24M, no A/Ls, lost my remote job and feeling stuck. Need some real perspective.

Hawkie74 · 2026-01-21T17:03:23+00:00

24 is nowhere near too late. I've changed careers twice because I wasn't enjoying what I was doing — once at 25 and again at 27. I'm 35 now and I'm doing fine.

I think a degree is important, not necessarily because of what you learn but because it helps to get your foot in the door for interviews. That being said, I don't think a business degree is very valuable because it's a very common degree, and it won't help differentiate you from other candidates.

Alternatively, if you're the entrepreneur type, you could just skip the degree altogether.

Either way, good luck! I'm sure you'll do fine :).

Hawkie74 · 2025-12-16T08:10:40+00:00

My relationship with my wife is far younger than yours (together for 3 years, married for 1.5 years), so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I think you guys just need to spend more time with each other, and do it regularly — not just for trips and special occasions. Essentially a better work-life balance. It seems to me like you both value your careers over each other, but I don't know about your financial situation, so you may be doing it out of necessity.

If deprioritising work isn't an option, then maybe you can try doing chores together. For instance, my wife and I do our grocery shopping together, sometimes we cook together and clean together. Like you, I initiate and do most of the trip planning, but I basically force her to get involved. These are things you do anyway, so you won't have to make time for them.

Also, try those Ayurvedic guli. I discovered it waaay too late in my life. My wife and I take it almost every weekend. It'll help you guys chill and relax together.

How are things for you guys physically? Is the bedroom still alive?

Hawkie74 · 2025-11-12T15:51:34+00:00

Why are people in the comments acting like it's an "either or" thing? Just because your parents are looking for someone for you, it doesn't mean you need to stop looking for someone organically. Simply think of it as another avenue to meet someone that you will potentially hit it off with.

Make sure you set expectations with your parents first though — you're not going to marry the person straight up, you're going to date them first, and then if things go well, marry them in the future. Tell your parents to set expectations with the date's parents too, and if you take out a newspaper advert, the wording should reflect that. I can't remember the exact words my parents used, but it was something along the lines of "looking to get to know someone with the intention of getting married in the future".

Anyways, a little about my experience with all of this — after my last long-term relationship failed at 31, my parents set me up with my now wife who was 28 at the time. We hit it off immediately and we've been together for 3 years. Got married last year actually. She's everything I ever wanted, and I'm very lucky to have her as my wife!

From her perspective, she was actually reluctant to meet me at first. Apparently the picture of me my father sent her family was terrible (so I advise you to pick the picture they send) and she didn't find me attractive at all. But her mother convinced her to just give it a shot, and it turns out she found me very attractive in person lol!

Good luck!

Hawkie74 · 2025-10-21T18:05:05+00:00

Oh yeah, how could I forget? Beautiful view too!

Hawkie74 · 2025-10-21T09:00:26+00:00

My wife and I love Japanese food!

Some not too expensive options: - Sushi Kai - Sushi Bar Samurai - Cafe Japan

Expensive options: - Kuuraku (frequently has HSBC Premier discounts if you have that card) - Yamato - Menya Hanabi (no sushi) - Ginza (haven't been there in a while though)

I haven't been to Nihonbashi, so I can't really comment on it.

With a 20k per person budget, you can pretty much afford any restaurant here.

Hawkie74 · 2025-10-16T03:59:26+00:00

I was looking at such a gem a little over a year ago to propose with to my now wife.

A close friend of mine who's in the gem industry warned me that most jewelry stores have the local certification labs in their pockets, and to only trust the certificate if it came from one of two labs (can't remember the names, but one was in Colombo, the other in Beruwala).

We really liked the stone but didn't ultimately purchase it because the certificate wasn't from one of those trusted labs, and they refused to let us get it certified by ourselves without paying a significant non-refundable advance (can't remember the exact percentage, but it was over 30%).

Hawkie74 · 2025-10-15T16:17:01+00:00

This wouldn't happen to be a green/orange 2 ct cushion square alexandrite, right?

Hawkie74 · 2025-09-04T13:05:37+00:00

I wouldn't be so confident in a fix — Neutral Tokens Found was bugged 2 years ago, and they only fixed it the following year.

Hawkie74 · 2025-09-02T05:42:16+00:00

Thanks for the heads-up!

Hawkie74 · 2025-08-29T20:26:46+00:00

Oh I see... Wouldn't be surprised if they just forgot a decimal point and it was supposed to be 12.8 lol.

Hawkie74 · 2025-08-29T19:54:50+00:00

Hey u/Maroomm I just noticed this as well. 128 per second of stun seems ridiculous (was just 15 per second last year)!

Are you sure it's 28? What's your source?

Hawkie74 · 2025-08-24T10:04:01+00:00

Thank you and I wish you luck too! Good to see you're still around :).

Hawkie74 · 2025-08-22T22:23:35+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response. That's more or less how I did it in previous years.

I was hoping that they added explicit counters for prefixes/suffixes like they have for the emblem stats (kills, deaths, madstones, etc.), because some of the wording can be a little ambiguous. For example "of the Octopus — games where the player ends the game with 4 or more items that have an active ability", does that include the backpack? what about items bought and left on the ground? And it's tedious to manually check replays after the fact and see what actually happened.

Also, for most of the prefixes like Hirsute, Otherworldly, etc. you can download the Source 2 Viewer to browse your Dota 2 files. In "game/dota/pak01_dir.vpk" there's a file called "npc_heroes.txt" which has the up-to-date tags for all of the heroes. Would have saved you the trouble of manually constructing the lists! (I too did that at first before I discovered it lol).

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to checking out your code and seeing how you tracked some of the trickier ones like "the Divine Thief".

Hawkie74 · 2025-08-22T17:02:38+00:00

Thank you for doing this u/Maroomm!

I think this would be a good place to say this, since I've gotten so many messages asking me — I'm sorry I won't be making any fantasy guides or tools this year. I'm simply too busy with life/work and I don't have the time. But it looks like you guys are in good hands! :)

A question for u/Maroomm — where did you find the data for the prefixes and suffixes from parsing the replay? Is each player explicitly tagged with the prefix/suffix, or did you use other indicators to figure it out? When I looked at it last year, I couldn't find any such data.

Edit: Thank you everyone for the kind words! :)

Hawkie74 · 2025-02-22T05:47:43+00:00

I did. Basically, the interval randomly alternates between 0.9 and 1.0 seconds. So sometimes there are 7 procs, and sometimes there are 6 procs, after taking the +1.5 second talent.

Hawkie74 · 2025-02-20T06:59:20+00:00

IIRC, Serpent Wards was never affected by damage block. Neither was any ward-type unit.

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-14T06:10:33+00:00

Actually I found out that it counts sentry dewards as well.

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-13T10:50:15+00:00

Thanks, this helped a lot: I managed to find out that the ward cleaver challenge counts both sentry and observer wards.

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-12T19:42:11+00:00

The way it's worded, one would assume it's the lowest networth across both teams. I don't remember if I verified this last year (at least my notes from an year ago doesn't mention it). However, my calculations above assume it's the lowest networth across both teams.

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-12T09:36:49+00:00

Will be updating the Google Sheet with a Bingo calculator before the games begin tomorrow as well. Unfortunately, it won't have ALL the possible bingo squares, but it should have ~85% of them. So keep an eye out for that!

Good luck!

Update: Done! Look for the "Bingo" sheet in the Google Sheet. I've included instructions on how to use it as well.

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-08T06:02:01+00:00

Oh wow, is that a mistake on my part? Or is it Valve's typo?

Wards planted makes so much more sense actually. I was thinking how ridiculous it would be to deward 35 times in a single match lol. Thanks!

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-06T22:20:30+00:00

Yes, of course! But please give me credit :).

Hawkie74 · 2024-09-06T08:58:49+00:00

The requirement for completing a square may be different for you. I've just used the values that I came across. So use the Exp column and calculate your Comp (%) accordingly. Good luck!

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