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Was the BSOD screensaver from sysinternals by Mark Russinovich?

I had installed the same and couple of my colleagues sitting around me had done the same.

Our CTO (Robotics simulation software) was visiting and had an early morning meeting. He saw this on all screens and had a minor panic attack fearing a virus outbreak or software bug.


I installed that on a housemate's PC and waited for his reaction in the next couple days... But it never came. And so I forgot about it.

I moved out. It must have been a couple months later (we were and still are good friends), we're out somewhere and the first thing he says to me "did you install a BSOD screensaver on my computer?!?" And I suddenly remembered, realized it had been months and started laughing.

What's hilarious is he never tried pressing anything or moving the mouse.. since, being a developer, he knew that was pointless. He'd sit down, see the BSOD, (often swear,) then just press the hard reset button. In true evil fashion, I think I set it to a long interval, like 2 hours, so it only activated if he walked away but left it running.

I do still feel a bit bad about it. But only a bit. :)


A much younger version of myself put that screensaver on my workstation at work.

A week or so later, one the IT folks passes me at lunch -- "Hey, your computer is on the fritz, it keeps rebooting and going to a blue screen ..." :)


I have a similar requirement where I want all my work related links to open in a particular browser/profile.

I use Mac and ended up implementing something that I can tweak easily, not polished but works.

https://github.com/mechanicker/chromer


This is the approach that finally worked for me and have been using this for past 4 years.

I create a top level directory for collection of related repositories. It lets me configure git for different collection of repositories.


> I remember having used a Red Hat (?) SourceNav (Source Navigator) by any chance?

I used it quite a lot before completely moving to Emacs.


Use ‘ditto’ for copying directories. It is fast!

https://osxdaily.com/2014/06/11/use-ditto-copy-files-directo...


Ditto can also be useful for backup and restore since, AFAICT, it preserves file meta data. (Unlike rsync for example.)


`ditto` will also preserve resource forks, which is occasionally necessary for not breaking apps or installer pkgs. I've had to use it when doing a semi-automated deployment of some zipped-up software to a hundred or so Macs via bash over ARD. `ditto -xkv`


We have a service that uses Go http proxy for implementing a reverse proxy.

Upgrading to Go 1.16 introduced an unexplained performance drop. We suspect it is due to how it flushes when the content length is not known (typical for streaming). In earlier versions of Go, the call to flush was less frequent and in other versions, flush was called on every write. As a team, we sunk a lot of time trying to debug this and finally changed some of the application architecture/logic to circumvent these overheads.


Reminds me of my early days as a rookie people manager. I was asked to estimate a project for a team that I had no idea about their abilities. I was very hesitant to estimate since I had no data to begin with. My manager asked me to throw a number and see if there is a push back!!!

I soon made a decision not to be a manager responsible for guess work based estimation and moved back to an IC role where I estimate effort for work assigned to me.


I am on my 26th year as a programmer. I love the fact that I can imagine and also make it happen.

However, I see a constant push from people around me to focus on creating a pipeline of ideas and let others implement them. Unfortunately, I do not see the same level of enthusiasm I have in implementing some of those ideas - could be due to lack of recognition since it is not their original idea.

Once I retire, I will just go back to where it all started. Come up with an idea followed by implementation. The sheer pleasure of seeing your idea working in a reasonable timeframe is exhilarating!


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