• a married ex-gamer (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    seejay:
    KattMan:
    Actually this sounds good.

    Gamer girl. Talks to you. Works with you. Is she hot?

    Many of us gamer girls actually are quite hot. :)

    -- Seejay

    I know mine is. She wasn't much of a gamer girl when I first met her, but I got her converted from tetris to more involved gaming.

    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. sigh

  • Monster (unregistered) in reply to Link

    I was just thinking that... JPod at it's worst.

  • (cs) in reply to dlikhten
    dlikhten:
    (god forbid he was asked to open a ssh shell).

    Yeah.. and think of the trouble he'd have entering his PIN number at an ATM machine!

  • (cs) in reply to beesay
    beesay:
    seejay:
    Many of us gamer girls actually are quite hot. :)

    -- Seejay

    On the internet - nobody knows you're a hot chick gamer...

    True true... unless you play a hot nelf toon in Black Mageweave....

    pyro789x:
    seejay:
    Many of us gamer girls actually are quite hot. :)

    -- Seejay

    ...Where do we find you, as a collective?

    See, usually we're hiding because there's way too many over-testosteroned teenage boys (and even some desperate socially awkward men) who just don't take the hint and realize that no, I do not want to re-roll a new toon just to level with them and pay attention to them. I'm busy raiding SSC and they're just irritating me.

    PeriSoft:
    After she started playing UT, we were playing some chess. At one point, she'd started owning me pretty seriously, and after the sixth captured piece in a row, she mustered up the deepest voice she could manage, and boomed, "KILLING SPREE!"

    FPS aren't my forte, but after playing extensive games of UT at LAN parties with guys that put it on 125% speed, I practiced doing single kills with the sniper rifle. I seemed to do better that way instead of the "spray and pray" style of playing. I got very used to hearing "HEAD SHOT!" all the time and can mimick it quite well. :)

    -- Seejay

  • BillyBob (unregistered) in reply to Eric
    Eric:
    Passion. You need passion for what you do in life. If your just going to work to make a paycheck to pay off some debt, then that is all you are! Do you love what you do? If not, it is time to move on. I have never heard of this 'Third-class Programmer' thing. The closest that I came was a company that I worked at for a year, and I saw that the lack of accomplishment made me find something new. Nothing close to what is described here through.

    Sadly, after years of exposure, the third class programmer becomes delusional and in rare cases psychotic. Be warned! ;-):-p

  • Tipa (unregistered) in reply to loser
    The sad thing is that it wasn't like this when I began working there. We had lots and lots of interesting stuff to do. Things went down in such a slow pace no one noticed. Now, looking back, I cannot think of myself as anything but a loser. Even the abilities I had 10 years ago are almost gone...

    If you were in my position, what would you do to solve this? Mind you, I have some huge debts that I must pay, so quitting this job right now isn't an option.

    This is a real danger. I wasn't in a position where I had no work, but it was a non-programming position, and though the job was fun, it wasn't programming.

    It took a LOT of studying to get back up to speed. I turned a bunch of the Access/Excel-based apps and turned them into ASP apps based on javascript and Python, and build a Linux server and got that working, then routed all the company email through it for Spam checking (we were getting a LOT of spam), and from there I felt comfortable enough to bid on a contract that got me some real experience, and took my skunkworks projects at work and this contract to get me a real job...

    Where I knew NOTHING about all the things that had happened in the industry since my last programming job in 2002.

    Do nothing jobs can be killers. I'm glad I got out before it was too late to ever catch up.

  • (cs) in reply to Tipa
    Tipa:
    This is a real danger. I wasn't in a position where I had no work, but it was a non-programming position, and though the job was fun, it wasn't programming.

    It took a LOT of studying to get back up to speed. I turned a bunch of the Access/Excel-based apps and turned them into ASP apps based on javascript and Python, and build a Linux server and got that working, then routed all the company email through it for Spam checking (we were getting a LOT of spam), and from there I felt comfortable enough to bid on a contract that got me some real experience, and took my skunkworks projects at work and this contract to get me a real job...

    Where I knew NOTHING about all the things that had happened in the industry since my last programming job in 2002.

    Do nothing jobs can be killers. I'm glad I got out before it was too late to ever catch up.

    Agreed. I've gone through a variety of jobs where some had programming, some didn't. Some were monkey programming jobs too, so I didn't learn much.

    To fix it, you need to do stuff on your own. Either find ways to implement new technology into your current job or if that's not possible, you're going to have to develop projects on your own to do from home. When my programming skills got rusty, I rewrote web applications from HTML to ASP then eventually to .NET. I set up my home computer as a server, familiarizing myself with two different server set ups, plus a few different FTP servers. Buy books on new technologies and play around to find another new project based on something you're interested in.

    Nothing like having to do a total rewrite from the ground up of sites that you've been maintaining for several years to really work on those abilities.

    -- Seejay

  • WhiskeyTangoFoxtrotBatman (unregistered)

    Ye gads. I have every one of these people at my office. :( shiver

  • Rich (unregistered)

    He has to start somewhere...

  • someguy (unregistered)

    This is pure gold!

    Captcha: muhahaha, the part with the tipped water and the shoe's grip, I chortled!

  • Bejesus (unregistered) in reply to loser
    loser:
    I'm currently in a job like this. And I've been in it for 10 years (I'm 30 now).

    The sad thing is that it wasn't like this when I began working there. We had lots and lots of interesting stuff to do. Things went down in such a slow pace no one noticed. Now, looking back, I cannot think of myself as anything but a loser. Even the abilities I had 10 years ago are almost gone...

    If you were in my position, what would you do to solve this? Mind you, I have some huge debts that I must pay, so quitting this job right now isn't an option.

    Since this is (or will be) a restart from zero, any suggestion is most welcome.

    Quitting is your only option, just prepare for it properly by using the time spent doing nothing to learn enough to be able to lie your way into a better job and not suck at it.

    Don't use your financial situation as an excuse to stick it out in a career ending job.

    I have never ever met anyone who has quit their job and not had it turn out to be for the best, and I've met plenty of people who spend all day wishing they had.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to seejay
    seejay:
    Tipa:
    This is a real danger. I wasn't in a position where I had no work, but it was a non-programming position, and though the job was fun, it wasn't programming.

    It took a LOT of studying to get back up to speed. I turned a bunch of the Access/Excel-based apps and turned them into ASP apps based on javascript and Python, and build a Linux server and got that working, then routed all the company email through it for Spam checking (we were getting a LOT of spam), and from there I felt comfortable enough to bid on a contract that got me some real experience, and took my skunkworks projects at work and this contract to get me a real job...

    Where I knew NOTHING about all the things that had happened in the industry since my last programming job in 2002.

    Do nothing jobs can be killers. I'm glad I got out before it was too late to ever catch up.

    Agreed. I've gone through a variety of jobs where some had programming, some didn't. Some were monkey programming jobs too, so I didn't learn much.

    To fix it, you need to do stuff on your own. Either find ways to implement new technology into your current job or if that's not possible, you're going to have to develop projects on your own to do from home. When my programming skills got rusty, I rewrote web applications from HTML to ASP then eventually to .NET. I set up my home computer as a server, familiarizing myself with two different server set ups, plus a few different FTP servers. Buy books on new technologies and play around to find another new project based on something you're interested in.

    Nothing like having to do a total rewrite from the ground up of sites that you've been maintaining for several years to really work on those abilities.

    -- Seejay

    Same here. I wrote my own PERL scripts to help automate the content presentation for a website of mine when I was back in college. Just recently I rewrote the core functionality in PHP and it's finally DB driven instead of using flat files.

    You really do have to have your own side projects or else work can dull the skills (depending on what you do there).

  • Claudiu (unregistered) in reply to Leo

    Also I would shoot myself if I spent 40 hours of my life each week doing that.

  • bighusker (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Ok, the group is WTF-Heaven, but does he have job security for life? If so, then who cares... If I didn't have to worry about getting tossed and having to find a real job, I wouldn't mind getting paid to surf and play all day ;)

    That was my response as well... Unfortunately, he'll probably have to find a real job at some point. And when that happens, he's gonna be screwed in the experience department regardless of what his resume says.

    OTOH, he could use the downtime at work (pretty much sounds like 40 hours a week) to run his own consulting business...lol.

  • (cs) in reply to a married ex-gamer
    a married ex-gamer:
    KattMan:
    seejay:
    Many of us gamer girls actually are quite hot. :)

    -- Seejay

    I know mine is. She wasn't much of a gamer girl when I first met her, but I got her converted from tetris to more involved gaming.

    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. sigh

    Been with mine for 7 years and still not married. But she loves kicking my butt in game. She's gotten better then me. Where I was always helping her in MMORPG's she's the one helping me out of tight spots. Good to have a hot gamer girl for a girlfriend, even better to have one that will save your butt rather than watch you crash and burn and laugh about it later.

  • (cs) in reply to seejay
    seejay:
    pyro789x:

    ...Where do we find you, as a collective?

    See, usually we're hiding because there's way too many over-testosteroned teenage boys (and even some desperate socially awkward men) who just don't take the hint and realize that no, I do not want to re-roll a new toon just to level with them and pay attention to them. I'm busy raiding SSC and they're just irritating me.

    -- Seejay

    Also note, a lot of Gamer Girls (yes this needs to be capitolized) will play as males just to keep the "over-testosteroned teenage boys" away due to homophobia.

    Just look for the male characters that are NOT all over the half dressed female characters and you stand a good chance of finding a Gamer Girl.

  • Salami (unregistered)

    Best WTF in a long time. If you combined my previous three jobs, that could be the story of my working life.

  • (cs) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    seejay:
    See, usually we're hiding because there's way too many over-testosteroned teenage boys (and even some desperate socially awkward men) who just don't take the hint and realize that no, I do not want to re-roll a new toon just to level with them and pay attention to them. I'm busy raiding SSC and they're just irritating me.

    -- Seejay

    Also note, a lot of Gamer Girls (yes this needs to be capitolized) will play as males just to keep the "over-testosteroned teenage boys" away due to homophobia.

    Just look for the male characters that are NOT all over the half dressed female characters and you stand a good chance of finding a Gamer Girl.

    What's amusing is I always aim for my characters to be female, regardless of any in-game attention it may drag. And honestly, I haven't had much of an issue with it at all (in Wow anyway). Of course, I tend to not dance on mailboxes in my underwear either, although I did have the guild tailor craft what I call my "tart" suit which I switch to when we're going to wipe to save on repair bills. I tried dancing in it once and my nelf dance went immediately from high class stripper to 10 cent hooker. Won't do that again.

    That being said, I've heard enough stories from girls playing girl toons and guys playing girl toons to know that there are quite a few desperate lonely boys out there who will happily latch onto you if they think you're a real life girl (tm) on the other side.

    -- Seejay

  • (cs) in reply to a married ex-gamer
    a married ex-gamer:
    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. *sigh*

    Might I add a word of advice?

    A gamer girl is one who was into games before you met her. If she got into games because you were into them, then there's a high chance that she won't stick with it in the long-run.

    I can't count how many girls I've met over the years who gush about playing certain games, only to abandon the game once the relationship with whatever their latest squeeze was who got them into the game in the first place ended.

    There's always exceptions to the rule though.

    -- Seejay

  • (cs) in reply to a married ex-gamer
    a married ex-gamer:
    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. *sigh*
    Is that your picture on the cover of this month's Whipped Magazine?
  • Stu (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Vechni:
    "It is her mission, apparently, to run out into the middle of an open area and get shot down so her teammates could spot the enemy."

    WTF

    Misogyny at it's finest.

    Why misogyny? Given the way girls clan up together for online gaming, mostly likely was a girls' clan that after noting her abilities assigned her to "enemy identification."

    Is it still misogyny when it was other girls made her run out there?

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Stu
    Stu:
    KattMan:
    Vechni:
    "It is her mission, apparently, to run out into the middle of an open area and get shot down so her teammates could spot the enemy."

    WTF

    Misogyny at it's finest.

    Why misogyny? Given the way girls clan up together for online gaming, mostly likely was a girls' clan that after noting her abilities assigned her to "enemy identification."

    Is it still misogyny when it was other girls made her run out there?

    No, that's just how women operate. They're far crueler to each other than men, on average.

  • (cs)

    Not for any amount of money. Not for anything at all, would I stay at such a place. "Andrew" Escape now while you are still semi-consious!

  • Expategghead (unregistered)

    I feel ill reading that post. Seriously , truly nauseous.

    I shall go and kiss my boss.

  • Leon (unregistered)

    sounds like an improvement on my job...

  • KDEESLEEYO (unregistered)

    Haha, can i apply there?

  • :E (unregistered) in reply to Vechni

    I actually know a few CS clans that used to use a really weak player just to be cannonfodder and see where the other team is. Makes no sense at all in UT though :P

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to PeriSoft
    PeriSoft:
    I got my wife playing UT for a while. She's definitely hot, but she's also definitely not a gamer, despite the UT sessions. The main reason she liked it was because she could order the bots around, which actually says a lot about her... :)

    After she started playing UT, we were playing some chess. At one point, she'd started owning me pretty seriously, and after the sixth captured piece in a row, she mustered up the deepest voice she could manage, and boomed, "KILLING SPREE!"

    Keeper all right!

    Just you wait, the next time you come home a bit drunk, she throws you out of the door and declares "MY HOUSE!"

  • Sonny Brilliant (unregistered)

    this one got to me laughing. Oct-22: Finally got to see the “Repo” database. It was literally three tables in an Access database and had a “form wizard” form called Form1. The form didn’t do anything. This is what Diane has been working on for six months.

  • Hugues (unregistered)

    Wish there were a pokemon chick at my job. Too much sausage, I will never get some fun in here :(

  • (cs) in reply to seejay

    I go down to magfest every year with powerglove boys. Many gamer girls are really hot. :)

  • NotanEnglishMajor (unregistered) in reply to loser
    loser:
    I'm currently in a job like this. And I've been in it for 10 years (I'm 30 now).

    The sad thing is that it wasn't like this when I began working there. We had lots and lots of interesting stuff to do. Things went down in such a slow pace no one noticed. Now, looking back, I cannot think of myself as anything but a loser. Even the abilities I had 10 years ago are almost gone...

    If you were in my position, what would you do to solve this? Mind you, I have some huge debts that I must pay, so quitting this job right now isn't an option.

    Since this is (or will be) a restart from zero, any suggestion is most welcome.

    Easy.

    You have lots of free time, right? Well...

    1)Download the language/development environment of your choice, M$/Oracle/Open source, they are all freely available on the web.

    2)Start with "Hello World" and build your proficiency in the language you chose.

    3)Pick some small, well defined, repetitive process and write a prog to automate it.

    1. (This is the hard part) Convince someone else in your company to use this newly minted program.

    Congrats! You now have a new "system" in "production" and a current bullet point for your CV.

    --you owe the Oracle a hot gamer chick.

  • (cs) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:

    Actually this sounds good.

    Gamer girl. Talks to you. Works with you. Is she hot?

    I refer you to http://xkcd.com/322/

  • Beaver (unregistered)

    This is exactly what I am facing as a contractor at a very large Bank. It's insane. Insane and boring.

    I am studying for my 10g DBA certification, looking for another gig, and keeping my pie-hole shut.

  • Beaver (unregistered)

    This is exactly what I am facing as a contractor at a very large Bank. It's insane. Insane and boring.

    I am studying for my 10g DBA certification, looking for another gig, and keeping my pie-hole shut.

  • Geoff (unregistered)

    And then, he proceeded to grab a nearby glass of water and tipped it over onto my desk. This caused a large puddle of water that started dripping onto the keyboard. He then lifted up one of his legs, and put his shoe on the desk, in the middle of the water. He then grabbed his ankle, tugging at it, and said, “good grip in the wet too.” And then he walked away.

    ROFL!

    This post made me laugh so much at work that I gave away the fact that I'm not actually working :-(

  • gygax (unregistered) in reply to a married ex-gamer
    a married ex-gamer:
    KattMan:
    seejay:
    KattMan:
    Actually this sounds good.

    Gamer girl. Talks to you. Works with you. Is she hot?

    Many of us gamer girls actually are quite hot. :)

    -- Seejay

    I know mine is. She wasn't much of a gamer girl when I first met her, but I got her converted from tetris to more involved gaming.

    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. sigh

    thats why you dont marry them. ;)

  • Gabriel Cesario (unregistered) in reply to gygax
    a married ex-gamer:
    I thought I had succeeded at this as well, but as soon as I married her, all gaming interest went firmly out the window, along with the willingness to allow me to play for more than 3 min. without some manner of interruption. *sigh*

    I'm starting to get worried, I've married last week.

  • Iain Collins (unregistered) in reply to seejay
    seejay:
    True true... unless you play a hot nelf toon in Black Mageweave....
    I just caught myself saying "hubba" in response to reading that.

    Might stay off the WoW for a bit.

  • pointer (unregistered) in reply to bumblebeeman

    People wanting to find this magical work. Look into night shift work.

  • (cs) in reply to Iain Collins
    Iain Collins:
    seejay:
    True true... unless you play a hot nelf toon in Black Mageweave....
    I just caught myself saying "hubba" in response to reading that.

    Might stay off the WoW for a bit.

    You sir, have made me giggle. Thanks for the smile. :)

    -- Seejay

  • Ponedonkey (unregistered) in reply to Vechni
    Vechni:
    "It is her mission, apparently, to run out into the middle of an open area and get shot down so her teammates could spot the enemy."

    WTF

    This is the real WTF.

    No, it not.

    CAPTCHA:bling. I wish

  • annekat (unregistered) in reply to NoLongeraLoser

    You can usually look around and find some small need somebody has. Then do a program or find some tool to address that need, and blammo! Suddenly everybody absolutely has a vital need to use it all the time, and you get enhancement requests.

    Happened to me more than twice. Now I have way too much on my plate to look for more things.

  • dmsuperman (unregistered)

    This never happens with these, but I literally laughed out loud. During the middle of my English class. The last bit about the arrays was hilarious.

  • frosty (unregistered)

    last post?

  • Mordac the Preventer (unregistered) in reply to frosty

    No.

  • (cs) in reply to Mordac the Preventer

    still not last...

  • Ponedonkey (unregistered) in reply to beesay

    But there are are no girls on the internet!

    CAPTCHA: ingenium What the hell is an ingenium?

  • Learning Programmin (unregistered)

    Seriously how do you find a job like this? (I'm 100% serious)

  • Former "ASP Programmer" (unregistered)
    May-24: Met Steven today. He’s an ASP programmer for some internal sites. Later in the afternoon, he stopped by cube, worried. To quote: “You're going to have to help me on this, because I know absolutely nothing about ASP.”

    This article doesn't surprise me one bit. I can explain exactly why this whole "third class" of "programmers" exist in one word..

    Microsoft.

    They went too far when they took VB into Access, Excel, and then the Web. Remember learning BASIC in school:

    10 print "hello, world"

    Microsoft with their ingenuity said why not take this basic language so any dimwit can make half assed programs! How cool would that be? Then we can hire 10,000 of these monkeys to maintain the code for our next gen O/S!

    Microsoft has made it far too easy for anyone that can use a word processor or a spreadsheet (though there's many that don't even know how to use these basic apps properly!) to write code and call themselves programmers.

    Don't get me wrong, Microsoft has designed some great applications and interfaces making computers usable by the masses, and hence is also responsible for the third class of computer operators! :)

    P.S: No offence or pun intended to Microsoft, Microsoft love childs, advocates etc. :)

    Ok, time to brace myself for the flaming replies :)

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