Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Here's to hoping next year will be better.
And totally with you on iOS autocorrect!
Don’t give up hope, and keep trying. Also, one key for me was to get properly medicated. Prozac was a turning point, but everyone is different. There was a clear step function from "before Prozac" to "after Prozac". The suicidal ideation stopped, among other things, which let me get my life in order.
Mostly just remember to enjoy each day in small ways. The only thing I regret from 2016 is not taking the time to appreciate the small things. There’s an interesting mental exercise to snap you out of this: pretend you’re on your death bed at 80, and then you were magically transported back in time to the present day. What would you do? Even being able to run is a blessing I don’t remember to appreciate until I can’t.
You’ll figure it out. Or at least, the chances of you figuring things out is much higher than things going downhill forever. It’s the default path, even if it doesn’t feel like it when things are going wrong.
Major life change happened recently (mom aging mom moved in with me, husband, and dogs) and my saving grace is creating, quilts mostly. I'm reallllly leaning into sewing at 4am!
I appreciate your perspective. Thanks for sharing.
Have a wonderful holiday week.
I do this, occasionally. Didn't realize this was a thing other people do, too. For some reason it really works in terms of making me feel more appreciative for my health and the many years I (hopefully) have left to live my life.
It also lets you pick more than one language at the same time, which is amazingly useful
(sadly "more than one" is strictly 2, but 3-4 would be even better)
“Keep your highs low and your lows high.”
“When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
My wife almost died early this year from a hospital deciding to rush her Sodium level restoration because beds were scarce and profitable. She now suffers from extreme anxiety, her previous life as a happy, well-balanced mom is over, and as I write, she’s in the next room chattering in nonsense to herself because it’s how her brain copes. It’s worse in the mornings, gets better, briefly, in the afternoons as she gains more higher-level function, until her loss and grief for that overwhelm her, and she reverts again.
I won’t go into the litany of pain and suffering she continues to go through, suffice it to say she has had a variety of terrible-to-observe, worse to endure, symptoms throughout the year. Screaming in agony for hours, in first or third person, in hospital or at home, when painkillers just don’t work is not an experience anyone should go through.
The highlight of today is that a friend has invited us around for an Xmas meal. It’ll be our first social engagement since it happened, so there’s some risk. It’s at 4pm, which is usually her best time of the day, so we’re hopeful things can play out “normally”. I guess we’ll see, sometimes you have to risk things, just to make progress. I don’t think my friend actually realises just how much it means to us what his family have done, but I am so grateful that I cried on getting the invite. It can be hard to struggle alone.
So again, take heart. There is always something worse that could have happened, even for us. Don’t let the past dictate the future - you can’t change the past, but you can influence the future.
And I will join you in hoping that next year will be better.
[edit: thank you all for the kind wishes. Xmas has been hard so far because the sense of loss she feels is so much stronger than normal, but we live in hope]
If I may, this is a point I’ve been thinking a lot of lately though - as in, is the “oh there’s many people out there who have it way worse, so be thankful for what you have” mindset actually healthy?
Of course there will always be others worse off… and the inverse advice is also widely accepted: “never be the smartest person in the room”, “always look up, not down, to grow”, etc
I’ve been processing this in the context that I’m on the cusp of needing to give up on some life dreams, at least for a long while.
I’m glad to be shut down if this isn’t the right place for this discussion
Is it healthy for a person living under normal circumstance ? Probably not. Is it useful for someone in extremis? From personal anecdote only, I would say so. YMMV.
It’s not always healthy to compare yourself to others but it’s always healthy to be grateful for what you have and what you can do.
I am curious, what exactly happened to your wife? What is sodium level restoration and why did it have such an impact?
I understand if you don’t want to go into it.
You need a certain level of sodium in you - typically around 135-145 mEq/L. The body expects this level in a similar fashion to the way it expects a certain temperature, it’s where it works best and as you go farther away from this optimal value, the body starts to suffer. My wife’s level was 121.
In fact the body can manage reasonably well over a wider range, as long as the value changes slowly, slowly because the level of sodium controls, via osmotic potential, transport across the blood/brain barrier.
So the hospital should have added a maximum of 6-8 mEq/L per day into my wife’s bloodstream via intravenous saline. That would have given her body time to adjust, slowly, to the new sodium concentrations. Instead they initially gave her 13 mEq/L in 12 hours, and then another 6 mEq/L in the next 12 hours, by their own test results. She went clinically non-responsive (ie: near-comatose) for 2 days after they did that.
Sudden sodium changes can result in edema (which can be fatal) or osmotic demyelination - the myelin sheath being a wrapper around nerve cells that allows rapid electrical transmission from nerve to synapse. Losing the myelin is “a bad thing”, see Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis etc.
She woke up after they tried to “reboot her brain” and gave her Prozac, then discharged her because she could “walk” with a walker for help. They subsequently put her on benzodiazaprenes in the (9? I lose track) times we came back to ER over the next month or so. She’s still struggling to get off those, though she has halved the dose they prescribed (1mg Ativan every 4 hours).
We can’t even sue the hospital, because we spent the last 9 months trying desperately to figure out what went wrong and if it can be fixed, and we only got 6 months to file any dispute because it’s a county hospital. I spell it out as simply as I can above, but finding out what went wrong was a gradual thing. We have appealed this, but I don’t hold out much hope.
All told, I am singularly unimpressed with the American “healthcare” system to date.
also smart punctuation, especially in macos.
I have thousands and thousands of screenshots of highlight posts and comments (highlight to me of course), that I dream about organizing with tags for future access, whether I use any of the information or tools, refresh myself on something, or just want to walk down memory lane... A lane that just keeps getting longer and longer. A lane I'm happy to have at least left a bread crumb trail on to retrace in the dark if I feel like it.
In hindsight, screenshotting them has been more of a personal act I do for myself, knowing very well I may never meaningfully do anything with the majority of them. Every screenshot taken was something important or impactful to me in the moment though. The process of screenshotting is just a part of the ritual it seems .
I thank the individuals, and community as a whole, who have been responsible for making my life better, enabling growth I'd have never anticipated or foreseen , enabling countless echoing feelings of comradery and connection that have been hard to find in meat space consistently.
This place was like discovering a magic land when I was 18 given my rather humble background. I still had a lot of learning and growing to do. Hacker News has been invaluable.
Not to get too gushy... But I do love this site, and I love the fact there are people willing to take time out of your days to participate in it. People of all creeds and credentials being civil, yet unafraid to agree to disagree. Willing to have some fun. Willing to be candid. Willing to dive into the deep end depending on the post...
Merry Christmas everyone:)
Always wish I could wave a magic wand, and somehow reciprocate back all the good I feel like I've just freely consumed and co opted from others over the years ... The giants whose shoulders I stand on.
I'll never forget or downplay the people and exposures that are integral to who I am.
Were I born and raised on some far removed island... Id have been grown off of whatever arbitrary cultural and informational scraps that I could gets my mits on from my local hierarchy, and that's about it. I don't like the sounds of that.
Modern life has its downsides and contraindications for sure, but Hacker News is not one of them. Hacker News is one of modern day phenomon that I am thrilled to have been alive for.
Hope you all have a solid day!
I’ll follow you.
It would be amazing to have such a high quality community able to contribute to everlasting threads. About life, decisions, and of course, curiosity.
P.S: Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
The mystery of Santa's sleigh has been solved. Santa is a quantum phenomenon, meaning that he is in everyone's house at once. BUT if anyone observes him, then the probability function collapses and only one house gets toys.
So have a Merry Christmas, and don't look.
Merry Christmas!
I'm from Eastern Europe and we celebrate already on 24th.
(If I understand correctly last year it was some kind of transition.)
Sorry for the confusion, "now" in my comment above was ment to refer to the current time, i.e. the 26. or 27. (or whenever I wrote that comment).
I guess now “carrying the pager” is a metaphor like “copy and paste” (from the glue used in newspaper layout).
Can't help but think of that epic line in The Hangover
"Paging doctor F.....!" - Phil
Merry Christmas!
Not to mention being robust against all kinds of physical abuse, which may itself be a useful characteristic for an on-call comms unit.
Policy I've seen employed was that the current on-call remained on-call until the pager was fully charged.
Dead pagers may be more fun than dead puppies, but that's not a high-prestige contest.
Admittedly, I'm someone who has carried an honest-to-god pager, the "start the number with 911 if it's an emergency" sort of 10 digit segmented LCD ones. Even remember enjoying the freedom of getting upgraded to one of the national ones when traveling!
Though I'm currently thinking about switching from PagerDuty to ntfy.sh/pushover, as it's really hard to justify almost $50/mo per person with Pager Duty for the use my small team makes of it.
Not on rotation, but one never knows how much something escalates, therefor and for the team members silence if of course preferred ;)
So nice to hear you and your colleagues can make the work/life balance out for each other!
Through these hardships, I've learned about strength, resilience, and the importance of true friends who have your back. I also learned that I am strong and can deal with difficult hardships. As I look forward to 2024, I'm hopeful for a return to normalcy and better health. Here's to a year of healing, growth, and brighter days ahead.
I read HN most days. It’s great to see people from so many places around the world in this thread.
All the best for 2024!
Let’s see… HN launched in 2006, I was 18, I’ll be 36 next year, so this is actually an off by one error. Oh well, if you squint a little or drink too much eggnog then it’s true.
Remember to focus on yourself this year, and especially to give yourself permission to be selfish. It’s ok not to live your life for others.
Here’s something depressing, or uplifting. When you ask older people which age they’d most prefer to re-live, the most common answer is 36. So remember to live this year to the fullest, even though it doesn’t feel like you’re in your prime. You actually are.
I'm taking a break today and playing call of duty all day long. Tomorrow I will go for a hike or a walk, and then 26th is back to the business/grind.
I hope y'all take a good time to rest.
I'm thankful for the folks who are working over the break. Thankful for the gas station attendants, the police officers, healthcare professionals, on-call engineers and customer support, and so many others to whom I am eternally thankful for making our society.
No, seriously, have you ever tried humbugs? They're a delicious molasses-y mint candy, and I always try to pick some up at this time of year.
There were lots of important things in life I couldn't see,
But I got a wonderful realization that set me free,
Oh how wonderful it is to let my actions be made by me!
Merry yuletide everyone!
Deployed several concurrent Workers
Happy Movie and Chinese food day to some of you. ;-)
worst ?
Some of you might not celebrate it but that just means I'll have to eat your share of cakes \(^_^)/
I'm on call and already had my first intervention. How's your Christmas going?
Space Christmas, Shonen Knife
Wishing you and yours a fantastic holiday season!
I love the interesting links, articles, discussions; and I very much appreciate the moderation philosophy. Though I work in tech and hold a certain technical literacy, I’m in a management role and don’t have a background in software development. Nonetheless, there’s plenty here for me, and I wind up learning a lot from reading the technical discussions.
Much love from Malawi, Africa.
Life being just a ride, may it be pleasant, or at least pass the hardest bump quickly.
Overall 2023 has been a horrific year after experiencing things I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.
So thank-you HN community for the laughs, interesting submissions, wonderful stories and absorbing discussions.
They have quite literally been a life saver.
Merry Christmas All!
I’m certainly not sad to be here.
Stay with us. We need more joy.
And happy 8 year anniversary for my account, made on Christmas Day 2015. LOL
You can have the festal greeting anyway: Christ is born!
As in... I migrated here from Slashdot level old :-)
I made a new account, because I'd like to start anew.
Let me take off my mask for a moment, and be authentic:
I encourage folks to remember that life is not a zero sum game -- even if you feel your chips are down this holiday season, try to remember that there are some things money can never buy.
If you're kind, small things -- a barista who remembers your order, a smile at the library, a knowing smirk from the corner of the college cafe yet to be gentrified away will remind you that you are not a ghost in this world, and people remember the positive effect you have on their lives.
And make no mistake -- these are dark times. Part of my own loneliness is that I deleted every shred of social media in 2016 -- I had a beautiful series of photographs on Instagram, and years of cherished memories on Facebook.
I deleted it all, because I was scared what would be done with that data to my friends -- Persian friends, Palestinian friends, Ukranian Friends, Russian friends, Israeli friends, who came to this country because they truly value free expression.
It can be hard, to be a hacker, to feel apart from the physical realm in a lonely way that goes beyond IQ or interests, but don't let that take your soul.
When we must "punch" in our humor, always be sure to punch up.
Merry Christmas!
May your bugs be solvable and enlightening.
I appreciate the banner color update as well.
Also, a few relevant XKCDs, because of course:
https://xkcd.com/361/ https://xkcd.com/1933/ https://xkcd.com/2872/
Christus natus est
O Χριστός γεννιέται
Христос раждается
המשיח נולד
ابن الله يولد اليوم
:)