Vito @vitorm@mastodon.technology

Trying to explain software complexity to middle management with brilliant ideas is truly exhausting. It's not even midday on a Tuesday and I want to go home.

Interesting article that shows the links between Nigel Farage's new party and Italian's populist party 5 Stars Movement: once again Italy leads by example in Europe in an attempt to get rid of democracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/21/brexit-party-nigel-farage-italy-digital-populists-five-star-movement?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Growing up in Europe made solo trips very easy: pick a Country, choose two or three cities, go explore for a week or two. Anywhere you'll find new food, history, museums, art.
I don't know how to solo travel anymore now that I'm in Australia. Going solo in Asia feels too much of an adventure for a relaxing holiday.
I'm thinking to take a week to go to New Zealand, but I wonder if I'm not too much of a whimp to explore and hike on my own.

By the way, the home page is a tab called "Home", and it's the default tab every user sees after logging in.

In the past few months my company rolled out an internal tool I've been building for a while, and now they're sending a survey to see how well received is by new users.
I've just been told we can't ask questions about the home page because it would confuse people who don't know what a home page is.

Another company I applied for sent ma a link with a coding test without even giving me a call before. I'm tempted to flat out refuse to comply, but my job search is going bad enough that I don't think can afford it.
If you want me to spend 1-2 hours of my free time at least give me a call first so I can ask a question or two about your company or the role.

And here I am, after my first Australian election, wondering if I brought a political curse from Italy with me. This sucks.

A user walked to my desk very alarmed because "nothing is working anymore and there is an error message from Microsoft saying they'll take my account away!".
It was a message from Office 365, something about changing user agreement. I clicked on the Accept button, the message went away, and Office resumed working.

I just found a job ad for a junior web developer position requiring a minimum of "2-5 years using React & Redux". Redux came out less than 4 years ago, React 5 years ago. So they want a junior developer who has used them for as long as they've been around.

Feeling sad looking at my personal gitlab coloured squares thingy I sort of decided to code a bit on personal projects every day and see how long of a streak I can make. 9 days in and I'm already feeling empowered!

There are users in my org that just would have no idea how to login into Salesforce. They won't use bookmarks, they won't use password managers, they won't use pinned tabs. They would open the browser and feel lost.
We had to put an icon on everyone's desktop, which is a masked cmd file that opens Firefox to the Salesforce login page, because users were just unable to figure out how to get there (we had a link on the intranet, BTW, but people wouldn't use it).

Working with end users always opens my eyes: no matter how much you dumb down your UI, most people will always be unable to use it.
They just refuse to read a simple set of instructions, read error messages, follow a link, install updates, reboot their machine. Any time something goes off the beaten path most of my users just throw their hands in the air and refuse to apply the most basic troubleshooting steps: it's not their job, they're too busy and important to do anything, after all.

Maybe it's time I start working again on my home server and make it more than a download box?
Or I could just keep spending my free time watching again and again Rick & Morty and Boejack Horseman.

Who would've thought that looking for a dev job with 2 years of developer experience would be as hard as when I was applying with no experience?
Is it the Australian tech market or is it me that sucks? D:

It wasn't "heroic", it didn't feel right. It felt like I was yelling at an old stranger in the street. I'm very shy, I don't do that. People around were agreeing with him. They agreed that immigrants are criminals, they harrass our women, they live off our taxes, they could work but are too lazy, etc.
I tried to reply, but I was soon overwhelmed. My words were too weak. I was soon defeated, I left.
My hands were shaking for long after it was over, the shame I felt for my Country is still there.

So, I ended up having an altercation with a racist old man in the street. He was loudly harrassing and insulting an African immigrant who was selling lighters. I don't know what got into me, I'm not confrontational, I stepped in and told him that he needed to stop that change his tone. He started yelling at me, I ended up yelling too. It wasn't pretty. I left disgusted, defeated, sad.
I can't take this holiday anymore, I want to go back home in Australia. I have one more week, I can't wait.

Italy 2019: on a main TV channel two grown ass men in yellow face wearing fake teeth are the idea of entertainment for families #PlsStahp

Halfway through my holiday back in my hometown. It's still snowing. I'm eating a lot and quite well. I'm still fairly miserable. It's not hard to remember why I decided to leave and go as far away as possible.
I feel like I'll need a holiday after this "holiday".

I left Australia in full summer, I came to my hometown to find snow and real winter #MateraSnow2019