mclovinit

I've always been a fairly private person. My kids see me every other week and we communicate via Telegram with random memes or silliness.

My personal projects are sort of stagnant but I'll occassionally try to tinker with Rust, hone my front end skills or just dump more hours into real work.

My guitars probably annoy my neighbors as I slowly start to increase the volume on my amp that much closer to 11.

I saw my brother after 2 months and a friend after 3. Dating just stopped in all forms (e.g. virtual).

I'm reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and taking "stock" in my overall investment strategy and just trying to be more aware.

Been asking myself what I really want as a dude with over 23 years of IT exposure, living by himself. The life questions really have become more prominent during this time.

Lost my ex-brother in law who I really got along with. He died suddenly of cardiac arrest due to stress. He was 33 yrs old. 10 yrs old when he came to the US. It hurts a great deal thinking about that, but it forces me to ask some serious questions about what I'm doing with my life.

Making a ton of mistakes early in your career, being lucky to work with those that took the time to have constructive discussions/arguments with you (i.e. they're passionate and actually give a crap about budding talent), and paying it forward are a few key things that make for a good engineer.

I've pulled whatever hair out that I have on a Friday night trying to figure out something with a solution or approach unpublished elsewhere when I could be watching Doctor Who or getting fat on fat free ice cream and sedentary on my couch instead. Sometimes spending that personal time experimenting pays dividends in the form of a working solution. Other times it builds grit.

I think it might be useful to cycle in new sold/unsold sets of logos to give the effect that sales are taking place and business is moving ahead. otherwise, it looks like no business is being done. also, maybe instead of "sold" something like "to be sold" might work to give the impression that it isn't off limits yet.

So correlating packet sizes between the Wifi and destination network's logs is really the problem here. That is crazy. What stops them from collaborating with any other company like this? So if someone has malware installed that sends packets out to some site deemed illegal, the user is automatically assumed to be in violation of some terms?

I agree and I use Linux everyday (and Windows).

For the typical desktop user, we have to ask what the intent of usage is. Running a business with proprietary software and licensing, typing up documents for personal financial planning, playing games.

Linux has never been consistent with so many flavors of the day out there, but generally it is a heck of a Swiss Army knife when it comes to solving problems for me at least.

Oh how I love this.

One of the interesting side effects of social media is the social "guilt" of "unfriending". I suppose this is another form of the inconvenience associated with using a technology. Individuals feel briefly butthurt by someone consciuosly disassociating themselves after intelligently beating the system. For example, I first unfriended all connections prior to deleting my Facebook account which allowed me to stay away forever instead of coming back to reactivate my account. You might have heard of similar approaches such as the "overwhelming force" of paying someone when it comes to quitting smoking if they happen to catch you smoking. Instead it seems companies have countered this by selling electronic cigarettes which seem to be socially appealing (e.g. asthetically appealing color and pattern choices). If someone does to act quickly enough on their plan to "leave the system", they may quickly get pulled back in with a counter move on behalf of some business.

This. Adversity makes or breaks. Even if it breaks, you can still rise from the ashes. It's best to not let unhealthy thoughts drive you forward. Small pet projects are great. Who cares if they take months to complete. Setup reminders for yourself to always keep your pet projects fun and reward yourself when you complete a small part. Making these associations is important. Otherwise, the exercise becomes pointless. I started out in my career with low self-esteem. Now even when I stand anywhere halfway between the shit and the fan, I can come out smelling like roses. This is especially true in groups which come with their own political challenges.

I am thinking that announcing this feature may be a tactic to win back consumer trust or in the least attract new customers who are not familiar with the potential buyout.

Somewhat related to this, I am amazed by the analysis done by bionerd23. Her study of cesium 137 levels in vegetation is interesting. She measured the levels in mushrooms found in Bavaria and apples found just 4km away from Chernobyl and saw that only 0.10 of cesium was found in apples. Interesting study.

You can find her videos on youtube.

This is absolutely fantastic. Great method for teaching new concepts to those new to the subject matter. I have an engineering background and have to say that this approach is refreshing to read. It's like a bag of chocolate chip cookies for the brain :)

It's great that you are staying in the groove. Resetting by taking time off is definitely easier with a supportive spouse/partner. I had to voluntarily take time off when I got sick about 2 years ago. My spouse is a CPA so she was able to offset my loss of income for 6 months before I was able to get back to work.

I learned to back off and enjoy my life outside of work. Life is just too darn short. I still stay relevant by learning at least one new thing each day. Will I ever use all of the tech I learn on personal side projects? Probably not, but I get a kick out of designing things on my own schedule without any corporate constraints by some manipulative middle manager.

So today I broke out my old electronics kit and taught my young one a bit about adjustable voltage regulators. Could have caved to the guilt of work and VPN'd in to code some stuff, but that just isn't worth spoiling my time with my family.

Very good points.

That last point is interesting. Even with an RF detector, an accelerometer may act as a cheap room bug. Heck, if automobiles use them to detect when an airbag should be deployed, why not just use them as bugs in cars? Now I'm scaring myself.

At my current employer, I had no idea that current employees/senior staff would be pulling in former collegues from a direct competitor. It's hard to see what mindset they are dragging in with them, such as failed processes, that are clunky, but familiar to them or the same singleminded views they are used to. I have to fight that battle being more of an outsider in a senior position and knowing that some of them are filling in more senior roles for the first time in a new company where only their former collegues know their past habits/skeletons.

The aggravation can make you want to lose your cool, but like you said, not backing down is key. Nothing is worse than someone telling you that you are not doing your job and then never challenging them with an intelligent response. You then have to spread your gospel like you own it. Otherwise, you become guilty due to your perceived indifference.

I think even slang terms have a place here. Not sure if the goal is to really improve language skills. If not, any new widely accepted terms could be defined and optionally rated by a community for wider acceptance. If the word is fairly new it could be highlighted in some way to indicate its popularity.

I agree. In my mind, I felt a lot of self-doubt at first, but after digging in, that fear helped propelled me. I suppose if it wasn't for that fear of not being good enough and side projects, I would not have transitioned easily. I also underestimated my ability to adapt quickly.

Today I am very much hands on and I make it known that writing code and designing is my passion.

I secretly stayed active during that role. It takes dedication. Some of this comes from work ethic. I had that drilled into me with the family biz growing up. My tolerance for abuse and failure is high. I focus on looking at myself as a business entity even if I work full time somewhere. Sometimes it isn't enough, but I think going through a tough upbringing had pulled me through. I always find myself asking the question, "Do I want to just want for the rest of my life or do?"... I also still dream and dreaming is key to driving forward. My wife fills the entrpreneurial role right now with escessive travel trying to build something in a new market. I help where I can...so this is me trying something new again ;) We never know where life will lead us so best to take it by the horns and find out :)

I took a management path at first, thinking it was a natural progression upon obtaining over a decade and a half of experience and being enouraged by my peers over the years. I was never unhappier. I gave it everything I could. My team loved me and I shielded them from mountains of pain and frustration. I got sick from stress and mildly depressed from lack of a technically creative outlet. It took me over a year to recover physically and now I am fully back in the game developing as a technical lead. I still manage, obviously, but within a different context.

From my standpoint, I do not regret anything. I learned from these experiences because I love to explore and am not afraid to fail along the way.

I see so many that seek advice when they have the power to take action themselves. So much time wasted really.

geez. i hadn't seen that tweet. crazy. i would love to consider gitlab as an alternative. need to plan on migrating my repos and gists over first. i can't support that type of culture. not today. not ever.

I completely agree. There is no guarantee that they will invest wisely. Adversity is a great teacher and wisdom is the fruit of that labor if not somewhat liberating. I think through that wisdom, the phrase "never enough" has much more meaning. 10k needs to be 100k after time passes and we keep finding excuses to inflate that number.

We were a development team years ago (90s) working late on the production Oracle database writing some SQL (cringe). One junior dev deleted all records from one of the core tables and sat expressionless in total fright for a good 5 minutes. I let her sweat for a bit before I typed 'rollback;' Good thing she didnt commit and there was enough rollback space :) One of many close calls.

I have been active in high tech for many moons and like to look at this place as just another alternative feed for a old man ;) I would much rather HN than other sources, but my time is limited like many. So I just hop on occassionally and learn (or teach) something new. Once in a while a post resonates with me, but when it doesn't that doesn't mean it's just noise. It can mean I have much to learn.

I haven't been on for that long, but I am starting to see examples of what you mean. I tend to weed out what doesn't apply to me which I think many do.

For those I know, including myself and my partner, the habit to strive for is spending less, and I agree that credit can be a useful tool if used wisely, but never really know when life can throw a curve ball. For now, we use credit cards, but manage to eliminate our debt by paying everything soon after incurring debt. Call it using debt for leverage I suppose. For any big purchase (which is rare), we aim to use credit when no interest penalties are present and pay off before any are incurred. A small house, inexpensive vehicles, and thrifty habits even with the use of credit cards allowed us to save quite a bit in contrast to those heavily in debt with terrible credit, but it is still a gamble. I don't blame others for having debt. There are many reasons for this. Without any major life events this system works for us...until perhaps it doesn't.

I totally agree. One of the reasons I like HN: high signal to noise ratio.

I have used tcpdump in the past to capture traffic when I had physical access and ability to implement a hardware tap and analyze packets after feeding in packets with tcpreplay from another network's pcap file (IIRC). The point was to configure an IDS like Snorby using rules I derived from the packets I analyzed in Wireshark (from the resulting pcap file).

However, I haven't seen a need to use tcpdump in awhile since my problem domains have been quite different in that my focus back then was primarily network monitoring. Usually performance problems where I have worked have been easy enough to identify at a higher layer (e.g. n+1 select issues with SQL).

Hmm. I wouldn't say it's backwards. It's nothing more than another art form (sounds so cliche, but true nonetheless). If it is backwards, what is considered the defacto standard? The same could be said for Jazz, Pop, Classical when compared to others. I happen to love metal (older 80s to 90s), but listen to anything newer that gets me through a good workout in the garage ;) Maximum the Hormone has interesting sounds, but I could care less about having the t-shirt or taking the lyrics seriously. I love listening to and playing classical guitar, and for me at least metal is not something that you necessarily grow out of.

P.S. no downvote from me because not everyone can or should be expected to love every form of music

What worked for me was basic yoga asanas to loosen up and then closing my eyes and focusing on relaxing every area of my body from my forehead, eyes, jaw and so on. I would do this thing where I wouls stretch my arms up as high as possible and tense up and much as I could and then relax my body as if to touch my toes. Works great if you have a tight neck or back.

I never saw a need to go beyond 30 minutes. In my opinion there is no right way. The breathe is key. Irregular breathing is a problem for many of us if we spend most of our day sitting in front a monitor tightening up.

It's good to see you have a teammate going forward. I may try something similar if my spouse is in agreement. Sailing definitely requires a solid partner. It's hard work. My spouse and I (in our 40s) live in a fairly old and small single family home well below our means. Our neighbors are retired and spend a lot of time on their boat sailing up and down the coast. They have definitely been through some stormy weather through the years (pun intended), but that's what it takes. You won't know the shipmate ya have 'til ya "capsize" arrghhh :)

Sometimes they are gone for months at a time. One of them picks up work related to sailing when not sailing and is quite handy in fixing anything from sails to refurbishing old boats. When they are not sailing they come back to their home which has been paid off for many years. I suppose paying real estate tax is always there, but the benefit is that they have a good community to come home to. Plus it gives me a chance to partake in conversation and share a pint or three in front of a warm fire ;)