Rant: My One Terrible Experience with an Amazon Order

I received an notification from Amazon that there was a payment problem with one of my orders. I have order many times from Amazon with no problems, so thought this was an odd issue.

I had ordered four items. One was already shipped, delivered, and charged to my CC. One was already canceled because I didn't notice the notification early enough. I received another for the last two items.

I tried to go online to review and it just says "We're sorry, but we encountered an error when processing your request. Please try again." and underneath the CC options "Your Shop with Points balance cannot be applied to this order." When I try to select a CC and continue, I just get the same error. I changed the CC option which has the same points-balance message and also received the same error.

I tried their online chat. The automated messaging was useless as it quickly forwards me to live support. Support 1 says transaction declined from bank and to call the bank. I explain that the same CC was already accepted to pay the other part of the order. I also asked why it says "Shop with your Points balance". Support 1 then forwards me to "a member of our specialist team".

Support 2 asks to confirm the last 4 digit of my CC which I provide but also provided another CC that I had on the Amazon site list. Both did not work. Support 2 suggests to cancel the order and that I place the order again. The prices of the items have already gone up since I placed the order so I asked if there was a way for me to pay the prices when I placed the orders. I also added if not, then cancel the order.

Support 2 then sends me a list of things to check with a failed charge:

- Have you entered the credit card number correctly, without any transposed digits?

- Have you entered the correct expiration date? Has the date expired?

- Have you entered the billing address and phone number that match those associated with your credit card?

- Have you exceeded your credit limit?

- Has your credit card recently been reissued with a different credit card number and/or expiration date?

I think proceeded to explain that this was part of an order and that the item was already shipped, delivered, and charged to my CC. So obviously the CC number is correct, the expiration date is correct, the billing and phone numbers are correct. I added that I have order other items during this period of time so it was not because I exceed credit limit (besides that I am thousands of dollars from my limit) also the part of my order in question wasn't even $20.

Support 2 then states to contact my card issues to solve the decline error. With other orders when this happens, I have always received a notification from the bank to review suspicious activities or confirm the order. I did not receive any notification. I even signed onto the CC site and there were not notifications on their site of either too which normally would be there too.

Support 2 then sends message.

1.If you aren't opted into this feature and you'd like to use your rewards points on your order, checkout through your shopping cart. 

2.Enter the amount in the box on the Order Summary page.

3. If you don’t see the rewards points box you'll need to click the "Change" link next to your billing information on the Order Summary page. 

4.You'll be able to apply the maximum available points to your order, or choose a different number of points to apply. 

The rewards points you redeem will be deducted when you confirm the purchase at checkout. 

Have you tried this?

My problem is that it is opted in. I don't like using points so I'm not even sure why it has points underneath my payment options which they have yet to answer or even address. And I have been asking that I want to opt OUT and just pay the !@#@!# order. JUST LET ME PAY FOR THE ORDER! (I didn't yell this but surely was running through my head)

Suddenly I get forwarded to another support person. During this time, I also messaged that I just want to pay with any credit card with the original prices. 

Support 3 was taking a while to review so I provided a summary during this time too:

In summary, I just want to pay the prices of items (Herd Mentality Udderly Addictive Family Board Game and Fitness Volumize  Strengthen) when I placed the order because the items are now more expensive. I would like to pay with my CC that ends with 0509 but if not possible, I can pay with a different CC. If I cannot get the original prices, then please go ahead and cancel the orders.

The issue with the site is that I cannot select the credit card I want to use because it returns an error "We're sorry, but we encountered an error when processing your request. Please try again." What appears odd is underneath the CC details, there is an additional statement "Your Shop with Points balance cannot be applied to this order." First, I don't want to use points so not sure why that statement is there. Second, there is no option to turn it off and just pay with my CC. Third, this is a part of an order where the first item was already shipped and delivered and charged to my CC (which I assume is not my points balance which I'm not sure what that even means).

Support 3's first questions is if I used points for the order.. I explain that I do not recall selecting points (I still have no idea what these points are). I know that I have always avoided using points, but may be possible that I accidentally selected or it was defaulted and I didn't opt out?

Support 3 sees that my payment was declined multiple times and unable to charge the card and to check with the bank. Continues to tell me to request them to approve the charge. I do not want to call the bank. This was already taking too long for a $20 order. I repeat again that part of the order has already gone through and I use this card often so it is not an issue with the card.

At this point, I have had enough. I asked Support 3 to just cancel the order.

Support 3 asks for my number to call although I really, really didn't want to extend this anymore. I get forwarded to another person. Support 4 "please wait let me connect call." I get a call soon after. The person says a name that does not match the name on the chat, so I am going to assume Support 4 only connects me to a call and now I am talking to Support 5.

Support asks me what the issue was... ...................................................... I take a deep breath before explaining my situation again. Support 5 tries again to charge my card. I tell her that the other support already tried that. Support 5 says it was declined, and I tell her that is what the others have also said. I tried to ask if I can just pay with another credit card. Support 5 tells me to call the bank.

I really had a enough at this point and just asked them to just canceled the order. I am not going to reorder and now strongly considering canceling my prime membership. It was already on my mind because I don't use it much and it just costing more and more. And what's the point if I cannot even order stuff, which was the original reason I had it too many years ago...

Scammish: Modern-day cable news (my apologies to real journalism)

When did "news" become Entertainment Tonight? I am very disappointed in whoever is in charge of regulating the information that is broadcasted to the public. The government should ban the term 'news' when fundamental checks are not employed by certain organizations. My biggest beef are with Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. They should not be allowed to use the term news in their names. 

My apologies to Entertainment Tonight, but I feel they even do more background checks than today's cable news. Also my apologies to journalists that put the hard work even putting their lives at risk at times.

Sorry for the lack of references to my claims. I do not watch them daily, nor do I really follow... but when such a viewer can catch news that are incorrect, bending the truth, or even easily checked on the untrusted internet... something is definitely wrong.

Besides the blatant bias of information, "anchors" of these channels are so biased. It is way too obvious, and this should not be allowed as news. They should also not be allowed to put "statements" in the form of a question, like "how can we allow them to do that?" They try to make a point but what is the seemingly obvious answer but at the same time removing their liability that they may be incorrect. No! If you cannot accept liability for your information, it should not be allowed to be broadcasted.

Breaking news! In professional world, there is a say "if all issues are critical, then none of them are". I really, really hated this about CNN. How do you have the same breaking news for an entire day much less than entire week? After that horrendous month of break news, honestly, I do not believe in any CNN breaking news since then. Even if someone mentions CNN and breaking news, I no longer care anytime.

Guests! How can you do a proper interview in 2 minutes (exaggerated)? Especially when you spend the 1.5 minutes just introducing them, asking them a question, and interrupting (especially counter-points)? Do a proper interview where they can answer all questions, and summarize their responses... THEN let us decide what that information means! Or at the very least... let them talk (but do cut them off when they don't answer... stop doing it live so you don't waste our time watching you floundering with cutting them off)!

Work! He lied, he played too much golf, this, and that. I don't follow their every step, give some numbers! He lied this amount, compared that amount. I get more news from the Daily Show and Last Week Tonight than MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN combined... and they cover way less information (LWT only covers one topic a week). And they don't even use the term news...

After re-reading this, I made this sound like things that cable news need to fix but I know they won't change because they make money from this. My suggestion is to have them stop using the word news, ban them from having a format that looks like news, and anything else that misleads their viewers to think they are news. News should be 100% news, not 10% pretending to be 100%. Government regulations should ban this. Stop them from discrediting real news by saturating the industry with non-real news.

Scammish: MSNBC and other poor so-called journalism in mainstream media

Maybe not fake, but definitely not fair journalism... Coverage of Andrew Yang on MSNBC.

Since 2015, I have felt something felt odd about "news" coverage of MSNBC. This is a bit too blatant.

Reference

https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/andrew-yang-msnbc/

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/18/msnbc-excludes-andrew-yang-from-media-coverage-despite-polling-above-other-candidates/

https://nwasianweekly.com/2019/09/editorial-yang-media-blackout/

https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/jz1zwg/msnbc_yangmediablackout_confirmed/

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3819305

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvIiZXzDgm0&ab_channel=NerdsforHumanity

https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-media-blackout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMOTBj9Rbgg&ab_channel=ClaytonFilpo

https://twitter.com/scottsantens?lang=en

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=yang+media+blackout#id=2&vid=a4372f74583ea069b649201e84de7a86&action=click

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewynnahRxUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Kd7VqnvtY

Interview: Attentive to detail? It is a rather low bar to pass.

 I remember early in my career there were several questions I struggled with in interviews. One of those questions was "Are you detail oriented?" In my mind, I am always seem to miss a minor detail. I seem to consistently score 99% than 100%. If there was a silly mistake to make, I can make it. So I was always hesitant in responding to this question. But of course, I knew better and responded yes anyways because there is no other answer to this question.

First, what a useless question from interviewers to ask a question that any intelligent person can answer but cannot verify.

Second after years of experience, I am way, way, way, way more detail oriented than most people I have worked with. And those that were more detailed spent too much time on details than getting the work done. I know most people will claim this whether this is true or not, but I am saying that they are on the more extreme side. 

Because everyone kind of have to answer that question (now more indirectly than directly like in the past), that means all those people also claimed they are detail-oriented.

Now, I want to say that I am far from perfect. But there are so, so, so many details that I catch that just makes me wonder why we even hired this person. What broke the camel's back to make my publish this post was where one of our developers repeated the same ticket number in the description. The number is right next to the original number. The developer added to the description, #12345, right next to that exact number so that it read #12345, #12345.

COME ON.... that is too blatantly obvious. They even had to click in the field to update so it is not like they copy/pasted too quickly.

Another example is when they provide their list of changes, they consistently miss items on their list. More than 50% of the time.

Grouping remaining examples together: they misspell objects (in development this is quite important because they are use shorthand so I cannot tell if it is intentional or not), they repeat items, they do not enter data consistently (eg they will repeat an item name but have different types).

I am lucky to have one good ticket with no errors 10% of the time. And this is just with requests. If I get into email messages, instant messages, etc... it just boggles my mind how terrible my colleagues are with details. Of course, I am not saying they are terrible people or workers. I am just saying that being detail-orient is way more overrated than most intelligent people think.

Conclusion

If you ever get the question, be confident that you are detail-oriented especially if you finished in the top 10% of your high school class or got into a top-tier university, you are easily more detail-oriented than most people.

That is besides the point that the question is just useless like "are you a good person?" or "are you telling the truth?" One answer lets you progress and the other... well, no one chooses the other answer. That's why they are useless questions. Sometimes I wonder if HR even tries. Or if I want to be more open-minded, I think HR wastes too much time on the bottom 20% than the top 80%.

Buggish: C# SMO Error The name specified in the TextHeader property of StoredProcedure 'StoredProcedureName' must match Name property.

Error Message

The name specified in the TextHeader property of StoredProcedure 'spName' must match Name property. 

Results

None. I don't why this occurs.

Details

I created code to copy Stored Procedure from one server to another. This has worked have several weeks, and suddenly I have two SP that throws this error. The immediate cause is that the source TextHeader is different from its own name.

StoredProcedure spSource = dbSource.StoredProcedures[spName];

For some reason, spSource.Name is not the same as spSource.TextHeader.

I suspect the developer created the Stored Procedure then renamed it. This is not confirmed.

Edited 8/12/2021

Confirmed that this definitely occurs when a stored procedure is renamed. My fix is to use SSMS to get the alter stored procedure and execute as is. 

Buggish: Headset microphone not working (used to work) Windows 10, Realtek, audio connection (not USB)

I am not even sure when this happened, but suddenly the built-in mic was being used as the microphone even though it was using the headset microphone for a good period of time. I suspected something was wrong when the mute button no longer worked. I definitely found out when I was talking for a whole call then later realized my mic was up the entire time.

I tried so many different things with the sound and microphone settings in Windows 10. I tried uninstalling the audio driver in device management. I tried unplugging and re-plugging. Nothing worked for me, and none of them made a lot of sense to me because my headset is through the audio jack so it should accept the input as part of the system.

I suspected that the setting must have been set to headphones instead of headset. Then I remembered that I haven't seen the options to choose when I plug in the audio jack. I tried a lot of options to find it. Tried to run the RtkNGUI64.exe file which did not do anything.

I finally got fed with it and just went to look for the RealTek latest drivers. I should have known the auto-check wouldn't do its job. This is the full reinstall which will uninstall and re-install. I had to re-plug the headset to get the options.

I found the download on RealTek but the download took forever. Found the same driver on CNET download: https://download.cnet.com/Realtek-High-Definition-Audio-Codec-Windows-7-8-8-1-10-64-bit/3000-2120_4-77507761.html.

This probably took me a good half day to figure out, and several days of using the built-in mic because I didn't have the time to troubleshoot this. I also realized how little I know about Windows now compared to 10+ years ago. Age...

Gardening: Unguided beginner... do I know just enough to be dangerous to my plants' livelihood?

 I've started an interest in gardening because someone likes to have plants but not maintain them, and I hate seeing things die so I took it upon myself to help but no clue how. Obviously starting with watering them. Then eventually learning about over-watering. Then learning about composting.

I have to say after about 3 months... gardening is very hard. I still have no clue if I am over-watering or under-watering. I live in an area that is very dry, and the top soil is almost desert-like. My plants were doing way better when I started watering. One looks like it is not doing well again. One died which we suspect is over-watering because someone decided to just water that one plant without me knowing. Not only was I already over-watering, it had even more water than I thought. Also the soil did not look well in it.

This is actually quite time-consuming just watering and very-very-light pruning which I still am just guessing on how it works. I spend most of my time on watching videos on seeding and composting. I should probably spend more time on the things I should be doing...

Oddly enough, the experience is actually quite nice and pleasant even though it is hard work and takes up quite a bit of time. I really enjoy watching epic gardening, and like the idea of being more self-sufficient. 

There is just too much information to absorb. Would be nice if gardening was a bit easier... maybe I should consider finding a gardener friend.

Rant: Another reason to hate tech support (obvious issue but lost communication)

 I was just on tech support chat. I just got connected to chat which opened with that our internal wiki was down. My work laptop suddenly crashed, so lost communication. Laptop continues to have issues and no longer can connect.

Now on my personal laptop to connect to help desk, and I see that the ticket was immediately closed because he asked how my day was and I didn't respond. Even though the top of the conversation clearly shows my issue, he did not even bother to open the link I provided which gives the error immediately (everyone within my department is getting the error).

All he had to do was open the link and troubleshoot the issue.

Code: Display Net Use default results with C#

 Win32_NetworkConnection

Summary

This was the WMI OS CIM class needed to get the results from a simple Windows command prompt "net use" command. 

Thoughts

This was somehow amazingly hard to find on google. For whatever reason, the only command I can find were for Win32_OperatingSystem or Win32_Share.

There is plenty of information on all the elements but just could not find a connection between net use and Win32_NetworkConnection. 

My Sample Code

                string serverName = @"\\serverName";

                string WMIClassName = "Win32_NetworkConnection";

                List<string> shares = new List<string>();

                ConnectionOptions connectionOptions = new ConnectionOptions();

                ManagementScope scope = new ManagementScope(serverName,

                                                            connectionOptions);

                scope.Connect();

                ManagementObjectSearcher worker = new ManagementObjectSearcher(scope,

                                   new ObjectQuery($"select Name from {WMIClassName}"));

                foreach (ManagementObject share in worker.Get())

                {

                    shares.Add(share["Name"].ToString());

                }

References

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/cimwin32prov/operating-system-classes#shares

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/cimwin32prov/win32-networkconnection

A person cannot choose to be a leader, because being a leader is an effect

If there is one thing I have learned in my life time, that thing is that people are easily fooled into thinking the end justifies the means. On top of that, the thought is so over-exaggerated in shows and movies that it makes many people believe that they are beyond falling victim to such ideas.

One of those things you hear a lot is about how to be a leader. A leader must be this, or that, or do these these things, or has done those things, etc. And then there's a whole industry on books countering those properties of a leader. For those who strive to be a leader, this can be so confusing... and perhaps that is the whole idea so that others can reap in the money by publishing non-sense.

TO BE A LEADER is just the incorrect mentality because becoming a leader is an effect not the cause. You become a leader when someone chooses to follow you. You cannot make someone follow you, therefore, you cannot choose to be a leader.

This may seem like I am slicing and dicing the technical definitions, but I believe this is the mental block to our lack of good leadership in our current era. Everyone is too focused on being the leader rather than being followed.

Because of this, select people have been able to take advantage of this by claiming themselves as fake leaders. Technically they are leaders, but the reason I label as fake is because the means they gain followers are through very superficial means like money, lies, greed, deceptions, etc.

Code: A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client

Some notes on how to resolve this error message, as I keep need this reference:

Page

validateRequest="false"

Site

<httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to web.config

Buggish: Amazon WorkSpaces Locked Shift Key (Unresolved / workaround) Update: Resolved? [2020-07]

Replicate: Unknown

Frequency: Multiple times a day, but can get half a day without it occurring

Environments: Two different machines running different versions of AWS Client. Issue seems to be similar even though different OS and different clients.

Workaround: Turn on caps lock, then turn off caps lock. Repeat if necessary. Toggling may not work if toggle too quickly. At most 3 times, but works every time.

Behavior: Basically, the shift key locks on AWS because all actions appear to be as if the shift key is down. Like highlight text between two different mouse-clicks in a text box, select multiple rows in spreadsheet, etc.

Shift is not locked on my machine. This only occurs in AWS. Pressing the shift key does not appear to do anything which kind of makes sense because it should act as if shift key is down. But release shift key does not return the state back. I found toggling caps lock will return the shift key state.

I do not use caps lock at all, so this is not caused by using caps lock. I figured this out randomly.

I cannot guarantee that this does not happen when not using the shift key as I use the shift key very often. I do also use both shift keys (not at the same time). It does seem to occur more often when I am coding C# which uses a lot of shift keys for curly braces and for sql because I cap the keywords. I want to say that it seemed like this issue still occurred once or twice when there was no shift key used, but this seems to be a very rare occurrence.

It may be possible that there is a delayed or lag response to a shift key press which would explain why it occurs more often when I am coding. Oddly, I can also go a few hours without this occurring. This could just be my mind playing tricks, but also seem to occur less often when I work off peak-hours.

There also seems to be quite a few posts dating back to 2016 with no solution so I am not expecting this to be ever resolved, so beware if you decide to use AWS.

Update 2020-09-03

Interesting, not long after this post... this problem has gone away. I cannot recall when this stopped but feels like at least a couple weeks. Has this problem been resolved? Seems like it.

Update 2022

As of 2021, we have moved from AWS to Azure so there will be no more updates on AWS.

Code: C# Accessing network folder with Username and password to system not on the domain

Summary:

I was given a web server that is on a domain but need to back up files to another server (file server) that is not on the domain and with different credentials than the one I am logged on with (or the user assigned to the web server). I was given the credentials to use on the file server. The credential is also not on the domain. The assigned user for IIS was also a local user (ie not a domain user).

The code below was very simple to implement. I tried a few other solutions before finding this one. Others required knowing the domain. The key part for me was the CredentialCache and providing parameter for the machine I am trying to access.

Sample code from social.msdn.microsoft.com:

NetworkCredential theNetworkCredential = new NetworkCredential(username, password, domain);

CredentialCache theNetcache = new CredentialCache();

theNetCache.Add(@"\\computer", theNetworkCredential, "Basic", theNetworkCredential);

//then do whatever, such as getting a list of folders:

string[] theFolders = System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories("@\\computer\share");

by ahmedilyas (https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/ahmedilyas/)

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/287ca606-86da-4794-baed-2ad5db9bc833/access-to-remote-folder?forum=netfxbcl

Buggish: Pasting data from SSMS to Teams Excel (Web)

Issue

When I copy data from SSMS default results table to Teams Excel (Web), data is not translated directly into separate cells.

Cause

The cause for this is due to one of the cells that starts with a single double-quote. This will result with all data after the single double-quote to be in a single cell.

Fix

I do not have a fix for this if you require to keep the double-quote except to manually work around it. This was a data issue on user end which does not resolve the actual issue.

Work-around is perhaps to save the SSMS results in a different format, replace the double-quote with a different value or prepend with an escape character (sorry, I don't know what that is either).

Setup

SQL Server Management Studio	v18.4
Google Chrome	Version 83.0.4103.97 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Teams Excel (Web)	16.0.13014.35904

 

 

Buggish: Visual Studio, "Element [elementName] is not a known element" warning

Visual Studio 2019

I get the errors below randomly. Suddenly while programming the ASP.NET page, my elements will suddenly have the green squiggly warning that my basic ASP elements are not known elements. I have yet to figure out the cause or reason for this to happen, but it does happen somewhat regularly perhaps once a week (of 10-20 hours of programming).

This is purely a syntactical bug, because I can still compile and run my program. It does not interfere with executing the project, but is super distracting. 

My Fix (Updated 9/2/2021)

Issue has increased a bit in the last month but still on the rare side. Fix is still to just close the ASPX page then re-opening. 

My Fix (Updated 4/29/2021)

For the last few months, I found that closing the ASPX page, then re-opening also resolves this issue. This is way faster than my workaround from June.

In the last couple months, I have to say that I haven't noticed this issue. Not sure if maybe I do it so reflexively that I do not notice or that it hasn't happened. I have thought about this until I was skimming over some older posts.

My Fix

1. Clean solution

2. Clean project

3. Restart Visual Studio 2019

I don't know why this fixes the problem. This is my current de facto fix and has worked for the last month. Before that, I some times skipped #1 or #2. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Eventually, it just wasn't worth the time to skip one or the other.

• Element [elementName] is not a known element
• Element 'Button' is not a known element. This can occur if there is a compilation error in the Web site, or the web.config file is missing.
• Element 'GridView' is not a known element. This can occur if there is a compilation error in the Web site, or the web.config file is missing.
• Element 'TextBox' is not a known element. This can occur if there is a compilation error in the Web site, or the web.config file is missing.

Reference

Personal experience

My Return to Visual Studio........... sigh

Microsoft Visual Studio

I know in my previous posts that I had left Visual Studio. Sadly I have returned back. In the previous post, I had left primarily through pricing. I was charged a new customer price when I have been paying for over 10 years. My credit card was canceled due to one fraudulent charge, and I did not update my new card with MS. Also shows you how often I use VS, so I just hated that I was practically donating money to MS and they won't even recognize that been blindly paying them for years. Now the company pays for it, so I grudgingly (morally) returned.

Nothing against the actual application, Visual Studio. It is by far superior IDE to the ones I have used in the meantime, including Visual Studio Code. I can only speak for developing in C#, but I have to say that my programming efficiency is noticeably better with Visual Studio. 

Is it worth the cost for a hobbyist? Not really. The main functions are there in free versions, the pain points are tolerable. Is it worth commercially? Yes, the amount of money you save or produce for the company is definitely worth the price. Is the whole Microsoft shop worth it? That is arguable as other enterprise solutions provide a much better price point. If the company is not a technology company, then it is probably worth it. It is a bit bulky, but you don't need the expertise to hire the right person nor pay the additional cost of "real" developers. Not that option is cheap, but my assumption is that non-tech companies will not have good IT and will not have the expertise to really effectively run IT for the long term. They may be able to find one person, but that person will eventually leave or retire, then it will just be downhill. If they are a rare breed with excellent IT, then I recommend that they should consider transforming into a tech company.

Keeping Footer at bottom of page or below content (HTML)

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-keep-your-footer-where-it-belongs-59c6aa05c59c/

I always forget how to do this, but feel like each half decade that I need this, there is a new way to do it.

Waterfall Tester in an Agile World (thought experiment)

I've been in a couple corporate worlds that are agile... well in my option, "claims" to be agile. In my opinion, most companies that I have worked for and heard from friends are really just waterfall-light or lean or wagile. My big question for today because a group just recently acquired two QA testers to join their agile group.

This got me thinking, how does QA fit into an agile group? Our testers are expected to test after devs are done developing, so how is this different from waterfall? In full agile, QA would work with developers which I have not seen any self-claimed agile group actually do (not to say they do not exist, just saying... not sure what I am saying but seems important).

TO THE MAIN POINT... (focus, focus)... I think in the agile world, testers should be a special type of end-user. An end-user that is focused on breaking the system. When they find a bug, they report it like any end-user. Simple, clean, and feels like a nice sweet spot.

There is a little nagging feeling on this in that "isn't this testing in prod?" If we trust the agile methodology, this should not be a major concern. Small changes should have small impacts. By small change, I mean a change that has little impact. (Is that a catch-22?) What I want to say is that, there can be physical small changes that have big impacts. For example, a piece of code that is heavily coupled with almost everything, like security or audit or logging.

How does agile test those conditions? I don't think there is really any agile-method besides really falling onto a more waterfall-method. Which is also one of the reasons that I always shudder when I hear leadership say we need to go 100% agile. I may not know agile enough, but doesn't the first 30 minutes of agile training basically make that impossible unless the company really has absolutely no idea what it is doing? I mean, we have full spec'd out requirement that has been done multiple times... and you want to make that agile too?

I've been in two waterfall to agile transformations, and I've seen processes that took a couple days that are now two weeks because they need to go through more steps. Yes, agile should address this but don't like it when it becomes more waterfall so... yea. I tried... again... and again... but at some point there are more important things to fry and technically it adds more job security for my role. People look at me weird suggest something that does not really benefit me personally.

Anyways, if I ever have my only agile team and was assigned QA testers... I would have them help with writing test cases then test things in production. Bugs/issues will just go on the backlog and treated in an existing process.

My Job Search Experience from Nov 2019 to Mar 2020

I found a new job a while ago. One of the major reasons why there have been few posts lately. I have a little breather now that I have exhausted my need to learn as much as I can about my new role (even though my employer did stress on my learning at such a pace).

For a quick conclusion, I recommend looking for work through recruiters. They know which opportunities are live and hot. Applying directly to companies was hit or miss. Online search was really a waste of my time.

Searching Through Recruiters

Because I found all non-referral based jobs through recruiters, my inflated ego wanted to try to find an opportunity on my own. I had avoided all recruiters. I did have a timeline though.

When my threshold was passed, I accepted all recruiters. I have to say that it was actually kind of refreshing to actually see responses. Not all recruiters were active, but I would say that at least 50% of recruiters did respond after their "fishing" expedition.

Most recruiters found me on LinkedIn. With all recruiters, I asked a simple question or expressed interest. Those that did not respond, I did not follow up. Those that did and requested resume, then ghosted after I provided a resume were added to my grey-list. If multiple recruiters found me from the same company and ghosted, that company was blacklisted.

But at least 50-75% of recruiters did respond with a response... even a simple 'thank you' before ghosting was sufficient for not being blacklisted. Almost all recruiters with an Indian accent ghosted me or simply said thank you then never heard back again.

I was honest about my compensation but did not give it up freely. I always lead with that it was negotiable. If they were forceful and I was interested in the position, I always gave higher than my range and added that my main focus was on how well we matched. This strategy worked quite well for me. I thought I would lose some opportunities, but all that were interested in me got me further into the interview process. In almost all cases where I was no longer considered, I was honest with them that I did not seem the best match for them, but willing to work hard, and lowered my compensation accordingly... so I was not surprised.

25% of the recruiters that did respond, I did get interviews. Most of my interviews went very well. And as mentioned, I was not surprised to be rejected to some of them. I was also very upfront about my existing opportunities. I had three companies interested in overlapping periods of time. I think I had a good chance with all three with one already given a verbal offer.

I honestly said that I had other opportunities. I also said that they were my top pick (which it really was) but also explained that I still wanted to complete my due diligence. They were more than happy to give me the time (I said a week, probably could have gotten two but I did like that job).

First one had a delayed response, and couldn't give me a firm confirmation. They couldn't pay my asking price. In my first interview, I did tell them that my interest is in the job which did fascinate me. I was also not a perfect match experience-wise as they were looking more for a business PM and I was more technical. I felt the director still liked my style. Unfortunately, timing and compensation did not work out. The job opportunity was about the same. The one thing going for them was that they were a smaller company which I preferred. Interestingly, they had considered me about half a year ago. If they had offered at that time, I would have accepted. In the end, I was honest in that it is difficult to pass on an existing offer to a potential offer and that my compensation was met.

The other one after an interview found that the role was not what I expected.

Applying Directly to Companies

This was close to a waste of time. But do apply to companies that you heard good things about their hiring process.

My suggestions would be Amazon and Snap. Amazon was reasonably responsive for certain roles. They do cleanup their posts so that old posts will eventually be closed. Positions that are interested do let you know your status well. Snap was very responsive, and quite mature in their process in that they do consider non-digital factors.

I did understand that I was probably on the lower-end experience-wise and on paper. I believed I would still have excelled in the role for myself and the company if picked.

Surprisingly, I had better hopes for Google. I still found that they still had my application for an opening almost ten years ago and that it was still open. I also have not heard back on the opportunities I applied to this year.

I did apply to several other lesser known companies within a certain geographic region with almost nearly zero responses. It was so terrible that I even started to question the very rare companies that did respond which made me think they were ultra-desperate to fill a position. That is a turn-off for me because those positions are rarely any good and often not the same as advertised.

Online Search

I used all sorts of sites: LinkedIn, indeed, glassdoor, monster, dice, etc. All of these have miserable success rates for me. These opportunities include known businesses and unknown businesses. Except for the job board sending the automated email, there is rarely any responses from any company. A lot of posts that I found do get closed and then I'll find another open exactly the same.

For a period of time, I was dedicated each day to apply to at least 5 positions a day. I probably applied easily over 200 positions with maybe 1 response.

Timing

Of course, timing is very important. I probably was in a terrible time-frame of Nov - Feb. I was lightly searching as early as May. I actually did not hear much from recruiters near the end of the year going into January. Suddenly in February, I started getting almost too many calls. Now with COVID, there probably will not be many opportunities now.

Opinion: Chase Ultimate Rewards (Part 2 - Latest Chase Travel Information email)

"""
...

As always, we follow the policies of our partners, which means a credit, refund or change is at the discretion of the airline, hotel, cruise line or other travel provider.

...

We understand your feeling of urgency, but we can serve you better when you wait to call us if:

• You are not starting your trip within three days

• You trip isn’t covered by a specific flexible change policy offered through the partner

To change or cancel a hotel reservation, please go online to MyTrips https://travel.chase.com/trips?eapid=0509-70501 and click on your itinerary.

We are also working with our travel partner Expedia to launch other self-service cancellation options soon. We are addressing individual cases and will work with customers who can’t reach us right now.

...

"""

Just read this email today from Chase. As I mentioned in the previous post, Chase did not honor this policy as I provided the email from Alaska Airlines. The Alaska Airlines email was sent 4 days prior to my call. I was not starting my trip within three days, and I was not changing the ticket. Email clearly says cancel fee waived. There were a few additional criteria. My ticket met all the criteria with Alaska Airlines eventually honoring the ticket themselves by giving me a credit.

I had even called into Chase support, yet all I get is the email for generic user. What about those who already called? I suppose it is too much to ask for an apology.

Opinion: Chase Ultimate Rewards Refused to Refund Alaska Airlines Ticket where Alaska Airlines Honored Refund

In short, I have a lower view of Chase rewards which happens to coincide with me wanting to cancel my Chase Reserve Card; and a better view with Alaska Airlines which happens to coincide with me wanting to move away from United.

My situation is that I am flying cross-country. Due to family circumstances, I did not want to put them at risk with the Corona virus even if it is a rather small chance so I decided to cancel my trip with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines had launched their Peace of Mind policy which waived change and cancel fees. Because I booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards, I called them. When I reached some guy with a moderate Indian accent. After I explained my situation, he goes to "research" his options then puts me on hold several times. Eventually, he says that my ticket is a 'savers' ticket so cannot be considered for fee waivers. I explained to him that Alaska Airlines has the policy which he responds that I need to go through the airline even though the Alaska Airline site specifically says to go through the agency that I purchased the ticket from. He then repeats that my ticket will be charged a cancellation fee.

A bit off-topic, I can barely hear the guy and he barely hears me. When he speaks, there are random background noise. I am not sure why there is such a low quality with support this time. I usually have rather high quality sound and service from Chase or their credit card services. To add, why did he need to research on how to cancel my ticket? And also on one of the final holds, I just got this annoying beeping sound as if I was disconnected instead of the hold music I had before. I was unwilling to hang up at this point, and he did eventually return to give me nothing useful.

So then I called Alaska Airlines which I had to wait a long while. Eventually, I got through and spoke with Becka. Becka was wonderful, professional, and explained that I should go through Chase. I then explained that Chase refused and that I speak with Alaska Airlines. She understood and went to ask what she could help me with. I was on hold for a few minutes. She came back and told me that she explained my situation and confirmed there was "difficulties" with Chase so she needed to reach out to see if she could assist with exception for me. She came back on and said that she could help by giving me credit with Alaska Airlines which I was perfectly fine with (although, I would have preferred refund as the policy stated). Since I was most likely going to fly with Alaska in the future, this was not a major problem.

So, I do not understand why Chase cannot honor the policy the airline was willing to waive. From what Alaska said, they could have reached out to Alaska for a waiver code. I tried to call back to Chase but I was told that the wait was 3-5 minutes and eventually waited 20 minutes before giving up.

Interview: What Project Were You Most Proud Of? (Software Engineering role) (Failed)

I have had several interviews in the last couple months. This was probably one of the most popular questions for me (January - February 2020), "Describe to me about one of your proudest projects that you worked on?"

Because I was a release manager applying for a software engineering role, this question was quite tricky because I did not work on projects. I had other projects that I would like to share but they were not really programming projects or projects where I produced something. In most cases, I managed and delegated so I gave those samples.

Thinking back on those interviews, I do not feel that I gave good responses to the question. I also tried to provide a side project that I worked on as a release manager. The proof-of-concept did not get enough traction to be approved for actual use, although everyone liked the idea. Environment and management of an application was not something management wanted to handle, as they rather just purchase a third-party system or none at all.

Perhaps, I should have used a project that I worked on back when I was a programmer. I am not sure what a good response would be even after seeing what our developers do. Especially in an agile environment, the developers no longer work on projects in the same sense as a waterfall project. They are constantly just writing code per user-stories, test, and refactor. Most of them do not know the full project scope. Maybe they should, but from a procedural point-of-view, this method has been rather effective for the company.

Perhaps more effective for the company in that the developers will have trouble finding new jobs because they may also struggle with the same question. Without the experience, they will not know how to position themselves in such a way where they can also gain something that they can market.

Given that I was not able to even get a second interview with any company that asked this particular question makes me really think that I am definitely failing this question at some level. There have also been other weak parts of my interview that may have also contributed like not being the local vicinity (even though I recently moved to the area) and no in a current programming role which a couple HR managers have told me directly.

Coding: Difficulties of Learning New Programming Languages (Python/Django for example)

I always assumed that it would always be easy for me to pick up a new language since I have already had experience with Java, VB, C#, and several scripting languages. This was kind of the case in the past, but not so much in the modern era.

Knowing a programming language definitely helped me learn Python. What makes learning today is not the language itself anymore but all the frameworks, configurations, all the options, and all the new standards.

At first I spend so much time in just figuring out all the environments that Python can be used in. Maybe this step could be skipped if you already stuck on a certain platform like Windows, Linux, or MacOS.

Then I spend a lot of time just how to build out the infrastructure, like Apache, Django, PostGRESql, MariaDb, etc. Yet, I still kind of regret not going simply with mySQL. I imagine this would be longer for first time programmers as I already had some experience with IIS and MS SQL.

Finally the most time-consuming part of a new language is learning its new framework, process flow, terminology, plug-ins, and standards. For example in Django, I spent the last few days figuring how the engine picks the templates that you designate in the views.py after I built a second application. By default, Django looks through each templates folder start with the order the apps were listed in the settings.py.

At this point, I started to understand the importance of community support. I just could not find the proper wording to find the solution to my problem. My problem was that I attempted to make my template folders have the same structure. Because I did not learn the folder standards yet, I had some files in the template root folder like the index.html. So when I try to access my app2/template/index.html, my page showed my home page (app0/template/index.html). This did not make sense to me because I assumed that the views.py in app2 will use the index.html in app2. I kind of guessed this was the case so I tried to find a way to force the rendering to pick app2's index.html which led me down a lot of rabbit holes.

Each time I meet a new challenge, I find not only do I spend time to research the problem but in some cases, I have to also redesign my application to fit the community's standards. One example is learning about PyLint in its standard on documentation. I had to go through each file to provide documentation which is a triple quote description after the component declaration. I have been using the same method as MS Visual Studio which uses comments prior to the component declaration. It also checks naming schemes, tab spaces, proper empty lines, lines with spaces, etc. Although great for consistency, this took up a lot of time to learn and implement. I do not feel any of my past experience made this process any simpler or faster to learn.

In summary, I am starting to understand the demand for specific language requirements in current job descriptions. I think I would definitely learn much faster with an experienced language programmer to guide me through the differences. I feel that I will still learning faster than a new programmer but will still take time to learn the framework and learn how to troubleshoot compared to an experienced programmer of that language. I feel that it would take me about a month to be somewhat familiar with the new language, tools, and standards; probably a couple weeks if I had a resource dedicated to point me in the right directions. I probably spend 80% reading solutions to different problems similar but not exactly.

Unknown knowns: Location of Apache httpd.conf (000-default.conf) on Debian 9

/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

I am still quite new to Debian environment much less Linux, so I have trouble finding things especially when they are configured slightly differently. I am not sure if I am just not searching refine enough or something else.

Sometimes I run into configuration issues like setting up the static folder for Django. The instructions I find online point to a httpd.conf file which I cannot find. I see other similar files, but none does the trick. Then I recall updating 000-default.conf file from previous setups as I stumble across it again in search of httpd.conf.

Of course, this requires a service restart.

Job Search: Re-applying to Amazon, Google, other less known companies

http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/

I just read this article that I saw on LinkedIn. This got me thinking about my reaction to companies' response or lack of response. I know that is not what the article is about, but that is what triggered my thought.

Amazon

I was daunted by Amazon's initial application process. It was long and tedious. I actually avoided applying for a lengthy period of time because of it. But once completed, Amazon is impressively fluid to use compared to almost all other sites. Their interface is also levels better than other sites (including ATS systems which you think should be the best in market since it is their industry). I have to say that I am personally surprised.

I have applied to a couple positions, and only one interview. When the position closed, I received an automated email that I was not selected. I had an interview, was not selected, and received an automated email that I was not selected. The interview itself was not great, but that was more on the interviewer than Amazon.

Will I apply again? Yes. My experience with them is quite positive (relative to others), especially after each experience with another company like Google.

Google

Applying is simpler. I have applied years ago, and also a couple recently. No responses at all. The applications can still be found on their website untouched.

Will I apply again? I have to say that after a period of time after each application, I am less inclined to apply to Google. Today I even saw a couple new positions on LinkedIn, I shuddered, and didn't even bother to see the job description.

Snap

Applied once, and had an interview. My interviewer was great: charismatic and a pleasure to talk to. She was very up-front about my shortcomings which I also agreed with but did argue that I had similar experiences. I was applying to a management role with no direct report experiences. I had many leadership experiences but clearly not enough.

This position would also have been a 1.5 hour commute. Just because of the recruiter and her enthusiasm, I probably would have accepted the role if they offered. I received emails that I was not selected.

Will I apply again? Yes, and I would recommend others to apply to Snap.

Other Companies

Many companies are like Google. Even using Indeed or Glassdoor who automates some of these steps, I will still not receive any responses. I have most definitely skipped over companies that I have applied to previously where I have received absolutely no responses.

I have been highly selective in re-applying to companies that I have received no responses for.

I still re-apply to companies that I have received automated rejections. 

I continue to look at opportunities to companies that have more personalized messages that are not automated.

My Conclusion About Feedback

I feel that this is a classic game theory situation. If all companies gave personalized responses, then they are all equal again. So a couple companies that do not will benefit because there is not enough to detract people who apply. The reasons that I prefer companies that give personalized responses is that others do not, thus benefiting those who do. And this is why most companies don't because it is practically the same state as everyone doing it but less effort.

Reference

http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/

http://linkedin.com

Exercise (238) Finding time to exercise

The difficult part of finding time to exercise in the beginning even for 20 minutes is that it actually takes more than 20 minutes to return back to normal life routines. I would say initially, the whole process will take about an hour. So for me mentally, I had to prepare an hour amount of time to exercise for 20 minutes. As time went on, I was able to streamline some of my steps to maybe 45 minutes.

To me, I plan it kind of like a flight. Although the air time is 2 hours, you have to schedule time to pack, travel to airport, and wait prior to the flight, then wait, travel to hotel/home, and unpack after you land. For exercise, I have to dress and warm-up before exercising, then cool-down, shower/freshen-up, and re-dress after exercising.

This takes longer initially because there are some factors that you don't initially prepare for like weather, temperature, gear, etc. But after a while, you can start preparing ahead of time.

Anyways the point is that I found it much easier to be more consistent with exercising when I plan to reserve more time than the actual exercising, otherwise, after preparing I find that I do not have enough time then eventually aborting the plan to do "more important" things (which ultimately really is not that important but because you already planned it; the appearance is that it is more important at that moment).

On a side note, I have been able to maintain a sub-240 weight on a consistent basis now (including my high ranges). This is not just from exercising, actually exercise had little impact to this round of weight loss because I just started this week. A big factor was my diet which I did know but was difficult to control. I would like to say it was my will-power, but actually is due to combination of many factors outside of my raw will-power.

Moved away from my parents who are very concerned for my weight but does not care to consider my views on weight-loss because clearly I do not have a good track record (which they are somewhat correct). Moved away from work because I would eat out with coworkers. This was more primarily in combination with my parents because they did not like the idea of me eating out. So I ate two meals because I also hate wasting food and too shameful to tell my parents that I went out to eat. I had to eat their food because I had to return the containers on my way home. The last factor is that I live with my wife. I seem to naturally cook for two people. Maybe I could have cooked less, but it was probably due to my laziness. I didn't like to just cut half of an object, so I would cut a whole onion, tomato, chicken breast, etc. So I would just end up eating the whole thing also because I did not like having leftovers. So even though I did cook quite healthy, the sheer amount of food was not good for weight loss. At least this would explain why I am still relatively healthy for my size. Naturally, my wife now eats half the food I cook. My wife cooks a little more as she likes more variety of dishes but that is still way less than what I was eating before.

Not sure how this will last because one other major factor is that I work from home majority of the time. I have "gained" so much time without my 2 hours commute per day, preparing for work, logging back on, doing more work at the office to avoid rush hour, etc. On top of that, I get more work done in less amount of time.

Sorry to those who are looking how to change your mentality, but do not give up on hope. Change still starts with you and that is important. I went through most of my life on my own, so I had a chance back then. But some times there are external factors that impact you, and those factors will feel very daunting even if they aren't in hindsight. I have argued with my parents a lot on stop making me food, and they continued to ignore me. I could have refused not to go pick up food, but to me it was not worth a lifetime's worth of disappointment (I would rather be fat and content than unhappy and fit).

Job Search: Does PMP Correlate with Being A Good Project Manager (PM)? (My Super Limited Personal View)

While I search for jobs, I often see that many project management jobs require or prefer people with a PM (Project Management) certification. This some times causes me to think of all the project managers that I have worked with in the past.

In summary, I really do not feel like there is any correlation with a good project manager and being a PMP (Project Management Professional). My opinion could be flawed in what qualifies as a good project manager, but I think some of the qualities of the project manager far outweighs certain biases.

For starters, a good project manager should be able to handle a project well (not necessarily to completion/deployment). I specifically want to avoid saying successful because there are too many external factors on why a project could "fail" that is out of the PM's control. If anything, I feel that a good project manager really shines when a project is failing.

I have probably worked with over 50+ project managers with about half PMP (an extremely rough estimate). Most do the bare minimum; some do a decent job; and, very few do a good job. Bare minimum to me is just to keep their job. I often have to follow up with these PM; they often "lose" emails, notes, etc. on a consistent basis. Decent job to me is doing what is needed when things are not ideal. They will help out a little or upon request, but not more. Good job is when they don't need to be told multiple times to do their job.

By doing their job, I mean that they tell resources when their project is going to be delivered, the status of their projects, things I think a PM should know. So, I suppose I fail to see how a PM certification helps identify good project managers. What is it that they do that is so difficult? I practically do at least half the job of poor performers. I don't have a PMP. Those with PMP is about the same distribution across each quality of project managers.

To me, a company really only needs one person with a PMP and that should be whoever is managing the PMs. The other PMs just follows directions because almost all companies have their own variations so it is nearly impossible to really transfer one company process with another. Those who are more pro-active are able to figure it out, and those who are less or non-active are able to figure out how to fly under the radar. Yet, the company continues which seems to me that PMP really is rather useless, waste of money, and time.

Does PMP title mean a good project manager? To me, easily a no. Is it worth getting one anyways? Yes. Why? Because companies think PMP title means a good project manager which means they are willing to pay for it, therefore PM certificate is of value (unless I am the hiring manager, which I am not, so you are safe).

Job Search: Why can't ATS (Applicant Tracking System) transfer my profiles to other companies?

ATS solutions like Taleo, SuccessFactors, iCIMS, etc., do not transfer your profile from one company site to another. Yet LinkedIn and Google can, albeit they do a pretty terrible job of it.

Completing an online job application form is already a pain in the tuchus, but what drives me near insanity is the constant steps of upload resume, re-enter resume information into digital format, then cry/whine and repeat with maybe a 5% chance to get an initial call.

After so many applications, you start to realize a lot of sites use similar ATS solutions, which makes me question why they cannot just pull my information from last application to this one? I thought maybe it was a regulation issue but LinkedIn basically does that so does not seem like it. Perhaps if the ATS solution has a contract not to, they can at least build it on their main site so that I can provide them my information voluntarily for them to auto-populate the fields.

Interview: Have You Experienced Something (When You Haven't)

I had an interview when the interviewer asked me to describe an experience when I had direct influence in pushing an agenda in a release last minute for a role in release management.

I am paraphrasing the question as I cannot remember the exact wording of the question, and also that he repeated the question a couple more times with different words.

My Response

My response was on the line that I had never had to step-in to "force" a deliverable to be in a release. The reason I believe that I do not have these situations in my 8 years as release management is due to my ability to bring people together to re-evaluate the situation and re-prioritize the work. Development team can only do so much in 24 hour days, and there is a limit to how much can actually be done no matter how many people you throw into the issue within a short period of time (ie last minute). Both teams have had little issue with my methods. I manage the most applications on the release management team, so I handle a lot of different teams. I have had good reviews, and no one has complained of my methods.

I wish I responded that eloquently on the interview, but the bulk of the message is there.

My Reaction to the Questions

Oddly enough because the interviewer was really stressing this question, I was suspecting there was so underlying issue at the company especially in the release management role. I tried to address this concern (unsure if that really is the case). I mentioned that specific task really lies on the product or program owner. I am not shy on taking on other responsibilities or going beyond the traditional bounds of the release management role to get things done. 

My Personal Thought on Result

I do not think I passed the interview, unless the line of questions was to try to incite some reaction from me by asking the same question differently. At the end of the interview, the interviewer also did not seem interested in answering my questions. I do not believe that I answered his question.

Post-Interview Thoughts

I spent too much time rewording my initial answer to answer his follow up questions. I should have redirected the question so that he gave me a scenario and I would then describe to him how I would have handled it. Thinking back on it, I think that would have been the best method to clarify the concern or at least in some way to side-step the initial question.

Job Search: There Is NO Shortage on Skilled Workers, Just Shortage on "Below-Market-Pay" Skilled Workers

I have always been wondering how can the United States be short on skilled workers, because there are plenty of non-skills workers who do not enjoy their work. Maybe short on general workers to current jobs and unfilled jobs, theoretically. But even then that is very hard to believe because there are plenty of people who do very little in existing jobs.

And as I apply to several positions, the most common articles I read about is recruiters being inundated with thousands of applicants. When I talk to hiring managers, they most definitely are not short on candidates and most I have spoken to have had no problems hiring a fitting candidate within the last couple years.

When job posters have on their form your minimum pay requirement or pay history, this seems pretty evident that there is no shortage on people looking for skilled work (possibly other works; I have only searched skilled work). 

One conclusion I can come up with that perhaps I am wrong is that HR really, really has no idea what they are doing. This is also a very high possibility in my opinion as they go through so many motions that make seem to limit their search on quality and possibly cheaper alternatives.

One example is that almost all jobs list out the requirements of the candidate to a generic person yet they require all candidates to tailor their resumes to them. They should be tailored to their target audience who are not generic people. In an opening for a manager, many descriptions will have a requirement with "ability to work in a team" or if they are a level higher "ability to work in a diverse team". The position is for a person specifically leading a team. Or another opening for an experience developer who has a specific tool experience that is almost irrelevant to the actual job. There are development posts where they require "X+ years of experience with Jira" (Jira is a bug-tracking tool). If they hire a developer that cannot figure out how to use any type of bug-tracking tool is not a developer worth hiring.

In either case, there is most definitely no shortage on skilled workers. Companies are either just too cheap to hire them or too simple-minded to identify them.

Exercise (241) Taking fitness in my youth for granted

While I was starting to do sit-ups again today, I was thinking how difficult it was for me to do just 20. I was still able to do 20 without break and at a reasonable pace, but I was definitely near my limit. While I was at 10, I was just thinking how easy it was to do 100 before high school. I remember thinking how useless this exercise was, and never thought that it could be difficult for others. I thought people were just lazy and find excuses not to do them.

Now even doing a single push-up is a struggle for me. I have always been weaker with push-ups. In my  youth, push-ups were my weakest exercise where there was a limit on the number of push-ups, maybe 50.

7 minute mile was considered kind of slow, now I struggle with a 12 minute mile. I even now notice that my reflexes are slower.

But there is still hope because I still see people easily twice my age run faster and longer. My father can run marathons yearly. So I am slowly changing my lifestyle to be more fit. Life has made it a little difficult lately, but still on my mind.

Today, I had a sudden drop in my weight, 3 pounds. I am not exactly sure why as I had been maintaining 243-244 pounds for the last couple weeks. I think eating less/healthier and evening walks every other night have lowered my weight a little bit, but then I was adding weight by drinking more water at night so I didn't notice my weight loss. Last night, I didn't drink any water. Anyways, I hope this is good news and not something else. I feel physically normal.

My Thoughts: Learning Linux is hard (from Microsoft products) but worth the price?

The amount of information that is purely leaking out of my head as I write this article is just ridiculous. I just finished configuring Django/Python, Debian, Apache, MariaDb (after PostgreSQL), Google Cloud, PuTTY, DBeaver, Eclipse, and Git from scratch (no knowledge). That experience was so very tedious.

If I were to do this again, I would have learned Java and MySql first. The rest are fine. The biggest hurdles was reading documentations for MariaDb which some doubles from MySql. This worked for the most part, but in some rarer instances, MariaDb has kind of split from MySql. So, I spent a lot of time following directions that didn't work. Django was an added layer too because I was not sure if it was Django configuration or an Apache configuration. I think by going with Java and MySql, I would have one less layer of technology to figure out where my problem was.

Another hurdle was that I was working of a Windows system while configuring these technologies on Google Cloud. Of course, I also went with Debian without the GUI so I had to learn all the terminal commands. I did not setup a comparable environment on my machine so I had to upload to Google Cloud to test things. This of course meant that I had to figure out how to connect PuTTY and DBeaver to Google Cloud.

Visual Studio may be a good alternative to Eclipse and DBeaver. That I am not sure would have been easier or not. From my experience most people in this tech stack typically use Eclipse. I am not so sure about DB IDE.

Compared to my experience with Microsoft products, this was much much harder than learning MS products. Wizards, tutorials, how-to instructions, etc. were all levels easier to focus on the configurations that needed to be changed. MS definitely got my up, running, and programming within the same day. This took me about 3 weeks only weekends and some nights, so maybe equivalent to 10 days of actual work. Either case, way longer than it took for MS. Maybe this is a sign of my age...

As for pure learning curve goes, MS is way easier and faster.

As for performance, empty shells of a project is already way faster than empty MS projects.

As for price, MS is way too expensive.

In conclusion, there are pros and cons to both. As a person that wants to make decent wage to effort, learning non-MS product is worth the price as they are paid more in general for similar jobs. Good MS developers can still be paid well in higher tiers but there are fewer available openings and more lower quality developers vying for the same role plus managers who cannot recognize good talent.

My Thoughts: MySql or MariaDb for Beginners in 2020

MySql for learning purposes.

Go with MariaDb when you have more experience with MySql. Most things you will need are supported by both DB. Once you have more experience, you can move onto MariaDb if you believe that is a better option.

One of the biggest reasons is that there is more resources available for MySql. Most MariaDb refers to MySql, but it seems to be starting to branch a little. 

Another big reason is the a graphical interface, GUI, or IDE. Most are not free for MariaDb. Although some articles say that you can use MySql, there are also recent articles that state that MariaDb is starting to not work or less stable. From personal experience, I have had no problems with DBeaver with MariaDb.

Unknown knowns: Connecting DBeaver to Google Cloud VM MariaDb

Install MariaDb Server and database is pretty standard. I used this link:
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-mariadb-on-debian-9/

The problem was using DBeaver to connect to the server which required another step:
http://www.daniloaz.com/en/how-to-create-a-user-in-mysql-mariadb-and-grant-permissions-on-a-specific-database/

• May also work for MySql

Reference

https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-mariadb-on-debian-9/
http://www.daniloaz.com/en/how-to-create-a-user-in-mysql-mariadb-and-grant-permissions-on-a-specific-database/

Unknown Knowns: Parsing Names (2010 list by McKenzie)

I have attempted to parse names before, so this was an interesting read. I did kind of know about complexity of input restrictions to names, so I did not spend a lot of time working on that much. I did try to create a program to detect first names, common names, family names, etc. I probably spent an entire day just reading a plethora of articles on different cultures of names. Essentially, I never got around to even starting one. For most systems that I build now, I just use a display name. User enters their own first name and last name which most of my applications don't require but is sometimes required for third parties especially for payments.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Unknown knowns: Postgres Boolean Column Default Value

I am new to Postgres and I was trying to default a boolean column to true or false. But kept getting an error:

ERROR:  column "ColumnName" is of type bit but default expression is of type boolean 

HINT:  You will need to rewrite or cast the expression.

I tried using values 1, true, TRUE, and 'TRUE'. None of these worked.

Solution

ALTER TABLE public."_TableName" ALTER COLUMN "ColumnName" SET DEFAULT '1';


According to what I can find online, the other values should have also worked. At first, I thought maybe DBeaver was causing the problems but I get the same error when I run the same command to the VM. I do not know why this does not work. Link 1 shows that TRUE should have at least worked.

Reference

1 - https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/postgresql-boolean/

Unknown knowns: Postgresql (psql) Case Sensitivity Borderline Buggish

I could not find much literature on why POSTGRESQL is case sensitivity is no consistent. Obviously, it can be worked around but not very intuitive to someone new to Postgres but is experienced with other databases.

My "problem" with Postgres in my first hour was creating a table and querying the table. Postgres forces lower-case on the table name when creating if no double-quotes are used. But when you query the table, the syntax is case-sensitive so will not find the table because they are not the same cases.

Most literature I read just explains that this happens. Some argue that this is not a case-sensitivity issue, which I suppose is kind of, maybe technically true. But seriously, if I type in any language:

CREATE TABLE AbcDef

I would most definitely think that, "SELECT * FROM AbcDef", should most definitely work whether the system records the table the same way I named it.

I am just saying even if Postgres lower-cased AbcDef to abcdef, it should also search for table abcdef when I query by AbcDef. And if I really want it to be AbcDef with double-quotes, then I use double-quotes in my query. And this is why I think this is kind of buggish.

If it weren't for me trying to gain some experience with Postgres, I feel this is probably enough for me to start gaining more experience with MySql. Although the object-oriented portion is a bit intriguing.