morning

good morning all

o/

It's actually nice weather here today. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be too :D

yeah its pretty decent here - glad i brought my sunglasses

Heh, I don't need those with work from home all that much anymore :D

i do enjoy working from home, but alas, i have to go into the city 3 days a week

thankfully we get to decide which 3 days we want, but i think in an ideal world i'd only do 1/2 per week

Oof, yeah. 3 is a lot!

We'll probably be going back to 1 day a week after all this is over, but even that seems one day too many to me XD I can imagine going to the office 1 day every two weeks as that's the day our sprint changes, we do the retro etc. but the other day there's just nothing to do!

it guarantees you have atleast 1 overlap day with everyone in this office - we hired a lot over lockdown and management wants to make sure they get to experience the "company culture"

it is kinda daunting going back to the office, our recommendation was to do a few days a week before it became mandatory... which almost no one followed xd

Ah, yeah.

Before covid I spent three days a week at the office, and two days at home. That was great.

But entirely working from home is even better :D

its an interesting question from a management perspective: better productivity from having everyone in vs being more willing to work by not having to commute

Well my productivity at the office is lower than at home, so I'm not sure why a manager would think I need get to an office for that.

for me its weird. the websites i need for my work load faster in the office because when we aren't at the office we have to use a VPN which slows everything down... but cutting out a bit over an hours travel each way makes me more willing to work

Ah, yeah, that is weird... Over here everything is done through vpn as well, though it's not necessarily faster at the office: You're still using the vpn when there XD

I don't know how the office network is set up, but it is impressive just how much faster some pages load there

I guess that goes for almost everything where you can either just use internet or have to access internet through a vpn :)

also i imagine that working at a satellite company in a big city probably means we have above average internet speeds compared to a small town

Might be? Over here most internet connections are glass fiber, whether you're in a city or a small town. It's how much you pay for your connection that has more influence on your connection speed :P

i tried to look at upgrading our fiber connection but it appears to be hard capped at 50 down and like 6 up here :/

@AlexRobinson My home network is much faster than the office, and most of the team agrees productivity is higher when they can be mostly at home so we're keeping things as a "work where you like" basis.

i'd almost certainly agree, but as far as i understand, a lot of new hires over lockdown who only worked remotely end up leaving the job because they don't know anyone - which i can understand

@AlexRobinson We put in a lot of effort to create social chat. I was hired into my current employer during lockdown. Haven't met my boss yet - met half my team. And I've hired in folks who will be remote-only. It does all depend on company culture

I quite like the fact that remote working means we know more about our team-mates' families and pets than we might otherwise

As we meet them on Zoom or Teams etc

I can definitely see how that can end up being the case, though due to the specific nature of my work and age relative to most other people's age... i didnt know more than maybe 5 people over lockdown

whereas now i know atleast half the people on my floor

@AlexRobinson Well that's... I don't think you need to go to the office to be able to do that, I switched teams mid-pandemic and with a bit of organisation I now know all the people I need to do my job, I know who to e-mail if I need X or Y...

I'm not a 'know the entire floor' kind of person. I need to know the names and numbers of the ones that I might need to ask questions, and that's enough ;)

I've been doing 2 days a week for the last 3 weeks - just to meet some of my senior stakeholders in person, but I'm the same as you - I wouldn't ever know all the floor

@RoryAlsop Will you keep doing 2, after meeting them all? :P

I dunno, I never noticed any slowness when working from home. But I was connecting to a VPN in order to RDP into my actual machine, so the machine-internet connection was the same, there was just an additional machine-rdp-vpn connection on top.

Yeah, here all internet goes through a VPN, and then there's also the connection with the remote desktop... which is sucking today btw! I can type whole sentences, look at the screen and only the first letters will be showing up :/

Something that should probably have taken no more than 45-60 minutes took all afternoon because of it, and because of losing the connection so often.

Yeah that's untenable.

Y'know what would be nice? If there was a 'Don't put at top of active questions' flag when editing a Q/A.

So you can fix the grammar/typos of a dozen old questions without garbling the feed.

@Sarov that's a tale as old as time a FR as old as the site

there used to be a mod only loophole that let us do it but it got closed

@JourneymanGeek Why'd it get closed?

I don't remember, might have been inadvertant :D

we could delete/edit/undelete for a no bump edit

There's a parallel to be made here to Tolkien's world.

Where everything was amazing in the beginning and always gets progressively worse with time. :D

lol

@JourneymanGeek Wait that one doesn't work anymore? I could swear I still see mods recommending that one sometimes to others XD

Pretty sure it dosen't

Bummer :(

and at least 4 years ago

afternoon o/

Morning.

Evening!

Last workday this week: ✅

@Tinkeringbell probably

Tired and bored.

@Sarov Same for the bored... thought I'd be joining an interesting webinar today, but so far it's been 15 minutes of formalities :(

imagines a suit-and-tie teaparty

Just professors talking about their universities and the Cleveringa programme so far XD

Introductions... not so much suit and tie ;)

I mean I even got paper out so I could take notes... there's nothing to take notes about :(

Maybe adding suits and ties would be an improvement, then.

Wait, like... actual, atomic paper?

The univerity of alberta dude that's talking now is wearing some... it doesn't improve :P

@Sarov Like actual dead tree paper, yes.

@Tinkeringbell Needs more ties then. At least 3 per neck!

XD

@Tinkeringbell Why?

@Sarov Because I was expecting interesting stuff!

So use a keyboard!

Nah, pen and paper works better for me, I remember more later.

shudders

Also you're killing trees! D:

Well it was already dead when I bought it

No, you're killing future trees.

future trees get killed all the time though... we have sheep grazing the heath fields here to do just that!

D:

I think things are close to getting interesting... ttyl

There's something I've never understood. Back in uni, there was this one class with gigantic assignments. The prof insisted on them being handed in on paper. At the time, I was mad because holy crap that's 50-100 pages of paper per student per assignment, that's like a dozen old trees per year.

Now, though, there's something else I don't understand. Why would the prof want that? I can't even imagine having to review a pull request on paper. That'd be awful.

@Sarov Well, it's not that bad... I only made 3 pages and a few lines of notes ;)

Barely a single branch killed :P

As long as we both agree that you're still a weirdo. :P

Isn't everyone?

I'm sure there's, like, 1 person who isn't.

Well they're a weirdo to then, just because they're not a weirdo ;)

That's not how that works!

It is now :P

You don't get to decide that!

:P

Srsly though. Why would anyone want to mark comp sci assignments on paper???

They don't have a nice screen at home, too much screen time gives them migraine, paper is more portable than a pc?

You don't have to take all the 2000 pages at once ;)

I've heard grading can continue far after office hours, so taking it home might be useful.

So you're making 30 trips? And leaving the assignments behind unsupervised?

Dunno. I've never had to be a teacher... if I could lock up the assignments somewhere, why not?

Do you really think it'd be easier to review code on paper than in an IDE?

Or even just a web browser with ctrl-f.

I've studied for my OCA and OCP on paper/in notepad because the IDE would make me miss stuff.

I dunno... The teacher probably had reasons, and you don't have to understand those... you just hand in your assignments, pass the class, be done with it.

But I want to understand them!

@Tinkeringbell Why/how would an IDE make you miss stuff?

Then go pass a few courses in psychology first ;)

@Sarov The way the exams were structured, 'does not compile' would be an option if there was e.g. a ; missing, or a package name was wrong... if you do that stuff in an IDE, it often autocorrects that.

You basically get a bit lazy

@Tinkeringbell Oh I see. That's a stupid way of testing/evaluating then, though.

@Tinkeringbell But I already graduated! I want answers now! :P

I'm sorry, I can't help :P

Actually, I'm not sorry, just trying to be polite.

I'm not sure it still counts as polite when you point out that you're not sorry.

Yeah but I should really stop being so apologetic XD

Why?

Because it's bothering people ;)

Just apologize for bothering them then!

Yeah, no, not how it works XD

It is in Canada! :P

I'm not in Canada though!

I'm a proper Dutch person (or at least, I try to be!)

Well there's yer problem!

That's not a problem!

There's worse persons to be.

@Tinkeringbell I meant this part.

Eh, don't think that's really a problem either. Canada sounds nice but comes with it's own set of problems :P

Being directly next to the US? Eeeewl :P

What, like - pfft, ah.

I was gonna say frigid cold, scorching summers, racial injustice and lack of healthcare professionals.

But that works too! :P

@Tinkeringbell Also horrendously underpaying. Medical graduates all move to the US to get higher salaries.

Let's list some Dutch problems: Narcostate, scorching summers, housing bubble, tax evasion haven

@Sarov Duh, healthcare isn't socialised there, so you can probably ask way more.

"Narcostate"?

@Sarov drugs and organized crime. Mostly drugs.

I see.

XTC, Meth, MDMA, cocaine

And quite a few murders

Oh also the prison systems are awful. Though that's probably true everywhere except, like, Sweden.

I don't know, the prison system here doesn't seem to be regarded as very bad...

It only has a problem with the psychiatric cases escaping and murdering people while at it.

The prison system here is probably a bit underused, penalties are very low in some cases.

When you say you like cold, does that include -40?

@Sarov No, if we're lucky we have 2 days of -15 in a row :P

And the whole country is paralized because cold!

snorts

Yeah no winter is between -30 and -50, with windchill.

Sounds like a good time to stay inside and sleep, I'm still in.

Well come on over then.

Maybe later! I'm getting the keys to my apartment tomorrow... I want to enjoy that for a while first ;)

Take your appartment with you then! We have room.

I... doubt the upstairs neighbour will appreciate that :P

On that note... it's time for bed, I don't want to oversleep tomorrow!

bye

Night.

@Tinkeringbell Why not? Canada is cool.

Highly relevant to the accept-at-top debate.