Peace of mind , and the resources to act on whatever comes to mind when I can hear myself think

Yup, there’s no kinkshaming here

“Task failed successfully” was actually uttered numerous times earlier this week at work; we were testing this robotics and automation system and trying to detect various failure modes, and this was declared every time we managed to produce a new fault. This was so that we could write procedures on what the operators should do under various circumstances.

Stupidity has a tendency of outlasting the solvency of those betting against it.

Yes. It was glorious.

On the flipside, there was a lot of broken CGI (as in, “common gateway interface”)

I haven’t got a fucking clue. I always hated normal jobs, but I do enjoy having both food and shelter (how decadent of me, I know), so I did what I could to scrape by. And what I “could” usually translated to “could find”.

Then my proper career started in 2008, and it was an offshore rotation. Give weeks offshore in various corners of the world, followed by five weeks at home. It paid well, and I got to see the world. I worked my ass off for five weeks straight, 12 hour shifts every day, and when I was home I was free ro do whatever.

Then came 2011: The company wasn’t doing too well, and I had contracted a family. I wanted to spend more time at home, and while I wasn’t completely prepared to change careers just yet, I was mentally toying with the idea.

In spring 2012 I decided it was time to find a “normal” job, so I could spend more time with my family. M through F, 0800-1600, mostly at a technical workshop, sometimes at clients’ places, and once in a blue moon at an office.

It. Was. Miserable. But having a normal job was what I was supposed to do, right? Well, the money wasn’t bad per se, but it was nowhere near what I used to earn. Plus, when I got home from work I was so exhausted I rarely had energy left over. The family life I was aiming for was severely limited by my stamina.

In 2019 I concluded that nor.al jobs are for normal people, so I reached out to some old colleagues of mine, and suddenly I found myself in a job interview. Got back offshore, and never regretted my change of heart.

It’s worth noting that I don’t really go offshore any.ore, as I have since ended up in a supporting role, where 90% of my job is done via email or VPN, from home, saving up energy for when my kids (now plural) get home.

I still pirate without a VPN

All web servers are servers. Not all servers are web servers.

If I’d seen your username, given no context, you would’ve been vaguely familiar.

But since I track votes I give to users, I can add that you’re at +35, so you must’ve done something right.

Keanu could probably kick my ass without drawing on the training from those two characters. But if I was maybe 10 years younger I might stand a chance.

If he added John Wick, no. I would need to be even younger than that, and even then my chances would be slim at best.

And if he were to add Neo, well, that depends whether he truly believes, or not.

Source?

Do you happen to enjoy boiling denim, foraging naked in the sewers, and playing nightcrawlers?

600-700 is around when the basic beginner traps stop working. Fried liver attack, etc, and not moving on past those traps is why so many get stuck there for too long.

Reading theory is helpful, but I’d say that’s more important at 1000+ ELO. For now, I’d say learning the basics of evaluating any position (king safety, long diagonals, weak squares, etc). Also, knowing many openers is good and all, but I suggest picking one and get really good at that. “I fear not the man who has practiced a million openers once” -Bruce Dickinson, or something.

My personal choice for openers are Kings Indian attack (as white) or Pirc Defense (as black). These are very similar, so if you know those two well, it doesn’t really matter what color you start as - they tend to end up with similar mid-games.

Also, around 700 it becomes important to spot which tactics are available to you in various positions. The puzzles at chess.com are really helpful for learning this.

As for the lichess argument, yes, it’s good. But I find that the analysis engine on chess.com is slightly better. And on that note, if you have a subscription, analyze your games afterwards, as it helps you understand what went wrong or right (yes, don’t just analyze your victories). Also, keep in mind that chess.com and lichess have different ways of calculating ELOs.

Also, use the time you have. If you’re playing 10min games, make sure to use your time accordingly. Don’t rush into a blunder because you didn’t see the revealed check or the fork. Personally I mostly play 10min games, as that gives me plenty of time to evaluate the board. Sometimes I do 3min when I’m less patient.

Source: 1757 day streak on chess.com, 1261 ELO while I’m writing this (Although, knowing myself, I’ll trip back to 1100ish soon)

While true, it’s important to keep in mind that the market can stay unrealistic longer than the ones betting against it can stay solvent. I don’t mean that as a prediction, but as a warning that “crashing any day now” can easily mean in ten days, ten years, or never.

Are you referring to how to manipulate files, or more what the various files and folders do?

EDIT, now that I’m typing on a keyboard (connected to a linux PC, obviously), and not on a phone:

Depends entirely on your definition of fun, really, but the way I learnt it was basically by breaking stuff, sometimes intentionally:

• Poking/editing files in /etc to see what happened
• read and write data from/to files in /dev (Careful, these are devicenodes. This is an easy way of overwriting your partition table). As far as I can see, /dev/dsp doesn’t exist anymore, but you could cat a .wav file to it and it’d play through the soundcard. I gues modern sound pipelines are a lot more sophisticated hence why I can’t find it
• Play around with redirects and pipes: > >> 2>&1 | 1>/dev/null
• Get comfortable with file permissions and how to use them. I had many users on this server I had, and I liked to (ab)use the group bit to grant access to various things.
• Poke every binary in /bin and /sbin to see what they do

:wq

I always keep mine back, except during meals and when it’s not allowed. It’s better for my back this way.

Some basic etiquette: Recline carefully - there are people with stuff behind you.

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Depends on where I am and what I’m doing. When on work travel, I VPN home. When I’m home I VPN to work. Outside of that, I don’t really use VPNs.

If I really want to cover my tracks, I have other means and methods

It’d probably work if they started killing the topmost million

No*

*: Distro dependent. A modern desktop distro might require slightly less than a modern build. But no matter what hardware you have, there are didtros that can run on it.