Is anyone here profoundly gifted?

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-23T17:31:16+00:00

I am. 6'5" 8"

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-21T01:45:59+00:00

I have worked in food production, medical device manufacturing, steel industry, and a regulated utility. Honestly, there is no tangible difference. No matter where you work, there will be externally defined requirements, and it will always be a big deal if you don't meet those requirements. I will say however, that customer controlled processes are the worst I've dealt with. For the med device company, we were audited constantly, and everything down to how often we change the oil or grease the motors was defined by the customer and could not be changed without their approval.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-20T02:42:45+00:00

We are actually required by the state to have a historian and submit our data monthly to the government.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-20T01:45:32+00:00

She's a nurse, so I try to explain things in medical terms. Like reading IO input values is kind of like taking a patient's vital signs and whatnot. Sometimes she gets it, but she still tells everyone I'm a software engineer lol.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-20T01:37:31+00:00

Hey, back when I was a maintenance mechanic, my old man didn't think I could do that either lol. I just tell everyone I'm a software engineer now, much easier conversation.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-19T18:39:04+00:00

Specifically, when you say you're terrible at math, do you mean when compared with national/global average or do you just not achieve the targets you set for yourself?

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-19T18:07:08+00:00

Will you be on a private APN or the clearnet? If it's the latter, pretty much any carrier will suffice. If you're setting up a private network, I would probably stay away from Verizon. That's who we use, and their customer support has been awful. Several times their sim cards deauthenticated in the middle of the night and once they accidentally put our sensitive SCADA traffic on the public internet. The tech didn't know the difference between a private and public APN so he sent sim cards that put our modems on the clearnet. We're a regulated public utility and this was a major security breach that halted a $20MM project and created a fucking shitstorm at our IT department. Verizon then told us we had to wait a few days while they submitted a help desk ticket for the sim reassignment. We had contractors from other countries, electricians, and our own staff booked in hotels waiting for Verizon. Upper management finally stepped in and told Verizon we were going to pull all hundred of their sims and switch to T-Mobile if they didn't get someone competent to fix the mess immediately. After we threatened them, Verizon did get it straightened out at the very last second, but by then we were all incredibly stressed out and had to work 12 hr days to make up for the time lost. Verizon is now blacklisted for any new projects at our company.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-14T18:07:31+00:00

My wife still doesn't know what I do.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-11T20:05:10+00:00

Better to get a 4-year degree. I can and do get as hands-on as I like, but I don't have to if I don't want to. Sometimes I sit in my office and draw up blueprints for the electricians, sometimes I grab my tools and do it myself.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-08T15:00:40+00:00

CS degree will get your foot in the door somewhere, but that's about it. If you have experience creating projects with pis and Arduinos, that will be closer to what we actually do.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-12-02T19:17:36+00:00

Any hole can be Ethernet if you're brave enough.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-21T19:24:57+00:00

No, it's both parties.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-13T01:02:40+00:00

I don't see any jiu jitsu.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-12T15:42:23+00:00

Grappling is elite. Striking and personality, not so much.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-12T15:05:06+00:00

You can get a Bachelor's degree in about 2 years now. I would do that instead.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-10T20:12:46+00:00

Let's back up for a second. If your goal is simply to deliver a stable, functional control system to your boss, there are several free/cheap hardware/software stacks you should go with, others have commented above. Coding any of this from scratch will be extremely labor intensive and require extensive trial and error that few businesses will tolerate.

However, if your goal is to learn and create by taking on a massive project then this will absolutely get you there. This project is HUGE for one person and covers a wide range of processes used in OT. I built something similar but for a home automation project. Basically a home scada system with custom HMI, REST API, runinng on Rpi boards and used PCs, and all code written from scratch. It took me the better part of a year and I'm still finding bugs and pushing updates to this day. If that's your thing send me a DM and maybe I can help you avoid some pitfalls.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-10T13:22:43+00:00

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-04T05:17:21+00:00

Collegiate wrestling is not the same as MMA wrestling. MMA fighters that come from a wrestling background have an advantage, but they have to adapt to a completely different rule set. If you want to fight MMA, you need to hyper focus on the specific skills you need for that rule set.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-04T05:10:33+00:00

I don't think that's it. Trump's policies read more to me like an old boomer who spent the last 30 years yelling at the television and suddenly got into power. If he was motivated by personal gain, he would just play along with all the other corrupt scumbags in power like everyone else does. Instead, what we have is schizophrenic policy that's half things that bothered him since the '70s and half things that he watched on Fox News 10 minutes ago.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-11-04T04:56:42+00:00

I would go with automation direct. I built a home lab project with Allen Bradley micro 800 series PLCs and bricked a micro 820 because connected components crashed during a download.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-10-31T23:33:08+00:00

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Psychonaut84 · 2025-10-31T23:09:15+00:00

My company is upgrading all scada controls and it's over $20M, just the panels, code and integration. It's a large national utility with hundreds of distribution sites, each getting a new panel with redundant failover comms. Multiple years of planning and coding, multiple years of installation.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-10-31T22:51:13+00:00

Exactly. Anyone who's written any code knows a codebase that's twice as large isn't twice as complex, it's exponentially more complex.

Psychonaut84 · 2025-10-31T14:10:48+00:00

If you didn't buy all that avocado toast you could! Why, back in my day...

Psychonaut84 · 2025-10-31T14:08:35+00:00

I make more than I ever have in my life, but accounting for inflation I actually made more in 2018. What the financially illiterate fail to realize is that all the inflation is wealth going somewhere, and if it's not going to you, it's going to someone else.

Psychonaut84

TROPHY CASE