When Physical Security Fails You

You spend years being the designated "tech person" in your friend group, fielding questions about why their printer won't work and explaining that no, you can't hack their ex's Instagram. Radio silence for months. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, they emerge from the shadows with actual tech curiosity! Your heart swells with pride. Maybe they want to learn programming? Build a website? Understand how databases work? Nope. Gaming PC. Because of course they do. The one thing that has absolutely nothing to do with your software engineering expertise but somehow you're still expected to know the difference between a 4070 Ti and a 4080 Super. Welcome to being the "computer friend" – where your CS degree qualifies you to be an unpaid hardware consultant apparently. At least it's not another "can you fix my phone" request, right? Right?

When your dad had the galaxy brain move to stockpile 128GB of DDR5 RAM back in September 2025, treating memory modules like they're Bitcoin at $100. The joke here is that DDR5 prices have been on a wild rollercoaster since launch—initially expensive, then dropping, then spiking again due to supply constraints. Buying in bulk when prices dip is basically the tech equivalent of buying the dip in crypto, except this actually has utility and won't tank because Elon tweeted something. The future-dated September 2025 timestamp adds another layer—it's either prophetic speculation about an upcoming price crash, or the meme creator is a time traveler warning us about the next RAM shortage. Either way, dad's sitting on a goldmine of memory sticks while Chrome tabs multiply like rabbits. Smart investment strategy: forget stocks, buy RAM when it's cheap and resell it when the next generation of memory-hungry AI models drops.

So you discover that in 16-bit real mode, the BIOS handles hardware directly and your OS doesn't need device drivers. Sweet! Freedom from driver hell, right? Then you learn about 16-bit memory segmentation and suddenly that smile disappears faster than your will to live. For the uninitiated: in real mode, memory addresses are calculated using segment:offset pairs, and because both are 16-bit values, segments can overlap in the most cursed ways possible. You can have multiple segment:offset combinations pointing to the same physical address. It's like having 5 different street addresses for the same house, except the mailman is your CPU and it's having an existential crisis. Suddenly writing device drivers doesn't seem so bad anymore. At least those make logical sense. Overlapping segments? That's just sadism with extra steps.

Your hacky code works? Don't sweat it. We're all just convincing rocks to do math by zapping them with electricity. Next time you're feeling bad about your janky workaround, remember that our entire profession is built on tricking minerals into thinking. And hey, if your solution is ugly but functional, you're basically following the grand tradition of computer engineering - flatten a rock, put lightning inside it, and hope for the best. Silicon doesn't judge.

The eternal struggle between engineers and AI models continues! Someone drew the electrical engineering symbol for a JK flip-flop (a digital circuit component that stores binary data), but the neural network expected beach sandals. Classic case of domain-specific knowledge vs. general AI training. The machine learning model probably spent more time looking at vacation photos than circuit diagrams during training. Next time just draw a CPU with tiny umbrellas sticking out of it.

Buy a new mechanical keyboard and suddenly TikTok's algorithm knows you've joined the cult. Next thing you know, you're sitting in a coffin surrounded by keyboard enthusiasts asking about your switch preferences while your bank account is already dead and buried. The real RIP is your wallet after you discover keycap group buys.