Two Grand For Takeoff

The eternal IT paradox: "Trust but verify" taken to its logical extreme. Poor Eric drove two hours just to press a power button that three people swore was already on. This is why we develop trust issues and insist on seeing error logs ourselves. Nothing quite builds character like a 4-hour round trip to flip a switch that takes 2 seconds. The server was probably running perfectly... in someone's imagination.

The classic "have you tried turning it off and on again?" approach has apparently made it to the operating room! When your code throws inexplicable errors, rebooting is your Hail Mary pass. When your patient flatlines... maybe try literally anything else first? The terrifying reality that the same troubleshooting logic we apply to our stubborn servers is being suggested for human bodies is peak programmer humor. Next they'll be suggesting to check if the patient is properly plugged in or needs a firmware update.

Self-hosting enthusiasts watching cloud providers rain down their "enshittification" on the masses. Meanwhile, Arduino—the beloved open-source hardware platform that powered countless DIY projects—just updated their ToS to prohibit reverse engineering. You know, the exact thing their entire ecosystem was built on. Nothing says "we're getting acquired by a massive corporation" quite like suddenly caring about IP protection after years of encouraging hackers to tinker with your stuff. Qualcomm's lawyers must've had a field day drafting that one. The self-hosted crowd is sitting pretty smug right now, and honestly? Can't blame them. When your Arduino board starts requiring a subscription service, at least you'll know where to find them—in their basement server room, running everything on a Raspberry Pi.

When your code crashes so hard it burns the image of Arthur Morgan into your TV. That's not a bug, that's a $444 feature. At least now you have a permanent companion to judge your spaghetti code with that signature cowboy disappointment. Still cheaper than therapy for most developers.

The bravado of developers who claim they "fear no API" only to cower in terror at the sight of Vulkan is just *chef's kiss*. For the uninitiated, Vulkan is the low-level graphics API that makes even seasoned graphics programmers wake up in cold sweats. It's like saying "I'm great at assembling IKEA furniture" and then being handed the blueprints to build the actual IKEA store from scratch. The documentation alone is thicker than a computer science textbook, and the error messages might as well be written in ancient Sumerian. Meanwhile, OpenGL (referenced in the title) is like the friendly neighborhood graphics API that suddenly looks like a cuddly kitten in comparison.

Tech YouTubers swerving hard to chase those "once in a lifetime deals" nobody else can find. Meanwhile, the practical build that anyone could replicate sits there, abandoned like documentation on a Friday afternoon. The classic tech influencer dilemma - create something useful or create something that gets views? Guess which one pays the bills. Just remember, that RTX 4090 they "happened to find on sale" probably cost more than your monthly rent.