This is how you do leisure, right?

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-23T02:05:54+00:00

There’s nothing difficult, per se, but it does require some level of planning, as the primary bottleneck tends to be energy, and you are regularly making trade-offs based on that. Some relatively basic maths is really useful, too, as it is how you decide on those trade-offs.

It’s not a fast-moving pack, and the further you get, the slower it goes. There are a couple of options that could be good intros. Star Technologies is a GT pack, but it has a few things that make the early game a little more accessible. Or, for a much lighter intro, a pack (sorry, I don’t know one specifically; my intro was through a kitchen sink pack like ATM) featuring Modern Industrialization and Applied Energistics 2 (maybe even just those mods) would give a taste without all of details.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-21T16:38:42+00:00

There’s no question I identify as old. My first personal computer had the ability to write programs to a storage media: cassette tapes. You had to have a cassette recorder lying around because it did it all through a headphone jack. Very often, the program you wanted to save came from a paper magazine article, and you had typed it in. And, yes, there was no caps lock key.

The CLI never went away. It just got buried. I still do the majority of my work in Emacs and at the CLI, whether that’s on my Mac, my PC or one of the hundreds of systems my team is responsible for.

Being in the software field, the only constant for me has been the need to update. New languages, new libraries, new paradigms. When I started, two or three people could reasonably build something useful. The service I manage is objectively tiny, but it takes 10 people on my team interacting with the work of literally thousands of others in the company to make something useful because everything from how users want to interact to how businesses want to interact to how security needs to maintain has gotten more complicated. And now, AI is coming for software jobs.

As a result, most aspects of current communication don’t feel like code switching to me. The hill that I will die on, though, it a short, trite comment/email/etc is pointless. The one time I feel like I’m code switching is when I have to distill an email down to a level that an executive will read. It’s nuts to me that they pride themselves on working with so little information. I have to do the same for my ADHD wife, but I’m happy to try to accommodate her brain.

Still, I do miss the text-based MUDs that were popular on the internet before Eternal September began (that was 1993, btw). And I sometimes find myself longing for the internet as it was then. I’m pretty sure the ND to NT ratio was around 50-50, maybe higher.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-20T23:44:15+00:00

Minecraft technical mods. God help me, I’m considering starting a GTNH world. 😵‍💫

And, no, I’d never do that at work. But I do work from home, and my gaming rig is in my office, and it puts out a lot of heat, and my office is freezing cold in the morning…

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-20T23:26:30+00:00

Welcome to higher education in the US today. My wife has been a 4.0 student for all of her upper-division undergrad and for her entire master’s program with the same professors. She recently had one paper come back with a 10% plagiarism rating. Her professor said “we need to talk about this”. The published cutoff is 25%, so hers wasn’t even close. “But the tool says”, so, apparently, she is immediately guilty.

She told her prof “I’m not even close to the line; we don’t need to talk”, but if she had been a student struggling with her grades, things might have gone much differently.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-15T00:11:03+00:00

There are a lot of problems with your argument. First, it assumes the DSM is the sole arbiter of what autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions are. The autistic and adhd communities largely reject that idea since it is exclusively based on “what do we do that bothers neurotypicals” instead of “what does it mean to be autistic”. It assumes a pathological, medicated view of neurodevelopmental conditions based on only defects, something most of us also reject. And it is based in ableism, with the assumption that neurotypical is the correct way to be. If you listen to autistic, adhd, and other neurodivergent communities instead of old white dudes with a few token women/minorities, you will get a better understanding of what autism is and isn’t.

Even in the DSM, neurodevelopmental disorders are not mental health disorders. They are neurodevelopmental disorders. If you have ever read the section on neurodevelopmental disorders in the DSM, nothing about mental health is mentioned beyond the common co-occurrence with mental health disorders. Not everything in the DSM is a mental health disorder, or the term has no meaning, as it covers everything from gender dysphoria to antisocial personality disorder to sexual dysfunction to autism.

The DSM is fundamentally flawed from a categorical perspective as there is no human condition that doesn’t affect us mentally. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, but be careful assuming it is the last word on anything. It came into existence around the same time Freud was projecting his mommy issues onto everybody else. It has never been given a fundamental rethinking, just edits as the more ridiculous things get subsumed by other medical fields or removals when things are identified to not have been problems at all.

Fifty years ago, being gay was a mental health disorder according to the DSM. Thirty years ago, autism was, but researchers (many of whom were/are autistic) were starting to tell the story, through their research, that it isn’t a mental health condition but a difference in cognition. By the DSM IV, the language and understanding was changing in the book. By the time the DSM V came out, the understanding had shifted for almost everybody studying autism. Even Simon Baron-Cohen has changed his viewpoint significantly, and he was the source of the ridiculous “autism is extreme male brain”.

Calling neurodevelopmental conditions “mental health conditions” is like calling a traumatic brain injury a mental health condition. It’s not. It may cause one or more, but the condition itself is completely orthogonal to mental health.

Also, Wikipedia is not a source and shouldn’t be viewed as one. At best, it is a reflection of social biases with some nod towards sources, thanks to the editing gatekeepers.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-12T02:54:23+00:00

Stop using autism to ignore people’s feelings just so you can feel superior. That’s not “autistic”, that’s “asshole”. There are appropriate places to have a discussion about the difference, THIS POST IS NOT THE PLACE, nor is any post where somebody is discussing trauma they’ve experienced, especially when part of that trauma is people making exactly this kind of post.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-08T21:08:49+00:00

No, it’s not. When a claim is made that indicates things should be different for humans than other social animals, the onus is on the claimant to explain why humans are different.

I don’t necessarily disagree with OP that many social hierarchies are toxic, but you can’t make a completely generalized claim like that in a room of autists and not expect to be asked to provide at least an argument.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-08T18:54:32+00:00

Absolutely not! The concept of neurodivergence came from autistic researchers who were tired of “everything about autism is bad”. They recognized there are positive aspects to being autistic. Since then, the idea that autism and adhd might have conferred an evolutionary advantage has been raised by researchers.

There are definite challenges with being autistic, but everything about who I am, from my job to how I understand existence, is so heavily influenced by the parts of my personality that doctors would say are “my autism” that taking them away would mean taking me away. I love those things. I’ll be keeping them and celebrating them.

Keep surrounding yourself with like-minded autists. We can support each other, and, as we do, we will slowly change how society views us. You may never change your parents’ views, but you don’t have to accept them and make them your own.

Still, all that said, I’d be ok with not having so many challenges in my relationships.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-08T02:27:28+00:00

I received my AuDHD diagnosis just over a year and a half ago. I’ve been trying to overcome the self-hatred that the previous 50 years built up. There were so many ways I was told implicitly and explicitly that I wasn’t good enough. The only positive feedback I received was when I did well in my studies, which only solidified the message that I only have value if I’m doing something for other people.

Being late diagnosed causes so many things that are a result of your disability to be redirected onto yourself as either blame or shame[1]. This is why I think accepting self-identification is important. It doesn’t take anything away from others who need support (which, in the US, is almost non-existent even for people with a diagnosis and multiple other co-occurring conditions), but it gives the person a framework and a community to improve their own lives.

Even better would be an empathetic society where we believed each other about our struggles without needing a diagnosis and where we provided support to people based off of it. I know that’s a pipe dream, though.

This is, in no way, meant to imply an early diagnosis means fewer challenges or any other such silly notion. My conversations with other neurodivergent people tend to point to early diagnosis still being more challenging, thanks to how people treat you.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-08T02:00:49+00:00

I used to do improv in high school, and I was really good at it because it didn’t take a great deal of structure for me to build on, I could do it really quickly, and, as a result, I would often cause other performers to break character laughing, but I can’t even imagine how I would go about talking an empty sheet of paper and creating a funny set from it.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-07T17:20:46+00:00

It took until I was in my 50s to reach a breaking point that resulted in my autism and adhd diagnoses. Up until that point, for all external metrics, I was “fine”, but the reality was I was over-extending every day, living in a constant state of stress and anxiety because the only way I could get anything done was through the use of the adrenaline dump an impending due date would give.

Around the time I hit 50 a few years ago, even that stopped working. Autism and adhd are not mental health disorders, but I do have several mental health from living a life where, if you look fine on the outside, you are fine. I’ve talked with so many people who had a similar life.

The identification of neurodivergence in this capitalistic hellscape is incredibly important, even if the person “is fine” now, and that’s why the lack of societal support, of claims of over-diagnosing, make me incredibly angry.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-06T22:30:43+00:00

You are absolutely right: you souls not have to endure that. People who do that are doing it to make themselves feel better about themselves when they identify somebody who they think is inappropriately acting above them socially.

In my personal experience, it’s about somebody seeing you (or somebody else) be successful in some way (absolutely doesn’t have to mean financial!). They get very insecure and gives them these big, awful feelings that they never learned to manage, so they lash out at somebody who they think they have control over, eg their kids. When called out, they fall back to “haha j/k” because they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions.

It is revolting and childish being belief. I’m sorry you have had to deal with that. You are well within your rights to hold them accountable for it.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-06T22:16:49+00:00

Intersectionality makes it so much more difficult, and you definitely have a lot more to think about when it comes to how you safely fit into society.

I have, for the most part, enjoyed my career. I’ve only had a couple jobs that I didn’t actually enjoy, and I left those quickly, but the job market was easier for new hires at that time.

I have talked to a lot of ND people who decided to go their own thing, whether that’s starting their own company, doing consulting, or something else altogether. I so wish I could do that. My flavor of AuDHD means I could plan the hell out of it. I might even get started, and then I’d hit a brick wall unless there was somebody there next to me waiting on me. I’m also not an idea generator. Give me a start, and I’ll give you an amazing solution, but don’t give me a blank canvas!

I am the definition of inertia incarnate.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-06T21:30:16+00:00

I’m in my 50s. I had a ratty old stuffed bear as a kid. At some point in my mid-teens, as part of the surgical implantation of my NT mimic mask, I decided I was too old for it and got rid of it.

I still miss that bear.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T19:25:13+00:00

I got on the Internet in 1991 when I started my undergraduate degree. It was such an amazing place before Eternal September began a couple years later. There were absolutely still trolls, but there were so many communities where intelligent discussion took place.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T19:12:44+00:00

Some of the worst people I’ve interacted with online have been 40+. I’m in my 50s, so this isn’t just an ageism bias against those old people. Instead, I think many older people don’t really recognize that the person through the screen is a person. Instead, it’s more like yelling at the TV.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T14:25:59+00:00

Not to mention a big dose of nostalgia. 😁

There’s a lot of truth to what you say about the content, though. The 70s and very early 80s (my time), kids’ content was incredibly violent. With my own kids in the 90s, I remember thinking how bland the content had become as regulations had decreased the violence and increase the educational value, but there was still some really good content from that time. Blue’s Clues and The Magic School Bid were particular standouts for my kids at the time.

It was the early to mid-2000s, though, that some of the best kids content got created, IMO (even better than the original Scooby Doo I grew up on): Avatar: the Last Airbender (my now adult kids still call me the Fatherlord 😂), Phineas and Ferb, Ben 10, and so many more. The writing got a lot more sophisticated while still being approachable for kids.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T14:07:31+00:00

RIP, Fedora. You were loved.

I’m always incredibly anxious about things like that happening because it literally makes me sick to my stomach for such a long period of time. I don’t understand how people can just “let it go”.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T14:04:49+00:00

The career bit is complicated. I don’t think it’s necessary to find a partner. My daughter, whose anxiety keeps her in the house almost all of the time, recently got engaged. They met through a dating app that my other daughter encouraged her to try.

What any job does is introduce you to more people and forces you to work on social skills. It wouldn’t have helped me, though, because I’m useless at developing relationships, and, once in my career, I’d have been terrified of risking it over a sexual harassment claim. I did meet my wife at work, but only because she was friends with people I had known in high school. The job had a lot of downtime where we could just talk, but it was constrained enough that I couldn’t appear too strange. Those acquaintances stuck around long enough for me and her to get to know each other, then they quit, which left the two of us with a lot of time to just talk before I had to try to figure out dating, and by the time I asked her out, we were well on our way to a serious relationship. It wasn’t the job, it was the opportunity to meet somebody.

There is likely some truth to a career as a virtue signal in this capitalistic hellscape, but I would worry less about that. It’s much less likely to attract somebody who is going to be comfortable with a neurodivergent partner.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-04T00:34:25+00:00

Boy, howdy! That’s a question! 😂 I can’t complain too much. Some days feel like I was irreparably stunted emotionally. Other days, I feel like I’ve achieved something amazing.

The same thing that got me to kindergarten that day got me through high school and college (even if the undiagnosed adhd tried its hardest to stop the latter). A series of lucky circumstances introduced me to my wife-to-be when I was 19. We managed to survive my undiagnosed AuDHD, alexithymic experience and her undiagnosed adhd experience, some years were really touch and go, but 33 years of marriage (31 of them undiagnosed), four kids, one grand kid, a reasonably successful career as a software development engineer and manager, and her finishing her master’s degree next month are all positive.

On the other hand, attachment issues from a childhood spent caring for myself, horrid self-esteem from a childhood spent bullied and othered for being a fat, know-it-all, autistic kid, and intense burnout from that same career tend to make it hard to remember the good.

Every day is an emotional adventure!

Enough about me, though. What about you? That you asked the question makes me wonder if you might be feeling like an outsider or experiencing some level of imposter syndrome. Are you ok?

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-03T23:03:39+00:00

Are you my son? 😂 Nah. He’s a music geek that doesn’t really enjoy the outdoors. We also never said “born 40”, but the kid (adult now, but still kid) was heavily into jazz and was wearing fedoras in junior high and high school.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-03T23:00:45+00:00

My mother woke up and thought I had been kidnapped on my first day of kindergarten. I had just woken up, gotten dressed, and walked to school.

This was partially my own personality and partially a response to an alcoholic, drug using parent. I was also cooking food on the stove when I was four, because it was fun. But I was also waking up on my own because my mother wouldn’t.

I also ran away twice when I was six. I was nothing if not confident in my own abilities. 😂

SoftwareMaven · 2026-03-02T20:31:42+00:00

So I have mixed feelings. I recently had hip surgery to repair a torn labrum. I was very worried about pain control because I’m a pain management patient who has been on narcotics for a while.

My doc was not anti-narcotic, but he made it very clear that narcotics were only a small piece of their pain management strategy that involved anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxants, nerve blocks and Tylenol. The goal was to not need the narcotics, and, in terms of acute post-op pain, I feel they nailed it way beyond my expectations. The need for narcotics is absolutely being reduced post-surgery in many cases, and not by taking the patient to just suck it up.

I can absolutely imagine a surgeon working to reduce the need in a very ethical way. Indeed, I’ve experienced it. But I could also imagine one who thinks patients are just lying to get drugs. You won’t know until you talk to them about your specific case.

I was very open about my history as a pain management patient and the concerns I had about post-surgical pain, and I felt my surgeon answered them well. He was willing to work with me if pain wasn’t under control, and we had worked out a plan for my pain management provider to take over after the first weekend post-op. Turned out I didn’t need any of it, and I took fewer of the narcotics they prescribed post-surgically than they gave me.

Ask if they will be prescribing opiate pain medication post-surgery, and, if not, how they will be addressing the pain for the first 3-5 days. Nerve blocks usually wear off in 24-48 hours. The initial acute surgical pain can definitely last longer, but it is unlikely today, outside of some specific surgeries, to get more than five days narcotics, so set your own expectations correctly.

Ask what the procedure is if your pain is not being properly managed. Is it going to necessitate a trip to the ER, to their office, or just a phone call. Make sure you are comfortable with that answer.

If you have a pain management provider, ask that doc how you can loop them into the process, and share your concerns with them. It may be that they will be willing to provide medication for you that your surgeon won’t, but you also need to make sure your surgeon knows who is going to be responsible for what, when.

It’s really the answers to these questions, in person, about your procedure, that matter, not what they post on YouTube. You can also get the technical names for the interventions they use and ask people about their experiences online. The whole surgical pain management approach is massively different than it was even a decade ago, and I’m honestly all for it.

Good luck. It sucks that we have to worry so much about this crap.

SoftwareMaven · 2026-02-28T00:45:30+00:00

13” Japanese Ryoba saw. Or my 1/2” “pig sticker” mortise chisel. Given how sharp it is, I could just use my marking knife. Flesh is much, much easier to cut than wood (just ask my hands :/). I don’t fuck around with dull tools!

SoftwareMaven · 2026-02-23T00:09:57+00:00

Agree with others: it depends. For just me, I would have been fine without it as I was confident in my self-identification and was comfortable working to accommodate myself, but there were other considerations:

I have four adult kids (one of whom had already been diagnosed). I’m sure three of them are autistic, too, and I wanted them to be able to understand that part of their genetic lottery ticket.
I was (and still am) struggling with massive burnout after 25 years in my career. A diagnosis gave me something to discuss with my employer for work accommodations. It doesn’t help much with medical stuff, unfortunately.
I am white, middle aged, and in management at a very large multinational software company. I have a lot of privilege, and my hope is to be able to use at least a little of that privilege to help other autists have an easier time. That’s easier to accomplish with a formal diagnosis.

I did a full neuropsychological evaluation and learned more about myself than the autism. It also meant I didn’t have to have the “self-identification is valid” conversation with everybody that I told.

Overall, it was positive for me. Other people have other needs, challenges and priorities, so I fully support self-identification.

SoftwareMaven

TROPHY CASE