• 14 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • The toxicity is in the dose. If you’re actually allergic to your cat, it could be a seasonal change in his grooming regimen resulting in more saliva on his fur, which means more allergen proteins in the dander.

    Another possibility: seasonal change has resulted in something blooming to which you’re mildly allergic. The combination of things might have tipped you over the edge of allergic response.

    There are a ton of factors that could be in play, and only an allergist can tell you for sure what’s going on.










    • Don’t be ugly, especially not inside, but it helps to look like you at least care about your body and appearance. Added bonus: by going to the gym/hiking/bicycling/being active, you’ll get out more and meet more people. The stronger your network, the more likely you will meet a person who is a good match. Funny things happen when you get deep into active hobbies: you meet more people with those same interests.
    • Choose partners because of how well they match with who you are right now. Stated another way: don’t choose potential mates on deterministic physical traits. Sure, everyone wants the super-hot partner. Choose partners because traits over which they have control appeal to you.
    • Even if you meet a great person, that person will most likely change. Emotional maturity here is supporting and understanding your partner’s growth. If you cannot accept how the person has changed, end gracefully and amicably. Move on.
    • “Keys to her heart:” Communication. Ask, listen. Corollary to that, being explicit about your needs and wants in a relationship. Out of 8 billion people, your romantic paradigm cannot possibly be unique. It’s up to you to develop the patience, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills to fulfill those needs by nurturing healthy relationships.
    • Anxiety and agoraphobia: get help. Empathy by way of anecdote, I have crushing depression, paralyzing anxiety, and nearly intractable ADHD. I spent almost three years in intensive therapy, with two separate therapists, seeing them both every week. TL;DR: want results? Put in the self-work.
    • “Feels like my time of finding someone has gone past its chances:” The time is past only if you give up or you’re dead. Here’s a speedrun of how “too-late” it is: I imploded my first two marriages. The second marriage didn’t even last a year, although we were together for 20 months prior to getting hitched. After a few years of working on myself and examining the root causes of my failures, I met my dream partner at 47 years old. We just had our 8-year anniversary.
    • “Hopefully I can get out of this deep hole I’m in as I’m in a terrible rut right now:” When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Change whatever it is you need to change. Otherwise if you keep doing what you’ve done, you’re going to keep getting what you got.



  • My general contractor buddy once explained to me the state of plumbing: “We used to make plumbing with lead and cast iron pipes, but that old tech would only last 50 to 100 years before it needed major maintenance. Then we modernized with copper pipes, which gave us about 20 years of working life. We really stepped into the modern age with PVC pipes, which generally give us a solid eight years of working life.”

    That said, I redid my house and sailboat with PEX, and it’s been solid AF. And anything that can survive being on a blue water sailboat is probably going to last a century in a house.



  • Technical writing and/or communications. I got my minor in TechComm, and it has been my sharp end into every job. “You can communicate effectively across a wide range of media for a wide range of use cases?! Hired!”

    Public presentation, meetings, project management, interpersonal dynamics, documentation, elucidating articles, proposals, DevRel, requirements gathering, specifications, business analyses, enrichment of peers’ skills… All dependent on tech writing and tech comm skills.

    TW also makes a decent fallback if (when) you burn out. Hypothetically, let’s say you burn out at the 15 year mark. You’ll have solid, senior- or principal-level skills and experience in your field which allows you to effectively liaise with professionals in your field. You could switch temporarily to a TW role, move into project or product management, or take over the docs backlog. And there is always a docs backlog.

    Since you brought up IT: networks and hardware are always going to require hands-on personnel. It’s a solid career choice; just be ready for the continuous learning curve (like most things computing).



  • Growing old is compulsory; growing up is optional. My boomer parent besties (Edit to clarify: the best friends of my lame-ass boomer parents) taught me that. They were awesome, hard-partying, and so full of life. They would take me for long weekends and vacations with them, doing fun shit including breaking his RC cars doing ill-advised shit. He was an EE for Phillips NA and she was an EE for IBM. We stayed in close touch until they died.

    If my own parents are what adulthood looks like, nah, I’m good, thanks.




  • I agree that there was unfavorable media coverage of the Vietnam Conflict. There was also a fire hose of positive media coverage, as well as a very intensive campaign to conceal how badly things were going, along with a lot of disinformation around why the US was there in the first place. Hell, I recall reading newly disclosed details about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident not too long ago.

    Anecdotally, my family were boat people fleeing the Communist regime. To this day, to a one, they are all hard-line Conservative, even when subjected to profiling under this administration. I like to think I’m somewhat informed and have certainly consumed a lot of media regarding the US and Vietnam. Somehow, I only first heard of the My Lai Massacre around 2005. Again, merely anecdote, but media control by the governments is a hell of a drug.

    My original points stand: we get to Monday morning quarterback a lot of shit; better an imperfect ally than more enemies; and however long it takes for someone to come around, better that they come around than not.