greyhair

I have had a pretty good life all along, but it was blips, and spits and starts. And stumbles all along. I just rode through them.

I had the advantage of having no vision, no plans, when I graduated high school. All my friends headed off to college, but I had no money, had no idea what I would even study, even though I scored just shy of 1500 on the SAT. Learning always came easy for me, it still does.

So having no plan, after high school, I left my job as a farm hand and became a motorcycle mechanic. Found my two major strengths there, thinking through abstract problems as logically as possible, and a certain base understanding of electrical and electronics. A result of that was I got stuck with all the quirky electrical faults, and most of the transmission work. I enjoyed both. Should I go to school for electical or mechanical engineering? EE won that decision process, and I headed off to school at 25. Not having much money, I settled on two years first, to nail down an Associates degree, then move on from there.

Got great grades, got a great job offer, went to work. Took additional courses, but never earned a higher degree. Blundered along through a few failed relationships (an early relationship with someone that was bad for me, left scars, and it took a while to figure out how relationships were supposed to work).

Finally met someone I could relate to at age 35. Okay? 35. I still was renting. I couldn't even afford my own apartment until I was 30. So at 35 I met the love of my life. A year later, we bought a house together. Two years later we married. Two years after that, we had our first kid. Age 40 for me.

So my 30s, my life had really only just begun.

So I have been coding in embedded systems now for 38 years. My kids are all grown and out of the house. I never worked at a FAANG. I am not rich, but the women I met, fell in love with, and married, had similar financial goals, so we have saved enough money to retire by time I turn 68. Very small house, we drive cars into the ground (never less than twelve years, my car is now 16 years old). So we have money to do the things we want. Travel and skiing being two of the top things. We raised three kids. Put them through college with no debt (not Ivy league, but no one needs Ivy League for the first four years, that is some heavy vanity BS right there)

Your career is not the end point of your Dreams, enjoyment is. Your hobbies should be something you enjoy that don't break the bank. You should constrain your costs on anything the doesn't deeply matter to you so that you can afford the things that do.

I will leave you with one huge final important note.

The things you 'do' in life are much more important than the things you have. Do not focus on 'having'. Focus on 'doing'.

I am a relatively old man now. I am still working because of two things, both related to me doing everything late in life. I started my career late, and I had kids late. I don't mind that I am going to work until I am 68 or maybe 70 years old. I am doing things, and I am enjoying the things I do.

Interesting, yes, but I went to the link, and browsed the 'generated artwork' and all if it was subjectively inferior to the original that it generated from. Every single piece. So I am not sure what the 'value' in it is, at this stage.

As far as the text driven, I would have to mess with some non pre-canned presentations to see how useful it was.

Knee jerkers are going to jerk their knees. To do otherwise would require too much reading.

Small organizations use github. Really large organizations have their own git servers.

I have worked on both sides of that.

What about point to point WiFi instead of a cable? WiFi 6 will handle anything that Starlink can possibly hand out. With a directional antenna, you'll have more range than you would ever want to store cable for.

Then again, I would think you could make a stabilized platform that could keep a starlink connection up.

I am kind of curious. Which came first? The editor or Rust?

I was wondering if you were learning Rust and decided that you needed a project to reinforce your learning? Or you were designing and editor and decided you should do it in Rust?

You an me both. I used emacs until I developed persistent tendonitis down the outside of my left hand.

Switched to vim, and the tendonitis resolved itself in about two months. That was back around 1990.

I agree, but schools need to get ahead of this, and plan for a later start to the school day, before this takes effect, because we already have firm data on the fact that the school day already starts to early, and permanent DST is going to make that worse. Personally, I'll just shift my 7:AM to 4:PM day to being 8:AM to 5:PM. But my wife cannot do that. She'll be stuck at 7 to 4.

And this is exactly why Zulu exists. Operate world wide with a fixed reference.

Oh no, permanently change to the early times. No more switching. Everyone works 7AM to 4PM.

I have lived my whole adult life with black out shades and curtains. I grew up very rural and was used to a pitch black bedroom. As an adult I moved to the most densely populated state in the country, and immediately discovered black out shades.

Clearly not. I shared a house with a guy that worked rotating shifts. It was hell, and made me really glad I did not do that.

But I worked blue collar job the first ten years of working, so 7 to 5, and for a while 5AM to 6PM (six days a week). I don't think many people on this thread understand what it means to wake up between 5:30 and 6:00 AM every day (depending on your commute) to get to work.

Why don't we leave the clocks aligned with the Sun, so noon occurs at solar noon, and just have everybody agree to shift their work day to 7:00 to 4:00.

Because on a solar basis, that is exactly what you are doing. "8 to 5" will now be "7 to 4". And people that normally work "7 to 4" will now be working "6 to 3"

That is all you are doing. You are basically just kidding yourselves. It is so extremely stupid, really. You want more sun in your evening? Get up and get to work earlier. It isn't rocket science.

I'll be waiting two years out for everyone pushing the school day to start at 10:AM, and for a lot of businesses to start at 9:AM instead of 8.

You could solve all these problems by just getting the Networks to stream their programming one hour earlier at night. And leave the clocks on standard time year round.

One more reason to pay slightly more for Windows 11 Pro (which I have).

My guess is the pro version will never see this pollution.

Lol! Oh yeah.

Says the person that has never punched a clock on a blue collar job.

7:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

Almost all 'blue collar' work starts at 7:00 AM. It isn't about farmers. I was a farmer once, my day started at 4:30 AM.

But I worked blue collar after that, my job 7:30 to 5:00, or 7:30 to 8:00 on long days.

Even in my current white collar job, that habit has stuck, and I have been working 7:30 AM to 4:30 AM for the last thirty five years, mostly to avoid the bulk of the commute.

So yes, there are millions of jobs across this country where people arrive at work, and punch in on a clock, at 7:00 AM every morning.

I hate daylight savings time.

I get up everyday at 6:00 AM, with a large segment of the population whose workday starts at 7:00 AM every day. They have no choice. And just as it was getting to be light a little at 6:00 AM, we just 'leaped ahead' back into darkness.

I would prefer that we just run on standard time all the time. You want more light in your evening? Get up earlier. Go to work earlier, so you get home earlier.

Daylight Savings Time sucks.

precisely My phone lives on DND. Only priority numbers get through on text.

I check it every two hours, on odd numbered hours.

If you text me expecting a response, and you aren't in my priority pool, I'll get back to you. After all, it is my phone, not yours.

My work slack is only available during my work day. Out of hours, it is closed.

I passive/aggressive the hell out of that.

A 'request' with no salutation?

My first reply is "What? No 'Hello'? No 'When you have a moment?' No 'How is your morning?'"

As a mechanic in a previous career, I can verify that. The only answer I ever gave was:

"Sure I can look at that, bring it into the shop, we're open eight to five Monday through Friday, eight to two on Saturday, and open until eight PM on Wednesday and Thursday, but only for drop off, pick up, and tire changes."

Always keep in mind that 50% of all people are dumber than average.

In this election year, Republicans will, at the very least, retake control of the House of Representatives, making Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the house. There is also an opportunity for them to take control of the Senate, returning Mitch McConnell to his leadership role.

The far right despises technology companies, and there will be a huge push by their members to bring them all to heel.

I tell this to my liberal friends all the time. You don't have to listen to the swill on Fox News, but you should at least listen to valid conservative viewpoints to understand why the disagreements exist in the first place, to understand why there is a range of views on any topic to begin with. Living inside a singular viewpoint bubble doesn't help anyone. The same people that insist that human sexuality is non-binary, and runs across a spectrum, hold near totalitarian beliefs on other topics. As a liberal, that attitude makes me sad.

And what is worse, if the ground is starting to thaw from below, if you get a foot or two of snow on top, it insulates the ground from the freezing air, and the ground temps will drive upward from below, turn the soil into a muddy mess. The same happens with rivers. A frozen river, with a heavy snowfall, will quickly thaw from below.

In Vietnam, most the US soldiers were 18-20 year old kids. The draft ended shortly before I turned 18, but I had older friends that were drafted and sent off to fight. No one I knew died, but a couple returned with life altering injuries, a couple others returned with what we now call PTSD, but back then they were just referred to as 'losers', and 'weak'.

Dairy farmhand outside Buffalo NY in the early 1970s. Snow over the top of recently thawed ground was the worst. Particularly if there was still a frozen layer three or four inches down. Rendered tractors unusable.

It cracks me up that this many years later, you put five people in a room to establish a git branch/merge/release strategy, and you get five very different opinions, and such strong opinions they are.

Luckily, that responsibility is not in my wheelhouse, I just have to live with whatever decisions are made.

So yeah, mass adoption in the consumer space, I don't see that happening.

A revert or a rebase gone wrong and wails of "what happened to my file?"

Pre LaTeX (I am old...) I wrote a huge command definition document for an embedded telecom product in nroff/troff. The whole thing was text files, with all the common parameters documented once, and the whole thing was assembled using a Makefile. So a typical page would be the command name, a descriptive paragraph, an include list of the parameters it used, and an include list of the possible return errors. Very little writing for a new command that mostly used existing parameters and errors.

And all tracked under CVS with a management/tracking layer on top.

# make command_doc

and the pile of text became a lovely 250 page postcript ready for the laser printer.

The git diff process and conflict process really goes off the rails at times, and I have never figured that out. Modify one line in a file, and add one new line two lines after that modification, and the git diff is two 40 line chunks with some common lines, a bunch of additions, and a bunch of deletions.

Really? One new added line, and one delete/add two lines above it.

it usually works fine, it really does, but when it messes up, it really messes up big time. As long as it doesn't create a conflict, you just shrug and move on, but when it does create a conflict, holy-moley!