Monday Morning Thread
A little tradition I picked up in the German reddit community: The "Montagmorgen Pfosten".
It's a thread someone (just whoever notices that there isn't one yet) posts around 6 to 8 am on Mondays where users talk about and discuss their weekends, what they are going to do in this week, what they had for breakfast etc. (I've coordinated it with CDT instead of CEST, given that most of the user base here is american or Canadian as opposed to r/de on reddit, where nearly everyone is in Germany, Austria or Switzerland; It is 1 pm in Germany right now). I've always liked participating in that thread as an unstressed way to start the week, and thought that we maybe could implement something similar here on ~talk.
I, for one, spent the weekend visiting my parents, and am now looking forward to spending a week working from within the hardly air conditioned glass cube my boss calls "Office" while being slowly roasted by the ungodly heat outside. Also, right about now, I wish Past-Me had taken the time to have some breakfast. Stupid Past-Me.
How are you?
Applying for a bunch of jobs again this week. Trying to stay positive about this round. On the bright side I've got an okay thing going right now at University, but I'm starting to feel over-ripe.
The first time job seeking after uni, it took me over three hundred applications, and a couple dozen interviews before I landed it. The next time I got one on the first try. It's never predictable, and a lot of the time isn't really about you, but the market. Try not to take it too personally.
I think not taking it personally will come with time. I know they're not trying to hurt me when they reject my application, but I was never good at handling rejection.
It's certainly one of the harder things in life to learn.
Good luck, don’t give up and try to stay calm. Sometimes these things can take some time.
Don't be too afraid of applying for jobs where you don't have the advertised experience (can't really expect you to if you've (just?) graduated from uni). They often expect a lot on paper, but if you perform well in an interview/present yourself well, you'll look good either way.
Finishing graduate school right now and looking for graduate level work. I was told getting more education would open more doors, maybe I'm just not seeing that yet. I've gotten a couple of rejections for being over-qualified for positions I think I'm only barely over-qualified for -- which is frustrating.
It's hard psychologically applying for positions that don't perfectly overlap with my experience, but I'm definitely coming around to the idea that I will never be, nor does there exist, the 'perfect' candidate for any given job.
Yeah in my experience almost everything has a big degree of "well this is how we do it here" so as long as you're not someone who can't code applying to a coding position you'll learn all the "this is how to do the job" parts once you get there.
Seen a lot of friends psych themselves out of even applying because they feel under-qualified. I say let the business be the one to tell you that.
That is a really good point. I will remember that as I send out the next salvo of applications.
Best of luck!
I have a pretty decent interview guide if you are interested in it! When I was in grad school for an HR related field, it was put together by everyone in my cohort and it has never failed me once.
I would love you forever if you could give that to me. <3
No problem.
It's unfortunately not saved in any cloud storage right now so I will send you a link later today
Thank you!
Hello,
Sorry this took longer than I anticipated to remember!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11VznpNw9NjLcH1K44tU8K_LVd-5TXK9w/view?usp=sharing
Good luck!
I've been laid off since January and have been looking for gainful work in my field ever since. It's been a slog to say the least, ripe with anxiety and depression.
I wish you the absolute best in terms of health and fortune, stranger, and maybe a little bit for myself.
I'll be thinking of you too. Hope and solidarity, stranger.
Spent the weekend at a hackathon, and didn't sleep. So, spent today sleeping in and vegetating on the internet - you know, mindlessly following trails of youtube videos. Avoided some work despite the deadlines creeping in.
About to go to sleep and hopefully be productive tomorrow, wish me luck!
Build anything fun?
Get a decent night sleep, wake up strong, and hit your deadlines. Afterall, you're the @name. With a name like that, you can do this.
Thanks for that, really made me smile.
And sorta, it was a blockchain hackathon, so just involved making an application that interacted with a blockchain, with the aim of `empowering the public to do environmental good'. We ended up making a neopets-like site, where you adopt animals (with tokens), who require feeding and maintenance that are in turn powered by microtransactions. So, essentially sponsor a child, but for animals and on the blockchain - so that the environmental organisations can divert funds to the ones that are most popular. We didn't end up winning (nor being a finalist), but we were pretty happy with the end result!
What did you do at the hackathon, if I may ask? I'm going to one in about a month, and would like to
stealborrowbrainstorm some ideas.What's the topic of your hackathon & what sort of hacking do you do?
This year, the core topics are IoT and Augmented Reality. However, almost every kind of project that can be done in 48 hours is allowed (so long as it's something presentable and not illegal).
I myself mostly do backend software and databases with, to a lesser degree, frontend/webdesign and some hardware related stuff, small robots powered by adruinos or raspis, or custom physical input devices (also known as "Button™") for whatever system we have running in the background. We'll be working in task oriented teams though, so there will always be someone with the skills when needed.
Hey, mentioned it here, but if you're interested in the code, its available on Bitbucket.
My tips? Do your research on the judges, it will most likely be the case that they're not too technically strong and won't really understand the work required to implement the backend. Hackathons are more of a way to try and develop a really strong pitch, rather than having a concrete product. I'd recommend just making a faux-demo (with some implementation, mind you), and make it look really kick-ass!
p.s.: from what i see your skills are, it looks like you'll do pretty darn well at it
Thanks, I'll put it right on the list.
I have gotten back into Fallout 4 and have been playing a lot. I never beat the game when it first came out and during one of the steam sales I got all the DLC for cheap. The mods really make the game so much better. Anyway this week I plan on buying a new bike helmet.
How's Far Harbor? I've been wanting to get back into Fallout.
I've only done a few missions in far harbor. But there is some mystery to all the story telling, which I like.
What mods are you using? I got too bored with the main game and quit because the stories all just seemed to bland compared to previous titles in the series.
ha! Let me load up NMM real fast.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6091
You'll need to tweak a bunch of it. You'll need to RTFM. and get F4SE http://f4se.silverlock.org/
This is just my mods I've liked. There are thousands of graphic mods and such but I havent bothered with any of those yet.
Thanks for the list man. I've definitely gotta bummed before trying to get tons of mods to work together but maybe I can just pick through and remove a few that don't look like they are for me.
Yeah just make sure to read the descriptions because some need to have lines added to some of the cfg files. Otherwise use NMM and it's all good
Gotcha. Yeah NMM was good for most games, just had issues with trying to bring Fallout 3 into this century, but it was probably something I was doing wrong.
Also, you NEED to launch the game from F4SE if you have mods that require it. Also have steam already loaded. If you don't, you'll learn to hate the creative community updates that happen every few months. When an update happens it is 99% of the time a creative community update. I think I'm getting that name right. When F4SE gets updated to the new version that is when you should launch the normal game through steam and get the update. Oh yeah, also set the game to only update when launched. F4SE seems to bypass that.
Is there anything like a "Requiem" for Skyrim, or "Ghost Mode" for Witcher 3, that's come out for Fallout 4 yet? A major overhaul that de-gimps, bugfixes, balances, improves the challenge of, and generally completes the game? Our to put it another way, a mod that will de-console and oldschool-RPGifiy things.
I want to go back to Fallout 4 again, but I can't find much on the mod side beyond UI/Graphics enhancements... I want gameplay balances, economy fixes, that sort of thing. There's usually a major overhaul for bethesda games that does this, and I was sad I couldn't find one for Fo4.
Hm. I think survival mode, which bethesda implemented might be what you are looking for. Stuff like you can't fast travel, you cant use the console, you can only save when you sleep, you need to eat, etc.
Look into that, it's fairly new I think
edit: oh survival is only difficulty, I don't this it effects the economy. I'm really not sure on very many other mods as I had just come back to playing after years
Good day, good morning! It's Monday evening here. I'll decompress myself and meditate a bit.
During the weekend I thought at length about the topic humility. The etymology betrays the connection to the land, the earth. It's so natural we say "cultivating humility." It's like that, low, close to the soil where the nurturing is, so close you can smell its aroma. And you care, like caring for a seedling.
Monday morning? I'm about ready to go to bed on Monday night. Please don't tell me I have to do Monday again...
I had to do some surprise gardening on the weekend, as we're having a rental inspection this week.
And I went out for dinner one night to a sushi train restaurant. I love sushi train! It's so much fun just grabbing random plates off the train and not knowing what you're getting.
I'm sorry, we reviewed your performance during the last 20 hours, and it would seem that they are not satisfactory. We, the board of time progression, fear that you will have to repeat the last day. Hopefully that will lead to a more satisfactory performance in your next review, which has been scheduled to be in 24 hours from now.
I smell a Black Mirror episode coming...
There's a sushi train restaurant that opened in my town about six months ago. I've managed to go twice, and it's awesome. Though, I do find the customers all go crazy for the sashimi, and the chef can't keep up.
Rental inspections are always tense, even if you know everything is immaculate. Good luck to you.
(Also Monday night here... Almost Tuesday in fact. I will join you in resisting repeating the day!)
Based on some recommendations I got on Tildes last week, I started reading the Witches track of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Finished book 1 in less than a day, very excited to proceed. He's the Douglass Adams of fantasy, I haven't been this giddy about books since I read Deltora Quest as a kid.
I am a pretty avid reader, I would love to have the ability to rediscover Terry Pratchett again. He has a very special place in my mind.
I hope you enjoy the track, it's really great.
Thanks! He has (had) an incredible mind. The wordplay in the first book is beyond what I could come up with in a lifetime.
A Hat Full of Sky is probably one of my favourite books. It's sort of a spin off of the main Witches track, focusing on Tiffany Aching, and is aimed at a slightly younger crowd than the normal Discworld books, but results in some great writing.
I'm sure that I'll read it - once I'm through with witches, I'm hoping to move to related tracks, haven't really decided yet. A Hat Full of Sky must be one of the YA novels?
For me the highlight on Saturday was the BBQ for the volunteers (who work at the wildlife site for which I am a ranger). Good weather, so we weren't all huddled out of the rain as last year, and not too much left over this time - just some cocktail sausages and lemon meringue pie which I will make good use of for the next couple of days.
This morning, however, it turns out that my colleague has managed to bail his phone and walkie-talkie in to one of the first of the seasons hay bails. He was repairing the bailer, and then started it up again before realising that the gadgets were no longer in his pocket...
Also, the Coastguard and EOD (bomb squad) were evidently alerted to a (probably WWII vintage) UXB in a remote area somewhere around here by someone on Facebook last night (because that's obviously the best way...) but the GPS coordinates were evidently wrong, so they are wandering around guessing now.
Haha! When I worked a farm in WA a guy bailed his iPhone on accident. We found the bail using Find my IPhone and luckily it was on the outside of the stack. Got it down and you could hear the phone inside. It was in a gorilla case but the case was ruined but it had saved the phone. We sent pics to the company and they sent him a new case.
Did he do anything to get them back? Or have the devices been sacrificed to the bail gods?
He's had a good rummage, and tried calling both the phone and walkie-talkie, but the gods are jealous for their tributes, and it's not looking promising so far.
I think that this will be the second walkie-talkie that they have received. There is still one somewhere at the bottom of the year-before-last's waste hay stack, that we are slowly burning through. I doubt that it'll be usable if and when we do ever find that one again.
I spent the weekend fretting because reasons. (Illness and a particularly stressful government branch).
However, this week looks stressful, difficult, and exciting. I'm officially diving in to become a Fortran developer, focused on the old 77 standard.
My first language was BASIC, then C, Python, etc.
Fortran is different. It feels designed for writing programs on graph paper, for transcribing to punch cards. And it's approach to memory is... Interesting.
Are you going to deal with lots of legacy source code? If so, that will be daunting, more so than the F77 language itself.
I hope you'll be getting better, and beat the stressful and difficult thing and find time to relax :)
Yep! Or at least, that's the hope (Should I say fear?).
I've already dealt with a ton of legacy COBOL code, but I was a little too effective, and now my old clients has managed to transfer most of the COBOL into modern C++.
So now I'm headed towards being able to handle F77, so I can help maintain some very old systems. Banks (where I got to flex the COBOL muscles), government systems, utilities. Those sorts of areas.
I hope. I have taken a fair leave of absence from contracting. I've had a daughter, tore a hole in my heart (not related), so there's a bit of a gap in my resume, which can actually be a pretty big thing for some of those sorts of clients.
Relax? What's that? :D
Thanks for the thoughts, but I'm afraid stress is going to be my life for the foreseeable future. My only escapes at the moment are Stardew Valley, and my pet electronics projects. (Next up, an automated watering system!)
You poor, poor bastard. My husband learned Fortran 77 as "the language" for his field (nuclear engineering) and it's ...special. Of course, I'm a dirty rotten R programmer, so it's not like I can shittalk other languages too much.
I've spent years with COBOL and nostd C89. This is just another foray into the languages everyone hates, but rely on.
And frankly... I've long since given up judging languages. Use the tool that works. I taught my wife R so that she could step her game up with her stats classes (psychology student, where SPSS was the standard). It's got some very good parts to it. (And warts... But what hasn't?)
A lot of codebases in the supercomputing world are written in Fortran 77. Most of the high performance BLAS/LAPACK libraries for example. Nowadays a lot of scientific code uses high-level libraries through scipy/numpy and others, but a lot of the highly optimized underlying code is written in fortran.
One of the reasons being that fortran compilers do extremely aggressive optimization and vectorization. It is also a lot easier for a compiler to optimize fortran code than C, since fortran has extremely strict rules for pointer aliasing.
All in all, it might be worth learning, and you might be able to look for jobs at the supercomputing hardware and software companies if you learn it well.
I went to GenCon on Saturday and got lots of stuff for Infinity, plus this weird little cat game that's just as wonderfully ridiculous as it looks. On Sunday I played WoW and painted a bit.
This week is sure to stress me out since I'm working on a project with my freaks-out-over-everything coworker. Send help please...
Where to? And what kind of help? The Mister Meeseeks kind, or the I-Dont-Like-President-Maduro kind?
I have a busy week ahead (well next few weeks) thanks to various cases at work culminating at once, but all I can think about is my friends visiting this weekend. One of them I haven't seen in almost a year, and most of the group (6 total) are meeting my 6-month-old son for the first time.
In other news, I ordered an ergonomic desk for my new office at home that is scheduled to get here Wednesday. Spent weeks researching and laboring over the decision. I was going to invest in a new screen or two to go with it, then our IT dept said I could use a spare monitor and dock they had. Glad to avoid spending the extra money on something I didn't really need.
Less than three days now till my first son is born, so I'm kinda tidying up stuff at the office so my backup can handle it while I'm out.
I'm excited and a little terrified as the day is coming up quick.
I wish the best of luck to you and your future son.
I think that's how it's supposed to go. Don't worry. If you're the kind to work until three days before the expected birthday, and to tidy up the office for the backup, you'll do fine as a parent. It shows dedication, and that's the most important part in raising a child. (That and having a flexible sleep cycle)
Good morning! It’s 6:30 and I’m putting off going for my morning run by researching the perfect running route instead. It’s a time honored tradition of mine. This weeks big plans are finish a couple drawings I’ve been working on and finish a pair of shoes I’m making. We will see how that goes.
Thanks for the neat post, sam4ritan! I really enjoy the notion of taking the time out of a Monday morning to reflect and talk to others about your weekend adventures. Here's to hoping we make it our own tradition!
I enjoyed a quiet and relaxing weekend with my fiancee, filled with video games and television. We watched the original Ghost in the Shell film too (way overdue), and I'm pretty sure it's one of my new favorite movies. Definitely in my top ten.
I have, to my personal shame, to admit to never having watched the original. Only the Scarlett Johansson one of ... questionable quality. On a scale from "The Room" to "Citizen Kane", where would you rank those two movies?
Watch it! It's just an hour and twenty minutes, and holy shit, it is so good. I haven't watched the life action version, or those movies, but I would imagine it's closer to the level of Citizen Kane than that of The Room.
Oh hi, Major!
Ok, I know what I'll do next weekend.
It’s morning? B-but, the sky’s pitch black here!
This morning, I went to school, I managed to do 30+ crunches and 10 legitimate push-ups (I skipped arm day) during Physical Ed.
Then I sat through Programming Theory lessons, memorising how to write programs verbatim.
And then I go back home and immediately went to sleep because I pulled an all-nighter on Sunday.
In that case get a good nights sleep.
And I'm sorry the time of day doesn't align globally, the dev team is currently looking into how to fix it. Expect a downtime of the production instance for the Reality™-System for about 8 hours. We will synchronize it with you falling asleep. Upon waking up, daylight functionality should work as intended.
I expect it to be! I paid an arm and a leg to get my whole body into that glass tube whilst getting some kinda human sized RCA jacks stuck into my brain, spine and rectum!
They didn’t even suspend my animation while they were going all Julius Caesar on me!
Ok, it's absolutely time for you to sleep. Good night! :-)
My weekend is Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday and I work ten hour days the other four days. So I just finished 40+ hours of cooking at a brewery and now I get to relax.
I had leftover cold pizza and coffee for breakfast (high effort i know) and I plan on going camping with my son this weekend.