my tool. I figured it out. So, just open the page and just skim through the text. Our ticketing system only has 7 options, the third option is called Request Access. One of the saddest parts is that I already walked them through it in the past. It is only three steps. The third step is basically an open form where the user has to ask the question that they just asked me: "please give me access to blah blah blah."

And then..... the worst of the worst culprits are when they are managers who request the exact same thing 10+ times. These are not even my managers. So now not only do I have to ask why are we hiring these people, but also how did we promote these people?!?!

I do these at first because I am only a jerk in the inside. But I also slowly include the steps to do their requests. Each time they ask after that, the turnaround becomes larger and larger... sometimes to the point where I literally sit there staring at the email thinking how it would have been faster for me to do it than just sitting here but then they'll never learn eventually just not doing it for another X days where X is the number of times they have requested the exact same thing.

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Buggish: Microsoft SQL SP Rename for SMO TextHeader and ScriptHeader

 Background: I use SMO to promote objects from one database to another.

Issue: I get error "The name specified in the TextHeader property of StoredProcedure 'StoredProcedureName' must match Name property."

Cause: The one cause I found related to this is when a developer renames the stored procedure. I am assuming they use the sp_rename function. For some reason, this proc does not update the TextHeader or the ScriptHeader. When pulling these properties, these still reference the old name. In my old post, this was a speculation. The reason I found this was because this specific promotion includes renaming an existing stored procedure. In the past, my best guess is that they renamed during development so never needed to submit a rename change in higher environments.

Workaround: My fix is to use SSMS to get the alter stored procedure and execute as is. This unfortunately updates the updated date, but better than being stuck.

Fix request: When renaming object, make sure to update other properties that references the old name like TextHeader and ScriptHeader. 


Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2020/09/buggish-c-smo-error-name-specified-in.html

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Buggish: The full path must be less than 260 characters long; other restrictions apply. If the report server is in native mode, the path must start with slash.

One of those moments where I just want to pull my hair out. I had this working last night, and suddenly stopped working. I just spent the last several hours troubleshooting the error: tried different configurations, parameters, figure out how to use Fiddler, several google searches, etc.

The problem/answer was basically that I was using the wrong slashes. The path should be using forward slashes '/' not back slashes '\' and without rdl.

\Folder1\ReportName

Psychology

To give myself the tiniest of credit, I initially solved this while rushing to pick up my daughter. It's a lame excuse but I think it important to why I didn't remember what I did. It worked and I left figuring I could return to see my work.

I think I left my project running and stopped the debugging, so I didn't see what values I ended putting in. This probably wouldn't have helped because I probably wouldn't have looked at the direction of the slash. I figured I had it in the code because I got tired of entering the data so I hard-coded the initial value.

I assumed that was correct and maybe I just put in the wrong path. I tried several paths like http://SsrsServer/ReportServer, http://SsrsServer/Reports/, http://Ssrs/Reports/browse, /folder1/reportName, /folder1/reportName.rdl, and also sorts of permutations of paths and file names.

I do not know why I didn't even check the slashes as that should have been one of the first things to check. To make it worse, I do not know why I even thought of it so suddenly. After this entire ordeal, I recall how I figured it out in the first place was because I used the http path then removed the beginning part. Because it used forward slashes, this fixed my problem.

Sometimes I really find how amazing my brain is at forgetting things.

Monday, August 9, 2021

Workaround: Infrastructure messed up DNS hostname and I can no longer access a server but server is up

I have a custom tool that uses server name to access server as that is the highly recommended method to access servers. Suddenly I no longer can access a server. I can no longer remote desktop or ping. Ping is not just a timeout but does not even resolve the name. I really, really, really wanted to avoid having to modify my configurations for a temporary change of a hostname to ip address.

One major reason that I want to avoid this is because Windows is extremely finicky about what users is logged into the server. I have to use a special admin account to login not the default one that I use to log into Windows (which also translates to the default IIS user that the web tool uses). Resetting this password to set a new password is still unclear and very messy. The cleanest method that has worked consistent is just to reboot the entire server which runs other web applications.

Anyways, I recall during a cloud custover where we used the host file to resolve names that have not been set up yet. I used to use this for web hostnames. I thought it was worth a shot and found that it also works for network folders.

The file for Windows 10 is located at (default) C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. You may need to run the text editor as administrator for this to save. Anyways, this saved me a lot of time and the hassle to revert it back once infrastructure team fixes the issue.

There should be a cleanup to remove the entry in the host file. I am likely to forget this as I probably will soon to forget to follow up with infrastructure team on my ticket.

Friday, August 6, 2021

Buggish: Windows calculating time stuck at zero to copy/unzip with windows explorer

Today I've had it. I tried to unzip a file from my local drive to a sub-folder in the same folder and the Windows download window pops up with its calculating. The zip file has around 20 files with each no more than a few kilobytes.

The popup just stayed at 0% for at least 15 minutes with the animation still running like it is thinking. I read a post that it should still be doing the activity while it is calculating but this is definitely not happening on a Windows 10 as I only see a single file in the sub-folder. After I cancel, all I see is that one file.

I do not know why this happens. This is not the first time. I have this issue with copying files from folder to folder. It is also kind of random with a small number of files, maybe under 10 files. Usually it will eventually copy/unzip/move. But the calculate time takes way, way, way longer than the actual action so what is the point of calculating the time?

I downloaded 7-zip and unzipped the files then canceled the windows unzip which was still calculating. So I waited 15 minutes, download another app, did the same activity that I originally requested, and checked the files before the calculate even reached 1%.

If it is something holding it up, it should either fail quickly or at least explain why it is taking forever.

Friday, July 30, 2021

Interview: How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet? (Take 2)

How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet?

Gather Answers to Follow-up Questions

Why am directing someone?

  • Instructional?
  • To cook me breakfast?
  • For himself? How many tries? How many eggs? Are there eggs?

Who is "someone"?

  • Experience
  • Age
  • Language
  • Customs
  • Culture
How? Where?
  • In-person? Virtual? Text? Amazon how-to? SMS?
  • Language?
  • High elevation?
  • Stove? Campfire? Barbecue?

Goal?

If I get this question in my next interview, I feel like my goal is to keep asking questions and hope to not answer the question. I think it would be entertaining to see how far I can push without actually answering the question which then go back to the first post with modifications to the additional information.

Reference

Take 1: https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/01/interview-how-would-you-direct-someone.html

Monday, July 26, 2021

Work Life: Why do I seem like an enemy when providing fyi? (no answer)

Scenario

A colleague (Bob) who does not report to me became extremely defensive. I suspected that the topic I wanted to share would could be misinterpreted so I had prefaced my call that this is purely informational. I explained that I am not blaming him or blaming anyone. Yet, he really took offense and told me that the process was broken and he will continue to do as he sees fit.

I do know one of the problems was that I am sharing this information because of an issue that came up which was not directly him fault. There is some fault because he made the change directly in production and due to unforeseeable issue, the db team had to restore him db object with one from another environment. Essentially, him change was overwritten. To make matters worse was that he was just on vacation. Him manager had to contact me to get a backup because I audit the promotions. I did not know the origin, and I told him that there has never been a request for that object so I do not have backup. DB did not have a backup because the issue was that it was corrupted... also the DB team did not want to restore an entire enterprise core database just for a single object.

Initially, I called him to let him know what happened since he was not here at the time. The DB team is also implementing processes to audit and log user access which was very loose before. I shared this information, the he started to explain why he had to do what he did. I listened to what he said then I explained that I am not saying that he did anything wrong in the past. Everyone understands people did what they had to before. To address him concern about process, I just shared that we have a process to promote changes. He retorts that the process is too slow so he has to make the changes in production to appease the business. I tried to explain that is not him problem. He continues to reiterate then added that someone needs to define a process (I interpreted that as he is not taking that from me). After a while he continued to repeat herself, and I tried to interrupt because he was addressing poor process. I wanted to share that he will get into policy issues if he continues and that he should take proactive actions. He would not listen and said so directly with "I will not escalate anything" which to me was ironic because he is personally escalating him fixes. So eventually I just let him finish, doesn't ask me any questions,  basically gives me an empty thanks, and hung up on me. 

Since he will not stop doing what he does, I called his manager (Joe). I did not share most of the details from my last conversation. I did tell him that Bob is under the impression that he has to make changes in production to fix the issues. I asked Joe to speak with Bob that he does not need to be concerned with escalating the fix. Bob's focus is to come up with a solution. If my process is too slow for the customer, then that is between the customer, me, and the executive management because my process is dictated from them. My process is typically slow because it requires their approvals. Joe was already on board with my process, probably unaware that Bob did this, and exemplified by these recent issue that he had to support during Bob's absence. I also told him that I am not looking for anyone to get in trouble. I am just trying to keep them from getting in trouble. Joe agrees and will speak with Bob. 

My Thoughts on Above Scenario

First, I felt bad that he thought I was attacking him. Second, I felt a little angry because I am trying to help him by sharing some changes maybe he was not aware of. If anything, he can just ignore my advice and continue as he had before. Third, I felt guilty for being angry.

Then my thoughts turned to an article I read recently about why geniuses have "poor" social skills. I remember my reaction was that geniuses are not the only ones with poor social skills. Every level of intelligence have examples of poor social skills. Back to the topic, one of the comments was that geniuses just don't want to deal with low iq conversations.

Initially I thought that made some sense because the topic is not important to them. Either because they know the answer already (fastest route from A to B) or the topic is inconsequential to their beliefs or values (why did A cheat on B on a scripted show). But after this transaction, I am starting to think the main reasons is that it is just a waste of time.

Either they have to figure it out on their own or they will never understand it. Adding myself to the variable made no difference to the outcome, so why add myself to the problem. So, why do I even bother? I want to see them do well but they do not listen. Even if they listen, they do not do because either they didn't understand or they do not understand the consequence. So if anything, I seem to have made matters worse.

I don't know. I really do feel that I waste more of most people's time. There have definitely been some that it helps. But honestly, it is just tiring to think if I am being more helpful than hurtful.

My Thoughts in General

Then I started thinking of others that have became angry, pissed, upset, or defensive when I was just trying to give some information small or large. In my personal life, I am very sarcastic so I can see some personal relations strained because it seems that I am not very good at explaining what sarcasm is.

So is it maybe me that is the problem? If I could redo my conversation with Bob, what could I have done better? If I didn't have the conversation, then at least Bob wouldn't have gotten unhappy.

I really cannot think of anything to change. Give more apologies? Give more prefaces? The only thing I can think of is to not have brought it up... but then I wouldn't have learned that he was pressured to deliver a fix (as much as I tried to relay that it was not his role to escalate or to resolve the issue).

Another thing that I have trouble explaining to people is that I very rarely get frustrated at people, but I do get frustrated with inefficiencies. For example, people who leave trash near the trash can. Is it really that hard to push it a couple more inches into the trash can? I have to schedule time every week just to clean the pile of trash into the trash, then they complain why I have no time. I explain if they just put in the last 1% effort after they already did 99% of the effort (ie trash, laundry, cling cabinets, turning off the light, locking door, care for things only they care about like garden, plants, etc), they could save me a lot of time. Somehow that conversation always ends up with everyone being upset even though I was only sharing that if they did their part, they would save "me" a lot of time... mind you, I do not bring up this conversation nor have I complained that I do this for them.

I am starting to think transparency is such a farce. Unless people start to be more self-aware, all these things is such a waste of my time. Sometimes I feel like a complete idiot whenever I try. Am I losing hope in people?

Friday, July 16, 2021

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? First night experiment

Lately, I have been waking up in the middle of the night. I also think I have restless leg syndrome at night. I usually go lie on the couch, and somehow that helps me go back to sleep. 

I know I do not drink enough water through out the day, and yesterday was the first time that I reached 5 cups (normal drinking cup not the unit of measure). I cannot remember the last time I even had more than one cup of water. I do drink some milk which I guess could count as some water.

Yesterday randomly, I started drinking more water. I brought the water pitcher to my work desk which reminded me to drink more water. I was wondering why I felt like I had more energy today, and realized that I slept the entire night... it was actually kind of odd to wake up on the bed.

Maybe coincidence, so will continue to test this out. Although I already missed drinking water this morning. I was going to post after a few more tries but given my track record... I may forget to do this after day three and I wanted a record to show when I last tried it.

...

kind of like all my attempts to start exercising...

...

sigh

...



Sequel (Edited 2021-08-17)

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/08/life-do-i-need-more-water-to-sleep-well.html

Thursday, July 15, 2021

Work Life: Attentive to detail? Detail-oriented? Why do people who claim this seem to be the worst at it?

Although this one instance today triggered this post, the main reason I post this is because I just have flashbacks to all the other individuals who also claim to be very detail-oriented.

I have worked with some extraordinarily detail-oriented people. I worked under a CEO of a company of over 500 individuals. I met him once. He remembered my name and some random information about what we spoke about over 15 months prior. Others may not have been as good but they were still impressive. And if there was one thing in common for all of them... none of them have ever said that they were detail-oriented.

If anything... perhaps I am biased to the data... I find everyone who has ever told me that they were detail-oriented especially after I tell them to correct a minor detail are the worst detail-oriented people. Always something on the line of "so sorry, I don't usually make these mistakes. I pride myself on being attentive to details.", "please let me know because I am very detail-oriented", or some other BS. They are not even average.

There was one guy that was so terrible that I nearly told my manager that I could no longer work with him because it was taking me longer to edit his work than to do it myself. I was really about to, but his work was so bad that even upper management said enough was enough. This was a lot because I've seen them accept pretty bad works before.

And today's example was a developer who talks a mile-a-minute to cover his inability to stay focused. He "prides" himself on his detail-oriented work. Yet every request has some pretty big blunders like misspelled object names, wrong server, wrong types. What really threw me for a loop was that he misspelled a name twice. One was an obvious catch like "label" vs "lable" but the other was OB210. OB is for outbound, so obviously that should be the letter O, but instead it was a number 0. It took me a little bit of time, and I actually tested that... it took me another hour or two because the "misspelling" of label was the actual spelling.

Yes there is human errors but this guy is up there. Developers have to provide me a list of their changes. Because he appears awesome, he gets a lot of new projects so many of his objects do not exist yet he will provide me a list of stored procedures like... spName, sp_Name, NameWithoutSp, NameWithSpAtEnd_SP, SPName, SpName, [spName], dbo.[spName]. It is just pure crazy how inconsistent this guy is. I can understand other developers do a little of this because the name was already that way but this guy gets to create his own names.

Third example, he created a bunch of destination folders. They have the same structure CustomerName_Type_CarrierName_something. A list of maybe 10 of them, then there is one folder that keeps failing because it is called CustomerName_Type_CarrierName _something. Who puts a space in the folder name? Then not catch it because it also needs to be set inside a configuration file where it is even more obvious there is a space.

Last example is he somehow screws up the SQL stored procedure names in such a way that even SQL gets confused. I use C# SMO to create automatically create scripts and he has one where it creates a name [SpName ] in the textheader but sql actual corrects the name to [SpName]. So this creates an error because the textheader doesn't match the actual name.

I just do not understand how these people have such huge egos and still look impressive.

Thursday, July 8, 2021

Work Life: Why do managers assign the person with the least meetings to schedule a new meeting?

Managers in general should be creating meetings instead of their underlings or other people's underlings.

Why do managers do that?

1. Because they like that rush of power (intentional or not)
2. They think they are too busy to do it
3. They do not want to appear to not understand what the meeting is for

What I think?

I guess there is nothing that can be done with someone who is power hungry. Feeling too busy is too disrespectful of other people's time. Not understanding what the meeting is for is not even the ask.

Scheduling a meeting with a person who's calendar is full, plenty of double-booking, etc., only makes any sane person just sit there for a minute or two to think things over... like does that person not understand that is calendar is full for the next 2 weeks or year? Do they think we can see why the time is even blocked out to at least see if maybe a block is less important? If they ever scheduled anything, they will realize that 99% no one can see what is there at all... it is just a big blob of unavailable times. So this is easily 5 minutes just to scan the calendar for an open spot. AND THIS IS JUST FOR ONE PERSON!! Most of the time I have to deal with multiple people...

How long would it take him to schedule? 1-2 minutes. Why because he can see his own calendar that he does not even maintain to keep up-to-date so that someone else can schedule a real meeting. He can clearly see that a spot is available. He can see which meetings typically run short.

More importantly, he has more authority to get other people to join the call. If I have a call with more than one manager... I spend another day or two just to reschedule because they respond that they cannot make it or a change in schedule....... then they have the audacity to not even recommend a new time.

So, in best case... 5 minutes vs 2 minutes. That is 2.5 times. If it takes him longer, it'll probably take me much longer, so 2.5X is probably best case.

Company Cost?

Let us take 2.5 times as the lowest difference in our time. Does my manager make 2.5 times what I make? If he's Warren Buffet, I probably should continue to waste the rest of the year rescheduling.. but that's an exception. Most middle managers probably don't even make 2 times my salary. So it is not even worth company time for middle managers to delegate scheduling to someone else.

Also my job isn't scheduling stuff. If anything that is what middle managers do. So what is the company even paying you to do? Sit in meetings and waste everyone's time? (I'd like to say that sarcastically... but it'll probably sound more like a weak laugh while crying inside)

On top of all that, this also wastes the managers time too. More time than if they just scheduled it themselves. Manager has to check calendar. See if it is more important. Then send email that they cannot make it. Read another email on the complicated list of when all the other people are available, put in another time. Then have to read another email because another key person cannot make it (usually their own person), and repeat. 

My Suggestion

Managers should open your outlook, click new meeting, click a time on the calendar, add me to the calendar, then send. It'll take you one minute to do. I will fill in the rest or give you the people who needs to attend.

And if you already know me... I send that list before you even create it.

Stop wasting both our time.



Friday, July 2, 2021

Buggish: transaction rollback in progress. Estimated rollback completion: 0%. Estimated time remaining: 0 seconds. (no answer)

 I tried killing this SQL session, but it never disappears. When I use "KILL ## WITH STATUSONLY", I get:

SPID ##: transaction rollback in progress. Estimated rollback completion: 0%. Estimated time remaining: 0 seconds.


I know what is executing it which was my web tool that edits the sql server. I tried restarting the App Pool but this did not do anything. I eventually IISRESTART and the session disappears.

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Life: So sad after accidentally breaking bird eggs

I cannot express enough how sad I am feeling right now. I just returned home from a walk. Our Christmas wreath was still on our door, and for some reason today I decided to take it down. Probably because this was the first time I returned home without my hands full. Because the wreath hung over my head, I grabbed it from the bottom and flipped it upside-down... then suddenly there were a couple splats. I thought it was bird poop, but at closer inspection after I put down the wreath... I noticed they were two tiny eggs.

I feel so sad for the birds. And suddenly a couple puzzle pieces came together. I now recall that there is always a bird that flies away when I open or walk by the door. I know it won't do anything but I put the wreath back but on the ground. I made sure it was rightside-up just in case there were other eggs left in the wreath. It was dark so I couldn't tell. I also just read that most birds won't return if their nest was disturbed so it will unlikely return.

Now I know to take down winter ornaments right away. Sadly, I feel I will remember this every year now.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Info: Getting network shares library with C#

Goal: to get a list of available shared folder names given a remote server name. 


1. I believe this uses the user that is logged into the site. https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/2939/Network-Shares-and-UNC-paths

This was super easy to set up.


2. This is what I wrote if logging in with a specific user:

ManagementPath path = new ManagementPath();

            ManagementClass shares = null;

            ConnectionOptions co = new ConnectionOptions();

            co.Username = "login";

            co.Password = "password";

            co.Impersonation = ImpersonationLevel.Impersonate;

            path.Server = FolderPath; //"devaappwebec01"; // use . for local server, else server name

            path.NamespacePath = "root\\CIMV2";

            path.RelativePath = @"Win32_Share";

            ManagementScope scope = new ManagementScope(path, co); // use (path) for local binds

scope.Connect();

ManagementObjectSearcher worker = new ManagementObjectSearcher(scope,

            new ObjectQuery("select Name from win32_share"));

            ManagementObjectCollection moc = worker.Get();

 



Sunday, June 6, 2021

Info: Command to get OS version from remote server

WMIC /user:domain\userId /password:userPassword /node:remoteServerName os get buildnumber,caption,CSDVersion /format:csv

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Buggish: C# Replacing \n with
versus \r\n versus \n\n

Problem to be solved

I need to replace MS SQL break lines with HTML break lines so that it can be displayed on a web page.

Background

Our network group decided to make routers reject posts that are too big. I have a tool to compare database objects across multiple environments to validate and to promote. I used a text box to display the sql queries. If there were five environments, then there would be five textboxes. If the stored procedure was really large, then I would have it five times. So when I post back to the server, I could potentially return a lot of data.

I don't want to truncate because most new changes are at the bottom. I don't want to skim because are at the top. And fixes are typically in the middle.

So decided to use html <pre> tag. This requires me to convert new lines to html new lines. I'm usually lazy and just convert \n to <br/> but then I realized that this returned two break lines which caused a blank line in between every line. This was a pain because that means it took me twice as long to skim through the code.

For some odd reason, I felt like doing both a \n\n and \r\n replace and found this did the same... even though the string value was just \r\n. This is really odd. Although works for me, this is not what I expected.


Final decision

string.Replace("\r\n", "<br/>");

Friday, May 14, 2021

Anecdote: Replacing plaintext user id and password with password vault

I just reviewed code where they are trying to replace configuration files that have user ids and passwords in plaintext to a password vault. The hilarious part is that they comment out the old configuration file which contains the credentials.

The habit here is that developers are always afraid to lose code even if there exists a million backups (or maybe because their exists a million backups), so they comment out old sections.

The code even goes through two code reviews before it reaches me. 

#GiveMeTheirPaychecks

Monday, May 10, 2021

Buggish: Unable to access MS Network Folder (IP versus HostName)

Problem (rare)

I am able to some times get to the machine's base share folders but unable to access sub-folders. I have share permissions and local machine permissions on the network machine. This seemed random because I was able to connect to other shares with IP address and hostnames. I have a different login to access the network folders than the system that I am working from.

Solution (workaround)

Be consistent with the address to the network folder. If logged in with IP address (\\10.10.10.10), continue to use IP address. If logged in with hostname (\\hostname), continue to use hostname. If you logged in with IP, then you may get access issue when using hostname. Also the same vice-versa. I was able to replicate this every time.

(Edit: 6/12/2021) Consistency is key. Using simple hostname or the fully qualified hostname (e.g. \\hostname vs \\hostname.domain.local) will also have the same issue. The trickier part to this is that net use will see these are the same and will not allow the user to provide login for both \\hostname and \\hostname.domain.local. This makes it very hard to switch. I had an post on how to remote net use but it does not work. My only solution is to reboot the system each time this needs to be corrected.

Background

We moved from one cloud platform to another. Before the group used IP addresses to connect to network folders. After the migration, we started to use hostnames. The infrastructure team also created a tunnel between the two cloud platforms. The tunnel was only accessible with IP.

When on the new system, I was still switching between IP and hostname depending on where I was copying the server address from. So I will oftentimes switch between the two depending which was readily available for me.

I do not think many people will face this problem as most people will be consistent with the address. The last oddity was that I can ping the hostname and resolves to the same IP but for some reason the destination folder does not recognize that as the same login. (I mean, I can probably guess why this is happening from the problem but not sure why it was designed this way.)


Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/10/buggish-unable-to-access-ms-network.html (added 2021-10-06)

Thursday, May 6, 2021

Buggish: MS Error Copying Files to Network Share after granting permissions without reboot

I hate rebooting, so I try my best to look for solutions even if it costs me more time. In this case, I am trying to copy a file to another new network share. I get an error that I do not have permissions to do so. Then I tried to use "net use" to disconnect and reconnect with the same error.

Solution

Close all Windows Explorer windows.
  • Closing one did not resolve my issue
  • Restarting the Windows Explorer may also resolve this issue. This will likely close all Window Explorer windows anyways.
  • net use /delete does not work
    • The network share wasn't even on my net use list


Potentially Solves Another Issue

Sometimes "net use" does not allow me to add another network share with different credentials saying that it cannot manage multiple shares. I'll use "net use /delete" to remove the connection. Then when I try to add it again, it still gives me the same error. Even after I "net use" again to check, the connection is no longer there. When I try to delete it again, it says it does not exist.

I believe this may be held up by the windows explorer that I keep open.



Reference

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24933661/multiple-connections-to-a-server-or-shared-resource-by-the-same-user-using-more