It made me so sad seeing them cheering and clapping, but not getting up and hugging each other :( So much happiness without the ability to vent it. Such a historical moment.
How do other engineers here on HN feel about it?
Moreover such complex missions can go either way, I think it is perhaps better to be even-tempered and business like about it.
Today? I'd be running around like an excited child, given half a chance. Probably hugging people I know are comfortable with it. I recognized I really do like that energy, and I only live once.
Not saying people who prefer a more restrained celebration are not valid in their preference! Everyone is a little different, and that is a good thing. At my workplace we like to have multiple ways to celebrate a milestone, because it's important that everyone can participate if they want. For example, we might have a team lunch/party (pre covid) for folks who like that, but also, say, personalized notes sent out, or office posters made of the achievement with participants' signatures on it (optional), and companywide announcements (again, representation optional).
For the record the only movie that routinely tears me up is Apollo 13. Specifically, when they land, and the people in Mission Control are shown. Some of those people have a lifelong bond because of that event, I'm sure. That's important to me.
That's OK. I not only don't celebrate that way, it'd make me uncomfortable even for a peer I like to hug me out of excitement. It's not what I want but it's what other people want and it seems to be the norm.
You may end up learning that this may hold you back professionally at some point unless you can stay in a role that doesn't value social signaling, as these behaviors are basically expected, and not performing them will get you excluded, unless you find a way to surround yourself with people who have shared views on this sort of thing, which is really hard to find out because it's implied.
At least that's what I've been thinking this past year of isolation where I have been very happy to not feel obliged to do the social things everyone else so desperately wants to go out and do together.
I'm on the lookout for backcountry camping trips I can do once things are "back to normal" so I can continue my isolation while everyone is at restaurants and parties.
I am gonna be really irresponsible, once I got my vaccine shot.
"We don't know from history what Wilbur and Orville did after their first successful flight, but I imagine the two brothers hugged each other. Well, you know I'm hugging you virtually. And, you guys who haven't been with me for 4, 5, 6 years...if it weren't for COVID-19 you guys don't have a chance of me (I think she was saying they wouldn't be able to stop her from hugging them) but I cannot give you a hug, so this is all I can do. I'm giving you the hugs."
Actually, that's pretty unlikely. It was a very different time. A display like that would have been considered unseemly. Also, neither Wilbur nor Orville were known for being particularly emotional or affectionate. Neither brother ever married.
The title text hit me a little harder than I was expecting:
> I've never been that big of a hug person, but it turns out I'm not quite this small of a hug person either.
The graph has a rough average of about 20 distinct people per year. Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but that seems quite high.
All these brilliant minds working for so long and accomplishing so much... Just for a clap and cheer, yet tommorow they have to do it all again in the rat race. Yet cryptokings are basking in glory for a lifetime.