!rant
About to attend a hackathon with free food and beverages - including alcohol.
And I can't get this xkcd with the ballmer peaking out of my head.
I sincerely hope it won't get as bad as ME...

This is my most ridiculous meeting in my long career. The crazy thing is I have witnessed this scenario play out many times during my career. Sometimes it sits in waiting for a few years but then BOOM there it is again and again. In each case the person that fell into the insidious trap was smart and savvy but somehow it just happened. The outcomes were really embarrassing and in some cases career damaging. Other times, it was sort of humorous. I could see this happening to me and I never want it to happen to you.

Once upon a time in a land not so far away there was a Kickoff Meeting for an offsite work area recovery exercise being planned for our Oklahoma locations. Eleven Oklahoma high ranking senior executives were on this webinar plus three Enterprise IT Directors (Ellen, Jim and Bob) who would support the business from the systems side throughout the exercise.

The plan was for Sam Otto, our Midwest Director of Business Continuity to host this webinar. Sam had hands-on experience recovering to our third party recovery site vendor and he always did a great job. He motivated people to attend the exercise with the coolest breakfasts and lunches you could imagine. Donuts, bagels, pizza, wings, scrumptious salads, sandwiches, beverages and desserts. He was great with people and made it a lot of fun.

At the last minute Charles 'Don't Call Me Charlie' Ego-Smith, the Global Business Continuity Senior Vice President, decided to grand-stand Sam. He demanded the reins to the webinar. Pulled a last-minute power-play and made himself the host and presenter. You have probably seen the move at some point in your career. I guess the old saying, 'be careful what you wish for' has some truth to it - read on and let me know if you devRanters agree...

So, Charlie, I mean Charles, begins hosting the session and greets all of the attendees. Hey, good so far! He starts showing some slides in the PowerPoint presentation and he fields a few questions, comments and requests from the Oklahoma executives. The usual easy to handle requests such as, 'what if we are too busy to do recover all systems', 'what if we recover all of our processes from home', 'what if we have high profile visitors that month?' Hey you can't blame them for trying. You are probably thinking to yourself, 'been there - heard that!' But luckily our experienced team had anticipated the push-back. Fortunately, Senior Management 'had our backs' and committed that all processes and systems must participate and test - so these were just softball requests, 'easy-peasy' to handle. But wait, we are just getting started!

Now the fireworks begin. Bob, one if the Enterprise IT directors started asking a bunch of questions. Well, Charles had somewhat of a history with Bob from previous exercises and did not take kindly to Bob's string of questions. Charles started getting defensive and while Bob was speaking Charles started IM'ing. He's firing off one filthy message after another to me and our teammate Sam.

'This idiot Bob is the biggest pain in the ass that I ever worked with'; 'he doesn't know shit', 'he never shuts the f up', 'I wanna go over to his office and kick his f'in ass...!'

Unfortunately...the idiot Charles had control of the webinar and was sharing his screen so every message he sent was seen by all of the attendees! Yeah, everyone including Bob and the Senior Oklahoma executives! We could not instant message him to stop as everyone would have seen our warnings, so we tried to call Charles' cell phone and text him but he did not pick up. He just kept firing ridiculously embarrassing dirty IM messages and I guess we were all so stunned we just sat there bewildered. We finally bit the bullet and IM'ed him to STOP ALREADY!!! Whoa, talk about an embarrassing silence!

I really felt sorry for Bob. He is a good guy. Deservedly, Charlie 'Yes I am going to call you CHARLIE' got in big time hot water after the webinar with upper management. For one reason or another he only lasted another year or so at our company. Maybe this event played a part in his demise.

So, the morale is, if you use IM - turn it off during a webinar if you are the host. If you must use it, be really careful what you say, who you say it to and pray nothing embarrassing or personal is sent to you for everyone to see.

Quick Update - During the past couple of months I participated on many webinars with enterprise software vendors trying to sell me expensive solutions. Most of the vendors had their IM going while doing webinars and training. Some very embarrassing things came flying across our screens. You learn a lot reading those messages when they pop-up on the presenters' screen, both personal and business related. Some even complaints from customers!

My advice to employees and vendors is to sign-out of IM before hosting a webinar. Otherwise, it just might destroy your credibility and possibly your career.

Some people say that they've built something with blood, sweat and tears. They've clearly never built anything serious. If they did, they'd know that it costs that, an unholy amount of alcoholic beverages to account for the crippling depression caused by the inevitable failures, and a shitton of cursing. FUCK!!

Here's a tip to caffeinated-beverages lovers.

People often make this mistake with coffee.. They take a cup of coffee after lunch and expect it will make them productive and concentrated immediately. That's BS. Wait for the pee.

Digestion takes ~27% of your body energy molecules [ATP], so you will anyway be sleepy.

When you ingest a cup of coffee you ingest a warm beverage. The warmth will most likely make you sleepy and the sleepiness might last 5 to 15 minutes.

Caffeine in the coffee acts as diuretic - it makes your kidney filter blood more aggresively. As a result 20-40minutes after ingestion you will want to pee.

When you want to pee it's an obvious sign the caffeine is working. Now you should be productive.

Brain [cerebrum] uses glucose molecules for energy rather than ATP, like the rest of the body does. So for the best effect:
- have lunch
- have coffee with sugar during or right after the lunch [do not drink coffee if your stomach is empty!! Ulcers, gastritis, refluxes - that's your future if you do]
- wait ~30 minutes or until you pee
- go to do your work.

This way you will not be working sleepy and your brain will have enough pure glucose to operate on [sugar is just 2x glucose molecules bound together]

I always get yelled at when I make a big deal of having tons of open drinks near expensive hardware, and it gets on my fucking nerves because it is almost always followed by a spill and irreversible damage.

Is it really that difficult to place beverages away from the electronics or maybe close the water bottle after taking a drink?

-Games (board games or video games)
-Coffee and other beverages
-Enough tech gadgets
But most important of all, love what you do.

I have this awesome StackOverflow mug, but I don't drink coffee. Or any hot beverages for that matter :(

I've just found out that the plastic cups that I have been using for almost 2 years at the office release a toxic steam when used for hot beverages.

travelling by train, supposedly first class.

asked for headphones on stewardess' first pass through our carriage.

that was an hour ago. since then, she made three other passes of our carriage, serving out beverages, foods and coffees.

because fuck you, headphones take most time to prepare so first we will serve everyone else.

So McDonalds have released a new antivirus product...

I clearly define the day's goal, get beverages/snacks ready, get my hair out of my face, take my glasses off, answer any remaining email, take a deep breath, and dive in.

Sometimes I'll listen to music, but it depends on the ambient noise level.

these beverages won't keep you awake.

How many standard drinks (or alcohol) is 4 CL of gin?

In most countries, a standard drink or alcoholic beverage is commonly defined as containing approximately 14 grams (0.6 ounces) of pure alcohol. This amount of alcohol is found in various quantities of different types of alcoholic beverages.

A typical shot of distilled spirits, like gin, is often around 1.5 ounces (44.3 ml), which is roughly 4 centiliters (CL). If we assume that the gin has an alcohol content of around 40% (80 proof), then the pure alcohol content in 4 CL of gin would be:

4 CL * 0.4 (alcohol content) = 1.6 CL of pure alcohol.

To convert this to standard drinks, which are typically based on 14 grams of pure alcohol, you would divide the amount of pure alcohol by the amount of alcohol in a standard drink:

1.6 CL / 14 grams = ~0.11 standard drinks.

So, approximately 4 CL of gin would contain about 0.11 standard drinks worth of alcohol. Keep in mind that alcohol content can vary between different brands and types of gin, so this is a rough estimate. It's always a good idea to refer to the label on the bottle for more accurate information.

Thanks, Chat GPT, i'm going to go ahead and drink 10 of these gin sodas and i'll only have had one standard drink!!!!

😂😂😂🤡🤡🤡

Happy friday ya'll

Coffee, tea or water?

Hot beverages for changing the mood

What are your coffee/tea drinking habits?
Do you prefer coffee, tea, or other beverages? ☕ 🍵
Do you use a coffee maker/machine or something else?

I'm wondering if I should invest in a coffee machine 🤔

I want a little study that correlates as much as possible programming languages with alcoholic beverages their coders consume mainly, and how alcoholic are they too on average.

Noise canceling headphones, brain.fm and some cold beverages nearby.

If you:
- Can’t entertain a thought without accepting it,
- Can’t say “I’m scared” aloud when you’re scared,
- Can’t say “Yep, I was wrong” when you’re wrong,
- Had more than three alcoholic beverages since Jan 1st 2024,
- Are addicted to weed,
don’t talk to me.

.: I need validated :.

Does anyone else like Sencha so much that they don't mind eating the leaves as well? Reminds me of the nori in miso soup.