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om3n

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No More Google 6 years ago

I've de-Googled nearly everything:

Firefox, DDG, protonmail, BitWarden, LibreOffice, etc. I even switched to iPhone.

The only thing I haven't been able to get rid of; YouTube. There's really nothing to replace that. At least I access it without being signed in, and in a browser on both desktop and mobile.

Tesla Cybertruck 7 years ago

I live in a northern Midwest suburb, in a region that receives a lot of snow in the winter. I have driven older trucks my whole life, in part because of of the 4x4 capability for winter driving. I also enjoy being the guy who keeps a tow strap in the toolbox and hauls people out of ditches. Hard to do that without a heavy 4x4 vehicle.

When you have the bed, you realize there are a lot more uses for it than you might otherwise think. Other than just hauling stuff, the tailgate acts as a bench to sit on- I used to have lunch with my wife every day in the summer like this. At an outdoor event (like fireworks, outdoor concert in a park, etc.) I've lined the bed with blankets and lounged at comfortable height with 3 friends and great view of whatever is going on.

For me, the real key is to own an older truck that you don't mind dinging or using to its potential. I buy used, with cash, and I don't spend more than $15K or so. I don't understand spending $65-75K on a brand new mall-crawling status symbol that will only start being used like a truck in 15 years by a guy like me.

Although admittedly, I really like the look and presumed potential of the new Tesla truck. It's the first vehicle that I'd actually consider buying new. I wonder how well the stainless steel will hold up the salty roads- the bane of vehicles around here.

Very similar experience here, I went through 2 Charge HRs in about a year. I'm on my third now, but I purchased this one new on eBay for $50 iirc (after the Charge 3 was released).

Every Fitbit I've had has felt disposable, and I've been using their products since 2013.

I'm in a particularly stressful time in my life (just moved, intense new job) where I've been struggling to sleep. There will be some nights where I simply don't sleep at all; just lay awake in bed all night. Of course I'm aware of all the health/safety/productivity issues associated with no sleep, and the anxiety of not sleeping just furthers my inability to fall asleep.

This is what I've been attempting to do to help with my sleep problems, with reasonable success:

  1. Lift heavy each week day.
I'm using a PPL routine with at least one big lift each day. I also trying to burn a significant amount of calories each day in the gym.
  2. Strict evening routine.
I try to go to bed within the same hour each night if I can help it.
  3. Reduce responsibilities.
One of the biggest issues for me is missing my routine. I now try to keep my weekday schedule the same (don't go out at night) so I can have plenty of wind-down time at home before bed.
  4. Wind down time.
I try to do something relaxing before going to bed that will distract my mind (like play a low intensity videogame, read about non work-related topics, etc.)
  5. Supplements.
I drink a cup of chamomile tea and take 5 mg of melatonin before I go to bed, and this seems to help (or might be a placebo)
  6. Listen to something calming and familiar while I fall asleep.
Unlike others in this thread, no Star Trek for me; I like to listen to twitch streamer ZFG speedrun Ocarina of Time. I turn the volume on my phone to the lowest setting, put the phone face-down on the bed next to me, and the audio commentary seems to be helpful background noise.

Just out of curiosity, who are your target users? What does it mean to be an unusual person?

I'd suggest that you get someone to edit some of the content on your front page. There are a lot of language/grammar cleanup opportunities, for example:

> How to date someone if you so insecure and nervous when trying to approach a person? Probably you have never even tried it yet. Here, at Holynetr you can easily ask someone for a walk with you knowing that your partner having the same social anxiety disorder just as you are or doesn’t mind to be with you anyway.

I have an X1 Extreme, and have been really wrestling with moving over to Ubuntu. Other than the fingerprint reader have you had any other problems? Do you think Ubuntu is safe/stable/performant on this machine, or would you recommend others avoid it?

IMO the real reason smartphones suck is that they are attention sucking, dopamine delivery systems.

I think he did make this same argument, in point 1:

Smartphones are unapologetically devices for consumption

I work for a large global company, and my department is building a fairly large Angular application. My team "owns" the primary project and several shared component libraries, and other teams build features for this project.

These teams are from all over the world, and many of us have never worked closely before this project began.

When we first started the project, we decided to split the UI into feature projects which are packaged and referenced in the common project. Each team owns their own feature projects; however, everyone is welcome to contribute PRs to any of the projects.

Some of our projects are shared and maintained by many teams, but we always have one team that owns each project.

Here's an anecdotal story.

My team was interviewing engineers last year. We had a Chinese engineer come interview with us. She was in the States on a work visa, and her first job here was for a state government project. She was on a team building a web application that had public-facing and internal-facing UIs, and she was apparently working on both of these.

Anyways, she comes in for the interview, and shortly after our conversation begins she pulls out her work laptop, opens up her work project, and start going through the code with us! I asked "is this open source?" and she said no. I could even see slack messages coming up from her team mates.

I honestly couldn't believe it. We asked her to stop. As you can imagine, she didn't get an offer from us.

I have had the exact opposite experience. Prior to 2012 I was in college and was overweight/out of shape and always felt like crap. I decided to get into shape: did intense cardio and HIIT workouts, lifted weights, and got into excellent shape within a year. I lost 50 lbs, went from being able to do 0 pull ups to over 20, I ran a few Tough Mudders (12 mile obstacle course races), etc.

I still run, lift weights, and keep my body fat % low, and if I can help it, I'll never go back. If I go days without exercise I start to feel terrible, foggy headed, lethargic. One 5 mile run will immediately make me feel great for the rest of the day.

That part was luck. These two companies both got me through their interview process at the same time, and they both gave me about a week to respond as well.

I'm also in a unique situation- I think I am actually sort of hard to replace, as I live/work in a smaller Midwest city. My manager has no interest in hiring a remote developer, and we've been struggling to hire people for the past year or so.

I don't think I'd try this at every company or in every city.

What I did recently was risky, so YMMV.

I asked my boss for a raise last year around performance review time. I explained that I had taken on a lot of responsibility, I cited some projects that I led, and I enumerated how I had impacted our team since I had joined. I really was the top producer on my team at the time. He explained to me that I was already being paid more than any other engineer in my department, and he negotiated a small raise for me that year- 6% instead of the normal ~3%. I was disappointed.

This year, I decided to up my game. I continued to go above and beyond at work, and then around performance review time I interviewed at a couple companies in the area and got two written offers for 20%+ more than I was making. I handed those to my boss and explained that I really enjoyed working for him, and for this company, and that I don't want to leave, but I believed this is what I was worth.

He immediately submitted me for a promotion, and I'm hopeful that the raise will come with it. I should get the results in the next 2 weeks.

Extremely powerful comic strip.

My mom is a nurse at a large research hospital, and the stories I hear give me extreme respect for nurses and doctors and the decisions/conversations they have to have. It's incredible what they have to deal with physically and emotionally on a day-to-day basis.

I'm a software engineer, and I started my career at a well known mortgage company in Detroit. Views are my own, BTW.

I bought a house a couple years after I started working there, and I wanted the full home-purchaser experience. I used my company's services for everything, and as an employee they hooked me up with a real estate agent (among other things).

I was honestly appalled at what little my real estate agent did for me through the whole process. I had what seemed like simple requirements: I wanted to live west of the city, I wanted at least 1 acre, and an outbuilding. The outbuilding is what threw off the search tool the agent was using to find houses for me; he rarely found good ones in my price range that had outbuildings.

I ended up finding the house I purchased. I'm honestly not sure what he did at all.

When it came time to sell my house, I did it by owner. It was super easy to do everything, including getting my home on the MLS with a service called Reozom, for a couple hundred bucks. I used several sources to come up with comps for pricing.

However, the purchasing agent who represented the buyers of my home was an absolute MONSTER to me; extremely rude in nearly every email or phone call. I think she was so horrible because I was proving how absolutely unnecessary she was in the whole process. I sold the house for a little under asking price, plus I paid her a 2% commission instead of 3%, and of course not 6% as if she represented me as well. The funny thing- she didn't notice the 2% in the purchasing contract until after it was already signed.

What I've anecdotally learned is this: real estate agents don't provide enough useful benefit for me to use them, and can be hostile as their industry is increasingly proven to be built on little or nothing.

Sometimes when I"m feeling burnout, I realize I'm actually falling out of love with coding for other people, and for projects I'm not passionate about.

I recently picked up a side project that I've fallen in love with, and can't wait to get off work to start working on my passion project.

One difference I've noticed is that I'm not learning new things with my side project (something I'm traditionally excited about); I'm using what I already know to build something great.

In this project "coding" isn't the end, it's the means to the end I really want- and therefore it's not even about the coding, it's about the project.

Look at the influence alcohol has in the US today though.

"An estimated 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States"

I could google statistics for violent crimes committed while under the influence of alcohol, drunk driving statistics, etc. Whether we like to admit it or not alcohol has left a giant, negative, impact on our society.

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...