Vedor

"A Scanner Darkly" entry [0] is my favorite so far. Somehow, it's wildly accurate.

[0] - http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/dick.scanner.shtml

For me, a great middle ground is building an engine similar to fantasy consoles (PICO-8, TIC-80, etc.)

This type of project is small enough to plan all the elements before you start (which helps to stick to the design and therefore to avoid feature creep). Yet, it is still complex enough to provide entertainment and challenge.

This approach also has the advantage – at least it is an advantage in the case of side projects – that you can see the results of your work quite quickly.

I'm working on such a project myself, and it is a great experience. Although to tell the truth, it is more of a "game creation kit" than an engine.

When I was a kid, I had a toy gun that would start with kind of distorted phrases, then continued with shooting sounds. I think it took me a couple of years before I understand that the voice was yelling something akin to "Baldy! Get the f... over there! <shooting noises>"

That's interesting.

I was born and raised in Poland, a Catholic country, and we do gather after the funeral to mourn and eat together. However, apparently this custom dates back to Slavic times – this may explain the difference between our experiences.

That sounds similarly to my condition, but I'm just in my early thirties.

I was stuttering since I was a small kid. In high school, went to therapy and I was stutter-free for around 8 years, then I started to stutter again. Since then, I have a better and worse periods, I can speak without much stuttering for as long a quarter of a year, then suddenly start to stutter even doing small talk with the family.

Regarding losing words, I really like your analogy with blank dictionary entry. It's like, "I can speak without stuttering as long as a... what is the word for a period of three months?", then I need to search my memory for this word, and quite often I can find the word I'm looking for, but it takes time. I had these symptoms as a child too, but they have gotten a bit worse in recent years.

I always half-jokingly thought there must be some consequences of being born almost 4 months ahead of schedule.

I quit smoking the old-fashioned way so I don't have a first-hand experience in that matter, but I was thinking a lot about this once. I belive patches and gums may not work in every instance. Please let me provide some context.

I was smoking for around 7 years, from my late teens (jus a couple smokes per day) to my early 20' (1.5–2 packs per day). I haven't smoked in quite a few years, I think it's close to 10 years, I don't count anymore.

I have never felt addicted to nicotine. To cigarettes, yes. I was addicted to all those little smoking rituals, gestures, and to all that social behaviour around smoking. I liked going out on the balcony in the morning in my bathrobe just to smoke. Or go out to the garden with another smoker after a party and have a conversation that wouldn't otherwise happen. Hell, I even liked the gesture of shaking the ashes off a cigarette.

Smoking was also a way to deal with boredom for me, a bit like a smartphone now. I'm waiting for a bus that won't arrive for 15 minutes? That's a great time to smoke a cigarette or two.

To the point: would nicotine patch help me to quit smoking? Probably yes, on the long run. Would gum / snuff / snus limit my craving to cigarettes to the point where I could work in a completely smoke-free place? I do not think so.

For a short time I worked as a machine operator in a production company, automotive industry. The CEO used to yell during meetings on the production floor that "the production must be high quality, fast, and cheap; there is no 'choose two' nonsense".

Yes, the CEO was going down to yell on the blue collar workers making pennies.

I used Pony for a small hobby project around 2 years ago. It looked promising and I had a lot of fun using Pony. My biggest gripe was lack of high quality materials to actually learn the language, especially that some concepts were new to me. The community on Zulip, including the main contributors like Sean Allen, were very welcoming and helpful.

Personally I say "I don't know" when I don't know.

I also try not to express my opinion in absolutes – I tend to tell that "I think that...", "I believe that", "as far as I know", etc. It is, in a way, a philosophical position – I am aware that I do not know about many things, that someone may be more expert in a given field than me. So, I am trying to keep an open mind, be open to discussion, and not impose my own opinion on others just because I feel that I am right.

I have been living by these principles for years and I feel good.

However, I would not advise anyone to take similar stance. It depends on the company culture, probably it differs from country to country too... Still, from my experience, it may hurt you career. In most places where I worked, that kind of behavior was perceived as a weakness.

Hell, I remember being told that I will not become a manager, because there is no place for "don't know". But it was quite toxic workplace anyway.

I am sorry if I misunderstand something here – to be honest, English never was my forte, so I may miss some subtlety.

I did not take your post as a form of hubris. What I meant when I wrote about perspective is that personal experiences shape our assessment of reality. I agree that childhood should be innocent and pure. But sometimes, it is not.

> so kids bask in your youth! It's fleeting and gone before you know it.

Depends on the perspective, I guess. I was working in several different places, and sometimes I had hard time. Even working in the worst places, I felt better than in school.

I hated elementary school, because kids were cruel (some time I came back to home with chocking marks) and teachers decided to just not see bullying. Or decided to give me a hard time, too. When someone destroyed my textbook by writing on it while I was not at the desk, I got note to the parents because supposedly I told someone to do that.

I kinda liked liceum because finally people were more mature. But man, long term, it was very exhausting. The lesson schedule looked like it was set randomly. For example, in second class, being 16-17 yo, Thursdays I had lessons from 9 AM to 6 PM, and the next day I was starting at 7 AM. I was tired all the time and had no time for social interactions.

Please note that the following paragraph is not personal. It applies to the entire phenomenon. For me, it is annoying when grown-ups tell children that it is the best time in their life. When I was a kid, I felt fear a lot. As a teenager, I was depressed and tired all the time. And, you know, if it is the best time in my life, why should I care about my future at all? It is going to be terrible anyway...

Everyone has its own perspective. Maybe you had great time in school. Maybe for my mother, school years actually are the best years of her life. But telling young people that they are living the best time in their lives, and it will be only worse later, is... unfair.

The pricing page is quite interesting and sheds some light on the business model. It sounds like all the computations will be performed server-side, and end user will be charged per API call. Still, it is hard to tell how exactly is it going to work.

LibreCAD is a fork [0] of QCAD Community Edition. It looks very similar, but it is actually a separate piece of software.

The biggest difference I see between these two is UI and the pace of development. LibreCAD is still being worked on, but the latest stable release was in 2016. Last patch for QCAD has been released four days ago.

Personally, I prefer QCAD to LibreCAD. Both are quirky to use, but QCAD is at least a little bit less quirky. If you are coming from AutoCAD, then both will be equally confusing.

[0] Maybe not literally, README file available in LibreCAD repo declares that "LibreCAD is a 2D CAD drawing tool based on the community edition of QCAD." On the other hand, Libre Arts article [1] calls it fork.

[1] https://librearts.org/2013/03/librecad-vs-qcad/

In Poland, it was common to use alarm sirens on the occasion of national holidays, even the less important ones. I was so used to meaningless alarm signals that hearing one was making me wonder what anniversary it was, instead of thinking about the potential dangers.

I'm not sure if it was a nationwide problem – voivodes (provincial govenors) could arbitrarily decide on the use of such a signal to commemorate important events. Maybe it changed since then.

> For my situation I suspect a strong component is personality-related

I think that's true for me, too. While the work organisation and environment is simply bad, I believe that the large part of harm is self-inducted in my case. Changing workplace would definitely help, but I definitely need to work on the underlying personal issues. I think about some kind of therapy to worry less...

I kind of trained myself to worry less. But the work-related stress is stronger, so in the end I care less for some important personal things, and I'm still frustrated with work.

> How have you found things since going back after the 3 weeks?

I felt much better... for around a week. When I went back after 3 weeks, I had a clean slate. Some topics were taken over and completed by colleagues, while others were not taken over and there was nothing to save.

But after that? It returned to "normal" state of being tired and stressed. That's not only my issue – it's a small company, and we all are overworked. Physically, we are unable to meet production deadlines, answer all emails, prepare all projects. That's just how it works. So after two weeks, I was sinking in emails, had to deal with calls from angry clients, etc.

Definitely. I was poking the job market for a long time, but here is the thing: I made several stupid decisions in my life, and I don't have higher education nor decent papers. I have the most professional experience in sales (maybe not in the traditional sense), but I fear to end in a worse place. In the current place I have, at least, good autonomy and interesting technology.

Alternatively, I could go work as a CNC operator – I have experience as turner / miller. That's worse pay and usually three-shift or four-crew work.

I tried to retrain. Got some online testing experience, and ISTQB FL papers. Didn't work out.

I'm going to set up a small CNC shop in the near future (2-3 months) – I'm working on it for half a year already and it's close.

Probably I should talk to some kind of therapist instead of writing such posts on Hacker News – while I don't mind personal stories when I read them, then when I'm an author I feel it doesn't belong here.

For me, almost everything starts at my work. Not sure what's wrong with me, maybe I'm too engaged, maybe I feel too responsible for my job... But my actual well-being is almost 100% related to the work.

I'm stressed almost all the time. Won't go into the details, just the management sucks big way.

Long story short, after work (including weekends) I'm so tired that I need a lot of totally lazy time. I strive for activities which are the least engaging. Even when I waste my spare time playing games, I'm looking for games that don't need much attention and are easy to play. With one hand only, if possible.

In November, I was on paid leave for 3 weeks. First I got a nasty infection, and just after that I somehow strained my back.

From the perspective, I don't believe how much stuff I got done during this time. Among others, I designed a board game about off-road driving that I had been thinking about for a long time; I was programming a lot (it's just a hobby for me, I don't work in IT); I kinda reconnected with a brother I hadn't spoken to in a long time... Had time to cook, had energy to clean flat thoroughly.

And all that being sick and having back pain. And it was enough to not worry about job things.

It feels like I could do anything if I wasn't so stressed all the time.

edit: typo

I think I had them when I was kid, but not anymore.

And just to be clear, I didn't mean that I fall asleep as soon I close my eyes. It's just that there is no "transition" between being conscious and sleeping. And then, suddenly, I'm awake.

I have that idea that my mind suppresses the memories of dreaming and falling asleep, because when I was a kid I had two recurring nightmares that I dreamed of almost every night. Still, never did proper research on this topic.

edit: typo

I, too, rarely have (or remember) dreams – once per month, maybe. But lack of dreams is not a problem for me. What I find annoying (and I'm really curious if you have similar experience) that I don't have feeling of passed time.

My sleep is like blink of an eye. It's night, I close my eyes, then I open them, and there is morning already. I's always the same, no matter how long I have slept, whether I am well rested or tired.

Since the time feels so compressed during my sleep, I can't help but feel that sleep is, kinda, a waste of time.

Usually I have 2-3 coffees per week. I drink a lot of various types of tea daily, though.

Never heard of it, but I have almost all of its symptoms. Interesting. Thank you for mentioning CAPD.

Just curious, have you checked your hearing recently?

For a long time I believed that I can't hear anything in large groups because I'm introvert (which I am) and large groups exhaust me. Turned out to be hearing problem.

And the thing is that I never had a feeling that my hearing is poor. But some day I got tinnitus that did not go away over time, and after some tests I learnt that I'm almost deaf for high-frequency tones. It impairs speech understanding, especially when there is a lot of background noise like on busy street... or family gatherings.

Disclaimer: I'm not an IT guy nor I work for an IT company.

There is a third option. You are working and staring at the screen for the whole day, even without breaks, but you can't actually focus on a single problem or piece of work, because the manager keeps distracting you.

I work for a small company, and as a consequence, I have a quite wide area of responsibilities.

I can't really focus on the bigger tasks (like creating user's manual for the new company product) when I'm supposed to drop everything if there are any unanswered emails from the client.

And learning midday that "Hey, man, the newsletters have to be ready today! And the website content needs to be updated before you send the newsletters!" is a very likely possibility, too.

Not 100% sure if that's what you are looking for (I don't do much network works) but I think that Camsat's GlobalCAM-4.5G may be worth checking, with one catch: the company targets CCTV market. Still, that's just a router, without any special license fees or mandatory clouds.

Youtube allows to control playback speed, within certain limits.