In the IT world, it's popular to do a post-mortem after a sprint, release, incident or project which is a kind of retrospective meeting where
people will write what went right / well, what went wrong / poorly and what could be improved / to try / change.
I will use almost the same pattern but for the year 2021!
This is a public blog post so I will not go in detail (personal area) and it will be more related to my projects or some apps/OS that I used.
"Anyone who likes meetings should be banned from attending meetings." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What went well
- Reduced my AWS bill cost by 66%. This one was easy to do.
Because I worked remotely, I transfered a lot of content from AWS S3/Cloudfront into AWS DeepArchive for backup and
I used my local NAS directly instead for media content.
- I switched jobs last quarter.
- Added a reminder for every Saturday to get the free game on Epic Games Store (I still have more games on Steam).
- Increased my reading. I've read more books in 2021 than 2020. I specially focused on Nassim Nicholas Taleb books:
I begun with "Skin in the Game", "Antifragile", "Black Swan" and "The Bed of Procrustes". I just begin the "Fooled by Randomness".
I also revisited a couple of older books since the new job was not the same area than the previous one.
"A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn't worth reading." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What went wrong
For this part, I will focus on one area: Software Quality.
I think we are in regression in terms of software quality (stability).
The video above is a conference of Jonathan Blow that reflects this kind of problem with current technology versus old technology and even more.
The first month I got my new computer in 2021, I took note every time I got some troubles with this OS (Windows 10) and some applications.
Here is the list:
- Long login and black screen after that. I can see the mouse cursor. The OS is on SSD/NVMe (solution: reboot manually).
- Can't open a local folder. I clicked multiple times to open this folder and 10 file explorers pop-up after 10 seconds.
- Quake 3 freeze. Ok it was on my HDD (RPM7200) not on my SSD or NVMe but this game was released in 1999 and it worked well on
my Pentium II 266 Mhz MMX which was the minimum requirement.
- After a Windows update and reboot, the start button doesn't work anymore
- Copy/Paste url clipboard didn't work
- Google Chrome freeze (can't switch window/tab) because it is currently downloading a file (before the file popup in the bottom-tray).
- Notepad++ freeze when saving a simple document (twice). HDD sleeped?.
I gave up and I stopped taking notes about that... That's remind me this Windows Vista video:
But wait, there is more...
Now, I can't update with the latest update, otherwise I will get a blue screen. Thanks to the rollback restore point to get the previous version.
Just install Windows 11 and you will be fine? Well, here is what Windows shows me about my computer that I bought in the first quarter of 2021:
Below are the problems I got during I was writing this blog post and did some basic stuff (e.g. backup):
- I clicked on the settings button. I saw a blue background with a giant cog icon and it tooks ~8 seconds to switch and see the settings menu.
- I've backup all my pictures from my phone into my computer. I got this message: "Error Copying File or Folder (There is insufficient disk space to complete operation)".
My SSD/NVMe info: 359 GB free of 3.63 TB. I clicked on cancel button and a popup with a green scroll bar will run forever (cancel box/modal).
The "close/x" button didn't work. I even launched the task-manager to kill this process. Of course it didn't work. The only way was to kill the master process which will remove all my File Explorer.
After that, everything was frozen except Google Chrome. The only solution was to reboot manually and a random Windows update pop-up even I disabled the update for one week. Take two for another rollback to avoid the blue screen.
I restarted the backup. Now, the title bar says: "Copying..." but the sub text inside the modal says "Moving fileXYZ...".
I restarted the backup, got stuck at 2 minutes and 15 seconds remaining in Windows Time which could be between 0 second to the end of the universe...
I waited another 20 minutes and I canceled this copy or moving or deadlock.
The workaround solution was to copy chunks of 10-20 pictures...
And it's not just Windows 10 or this computer (3 events on the same day during XMAS vacation):
- I was not able to scroll my wish list on the Amazon phone app. The position always comes back at the beginning every time.
- The Facebook app on my phone removed my auto-login so I need to log in again which is fine but after 1 minute, the app logs off and displays a message like "session timeout".
- I updated my 2 Mac mini (1 Ubuntu / 1 macOS). Both devices are connected on the same KVM.
The mouse cursor was cursed on both machines. The mouse cursor was moving like Y = sin(x) * 540.
It was an interesting effect but it was hard to click on buttons so the solution was to disconnect the mouse from the KVM and connects directly on the devices.
"Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker's life while convincing him that it is becoming more 'efficient'" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What to try / continue
"LPT: If you plan on doing something don't tell anyone; by saying something the brain registers an action towards the goal and rewards you with feel good chemicals which ultimately makes you less likely to actually follow through with your plan." Reddit - LifeProTips
Without too many detail and based on the quote above, here is the low-detail list that I target to do in 2022:
- I would like to post a blog post every month. I like the idea and it's like a tiny project.
With the system I created, it's pretty easy to generate a new blog post. The longest part is the writing/idea.
Some blog posts also remind me very good old memories.
- I will release a blog post about my XMas 2021 project (Blue Rose). Something behind that was more interesting than the project itself (clue: challenge).
- 2-3 experiments
- Some new projects (any area)
- A lot of books I would like to read
- And more... (even Windows 11)
"My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2022
Nothing too much to say to conclude except it could be better, it could be worse!
It seems there are some positive signals inside this gigantic chaotic noise
and I think 2022 will be better than 2021.
I regrouped some pictures from 2021 and here is the result:
Thanks for reading,
JS.
"It takes a lot of intellect and confidence to accept that what makes sense doesn't really make sense." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Random Fact: Hans Zimmer was the synth player of The Buggles inside this video (black jacket)
