61

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 31, 2022, 04:39:57 AM »

I also got two free sodas.

How did you get two free sodas?

The dude at the counter gave me a stack of cups without counting them.

62

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 30, 2022, 08:45:38 PM »

Currently on a delivery right now. It’s pretty slow today, which is odd considering all the handegg games going on. I noticed a lot of other food delivery people I encounter race to do orders as fast as they can. But the algorithm for DoorDash gives you plenty of time to just cruise. I just leisurely drive around, which is actually p chill ngl.

63

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 30, 2022, 07:44:24 PM »

I picked a place to stay in San Jose. It’s a really nice area, but rent will be $2300 a month while I’m there. What in the fuck? That’s more than a mortgage payment in most places.

64

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 26, 2022, 04:17:43 AM »

Today was shit. I didn't make shit. I got to hear a lady go off on some restaurant staff because the place wasn't very clean. I'm sure they spit in her food.

65

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 21, 2022, 09:42:54 PM »

I made about $25/hour today after gas. No crazy stories.

66

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 21, 2022, 12:08:14 AM »

If you are going to make a significant amount of money doing some side gigs be sure to form some kind of LLC first and keep separate books on the money you receive.  Failing to do that will cause you all kinds of problems in the future.  When I started a business 50 years ago, I kept my incomes from that business in my personal checkbook.  My income increased significantly, and things got screwed up.  Eventually I earned an audit by the IRS and ended up paying some extra taxes and fines.  An accountant was hired, and I separated all my business finances from my personal ones.  That’s the real downside of all the side gigs people have.  There’s nothing wrong with doing that and indicates all kinds of good things in people but if the finances are not handled in a professional manner there can be some significant accounting (and IRS) problems down the road.  Take this from a boomer who has personally made these mistakes and ended up paying for them.

They send you a filled out 1099 at the end of the year. I'm pretty sure you can also access it digitally. As far as "books" go, the app keeps track of every delivery you've made, gives you a month-to-month, week-to-week, and day-to-day breakdown of how much you've been paid, which you can of course download any time you want.

67

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 20, 2022, 04:06:53 AM »

All I can say is thanks for doing what you're doing. I know the primary objective is side-gig cash, but me for being in a big city and having such awesome delivery options with the likes of door dash, it's been a godsend. And all the dashers I meet are super nice and cool. I've had a few orders screwed up in the past year+ but I know to take it up with the restaurant and not with the dasher.

And I'm super glad to read that you guys are told upfront what you get for a gig. And not get penalized for passing.

I'm sure you'll have more stories from your quests. Keep 'em coming.

So far the funniest order was a lady who ordered a piece of pie and two eggs. She came out and was obviously high as a kite. And yeah, if you have disposable income it's a pretty great service. I used to order from them a lot too, which is what made me want to try out delivering.

68

Arts & Entertainment / Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 20, 2022, 12:00:44 AM »

I started delivering for DoorDash last week in my free time. It started out as a thing to try for fun, but I realized I can make some decent side cash. The app you use is like playing a video game and completing quests. You start out "looking for orders", and when one pops up it shows you the distance you'll have to travel, and a big, bold number that is the amount of money you'll make on the order. You can decline the order if it's not enough money for the distance. As far as I know, there's no penalty for declining.

Anyway, today I did a single order worth $20. I only had to drive a little over 5 miles to complete it. I had another order where some Chinese lady yelled at me because the restaurant got her order wrong. However, it was sealed and we aren't allowed to open orders to check if they are correct in that case.

Delivering to apartments is really shitty, especially if the orderer doesn't add a good description of where they are in the complex.

Delivering WingStop orders is really shitty too. The restaurant usually takes forever to make the order, they come in giant oily bags, and the smell of the wings is so strong my car just smells like shitty wing seasoning permanently now.

Today, I made $22/hour after taking gas into account. I also got two free sodas.

69

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 18, 2022, 06:31:24 AM »

Looks like I'm off to the Gay Area in June. I just need a Prius and 10 turtlenecks of the same color.

Apple?

I wish, but it is another of the big tech companies. It's not a fancy SWE job or anything. Just working in a datacenter.

70

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 18, 2022, 03:40:59 AM »

Looks like I'm off to the Gay Area in June. I just need a Prius and 10 turtlenecks of the same color.

71

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 07, 2022, 08:21:59 AM »

I quit. I spent an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't set up a VPN on a client's PC. I finally said "what the hell is this shit" out loud and the British guy came over. He looked at the config document I was going off of and said "Oh that lot is out of date." and scooted back to his desk. I had been using the wrong MFA token, credentials, and even the client. There was nothing in the document indicating it was deprecated. The proper client isn't even documented anywhere. I had to ask someone. Big deal, right? Now I know how to do it. No. Everything is like that at this company. Anyway, I have a couple more interviews coming up.

72

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 06, 2022, 06:26:18 AM »

MSPs are generally shithouses. You can actually learn a lot (by yourself if you are driven) due to the diverse nature of businesses you may provide support for, but you will likely lack guidance from someone who knows what they are doing. Usually, billable hours are the name of the game.

Work for a tech company if you want to do the "bleeding edge" stuff, work for the government if you want to coast, work for a mid-size business (as internal IT, preferably sysadmin or equivalent) if you want something in between.

It's a mess, held together by a British guy and a really pro manager. I'll most likely go the government route.

73

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 05, 2022, 05:40:44 AM »

Fucking nerds at this place trying to talk about how much they know about IT. The English guy is quiet and hardly says anything unless someone bothers him for help. There's a super autistic guy there who stutters and mumbles constantly who is really nice. Everyone else is a dickhead who is always trying to one-up whoever they're talking to. This one lady won't shut the hell up about Log4j whenever she talks to the manager, like she's some kind of security hotshot. She always announces to everyone that she's "in the firewall poking around". Later in the day, I saw her trying to use PowerShell with red text all over the damn place. I tried to start a conversation with this little Chinese guy the other day about all the services AWS has and how powerful it is, and he goes on a rant about how physical servers will always be better because you can see them and touch them. So, I just sat in my corner for the rest of the day and helped the autistic guy pull hard drives out of old PCs. Kill me.

Welcome to IT Hell, level 3.

Maybe I picked the wrong career. Hopefully this place is just more insufferable than the norm.

74

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: January 05, 2022, 05:29:07 AM »

Fucking nerds at this place trying to talk about how much they know about IT. The English guy is quiet and hardly says anything unless someone bothers him for help. There's a super autistic guy there who stutters and mumbles constantly who is really nice. Everyone else is a dickhead who is always trying to one-up whoever they're talking to. This one lady won't shut the hell up about Log4j whenever she talks to the manager, like she's some kind of security hotshot. She always announces to everyone that she's "in the firewall poking around". Later in the day, I saw her trying to use PowerShell with red text all over the damn place. I tried to start a conversation with this little Chinese guy the other day about all the services AWS has and how powerful it is, and he goes on a rant about how physical servers will always be better because you can see them and touch them. So, I just sat in my corner for the rest of the day and helped the autistic guy pull hard drives out of old PCs. Kill me.

75

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: December 31, 2021, 10:23:26 PM »

There are two level 3 remote workers from Pakistan, probably being paid $5 an hour for way more advanced work. They manage all of the ESXi machines in the office.

They took mah job!!!

Anytime I have call for support on any computer, application, or software platform, I know the guy answering the phone is 3 or 4 levels below the guy I need to talk to.

Taking Security + in a couple of weeks...  I'll be qualified for some $10 an hour Pakistani job.

Well, their role is probably a $40 an hour job in the US.

76

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: December 31, 2021, 08:47:16 AM »

There is no compartmentalization at this job at all. I have complete administrative access to everything, including the main router/firewall and I've been there for all of four days. That's not normal, right?

77

Technology & Information / Re: Cameras

« on: December 26, 2021, 12:53:11 AM »

Outstanding!

Thanks, just took it yesterday. Bugs are pretty hard to find in the winter, but if you do find one they usually move pretty slowly, which is great for pictures. Some people will freeze bugs and then put them on a leaf or something, but that's pretty cruel imo.

78

Technology & Information / Re: Cameras

« on: December 25, 2021, 08:39:57 PM »

Merry Christmas from bug.


E-M5 Mark III

79

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: December 25, 2021, 08:27:46 PM »

As for why anyone would work there and not in the UK: could be any number of reasons, but most help desks are being replaced by India.  So... FYI.

There are two level 3 remote workers from Pakistan, probably being paid $5 an hour for way more advanced work. They manage all of the ESXi machines in the office.

What kind of work are you looking for in the long term, Fortuna?

Cloud, most likely AWS. I'm working on learning Bash and Python concurrently with all the AWS services.

So, help desk sucks. How long do I have to do this?

Depending on the company, you may be able to progress internally. That's how I started my career — I did a year of helpdesk, then about two more years of level 2 support (which also sucks, but you get to deal with more interesting problems) before I moved on to bigger and better things.

If you want to take that route, what worked for me is to just do some of the tasks you want to be doing. I only got promoted to level 2 support after people noticed I was already taking on support tickets above my pay grade. Again, this likely varies a lot from one company to another, so consider what is relevant to your position and goals.

That's about what the hiring manager said. 12 - 18 months of level 1 support. But, I hear of people being promoted out in 6 months, and other people who stay there for years. It seems no one but the IT manager knows anything about cloud, though. The only problem is that the few cloud services they use are on Azure and I'm learning AWS. Although, I imagine they have pretty similar offerings, no?

80

Technology & Information / Re: I Hate Linux Distros

« on: December 25, 2021, 06:46:53 AM »

]

Their Tier 2 "IT Engineer" role is just a glorified help desk and that one "requires" 7 years of experience lol.

Tier 2 should be helpdesk, but someone who knows their shit.
Tier 1 is "read a script and search KB Articles."
Tier 2 is "know what you're doing, know how to google what and fix it."
Tier 3 is "oh shit, this isn't a problem with a pc, its an issues with the system/software being used."

So, help desk sucks. How long do I have to do this? Most of the people who work there are white trash and have been doing help desk for years. I overheard two of them talking about programming the other day: "Yo check this out. If you add a hashtag in front of your code the computer won't read it!". There's an old English guy who works there for some reason and he has a very strong accent. He seems to know everything under the sun related to IT. Everyone is always asking him for help constantly. I have no idea why the fuck he would work at this hick company in the US instead of at a posh office in the UK.