I’m going to start this with allegory and bring it back around to practical application.

My neighbor IRL legitimately has greener grass than I do. She also has 4 dogs who poop and fertilize the lawn everyday. She can’t walk into her yard without shoes on or without watching where she steps. She has a toddler who isn’t allowed to play in her backyard because of the dog poop. I may see her greener grass and want greener grass, it’s fine to want greener grass. But once I stop and look at why she has greener grass and what not only her, but her family has to sacrifice to get that greener grass, I realize it’s not worth it to me. I like being able to grill outside, I like being able to walk barefoot, I like not worrying about what’s in my lawn. Would I like it to be greener? Sure, but not at the cost of losing the very thing that I want.

The way things are perceived doesn’t reveal what it actually took to get those results. Especially in the social media age where everything is a cherry picked version of reality. You are never getting the full story in today’s social media environment, and with the prevalence of filters and AI what tiny story you are getting might straight up be a lie.

The best advice I can give is to look at the greener field, and actually talk to people who have a greener field. Don’t just follow them on social media or watch videos about it, talk to them. It’s much harder to lie face to face than it is on a video. If you can, try it for a week, then ask yourself, would I still want to do this when life happens and things aren’t perfect. Would I want to do this for the next 5, 10, 20 years? Once you have an idea of what sacrifices it will take to get the greener field, then and only then can you ask yourself is it worth it? It may be, in which case, attack it with gusto. It may not, in which case, fantasizing is fun, but that’s all it is, a fantasy.

Good luck.

I just recently had this happen and have started looking for new jobs as a result. Our company fired someone and a VP sent an all staff email and was publicly telling everyone that the now fired employee couldn’t be trusted etc. Rather than responding to the email so everyone could see, I sent a private text that information like that didn’t need to go to everyone and if someone needs to know that the individual was fired, it should be explained that “They were no longer able to uphold company standards.” And leave it at that, because anything more opens you up to a libel lawsuit. The VP’s apparently didn’t like that I was trying to protect the company, and hold to HR’s standards. So now I’m looking and realized I should have started looking 4 years ago because I can get a 40-50% raise by jumping ship.

My time at this company is coming to an end.

Politicians, they used to be expensive. Now it’s almost downright affordable.

Noai.duckduckgo.com

I work at a smaller company, everyone has to carry their weight, and the owner pays about double the industry average. He always says I would rather have shit equipment and good techs, than good equipment and shit techs. Obviously we want both, but if push comes to shove, you pay for the right people, because that’s harder to replace than a machine.

Comma 3x it’s a module that adds sensors and compute to turn your car into a level 2 self driving vehicle.

Glinet travel router. I always have both wifi and hardline with me wherever I go, whether or not I have either.

Sabrent thunderbolt dock. It has NVME drives inside of it so I can have my laptop be mobile then come home and have all my games ready to go.

Dockcase dongle. Most dongles suck, this does 100 watt pass through charging, gigabit, 4k 120hz and 20gb transfers on the ports.

Obviously Luna is up there, but my personal favorite is Pluto’s moon Charon. It’s so large it turned Pluto into a binary dwarf planetary system, the only binary system in our solar system. It also shares an atmosphere with Pluto.

Technically I have multiple TV’s only because I wanted multiple large high resolution screens for my computer. I don’t actually use them as TV’s.

Couldn’t find my drink when I was at work, found it…

Also ignore the spring pollen in the south it gets bad.

I actually use ai on a daily basis. Not LLM’s mind you, those tend to be garbage. But where ai actually shines is automating mundane tasks. I trained it on how I like to color grade my photos and videos, and now instead of spending hours, sometimes days, for bigger projects color grading, now it’s 30 minutes to an hour.

So yes the majority of the ai use cases will fizzle out, but it will stick around in areas where it automates workflows.

Relevant XKCD

You are correct that Canon and Brother tend to be the best straight forward printers. Brother is better for laser printing and Canon is better for ink jet printing. If you go ink jet go with individual cartridges instead of the combined cartridges it’s way less fuss.

If you can do laser the basic Brothers just work. We had one in our woodshop for almost a decade. Sawdust spray paint etc. and it just did not care. It didn’t end up dying even, we just swapped it for a color version, and we’re on year 4 with that one.

The only people who actually have a claim to the argument of “abortion is murder” are biologists.

The moto I live my life by is “The day you stop learning is the day you become obsolete.”

The one I wish more people took to heart is, “After everything has been said, and everything has been heard, these three remain: faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love.”

Just love each other, that’s all I’m asking for.

I scheduled vaccine appointments with my Dr. My parents were anti-vax and once I was old enough I went and did it myself.

14, rural communities have different rules I guess. My grandpa at 6 put me behind the wheel of his F350 while pulling a 20’ trailer so he could stand in the trailer and buck hay for all the livestock.

So by the time I got my license I already knew how to control a car and just had to learn the rules of the road.

It genuinely depends on what industry you are in. Every single job I’ve had has either been calling the companies in the area and letting them know I’m moving and want to have employment lined up before I move, or by calling a company and letting them know a shift in management has occurred and I’m looking to transition to a different company. The most I’ve had to do was email a resume, and if there’s an interview it’s a lunch interview that’s super casual.

Basically any trades based industry still operates that way, because most trades are still local businesses. When you get into the national or international businesses they streamline the humanity out of it.

I had faked my way into learning how to do projection mapping for an arena tour, and was on my first concert tour.

I work in events, last act was on the stage, so I started breaking down the equipment at the control booth that the last act wasn’t using. Pretty standard affair.

Apparently because I could be seen by the audience it was disrespectful to the act on stage and I was fired. I have continued to break down equipment that isn’t being used in every job since, and no one has batted an eye. He was a dick employer so I guess that makes sense.

I work in an industry where reputation is everything so as much notice as possible is recommended, and it goes both ways. I’ve had companies give employees notice on when they would be let go, and this is in the USA. But in this industry it is known that contracts will be terminated both directions, and you will be working alongside the same people who terminated the contracts in the near future. So it is in everybody’s best interest to be above board and cordial about the whole thing, so you can negate hard feelings.