53
votes
What do you need to vent about?
What is something that's been eating at you that you haven't found the right place to share yet?
Long rants, short grumblings, and everything in between is welcome. Topics can be serious or silly.
Please specify if you do not want responses and prefer to use this as a venue to scream into the void.
Recently switched jobs. Really poured my time, effort, and heart into the new gig for a couple of months. We moved to a new city for me to work in person, so I really wanted this to work out.
Maybe it's the summer heat. Maybe it's the plateau at the end of the early learning. Maybe it's management turning out to be a bunch of micromanaging, infighting sociopaths who lied to me about culture and collaboration. But I am completely burned out. And my manager still demands more and more. And of course a lot of the 'more' is AI hype that I, after giving it a chance, have no desire to waste my time on.
This has had a strongly negative effect on my mood. And now I'm venting so much about the stress to my partner that it's stressing them out. And on top of that, we miss our friends and the activities we used to have access to in our old town.
On one hand, it's awful. I do not enjoy the sensation of failure, nor of being bamboozled. On the other hand... I'm kind of glad to have some clarity that we don't want to live in the hyper-capitalist insanely expensive dog-eat-dog rat race city. I'll take what I can get for a silver lining in this messy world.
Now if only I could find a place to rent or buy back where we moved from... or hear back from a remote job application... then I'd have some hope.
Other than moving, I’m in a nearly identical position to the one you’re in. I joined a month ago and my company a week later laid of 15% of its staff (despite being profitable with a big war chest) in order to “become a startup again” and go all in on AI. I tried to avoid the overwhelming glut of companies going all in on AI, but I got terribly unlucky. The job and culture I was sold on doesn’t look anything like the reality of it.
I too feel bamboozled despite very carefully and thoughtfully asking questions during interviews… the feeling is awful. It’s made me strongly question whether I want to be in tech at all but I don’t have better options.
I wish I had an answer for you or for myself, but I’m just hoping we can find something better soon.
While I wish you the best, I have to admit that it feels good to not be entirely alone in this. Though I am certainly a bit dumber for having actually uprooted my life for the 'opportunity'.
I plan on quitting soon and focusing on my hobbies. Life is just too damn short to waste my time in a toxic space like this. Hopefully I'll pull a remote gig sometime soon. The real question I'm struggling with is whether or not we should break our lease, eat the penalty, and move back (or as near to back as we can manage, given the housing market). Or if we should wait out the end of the lease here. The embarrassment of moving so soon is coloring my opinion here, but I'm leaning towards breaking the lease and moving soon to save valuable months of our lives from being wasted in a place we hate. But I might just be panicking!
Hey man, you didn't know! Don't beat yourself up for taking a chance that didn't work out, and don't be "embarrassed" about admitting it didn't work out.
I know the feeling though, several years ago I moved to another continent for a job I ended up hating so much I literally ran away in the middle of the night. It took a while for the embarrassment to wear off, but it did, and now I have some good stories to tell and a little more knowledge of myself and what I want in life.
Take whatever you can from this experience, and then go do what you need to do!
Misery loves company!
I gave up a lot of flexibility and a safe, comfortable gig in order to chase better career opportunities. I’m not saying the instinct was wrong, but for me it’s hard not to learn the pessimistic lesson from this. I’m hoping I can find a job where I can grow and also not feel constant dread… that doesn’t seem too much to ask?
I too am considering quitting despite the uncertainty and the wild market dynamics. At a certain point prioritizing your own health is the most important… and my health (primarily mental) is taking a massive hit at the moment.
It’s easy for me to give this advice since I’m not you feeling the things you feel (well not precisely anyways), but I don’t think you should focus too much on potential embarrassment. Trust your gut as best you can. I think sticking out the full lease is a sensible option with the massive caveat of that’s only true if you can find a way to not be miserable. I strongly relate though to that impulse of “am I overreacting / panicking?”.
I am 110% working solely for health insurance.
My employer has engaged in tech-jargon boondoggles ("Cloud the Everything!"; "Make all the services subscriptions!"; "We interface with everything, so let's focus on building and selling expensive interfaces instead of our core software and hardware which is miserably behind the curve!"). Rather than investing in the R & D to make our products more reliable, competitive, scalable, and future-ready. And they've drunk the AI Kool-Aid because the company is run by Business Idiots, a/k/a sheep with MBAs.
I am so tired of janky workarounds, making excuses to customers for bugs, and deploying overpriced, incomprehensible, unmaintainable junk with crap UI's. The only thing keeping us in business is that the competition is worse. And hey, they laid off half the staff, including everyone in a position to make things better. But we're meeting KPI's, so it's all good.
*I actually like most of the people I work with directly, but we're all running as hard as we can to make no progress.
I feel this so much. Feels like paying protection money to the mafia.
I'm not sure if you're looking for advice; so if you're not please just ignore me. I'm going to skip the sympathetic, apologetic comradery under the assumption that you've gotten that as a default from everyone who you vent to. If you don't you absolutely deserve it, and I'd be more than happy to provide it in another reply if you ask for it. I certainly do have tons of it for your situation, but I don't think that will help you in the long run.
I've seen some studies in the last few years that I interpret as boiling down to this: anything that increases your central nervous system response worsens stress. While the studies are about things like running when angry, it also extends to venting, ruminating, etc. We also associate people, places, times, smells, with recurring stimuli. I'm pointing this out because you seem to be getting into a habit of venting about your situation to your partner to the point that it's stressing them out. It is important that you have communication, that you have a place to talk about it, and that they know what is going on in your work life. But I would recommend that you set a time limit to it and limit the frequency. If you need more than whatever time limit you two agree on, my opinion from experience is to seek a therapist to talk about it with. There is a balance to all things in life, you can communicate too much about something, but you can also communicate too little.
I did a similar thing with work a few years ago. When my work day ends, I shut off everything, I turn off my work phone (I am not on call) and I refuse to check my work email until the start of the next business day. I am still stressed at work, I still have my meltdowns, I still feel micromanaged, but I at least think that I am doing okay at limiting it to my work life. If you get home from work and spend the entire evening venting about work, you never get your body into a state of relaxation.
Do you have any links to those studies? This is quite interesting to me. In the past I've used exercise (quite specifically jogging/running) as what I saw as a healthy way to redirect negative energy. That said, I found myself in therapy for a couple years bulding new coping strategies, as I wasn't managing my emotions so well, so I'd be quite open to critically reassessing something I've always assumed to be healthy.
Thanks so much for this advice, this is exactly what I've been trying to do. But it is difficult to stay disciplined, and of course you can only bottle up your emotions so much before that has unhealthy results on its own.
I've started to avoid talking about work with my partner as much as possible. Hopefully that helps. Ideally I'd have a buddy I could bitch with over a beer or something, but the whole 'recent move' thing complicates that. Instead, I've rekindled some relationships with old friends to occupy my time and take my mind off of the work nonsense. If that doesn't help, well... I've already made up my mind to leave. Worst case I just speed up that timeline.
I agree with @arch - you have to find a way to disconnect from work at the end of the day. A past therapy session encouraged me to do so in a way that involves more than just the obvious (laptop off, don't check emails on your phone), but also includes creating sensory or ritual triggers. The actual execution of this should be meaningful to you, but here's a generic example:
I would also recommend that whatever you end up doing, don't be afraid to give yourself a few moments of "alone time." I work from home, and my partner is almost always here when my workday ends. But taking a few moments to myself prior to jumping into other activities together can be helpful.
Finally, accept that you aren't perfect. You aren't going to be able to mentally disconnect from work every minute you're not working. And while that does suck, if you don't come to terms with it, you're just finding a new reason to beat yourself up and escalating your emotions further.
Partner's health has been rough lately and I just want to cry, I'm so tired.
So I do. And then get up and go back to work.
Repeat
We have banana ball tickets for Saturday. I'm afraid he won't be able to go and this was a big deal for us.
I'm so worn out.
:'( I hope you guys get to go and have a great time.
He's not going, I'm still going to go, and his son was going to come with but now will work Saturday and come visit us later next week instead.
It's... Mixed. Our friend's going with her partner so that's still good, but it's gonna be super hot, and maybe storm, and I'm just hoping it's worth it all.
But this was supposed to be his first big event and it already got postponed from April (we'd put in for Chicago and St. Louis and got lucky on the lottery for STL) and I hate that he's not able to go. It just feels depressing.
Hopefully the storm isn't going to be an issue, and that the season of corn sweat will be over soon :/ is it over yet? What actually is banana ball? Have fun anyway! Be a good small small break :)
It's like baseball if you revamped the rules and made it fully about fans first.
Rules of Banana Ball
2025 World Tour Hype video
They focus on entertainment alongside the sports - which means trick catches, trick plays , trick pitches, dance breaks (even the umpire!), run celebrations, full length walk up songs, unique cheerleaders, celebratory guests, and Tiktok trends. And they're encouraged to go for the trick plays over the safe catches.
They're touring in MLB and NFL statiums and selling them out. Tickets are on a lottery system and there are literal millions of people wanting to go.
They get compared to the Globetrotters, but they don't script the actual game, just the dancing and antics. They have multiple teams now too so they've been expanding.
Also the Bananas' charity supports foster families and is called Bananas Foster and I love that.
Anyway I got to go to a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game in June at my conference, and while I had more fun than I'd expected, I'm not really a baseball fan. I will stream Banana Ball games (free on YouTube!) though. They're that fun to watch.
I particularly enjoyed the Man-nana cheer squad :D
Reminds me of Blernsball from Futurama.
Did you have a good time?
It's tonight actually!
Oh yeah you said Saturday -...- I thought it was Sunday when I woke up just now lol are you gonna eat a bunch of ball game foods? That's always one of my favourite parts about watching sports
It was super hot in St. Louis Saturday, like before the game I had to go sit in the shade because my heart rate was over 140 by the time I walked back to get something to drink. (Our bleacher seats were not shaded and since my partner wasn't with us we didn't move to an accessible (shaded) area.) I managed to eat some dippin dots after it cooled off later but was too hot to do more than drink water. (I ate sunflower seeds on the way home for the salt) And we'd eaten really good barbecue before we got to the park.
But it was a lot of fun, in a very ADHD way. There's always something happening, and it can be hard to keep track of it all. But it didn't matter if you did keep track either. I felt bad for the players and cast in the heat too. It was a really good time.
I'm glad you had a good time! That's brutal to sit under the sun for many hours. :\ even with hat!
Was it at least a dry kinda heat? Corn sweat as a concept lives rent free in my head now. Haha yeah if anyone suggest to me to watch baseball now I know I can counter with, nah let's go watch banana ball. I need more things happening than one ball + chew gum + team quietly strategizing. I've only been to one live game and my impression were (1) it was too sunny (2) this is a kind of liturgy isn't it (3) oooh snacks!
Watch a youtube game! They stream everything free and even then it doesn't really account for the level of constant chaos occurring - compared to an actual baseball game the music doesn't stop during the pitches, and the outfield is hyping up fans or doing a silly bit when there's not a hit coming their way, and there's a "kissing contest" or "dad bod contest" or toddlers doing a race of some sort between all the things. (And there are bits that happen just for the stream, they'll mic up a player for an inning and chat with the commentators throughout)
It was not a dry heat alas. St. Louis had a heat index warning over 110 (still does, it's going through Wednesday when I checked) and the sweat was not cooling me off at all. Far too close to the Mississippi to hope that the heat would be dry. Our summers in the Midwest are always of the sort that means your glasses fog up when you get out of the AC and it feels like you've stepped into a warm pool anytime you go outside. It only doesn't feel that way when it's just not that hot out.
Mugginess is no fun :/ livestreaming from cool Atlantic coast sounds like the winning formula for me. :D really glad you made it to your game though
Dear players in my RPG group,
I thoroughly understand that you find my 2-year-old fun and fascinating. I assure you, I love him and cherish him more than you can imagine. That said, I do not wish for my son to be present at our games in my home.
I am not evil, nor am I cold. I spend several hours with my son every day. There are barely any moments in which I am not aware of my son's presence. I am physically incapable of ignoring him.
This is daddy's break, which I arranged thoroughly with my wife. If you wish to be in my son's presence, feel free to come in earlier. You may also be here at any time that you wish. You can spend an entire day with him, and we will all thank you for your help. But don't keep his noisy and distracting presence on your lap during our games, and don't look at me like I am an insensitive demon when I suggest removing him.
Thank you so much.
I've been searching for a teaching job for months. I know as a "first time teacher" it can be tough, but I have 15 years of experience... Just not with working in a district.
I'm so beyond frustrated at running into things I don't - but should - know during interviews. I get the advice they give young teachers: to put in time in a district anywhere so you can get another job in a district anywhere. Problem is that I'm nearing 40 and have a family to support - I can't put in over time as a sub or a para to earn my wings.
I've done the legwork, I've shown I can manage a room of wild animals and get results, just give me a chance to do it and earn a living.
My wife was just in a very similar place. The thing that got her into finally getting a public school position (whereas most of her career has been in charters) was how people get in through private industry: someone recommended her. You'd think that with such a teacher shortage out there that schools would be more desperate. But instead, they're still absolutely picky
I wanted to give an update because this came so quickly. I interviewed with a school and received an offer the same day, and it checks so many of the boxes I had (older kids, close to home, high pay, friendly admins) and I'm just ecstatic about it.
I really was flagging for a while - I was beginning to grow convinced I wouldn't find what I was looking for. I'm happy to be proven wrong!
@chocobean
Oh wow that sounds great!! Wow they sent the offer same day they must have been really impressed by you. When do you start? Yay!
I have a trip to Kentucky next week and I need to wrap things up at my current job, so not starting for 2-3 weeks. The principals I interviewed with seemed really easy to get along with, and we ended up knowing some mutual people, which certainly helped!
I'm so grateful for this opportunity.
That's so exciting! Congrats!!
That's extremely frustrating. You're super awesome at what you do and just your one person's efforts alone do is so much more important than what a thousand finance people do every day to make line go further up.
Ain't right
There is one annoyance I have with certain computer interfaces. Microsoft seems particularly fond of it, but I have seen it elsewhere too.
If there is a single option, and the only user interaction would be to click that option, the computer should just do it for you. User interaction should be for interactive things, not just actions.
Microsoft teams really seems to like this paradigm. While you are using it, it will sometimes give you a banner that says you have to log in again. Okay, sometimes companies have stupid logout policies, so I can understand it. But 95% of the time, all I have to do is click the login button and wait. It doesn’t actually need my password again. Just fucking do that for me! Just try pressing the button and check in the background if the server actually needs my password. I use computers so I don’t have to think about shit like this.
Ooooh boy, the absolute crapfest that is MS Teams. It is the best representation of the worst of Microsoft.
The issue you mentioned has been driving me nuts. My work sometimes has slow points, but I'm expected to be available on Teams all day. So I came up with a workaround- I set up web-based teams in a Firefox docker container, with a user script to keep my status active, and another user script to notify my phone if I get a message. (Because why would the teams mobile app notifications work reliably?) I had it start up a few minutes before my workday, so I could even get away with sleeping in on occasion.
This "solution" has slowly been breaking apart. They made UI changes that broke the notification part. (My notification method also went down on its own, but that's another can of worms.) And now it's practically worthless because I get that sign in prompt multiple times a day.
I'm convinced that if companies didn't already buy into the Microsoft ecosystem, Teams wouldn't be as popular as it is.
Granted, my experience with Google Meet has also been annoying in its own way. It (and other meeting software) likes to create at least three different types of interfaces depending on if you're sharing your screen, watching someone else's screen share, minimized the main window, etc.
I suspect if Discord does an IPO, they may attempt to make a business-focused version. And if they do, I could actually see it being successful among small business customers.
I love that a setup with docker and headless Firefox, which should be super fragile, is somehow still more reliable than stock Microsoft teams. I truly don’t understand it. Microsoft is capable of making high quality software. This is the same company that made Typescript, which I think is the most flexible and robust type system in existence. This is the same company that makes VScode, which is likely the most widely used IDE in existence, even on non windows platforms. Teams is so bad, it feels like Microsoft is actively trying to make it as awful as possible. At my last job, I added some coworkers to a team. You know, the titular feature of Microsoft Teams. Teams didn’t bother telling them about it, and I had to show them where it was a few months later when they asked me about it. It is so astonishingly bad.
My job is really annoying me now. I'm burnt out, and I'm not enjoying my work anymore. Despite recently taking a week off, I didn't get to enjoy it as I had to work on our performance review reports. Despite finishing my report a week early, my manager insisted that I continue to tweak it during my week off so I didn't get to relax at all. I'm actively interviewing for roles at other companies however companies are pretty slow to process applications and respond to me. At the end of next month, my manager will have a conversation with me on my newest performance rating (which they're determining right now) along with any compensation updates. I'm hoping to finish interviewing and get an offer by then. I just want to tell my manager I quit at the end of that performance review call and close this chapter.
I've ranted about this before and I really appreciate everyone's responses. It's been really helpful! I'll be honest, I don't want any responses to this post, just wanted to scream into the void here. But still, I wanted to thank anyone who's read my rants before and given me advice!
I know you said you didn't really want any responses, but I'm giving you one anyways because your post resonated with me. Sorry.
That shit is ridiculous, your boss can fuck right off.
I sincerely hope you get the opportunity to do this. Totally feel you on the just wanting to close this chapter already.
Good luck!
Yeah my manager's been losing my favor over the last 6 months and that was just sort of the final push I needed to start taking interviewing and preparing for interviews more seriously.
I'll be honest, that's been my main motivator at the moment haha. I've had a great 2 years here but I think the time has come for me to explore other opportunities.
I give my cat love, food, outside time in the catio, attention with ribbon and ball. He is well loved. He sleeps on my face.
Every day he crawls out of his skin and sits aggressively next to my computer and wails at me when he thinks my workday should be done.
I have been surrounded by dog people this week, and endured their yatter about the malfunctions of their overbred surrogate children. So I feel entitled to kvetch about my pair of mixed-breed cat rescues.
My two perfect, adorable angels (not) have their own enchanting behaviors.
Lilly, the older female, is an aloof diva alarm clock who will yowl for me to stop working so I can walk over and pay her attention, without even meeting me halfway. She'll refuse to eat, and yell for me to pet her while she's eating. She'll scratch my face if I don't get out of bed and feed her on time. She'll howl for me to open the front door and let her out, even though she's got a perfectly serviceable cat door downstairs. She doesn't tolerate being picked up, or sitting on laps, and bullies the younger, bigger male cat unmercifully. But she also sleeps on my feet, will deign to be thoroughly skritched, and worries about the least change in her humans' behavior.
Dash is a hopeless romantic, rarely makes a noise that's not a diesel engine purr or snore. He loves everyone passionately, in potentially life-threatening ways. Dash wants Lilly to love him back, but he might get more mileage if he didn't try to share her food bowl. He's lap-promiscuous. We think he was raised by dogs.
How mew you mew, fellow cat slaves.
My kid has always had a cat in the house, staring with our geriatrics, then our parades of fosters, and finally our current foster fail. My tiny rant is that when I was growing up I didn't have meows at home: I desperately wanted one and now I do, but the kid is tired of the miracle of being under the same roof as one and having daily purr. yes the cat can be annoying, and smelly, and expensive, and ... but....cat is also fuzzy and purry and soft.
Wouldn't change it for the world! :)
It's probably just the toxoplasmosis talking but yeah. I can only imagine dog people are under an equal but opposite spell : they're so cute but how can they be possibly worth all that trouble.
Many of us have dogs and cats, they both have their charms. I did until a few weeks ago when my sweet old boy passed, however I do not think I will be signing up for another stint of dog dadding.
💯
I'm with you. One of my cats will scream when she wants us to go sit with her in a specific room of the house. She knows she can get attention if she walks up to us, but that isn't good enough.
Ahhhh!! Our girl has us wrapped around her finger. Closet scritch, toilet scritch, hallway scritch. One must follow her.
One of mine will meow at me if I stay up too late.
Her favorite sleeping spot is stretched out along the groove in the blankets between my legs. Meowing at me to try to remind me to go to bed has nothing to do with this. Nope, nope! (Though honestly, when the cute little dark-adapted predator is trying to tell me to go to bed, it really is time.)
Oh yeah, same. My believes that he's deserving of outside time all of the time. No so, young man. Not so.
We often times deeply regret introducing the catio. But they love it so ...
Is there a way to let them use it at will? Mine exit through a milk chute in our 1950s house. I have weather stripping around the exit so it's a set it and forget it operation. They love it.
I've been lobbying to install a self-serve door with my partner. So far I haven't won the day!
Tough battle. Just persuade them that your beast is ruthless with critters that walk in... Oh, and that the door will be mounted suuuper high.
Good luck! It's amazing for our cats' quality of life.
I'm tired of being pregnant and dealing with all of the late third trimester symptoms. I miss my body and I'm so done with dealing with the aches, swelling, rhinitis, acid reflux, and the lack of sleep.
And I'm still working at 38 weeks on top of this since I am trying maximize my maternity leave. Childbirth doesn't sound so bad when I feel raggedy. I know I'm almost at the finish line, but I have no idea how much further I have to go.
The last weeks of the last trimester are rough: no position feels restful or relaxing. For me it felt like my body has fully sidelined me fully in favour of the baby.
But congratulation, and easy + safe delivery day!
I can only imagine how rough you're feeling. I hope you get a chance for rest and that you have the supports you need both now and after the baby is here.
You're doing something that's both incredibly natural and insanely miraculous at the same time. Hang tough
I need to go past venting and into a rant. There are many "ifs" here. I'm aware that the worst might not materialize, but I'm angry and helpless to the point of constant nausea thinking about this situation.
This week, I learned that my employer is bidding for work at an ICE medical facility under construction. If we secure the bid, I'd be the first person assigned to it since I have the most expertise in the software/hardware stack under consideration.
I will refuse, and probably be fired. But half my family tree was murdered in concentration camps. I'd genuinely rather die than be complicit in the current monstrosities in any way.
As mentioned above, I'm handcuffed to my current job for health insurance. I'm on a medication that costs $100,000/year, and would be painfully crippled within a few weeks if I cease using it. Spouse needs a heart valve replacement again in the not-too-distant future. His work (that he loves) doesn't offer insurance, and the cost of marketplace plans would break us if I'm not earning at my current level.
My respect for my employer was already low, and the bid to ICE is the last straw. I'm actively seeking a new job. I was bitterly ashamed of my country - that's now evolving towards simmering rage. I don't know what the hell I can do to fight harder against the fascist regime. I have a path to emigrate, but spouse isn't interested. Again, he loves his job and has too many ties here. He's also far more optimistic than I am that the U.S. will self-correct; that's becoming a source of friction, too.
I'm going to stop here and see if I can chill a bit. Thanks for listening.
The other thing you could do if you need the job for survival, is not quit, but follow the CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism method. At least until you can quit.
I'm sorry you're here. I appreciate the call you're making, it's all I just and unfair.
Thank you for the support. Unfortunately, the Sabotage Manual isn't workable - there's nothing I'd feel ethically safe to impair related to medical facilities (even one at a concentration camp), and I wouldn't have physical access.
Spouse and I have now discussed the situation, and he's on board if it transpires that I need to quit.
Absolutely understood, I was definitely thinking more "slow rolling out with meticulous approval processes" rather than more explicit "sabotage" but I respect the ethical boundaries, on both ends. Be safe, and may your employer or manager surprise you pleasantly fingers crossed
Turns out that at least some of my fellow workers aren't pleased about this either, and we might have a little wildcat labor action in mind if it comes to that.
I'm just an internet rando without any experience of your situation and in another country...
Anyway, I had a thought... maybe you (as in this small group of people, not the singular you) can find a way to voice your concerns before the bid is done? I'm just seeing a future where someone has decided that this contract is a good thing and they become entrenched in their position and don't see any other way than to fire all of you.
If you are able to make a fuss about this before they are entrenched they might decide it's not a good idea to make the bid.
Just a thought.
I had the conversation with my manager today about this. He told me that there are many people unhappy with the situation, including him. I told him I'd quit over any ICE projects, and he was completely understanding. There's a periodic company survey (theoretically anonymous) going around, and my point #1 was that ICE work is morally wrong.
We'll see where this goes.
I'm happy for you, you showed real strength here. Thank you for letting us know, and making it possible to draw inspiration.
<3
Good luck and I'm so glad you had the conversation
Status update: Manager told me he's taking my case (anonymized) to the corporate leadership meeting this week. He asked for my permission to identify me if required, and I gave it. I told him I was already prepared to deal with any repercussions, because ICE work is a line I can't cross. He's planning to make the case that this wouldn't be the only employee loss if they proceed with the bid, and the morale impact would be devastating. Again, waiting for how all this turns out.
I'm just an internet random, but I just want to give you so many kudos for speaking up and being willing to take a stand
You're not "just an Internet random", but someone whose Tildes opinions I've respected for a long time. So I'm blushing.
I'm an old fart whose reservoir of fucks to give about consequences is running dry. Maybe if I hadn't been watching the U.S. go down the tubes for decades at an ever-accelerating rate, I'd have more reservations about this.
Well, I am an internet rando, and I second @DefinitelyNotAFae sentiment!
Well fucking done!
I'm starting up a Signal group for further discussions on how to approach this proactively. We've got a lot of leverage since our team does all the customer-facing work and they can barely cover the jobs we're doing now. Even if it's just two or three of us willing to take a stand, we can probably roadblock the ICE involvement.
I felt sick reading your original post: to be medically beholden to a system that's potentially asking you to participate in concentration camps.... I'm so glad you talked to your spouse and he's on board and you guys have alternatives. Keep gently bringing up the topic of moving....maybe go to some seminar, apply just for the sake of it...
With regards to signal group and making yourself heard at work, great job, but .... Godspeed, and wear a very long shirt (cover your butt).
I've thought about emigrating since I saw the price difference for arthritis drugs outside the U.S. (less than one-tenth what they cost here!), let alone the current political situation.
As for the job, I'm breathing easier to know we'll survive whichever way the chips fall. My coworkers with young kids (at least one that I know of has serious medical needs), are absolute hostages, and they deserve someone to fight for a better America.
I'm glad you are getting some much needed breathing room. As an immigrant, i know it's a very hard decision. One of the lesser known good reasons: to preserve cultural identity. If the place is catching fire and everyone seems to be losing their head, packing up the good cultural values and heading for the exit might actually be the only way to preserve it.
Sorry to hear you're all feeling sick at once. Hope you get better.
Good luck
Oh man. That's a position I don't wish anyone to get into. All I can say is follow your heart but really, all routes lead to heartbreak with that combination.
Take care, and also - I admire your courage and bravery for this step. It's easy to say you would do that when you get yourself in such a situation until you actually do.
It didn't help that I've been holding on to this without talking to anyone for a couple of days, while I was on the road.
I've had a chance to put things into perspective since I returned home and sat down with my spouse yesterday. We ran the numbers last night and can cover a marketplace insurance plan for a year, so quitting isn't going to be the jump off a cliff that I was afraid of. There are plenty of lower-paying job openings for my role if I'm willing to start over again.
Spouse is more than okay if I need to quit - I haven't exactly been flourishing in this job since the layoffs last year. He's being more supportive than I expected, and shame on me for nurturing doubts.
I don't feel courageous about this - I'm privileged to have the option to stand on principle.
Good on you to reflect on that, and I want to add to that: it's not easy to not have nasty thoughts when you go through such difficult times. I had to inform someone pretty recently about a toxic trait of mine out of safety. So, well, it's not the same, but I get how difficult that balance is.
And far too many people are fine to remain at standstill due to comfort and unwillingness to face it. Even when they have a family history like yours. I can understand it if you don't have the room the accept that integrity for what it is, and I hope that you can appreciate that part of yourself someday.
I am becoming more and more miserable at my job as time goes on. We write software and I am well established here. I am good at what I do but with all of the recent AI hype my coworkers are getting increasingly dependent upon it. My peers have always been lazy to a degree but this has put accelerant to that fire. It is gonna burn the damn building down and with the market fucked I feel like I'm stuck inside. I'm looking for other opportunities passively but it is difficult to find something comparable. Golden handcuffs and all that.
How exactly does the fact that your coworkers are getting dependent upon AI, affect you? What is changing that makes you more and more miserable? How exactly?
They push through vibe coded solutions without understanding the ramifications of their actions. This directly impacts me because it deteriorates our platform stability, maintainability, and scalability. It would be easier if I just didn't give a shit about our product and users, but I do. This isn't about moving fast for the business but more about making as much noise as possible to look good for promotions/raises.
I'm an executive in the cybersecurity world, and I feel like I understand the world we live in less and less as time goes on. Information systems have gotten so convoluted, so complex, and so flooded by various actors all looking to profit from harm and dishonesty that it just makes me tired.
From the 10 new SaaS apps that users discover every day and demand access to, to random fly by night AI startups getting their marketing hooks into people, to LLM generated phishing emails, all kinds of novel attacks becoming trivial to execute for any random person in bangledesh or Nigeria or wherever thanks to malware as a service providers, to the attack surface of every organization becoming both global and uncontrolled thanks to SaaS business applications, cloud hosted IaaS, "no code" automation platforms and on and on. Every one of these things has their own opinionated proprietary way of setting things up, auditing them, "securing" them and so forth. Standards are effectively dead. When you know security on azure, you still need to learn security on cloud flare, on AWS, on Google cloud, on Salesforce, on Oracle, on IBM, and on and on and on.
Everyone has just scattered in their own direction, and vendors and marketing firms have pounced on the confusion by promising to sell you a box, or more frequently now, yet another SaaS app that automagically fixes all of it.
I'm getting tired of keeping up with it all. A single human mind isn't built to digest this amount of complexity and detail, and yet at a certain level for a security executive, you just need to in order to be effective. You have to be able to verify what people are telling you, because when the auditors come around, or a large attack happens, or a security tool causes a production outage, it's your ass to justify and explain what you're getting paid to do.
The boundries of what you could get your arms around to defend used to be a lot more clear, and the types of attacks you could be targeted by used to be much more straightforward. XSS attacks, injection, DDoS, malware via phishing, and that was about it. Cryptocurrency added an extremely powerful financial motivation, and cloud and AI technologies made the landscape a lot murkier and attackers much more powerful.
I always wondered who all of those security people posting "day in the life" videos that were so popular on tiktok a few years ago actually worked for, because the job isn't working at home, sipping mimosas, doing yoga during your lunch break, and relaxing on the couch during the workday. It's mostly just constant stress and feeling like your head is going to explode from having to know so many details about so many things that you don't even actually care about, but must know about.
I'm more or less locked into this career now, but I don't know how I can do this for another 20ish years and maintain my sanity, except maybe to just stop caring, which seems like what a lot of my colleagues do. I can't really live like that while maintaining respect for myself though, so what can you do?
Moved to Japan, joined one of the biggest financial institutions in the country.
Was told I could use my international skills (English language being the main one) to be part of the global team.
I am in the team but 90% of my work ended up being the same as the Japanese employees.
I am fluent in Japanese, but no matter how long I study, reading and writing emails/reports takes twice as long for me. It's quite frustrating..
I am unable to use my English or my experience overseas, and I end up feeling like I am dumb since I cannot keep up with the Japanese employees with all the Japanese work.
Thats super frustrating :'( do you feel like your management team would understand if you suggest your own work for part of the time? Like.....what if you took an hour each work day to translate signs / posters around the office or in visible client areas? It'll look posh and you can be better known as the English guy, which may open up more opportunities more suitable for you
How's the move aside from work? Did you visit lots before the move and how is it different actually being there full time?
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I did have a talk and their excuse was that currently we just do not have that many overseas projects.
So I am basically on stand-by.
I moved to Japan 3 years ago, and yeah I used to visit a lot before the big move.
I am loving the country, culture, food.
I love games/tech/nerdy stuff, and I find it so much easier to enjoy my hobbies in Japan.
Whereas it was difficult where I grew up. (The Netherlands)
This country lives on events/collaborations, so I always have something to do and a nice excuse to leave the house because there is always another Gundam event going on, or an aquarium is doing a collab with one of my favorite games. Things you'd never see in Europe.
This is of course, only enjoyable during your private time, and working at a Japanese company makes me realize there are a lot of things I took for granted back in Europe.
I have to say I got used to living here faster than I thought, and living here made me not want to go to the tourist spots ever again after visiting them as a tourist before. Also, if you speak a little Japanese, pretty much everyone here will go out of their way to support you. (as long as they can see you are actually making an effort, which is a big cultural thing here. People making an effort have to be supported by the community, while being not putting in any effort will be ignored)
So far the good outweights the bad however, and tomorrow I'm going in to switch my drivers license to a Japanese one so I'll be able to get around a bit more freely.
That's a lot of collab and I would have a hard time saving any money if the aquarium and anime/games joined forces all the time.
40 PTL in NL sounds like a lot more than what we get in Canada. Does that include stat holidays? I can see how not having sick days and having ptl shrink by half feels bad.
I had a really good job interview in November with a great company. I did a better job presenting myself than I ever thought was possible. They immediately ghosted me afterward.
I've always been a bit shy, but now I feel less and less like I'm needed in society. Even though office jobs are often meaningless--it's nice to be a redundant part in the system. It's frustrating to be free: outside the system.
I don't have financial stress because I live very minimally--but this is a double-edged sword. Maybe if I had urgent needs I would change my behavior in a more productive way. Instead I have a lot of time to do the same things every day and dwell inside of this feeling. I'm not really depressed or suicidal at all but there is some fatigue about the state of things.
...
I was lucky before I suppose. I'm happy that I had a few prosperous years. I feel like I have sacrificed some social component to get good at programming. If anything it is spent time.
Concurrently, I don't have a strong desire to sit in a cubicle for 9 hours a day. I don't really want a job. I mean, I would love to sign on with a good team that had a supportive environment.
But even more than that, I want to accept myself as who I am without a job. I want to be okay with being retired at 29. I want this to be normal. But it is not.
I am okay with humans not having traditional jobs. But maybe it will never feel normal for me.
My dad was (and still is) a workaholic. He doesn't know how to relax or have fun. Even in his rightfully earned twilight years, he can't stop doing projects--to the point that its strained familial relationships. He has his own backhoe instead of renting one but he only uses it a couple times per year. He expects everyone to help him do manual labor tasks in place of normal family reunion activities. He always picks the worst time to do things too like helping him unpack a cargo container in the dessert in the heat of the day at 2pm.
I feel like I know how to relax but somewhere inside of me there is an image of this over-industrious behavior defining what it is to be a man.
Quick vent:
(A) a family member is dear to me and I love them very much. They're actually a very good [relative], but often times I am also aware of the fact that they're not a good person. There's a whole whackadoodle of why they are like this (very complex set of trauma), and I do think they are trying, they have been improving even now, and for the most part they're not evil or anything like that. Just....sort of....more morally gray than I like in a friend. I have to reframe my thinking a lot to something like, (1) for their circumstances they're doing really well, or (2) it's just really hard for them because they didn't have all the modern advantages I have, or (3) their brand of moral gray makes people feel fairly good and there's less direct harm / nobody feels immediately terrible interacting with them.
(B) other family members I'm quite disappointed with. My whole life I thought they were one kind of person, but [American politics] have proven that their values are actually quite different from mine. It's frustrating to see. On the other hand I should absolutely have always seen it from voting patterns and what they believe about authority etc.
So, I know I just need to live my life and let them live theirs. But my pride and judgemental attitude makes these interactions rub the wrong way, y'know. During the HK protests of '19, we used to say "yellow/blue is political opinion, but black/white is having a conscience." It's hard not to prescribe lack of moral conscience to folks whose views on policies are different from my own.
3 years ago my wife and kids and I moved into our dream home, and ever since, it's been like the movie The Money Pit. The foundation and fundamentals have been great, but everything else has been a complete nightmare. I've sunk countless money into keeping the plumbing and HVAC in order but it seems like at this point I'm fighting a losing battle. We've had to replace the water pump for our well 3 times, had to install an insanely expensive water filtration system, and had to get a lot of general plumbing work done thanks to the poor quality water. I love the challenge, but at a certain point I just got burnt out.
It's not like I can't afford it, but it's hard to find contractors to come out and even work on it. I am very mechanically inclined, and could do most of this myself, but I just don't have the time. I do as much as I can, but again, it just feels like an uphill battle. I know other folks have a worse situation than I do, but this just wears on me mentally.
Water is such a basic thing too, its probably not the amount of work that really weighs on you but the fact that you cant trust the water in your own house.
We had water heater issues last winter and it damn near drove me insane, I couldn’t live in a house where I cant trust that when I turn on the faucet good potable water comes out. I know this is like first world shit but to me its so very basic mammal brain to need to know that I have access to water.
I used to live in a century home where there were lead pipes. The city water was fine but would need to cross over the short lead segments into the home. We drank bottles water the whole time. I didn't like it, but it wasn't like we had the money to completely overall pipes after we already did roof electrical and AC.
I mostly mean that I gotta be able to wash my hands and take a shower.
Ive also lived without drinkable water, thats not quite so bad, we also just kept bottled water and big gallon jugs to cook with. Wasn’t very expensive to pick those up from Costco once a week.
We probably shouldn’t have been washing the dishes or showering with that water, but we did.
We have a refreshed product line launching in the fall. A sale started today to help clear out inventory. Our company uses a bunch of public slack channels to discuss all of this, so while we only officially know about it at the highest of levels, details are everywhere. Regardless, I had to hop on a call with my manager today, because my direct report asked on yesterday's call while I was off if we could get clarity on why we are selling the inventory. He knows it's because we are clearing inventory ahead of the refresh, so I don't even know why he bothered asking the question in the first place. He doesn't need clarity. Our job is sales. We know why our inventory is currently on sale.
Anyways, my boss tells him it's because of the big response during the Prime Day sale and holdover demand, which is bullshit and makes no sense. Clearly my direct report realized he touched a nerve as he wrote me right away. And today I had to get on this call and thank my manager for bringing this to my attention and thank him for keeping it at his level and not bringing it to his manager, even though my direct report didn't do anything wrong. Now I have to have a coaching conversation with my direct report because we are a publicly traded company and confidentiality and blah blah. All for a question he already knew the answer to. What a fucking waste of everyone's time.
Work. I’m a content generation engine for an AI driving model intended for highway use. That means a lot of highway driving, and I’m not a fan. I’m decent at driving, I have a clean record for the past 10 years, and I can get where I’m going well enough, but it’s starting to wear on me going in circles for an AI thing that might just be a boondoggle, and I’ve had enough close calls with objects in the road and other drivers that I’m not looking forward to getting behind the wheel, and even riding shotgun is starting to be a concern. There’s a timeframe for our vehicles to move into closed courses, which I’m looking forward to, but we’ll see how it plays out.
Thanks for what you do. I don't think self-driving vehicles completely solve all of the issues around transportation, but I'm hopeful they will contribute positively.
I will say that I am much more comfortable with Waymo's approach (gradual transition from supervised to autonomous) than Tesla's (beta testing on public roads with untrained people trying to pay less attention to the road).
I hope you are able to find a balance that reduces your stress levels, whatever that ends up working out to be for you.
About a year or so ago I took a massive gamble with my career and started doing something that is fairly risky. I would prefer to keep it vague, but I basically straight up gambled and I am continuing to gamble every day. The risk is not incredibly high, but the work I am doing now, I could lose at any time. I am essentially pre-fired and I know that.
The money from this decision has been great. It is potentially setting my family and I up for a great future. There is just one problem, I'm incredibly overwhelmed and I don't know how long I can keep doing this. It's really taking a toll on my mental health. I'm big time burnt out but I can't walk away from the money. Even worse though, it is not clear to me that walking away from this is the solution. I know that if I traded what I'm doing now for something easier, I would still feel burnt out. I would still feel depressed. I would still feel frustrated with the world. I would be all of these things but I'd also be worse off financially. I guess I'd rather suffer in the short term to be financially stable and potentially retire earlier. I just don't see any escape from this feeling. I really don't think that changing what I do would make me feel any better. This position is only temporary and I will likely never find something like this again. I should be grateful for this opportunity, and I am, but I also feel like shit every day.
Short of me winning the lottery, I don't think there is any escape for me from these feelings. Even then, I am not so certain. I am reminded of a quote by Schopenhauer which I feel describes life accurately.
There is fairly good evidence that the vast majority of people who make a big change in their life are happy with their decision 6 months later.
That is, it's better to make the change, than to not make the change.
So, when you do make the decision to walk away from the money, the chances are you will be happy that you made the decision to do so.
FWIW, our family did something similar, and while we remember that period of milk and honey reasonably fondly, we are all pretty glad that it's in the past.
The stress is just too much to continue it over the longer term.
And - in the end, the money didn't make that big a difference anyhow, as world events 100% out of our control intervened.
That sounds very stressful! I obviously don't know the details but it sounds to me to be untenable for the long term. Glad you are making decent money, but watch out that the mental side of things doesn't take too big of a toll on you. Good luck!
Ooh, is it overemployment? (Overemployment is when you get a second, remote, job and work both jobs simultaneously)
It would explain the gamble (insta-fired if your employer finds out), the payout (2x wages), the burnout (2x the work).
You caught me. This is the first time I've said that to anyone. I haven't even told my parents. I think I've decided that I want out. Actually getting out is harder than I expected.
As some of you know, I've been developing a kind of self love that's normally only fostered in early childhood. There's so much about this experience that's wild but one thing in particular blows my mind.
How many people - mostly men - seem to have this, but don't really take care of themselves? I thought I understood how the way we raise boys negatively impacts them. And perhaps it's even the case that many of them don't really love themselves the way I think they do. Even so, it's like so many people don't really have the ability to sooth themselves in a healthy manner.
I'm not sure if I grossly overestimate how many people truly love themselves or how poorly we are with raising kids in an emotionally healthy manner. Either would be really fucked.
To me, you're a more trustworthy source than random un-checked results from any search engine...
Do you have any suggestions for where to look and or what to look for if I'd like to improve my own self love skills.
It's a lot to wade through and try to figure out on my own.
I've seen you write about this journey before and wanted to check it out but got overwhelmed by the shit ton of info available
Yeah unfortunately I can't exactly give rock-solid advice. Especially on what pushed me over the edge - while it seems to be related to medication and it mimicking trauma responses in safe environments, I think you need to put a lot of work in before being able to trigger that. Even then you just... need to be lucky I think?
When I look at what helped me reach the point I'd say the most important 'elements' have been, for me:
(additionally I suspect that living with my parents for me, again, has helped somehow in processing some things. That is trauma specific but I can't help but feel that that dynamic may need to be replicated, somehow, for some people)
I don't think self love really is a skill. As much as something that can come flowing when that happens? It's like something unclogged in my brain.
If you ever reach the same point as me and actually get your brain in the 'reorganising mode'. Make sure you actually manage to take a rest as well. One of the 'shocking events' that I mentioned in the past is that I nearly had a heatstroke - I drank 6-7 liters of water the next day. And had to take a bloodsugar test to make sure it wasn't diabetes. Yet, during the past month I was so tired to the point I only felt better after taking in sugar.
I don't even know if it's physically possible, but the way it occurred for me feels like my brain literally needed more sugar because the rest of my body was struggling to keep up. No, really. At one point I struggled to get out of bed in the middle of the day. If it wasn't for that blood test, I would've had to contact a doctor anyway to ask for it.
I'm saying this here in advance should anyone else manage to get it because. While I'm glad the dust is settling. The past month has been exhausting. Processing trauma highway mode, preventing my toxic traits to damage the ones I care about, making sure I'm not isolating myself, keeping up appearances at work and home because I could not share it there, and more. It's been one of the most mentally taxing times of my life.
Just did my 9th day of stims for my third ER cycle and I am so damn uncomfortable. I have monitoring tomorrow morning (third straight morning in a row of blood draws and transvaginal ultrasounds before work) and am really really hoping that they decide to let me trigger tomorrow night. Despite being behind on work and needing to present in 2 meetings tomorrow and run a third I have zero motivation or attention for it because of all the anticipation for how this cycle is going. My appetite is in the trash from the hormones but I need to keep up my protein, fats, and fiber for the best outcome and recovery. Just a huge ugh all around to this.
Making a person is so dang hard. Hope monitoring all went well and this cycle is comfortable and successful.
Thank you. Trigger is looking likely for tonight and I am thrilled. Really hoping this is the final retrieval for us.
I forget how it works: there's a trigger shot and then some time waiting and then the retrieval? Hoping this is IT and no more need for retrieval ever and as many superb quality embryos as you guys were aiming for. And also hoping for excellent recovery for your ovaries
Yeah if my bloodwork from this morning looks good then they will call me and tell me what time to do a trigger shot tonight (anytime between 8pm-3am), then I do another 12 hours after that, and the retrieval will be 36 hours after the first trigger. The weekend is looking like it will be full of laying in bed eating salty foods to ward off any chance of OHSS. I do love having the doctor basically prescribe potato chips.
WaHahahahaha! Yes stock up on your favourite salt snacks :D hopefully your clinic is easy to get to and your RE is kind and gentle. Yay weekend plans!!
Can I vent about my brand new Daikin hybrid furnace/heat pump combo? It blows...
Hah. I mean, anything you're passionate about, go for it.
I have the opposite problem - A/C running almost non-stop the majority of the year. I never even use the heater. I'm considering leveraging our new "super off-peak hours" (intended for EV charging) to see if I can pre-cool the house a significant amount at night.
Whatever works, do it! Depending on how your house is built, I also learned about "Whole House fans" while looking for the right pump package.
It's a lower cost way of sucking all if the heat out of a place before bedtime. Maybe worth a look?
That doesn't quite work for our floor plan or local climate. However, I am planning on implementing an exhaust for my homelab (even though the current setup of servers and switches don't pump out as much heat as previous configurations have).
I used to live in a desert in one state, and thought moving to another (Arizona) would be no big deal. I was already used to the "dry heat" people meme about. But the one thing no one told me is that during most of the summer, it doesn't cool down at night. Right now, our low temps are in the 80s. When it gets really hot, sometimes lows are between 85 and 90. When that happens, there's very little you can do about it. I'm still expecting to have to run the air conditioner for a similar amount of time per day, but thinking I may be able to shift the schedule enough to reduce usage during peak hours.
I wish you the best!
Haha, yeah heat pumps super suck. Hope your area had decent grants. Staying cool this summer then eh?
Actual vent, I found out after the installation of our 10 year warranty heat pump that it doesn't cover labour (or travel) only parts; I did let them know I wasn't happy with them in a heated exchange and that I won't be recommending them for keeping quiet. They keep quiet about labour, Imma keep quiet about their services. Sales was a bunch of hot air, true to type, but I didn't know what I didn't know.
Lol, but for the wordplay and not the situation. How could they not factor those things into a quote? Crazy!
No grants that I already haven't used up, but there's a Canada Greener Home loan that's 0% over 10 years that we used.
The furnace, pump and a new hot water tank all came to 25,000 Canadian - a pill I'm willing to swallow, minus the $2000 in tariff costs that's added. Blasted windbag of a president!
Feels like there's never enough time in the day! Definitely a first world problem vent after reading through the other comments.
My wife and I are making more of an effort to take care of our physical health so we can keep up with our kids as they grow and now be those parents who are out of breath after playing for a few minutes.
I'm waking up earlier to make sure I have time to wake up, stretch, do a run and a light workout, and get ready for my work (thankfully I work from home, so I don't have to commute) and between work, kids, cooking, cleaning, house chores, and any other family obligations we have, by the time the evening comes around I'm beat and have maybe ~30-40 minutes of time that I spend with my wife if I don't fall asleep while putting the kids to bed.
After being in my role for almost a year now things are going well, and I talked to my boss about promotion which he let me know I should be on track for. The thing is that I feel like I need to start expanding my skill set, as in my current role I'm providing support for our system and not gaining a ton of experience that would be translatable to another company if I need to change jobs. While there's no indication that I'm in any danger of losing my position, I'm more paranoid after my previous contract wasn't renewed after I had received 10+ months of assurances that my contract would be renewed. The year I had off of work and needing to apply for thousands of jobs and knowing that a large percentage of the local applications I put in were binned because of my name since they don't want to hire an "ang moh" (white person) because they expected that I would want a salary outside of their range, and they could hire a local for cheaper.
My company has a continuing IT education budget and a preapproval for a site that offers training courses, and I'm planning to take advantage of it. I'm just not sure when I'll fit in the time to make meaningful progress on courses between everything else I have going on without cutting into my sleep time more than I already am. I know I can get by functionally on 5-6 hours for a long time, but cutting past that starts impacting me and I don't want my family to be impacted by me being short tempered because I'm so tired.
There's also me wanting to be able to enjoy my own hobbies (beyond small snatches of reading in between other things or maybe playing a game for ~10 minutes), or finally make some friends after having lived here for nearly 3 years.
Such is life though, things could be much worse, and I'm thankful for what I have, just feeling the need to vent to internet strangers about wanting more time to do more things. Even though we all only have 24 hours in the day. I did see a numerous clinic while on holiday in Bali that posted several signs saying they were open 25/7 which I didn't get the chance to take photo of.
Exercising is hard -..- but keeping up with your kids is a worthy and noble pursuit.
I've been occasionally taken back to Reddit for some niche communities that aren't on other platforms yet.
One thing that caught my eye is a particular format of post where someone asks a very generic question to the subreddit (like "What do you wish ___ had?") and prefaces it with "I'll go first" or "For me it's ___". It's consistent across big and small subreddits. The OP essentially never answers or engages in the thread again.
I'd love to actually know if this is some way of stealthily promoting engagement on the sub or a normal shift of how the demographics of reddit engage with online communities now.
Am I being targeted? :)
In all seriousness, I get what you mean. That's why I purposefully haven't posted my own response. Trying to respond to others as well, but it's been a busy and exhausting work day.
Hah yeah that's still quite a bit more text than most I've seen. I appreciate that Tildes at least makes the scheduled discussion posts clear that it's generated by automation.
Particular exhibits of what I mean for the others:
If these are real people posting their real thoughts then I just find it utterly eerie that reddit has developed an extremely consistent vocabulary across many communities.
I'm getting pretty sick of my apartment complex. I just keep having maintenance issues and it's like pulling teeth to get them fixed. I just went over a month taking scalding hot showers because they somehow screwed up a repair of a leaky faucet. My kitchen sink regularly backs up with nasty drain water from my upstairs neighbor (allegedly due to someone pouring grease down the drain). There's water leaking from under my building that they just haven't done anything about (but hey, at least they're paying the water bill).
I'd like to move out of here, but I can't drive (legally blind) and the only other walkable apartment complex is much higher rent and doesn't seem much better. There are some houses so I'm considering whether I want to buy a house (especially in this market) but they're also all built in the 50s or 60s so I suspect that might just be a PITA too.
I'm taking an introductory class on statistics right now. I had an assignment which required me to use the binomial probability equation. The problem is that it used math symbols that I haven't seen yet. I was so confused about it I figured that it couldn't possibly be the right thing, so I messaged the professor about it on the class forum. No response. It's less than 24 hours until the deadline for the paper, so I send another message.
Roughly six hours before the deadline, I get an email with a forum digest saying that there were new messages in the class forum. I have got a response. The response was the exact same formula as was in the book. And rather frustratingly, it says the message was sent at 7AM this morning. I checked two hours prior and it definitely not there at that time.
The good news is that I actually asked AI about it and it told me the thing I needed to look for was called a binomial coefficient, so I was able to figure out how to solve it and submit the paper in time.
But the thing is that the book never mentions the term "binomial coefficient"; it's a digital book, and the search returned nothing. I learned how to solve it from motherfucking Wikipedia! And I'm 100% certain that I've never seen this in any of the math classes I've taken in my lifetime. How on earth was I expected to be able to do what she wanted?! Was I supposed to just ask AI to do the work for me?
And another thing is that this whole time, every assignment has a note that we should be using a LibreOffice spreadsheet template to calculate our answers because it's going to be important for the final exam. This week was the first time we've actually covered any of the topics that have equations in the spreadsheet at all, for binomial distribution. And worse, it was still useless for the assignment because the spreadsheet was just using the builtin BINOMDIST function!
Edit: I have a fun update. I woke up this morning and checked my email. I got an email notification that my instructor responded to my private message. It came in at 2:58 AM, so well after the deadline for the assignment. In it, she said that she responded to the forum post “a few days ago”. “Hope that’s helpful,” she says.
Ugh, that sounds stressful, as someone who has a moderate phobia of math.
In a data science course, we were maybe a little over halfway through the semester, and suddenly the book transitions from "here's how you can make some basic charts with python libraries" to "now we're going to use some statistical modeling practices you've surely heard about!"
I call these turning points in courses the "draw the rest of the fucking owl" moments. If you're unfamiliar, it's a meme that's supposed to be a drawing tutorial for an owl, and... I think you get the idea.
The scary thing is that binomial was the only distribution we covered in the book chapter. Tomorrow (by which I mean the next hour or so) is the next study period and I’m imagining how scary it will be.
Worse, I’ve got “voluntold” to teach two classes with curricula that are new to me so I will have to study them as well so I can teach them effectively.
Edit: Damn it, I was right; we're doing the other distrobutions next. Also the confusing submission process meant that I hadn't submitted my assignment, so my submission was less than 20 minutes before the deadline!
The inappropriate and excessive use of periods.
People who.can’t fucking wr.ite without a shit-ton of. periods
This will be the phenomenon that ultimately chases me well and truly off all but the necessities of the internet. I am at my wits’ end with it. Why, oh why, oh why, oh why did this become a thing.
It changes the cadence of writing to such a degree as to make reading at a glance nigh impossible. And yet, so many people online seem hell-bent on doing it.
*Also: Periods aren’t colons, lol. Using them as such just breaks the sentence.
I am literally metaphorically dying here. Poor punctuation on the web is killing me.
Well hey, if it makes you feel any better, I'm compensating for those people by not using periods at the end of my "paragraphs", lists, or sentences relatively often
I mean, technically it's not inappropriate use of periods if I'm not using periods ;)
This really feels like malicious compliance, and I have mixed feelings about it. I almost feel guilty for the periods in this comment.
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1.5 years ago i moved across my country to a new city for a new start (and better weather). i acquired new 2 clients the month before i moved who were local to the area i was moving to. they paid well, promised lots of work. once i arrived, almost everything has gone wrong, some in ways i couldn't have imagined, others completely "my fault."
the "my fault" stuffs
my housing choice was absolutely awful. expensive, old, unmaintained, in uniquely bad area. i was so concerned about not "wasting money" in a hotel/airbnb looking for housing, i signed a lease without seeing the apartment in person. i thought i did enough by having the agent do a live walkthrough but didn't consider her shitty phone camera was hiding how awfully maintained the place was and of course it wouldn't should the neighborhood or the other parts of the building or the lead in the water or the constant dogs barking or smell of cigarettes and cannabis, etc. i can't blame anyone for this.car insurance, medical insurance are both way more expensive here -- sometimes double what i was paying before. public transit on the surface is comparable, but in practice is awful. for example, it would take me ~1.5 hours to get to my work location on pub transit and 25 minutes by car. i could have easily looked up this information in advance, but for some reason didn't, so that's on me.
other bad stuffs
the two clients stopped paying me almost immediately after arriving here. one was always 2-4 weeks late with payments (we established payment timelines before agreeing to work together), the other just stopped paying me completely. i threatened both of them with court and one paid up and the other called my bluff so i had to take them to court to get backpay (i won but it took ~6 months). drained all of the rest of my savings during this time, the move taking a large chunk of it initially. i couldn't find a job for a while, was driving for ride-share in the meantime which was barely paying enough to maintain.the only full-time job i could find was a ~50% pay cut form my previous line of work, but it seemed like the obvious choice to take it and keep looking for work. it's been a year of applying for new jobs and only 2 interviews and zero offers. the first 6 months of the current job were horrendous with an increasingly toxic work environment due to the site manager. toxic for everyone but i was the newest target for aggression.
i'm not vibing with the people here. everyone is friendly and i have made some light friends but the political alignment of the average person is at odds with my existence and, like, reality. i'm also struggling to find people with similar hobbies/interests. i know this is a problem with aging (in my mid 30s) in general but at least there was a shared reality where i moved from.
extremely minor and nit-picky but the food scene here is awful. food is expensive and very limited in options and just average at best.
i should have visited more and done more research. i have accepted these mistakes and unfortunate circumstances and have chosen to move back to where i was before with a new appreciation for it and my life there. i made this decision in february to move at the end of august.
unfortunately, more things have gone wrong since making that decision to move
including no longer feeling confident i could keep my job and work remotely from where i am moving to. i was also anticipating that i would get a raise around now (a year with the current company) and it doesn't look like that's happening either. this is a problem because i'm already making so little to begin with and have been slowly accumulating debt that i'm not able to save anything for the move. my credit is good enough that i could, say, get a loan or open another credit card for the move but that doesn't sound very smart, does it?i had several creative projects running concurrently that i was really excited about but for one reason or another they have all sort of stalled. not having at least one ongoing creative project really sucks as i put i attach a lot of my self-worth to my creative projects -- which is problematic and something i'm working on.
so, i'm postponing my move for another six months so that i can wrangle my finances and move more responsibly than how i came here. it's not the end of the world for many reasons (i have housing, food, and can at least pay my bills for example) but it really fucked with my mental health. i'm always fluctuating on how well i manage my depression and having things to look forward to and/or hope in general is paramount and right now i feel like i just took several steps back in a zoomed out view of several bigger steps back. and that's not considering how awful the state of the US is and the world at large. i'm exhausted.
i don't believe in luck or karma or anything like that so i'm just trying to get through this period and move forward.
but a positive note! i got a second wind with job searching and think i have a new career path i want to move toward and recently started biking (eventually want to sell my car and just bike commute as well as for health purposes) which is helping with the depression and exhaustion. also think that the toxic manager is getting let go in the very near future which may lead to me getting a raise after all.
My sister's a pretty all right person -- we're not super close, being very different personalities. But about once a year she'll grouse to me about not being sure about her finances for retirement. To me this is a math question, organizing what your expenses are, and comparing with your retirement income, and I've told her so, many times. Of course one cannot predict to the dollar what future expenses will be like -- one could have a sudden surge in medical expenses, for example.
At the end of every call, she says she's glad she talked with me and feels more confident. Until the next time she calls with the same exact concerns.
Calculating a year of expenses is not some arcane question, but I'm guessing she has never actually done it. It is frustrating to be a broken record...
If I was to take a wild guess, you are (or have been) employed with a finance company, worked in a finance position, or know your way around Excel. Something that has created a mindset that you are an expert in this area.
I do know my way around Excel, but no, I haven't ever worked in finance. I think I'm just more comfortable with numbers than she is, but she's actually the one with an MBA.
Hopefully this is funny to you instead of triggering: Classic SNL skit Don't Buy Stuff
That took me right back lol
Robertson/square drive fasteners. Especially those used in pocket hole construction. It is SO HARD to find pocket hole screws with decent drive options, for some reason they're all square drive. Torx ones only come in a limited range of sizes, have to be specially ordered and cost 2-3x as much but if you're using more than a handful in a job (and I'm using a few hundred) it's worth the expense because square drive is such a nightmare.
No, Canada, you're wrong about this one, sorry. Robertson is better than flat and it's better than Philips too but it's at best barely equal to Pozidrive and everything pales before the glory that is Torx.
As a Canadian I also believe star (torx) is better than a Robertson. But I mean, it's a hundred years older, and manufacturing had made huge progress in that time. By this point, that star isn't offered at least as often is sheer laziness on manufacturing part, imo
I unfortunately just moved back to my parent's place with my cat. My cat recognises the apartment. But now she wants to be anywhere but my room! I feel abandoned by my cat. She's usually very needy and hangs around me.
Why cat, why??
Maybe because your room already smells like you/her, but the rest of the house needs work, so she's doing double time rubbing her cheek and rump all over?
Hahaha. Maybe you were right! She's back to hanging out in my room.
Cute. Other explanation: ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ cat gonna cat
Or the other explanation is my room was full of boxes to unpack and my cat hates labour. Haha.
Not much of a vent, but I miss my dog. He just passed recently and I am grieving. His last year was kind of tough with health problems and I am trying to focus on all the good times we had. The negative bias of the human mind is quite annoying though and I wish I had more avenues to express my grief.
Im so sorry for your loss :( was he a big or little dog? What was his favourite sleeping position?
He was a small guy, about 17 pounds. He used to sleep snugged up to me on our bed, but in his later years slept on a bed on a bench at the foot of our bed. He was a good boy, thanks for asking!
Awww I'm sure he was the bestest boy. I don't know if you have other little fellas who need the room, but perhaps a little stuff dog on the bench? Moved out of this plane, but always remembered.
Alright, I have another. FaceID on iPhones is very good and fast. I only ever see a Lock Screen for a second before I dismiss it. No complaints.
If you are actively navigating on Apple Maps, it can take over the Lock Screen. This is useful so you don’t have to unlock to see the next turn.
However, these two features mix together in a way that is so terrible that I don’t think anyone at Apple actually uses Apple Maps directions with Face ID. If you have the maps Lock Screen replacement and need to unlock your phone, you swipe up to dismiss the Lock Screen, wait for it to start the faceid camera, which takes longer than it normally does for some reason, wait for it to recognize your face, which takes longer than normal, often it will fail, because for some reason it seems to fail more often in this context, finally put in your pin, and then it dumps you at the Home Screen instead of your last used app. What? It is actually worse than it would have been if it didn’t take over the Lock Screen.
Ironically, if your phone heats up too much, this is one of the features that it disables. So if your iPhone is too hot, you get a better experience in this situation.
I saw this thread a couple of days ago while in my depressed haze and I think it might be a good place for me to journal a bit or vent, idk. Feel free to comment on it if you want to make me feel better or share your own thoughts.
A couple of weeks ago I went through a devastating breakup/discard that has really made trip hard into my depression. We had a great relationship. I miss the talks we had when she would finish work and drive home. I miss the cuddling and the safety I felt while chatting late at night. I miss the feeling of wanting to be a better person when I was with her. It was only a couple of months, but I don't know why it's been affecting me so hard. It's not like I haven't had short relationships in the past. Even within the last year I've definitely had some breakups and ghosting after a couple of months. But this one feels so different.
It was the first time in a while that I actually tried. I think it was the first time that I actually wanted to give my heart out for the longest time, since I've had so many difficult relationships in the past that have really led me to retreat into my friends and running away to travel to grow more and learn more about myself. I remember after a couple of dates she looked me in the eye and told me that if I wanted to be with her I needed to put in effort on my dates. I could have ended it right there, but I decided then that I wanted to try. I actually planned something beautiful that I'm proud of. She told me a month later that she was super surprised that I proved her wrong. I knew I could change, that I could grow with her, and I was happy.
I planned a couple of things for her birthday, and I asked her to dress up. I was really excited for it and I really wanted it to go right. But the night before I lost my keys while walking my dog and got super stressed about trying to find them. The morning of I was still trying to find them after walking 10 miles the night before. I was going to run late so I had to run out of my house. I forgot to dress up. She was embarrassed, I was distracted. Definitely my fault. The week after we had a wedding to go to, and the day after we accidentally slept in and she was upset at me for not worrying enough about the time, in my sleepy haze I must have snoozed or shut off the alarm. Things got heated and I felt pressure, so I put the pressure back onto her and she ended things. I shouldn't have given her an ultimatum. We talked so many times the weeks after, and I kept chasing. I don't know. I'm so numb right now to be honest.
We had our final argument a week ago. She said that she felt that I didn't respect her decision. I probably didn't, because I said I was willing to grow and change and make less mistakes. She says that we don't have the same standards. Maybe we don't. I've always had trouble with people's standards. I think it's the only way I can grow.
I'm just really sad now. I've been so numb. My friends have been telling me that she isn't worth it and that I am better off, that I deserve even better. But why is it that every time I pick up the apps again I end up seeing people that aren't even worth swiping on? Why is it that I feel like I could have been better, I should have? Why am I torturing myself with thoughts of I'm just not good enough? Why do I feel like I never want to open up my heart again? I don't know. I'm just sad.
You've said "I can be better" and "I want to be better" over and over again in your comment. I think it is good to be able to identify areas where you need personal development. But I would also recommend attempting to detach this from your past relationships or even from thoughts of future relationships.
It's a bit cliche to say, but you should spend some time on yourself. Identify what matters to you, what would help push you towards being the person you want to be, and work on that.
I also strongly recommend therapy for everyone as they go through life events, especially if those come with overwhelming emotions. That could possibly help you "be better" while also giving you support and accountability.
The "I can be better" sentiment does come from a place of trauma (Asian American). But also from other trauma from long on-off hot-cold relationships that I've been trapped in personally. It feels like it's always there.
I spent a lot of time on myself. Sometimes maybe a bit too much. I think I've been leaning a lot on the fact that you don't have to be perfect to be in a relationship, ya know? Like if I waited for myself to be perfect I'd never start one. (If you can't tell my favorite movie is Good Will Hunting).
I do have a therapist thankfully, it's still hard though unfortunately because I know I have to do the work and feel my feelings.
phoenixrises, it's not your fault.
That was a major breakup, and it's still very fresh. It's going to hurt a lot right now for a while longer. And maybe this will be the last time you love again. Or maybe not, but that's too distant to think about right now. You got to see yourself in love, and you're learning lots still. It does sound sad, and I can tell you tried real hard.
I did try. I feel like that's why it hurt so bad. Even in the end I've still been willing to try, and it wasn't enough. It makes me feel like I'm not enough.
It's one of life's more heartbreaking mysteries, that we can try our utmost, sometimes both people trying their utmost, and still not make it work. I'm sorry your trying still wasn't enough for her. I hope some day eventually it will feel less like you're not enough for her, and maybe a bit more that she wasn't yet enough for herself.
sometimes it makes me feel if i'll ever be enough, ya know? It took so long for me to even find one person that I wanted to be enough for, and I wasn't.
You are heard :< its a sucky feeling. One of the worst tbh
annoying ex girlfriend harassed me. another annoying ex girlfriend ignored me. 2nd ex girlfriend stalked me online and harassed me, with impersonation of other people. ex-friend (normal friend) was totally insane, had psychotic episodes and wanted to conquer the world, while being depressed. he also lied to investors with his company, and now is doing some crappy start-up things to conquer the world with his "synthethic intelligence" ai models. calls himself "Quasar" like the brightest object in the world.
been stalked on social media, harassed online, from gentle trolling, to dishonest lies, including weird things like... i don't even remember the name of that anymore, it's a really crazy thing. OH, got it, gaslighting right. even gaslighting with paranoia. experienced annoying MitM cybersecurity attacks and weird bs that normal people never experience in their lives.
I'm angry and sad that "civilised" European countries are not helping Ukraine enough to drive aggressor - Russia - out of the Ukrainian territory. So far it just seems like "here you have it, some weapons for testing so that our military equipment will gain some recognition and we will get more clients and €€/$$ for our military industry". It's always about money.
And I'm not even mentioning Palestine and Israel...
I bought a house not so long ago. New neighbours moved in recently on the side wind usually blows from, and I've realized one of them smokes. They otherwise seem lovely and quiet.
I have a lot of emotions to work through: i despise cigarettes and the smell of cigarette smoke, I despise having to close my windows from fresh air everytime they go out to smoke, i despise feeling like i need to "be on the lookout" for smoke smell now. They're on the side my furnace intake is on, and I'm concerned about smoke cycling through. I feel pissed I spent and borrowed SO much money, to end up next to a smoker. But, i want to make them feel welcome, to their new home and don't want a bad neighbour relationship. Cigarettes can f right off. I don't mind if someone wants to reply, though I'm late to the party anyway.
Can you politely inform them of the problem and ask if they can smoke on the other side of their yard? Back when I smoked cigarettes if a neighbor let me know that my smoke was blowing into their open windows and asked me to move where I smoked so that didn't happen I would have obliged.
Yes, definitely if it actually becomes a nuisance, I'll come up up with a tactful way to bring it up. It's been quite a short period, and they dont yet have established routines so perhaps the smoker may gravitate elsewhere. I also have to work through my own emotions, as I can get quite upset over even faint scents of it, and I'm not sure that's fair on my part. But, a vent is a vent! :)
I can bide my time, at least for now, as the current heatwave im in means we've had AC on and windows closed.
LOL, yeah fair enough. :P
I'm so sick of my workmate and buddy leaning into his recent ADHD diagnosis as an excuse for everything and not only that, feeling the need to impute neurodiversity onto every shitty, hurtful, or annoying student behaviour.
I'm sure there's a closer saying to what I mean, but I'm reminded of "To a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail"
This just happened: I just had a filling fall out. Again. Very back molar, on the outside of the tooth, so one of those spots that's inconvenient to reach with a toothbrush.
Honestly I kinda expected this one might fall out, since I could feel its edges with my tongue and that happened with the other filling that fell out. Still, very annoying. This will be my fourth time at the dentist in just a little over a month. First time was because another filling fell out of the back molar on the opposite side of my mouth. Then I went for an overdue cleaning, and then to get two more cavities filled.
At least this time it didn't happen on a weekend, so with luck I'll get it filled in tomorrow or Friday. Hopefully all my other fillings are secure...
What causes fillings to fall out? Does dentistry skill have anything to do with it? Site prep step missed? Incompatible erh, glue?
I'd say this one is ultimately due to my own bad dental habits and the placement. These fillings are both at the very back of my mouth, so they're in an inconvenient place to reach. They're also both the top molars and I start on the bottom row first, so there's less toothpaste on the brush by the time I reached them. And over the years I've had some sort of minor long-lasting infection/chafing at the corners of my mouth which sometimes made brushing those very back teeth painful due to the friction of the toothbrush, so I wasn't keeping them clean.
And to top it off, my dental habits are not the best. Turns out I just really hated the taste of the toothpaste I used for the majority of my life, but since I hate mint my options for non-mint toothpastes were limited. So I didn't just dislike brushing my teeth, I actively hated it and tried to do only the absolute minimum for my entire childhood. By the time my dentist gave me a different kid's toothpaste where I did like the flavor, I was an adult and had only recently gotten in the habit of brushing once a day. I actually now have a prescription toothpaste with extra fluoride... Which I'm currently out of.
Add in the fact we just moved a couple months ago and still haven't found my electric toothbrush or gotten new floss... Yeah, sadly I think these two fillings were doomed. This is the end result of years of minor neglect on top of a sweet tooth.
If you like Pokemon, I've had some success with their tooth brushing app because cute
It's challenging, like you said, many different small challenges. :/ I learned too late as an adult that I brush too hard and should prioritize flossing instead
I got 42 votes for a post about parenting at the end of June, which felt flattering considering nothing Ive ever posted here has been upvoted that much.
Then a couple days later I got a week long ban for posting my views about trans kids, views that I felt I expressed carefully and respectfully. After the ban, I wrote deimos asking why the ban and havent had a reply.
I realize this is not a democracy but I thought I was being polite and my views come from a world of experience with kids as a father, grandfather, school principal and the founder of a street outreach to kids thats been running for 30 years. Im not just pulling stuff out of my butt so Im not sure what the problem is.
And Im kinda choked to be frank. Whats the deal, @deimos?
My view on it is that the government has no place in banning it, thats just cruel.
Support new research, give people options, and hope they can choose a path that works for them.
There are so many states of existing that are between “no treatment” and “aggressive treatment starting before puberty” that people don’t explore, and I think thats a tragedy.
I don't believe this conversation will be productive here for a variety of reasons, particularly given the intent of the thread and personally I'm hoping it doesn't happen. But specifically I'm just recommending it not be a "here" thing
Yeah, likewise... Let's not get another thread locked.