20240428-smartest_guy_in_the_room.txt
WARNING: Long, angry-ish rant.

This is going to sound braggadocious, and maybe it is, but I generally
don't want to feel that way.

There are times when I feel like the smartest guy in the room. I'm
sure a lot of Gopher users and STEM people feel that way at times. I
usually don't feel that way around other STEM folks, other people who
contribute to source code and whatnot. I'm not one of those. I don't
have the chutzpah or knowledge to start a pubnix, solder, or even
pursue programming as a real career. I don't even like thinking about
trying to make a "normal" website in the current era with overwhelming
amounts of web frameworks and security issues. The last time I tried
around a decade ago, I couldn't even edit the actual HTML. Everything
was through a GUI (Wordpress, IIRC).

But other times, I really do feel like the smartest guy in the room.
It doesn't make me happy. I usually feel angry, because if I say how I
feel, it's just going to make the people around me angry. And I
usually can't do anything about it anyway, so it's pointless. Some of
this was mentioned in the 2022 glog post furk. I know how to do a lot
of stuff. I like to say I know a little about a lot, a jack of all
trades, master of none. There's probably a lot of resentment, too. In
this cruel, unfair world, the most successful people often aren't all
that smart besides being politically savvy and having a head start.
Even the strongest people aren't the most successful or powerful. It's
dickhead billionaires that own shitty corporations that use the most
words to say nothing at all. How the fuck was Harvey Weinstein a
millionaire? Epstein? What the fuck?

Anyway, I keep running into more and more people that use Rotten Core
i-products. And it gets under my skin, little by little. I can't stand
it. I really can't stand how fucking stupid and careless you have to
be to support a fucking company that hates you, treats you like shit,
treats everyone that buys their shit like shit, is actively trying to
make devices less compatible to push their shit, is doing everything
they possibly can to screw over consumers and line their pockets, and
sleep at night. I used to use Rotten Core. I was a kid and I didn't
have a choice. I see people choosing to use Win11, which is now my
work OS (again, not my choice). I'm generally apathetic towards MS,
but their changes and "locking down" and becoming more and more like
Rotten Core is starting to irritate me, too. I can't even move the
taskbar anymore. WTF, MS? I guess Powershell is OK, but it's still not
as good as Bash, IMO.

I can't remember where I read it, maybe Rinkworks, but it was a short
story about a woman who basically refused to use MS Win for "religious
reasons." I thought it was pretty funny. If I could, I'd never touch
another Rotten Core product again, but that shit is getting more and
more popular here in the USA. It's mind-boggling. I guess this whole
"We're incompatible with everything" thing is working for them.
They're slowly pushing out MS Win in desktop and they might be more
popular in the USA than Android, which is fucking infuriating.

Example: I was trying to sign in on the Rotten Core Pad at work, and
it needed my MFA token, which was a Solokey. Great. Problem: this
stupid mofo device doesn't have USB in or NFC. I suppose I could have
used Bluetooth, but somehow I'm thinking even that wouldn't work
(especially considering where I work is flooded with wireless
traffic). So I had to get an override code... just for my boss to show
me this app that I'd be using soon.

Oh, and I've been doing a lot of online training from a site that's
abbreviated LI. I generally like the idea of getting certifications
(as I was missing those a lot), but sometimes the course instructors
make me think I'm the smartest guy in the room. Some of these
trainings, especially for Win troubleshooting, make me wonder what
they're doing. I know some of them are going the long way for newbies,
but sometimes I just wonder why anyone bothers with the Start Menu >
All apps > scroll when you could just type in the name of the
program... although there's a good chance you'll just end up doing a
web search for the program, so that's a valid excuse.

And while I'm the "smartest guy in the room" about workflow
efficiency, especially on PCs, these online instructors certainly know
more than me on the subjects they teach. I definitely don't do the
greatest at the quizzes... mostly because I'm about to fall asleep
with many of them. Some of the requested/recommended training courses
are just either really dull or really not useful. I don't really care
to be a master at MS Teems. I really don't. Speaking of people who use
a ton of words to say nothing, some of these "keep focused" and
goal-oriented trainings go in one ear and out the other. I suppose
they do have a point and some good lessons, but I know how to work and
very little they say resonates with me... Maybe that's why I'm not
more advanced in my career. lol.

But I really like my coworkers. Genuinely. I just can't grasp how one
of them chooses to use Rotten Core. It's also awkward that of my team,
I'm both the oldest and newest (although that's soon to change with
another new hire). It makes me feel like a bit of a failure on one
hand. I mean my boss hasn't even finished college and he's got a
better position. Then again, he's been working there for much longer.
He's also really smart and working on his degree.

It's just frustrating because I know I could be in a better role than
I am but the job market is brutal and as I alluded to earlier, there
are very few tangibles that show my abilities. I've been promoted
once. Once. And I left the job to follow my then-girlfriend (although
the rest of the team was fired about a month after I left, so no
guarantees I would have gone anywhere there). While I feel I know a
lot, I also feel I know very little. I can program, but I hate
includes and libraries, so I've never gotten very far into it. I can
build websites, but I don't have "marketable" skills, like being able
to trick Wordpress into what I want it to do without great difficulty.
I even technically have to lie on my job applications because my
fucking major isn't even included on most degree lists. WTAF? 

I generally try to be very honest, so "fake it until you make it" and
"it's not what you know, but who(m) you know" really don't work great
for me. I've been hit hard by life, although I know everyone else has
problems and many have been hit much harder. I feel like I'm
constantly trying to get ahead but many fundamental things I learned
about being considerate, being humble, being right, standing up for
yourself, etc. seem diametrically opposed to advancing. Shit just
doesn't make sense.