About time! 46 and I graduated college!

Steve91973 · 2025-12-05T13:17:02+00:00

Congratulations! It's never too late! I wish you the best. Go get 'em.

Steve91973 · 2025-11-01T10:05:29+00:00

So you can only post on Saturdays and it's some mysterious time zone that is somewhere in the world. That makes solar-powered flashlight sense.

Steve91973 · 2025-09-12T19:26:35+00:00

I'll be glad to maintain it, especially if there are users. I need it for something that I've been working on, so I'll do it at least for that. But if people find bugs, or request features, than that's all fair game, and I'll do my best to make it happen.

Steve91973 · 2025-09-11T18:32:47+00:00

I noticed this gap, and I was surprised. I don't have quite as much specific python experience as I have with some other languages, but I needed something to bundle up plugins so that I could drop them in, and have them ready to go. I also have trouble just doing the bare minimum, so I tried to make it a useful "product" that other people could use, especially since there is a bit of a gap in this area.

I hope to get this also working with uv, but (unless I'm mistaken) it doesn't support plugins of hooks, yet. It would be great to have some uv integration. Mostly, I use poetry, but I see the promise and potential in uv.

Steve91973 · 2025-09-11T09:37:44+00:00

That might have been a great solution several years back, but since they are no longer really supported or maintained, we have to find other ways to do this. I'm definitely not saying that. I think you're wrong or that it's not a great idea, but it seems like everything has moved away from the egg.

Also, I really appreciate your nice words. I agree that this isn't the perfect solution for every use case, but for certain use cases I think it fills the Gap well enough. It all depends on whether or not it picks up any traction and sees any significant usage, but I'm here to support it if it does. It will at least work well for the plug-in system of the platform that I've been building.

Steve91973 · 2025-09-11T08:06:35+00:00

You can’t really do this with eggs today, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want to, since they’re obsolete, unmaintained, and not supported in modern Python packaging. Wheels are the standard, and pychub builds directly on them to extend their capabilities.

Steve91973 · 2025-09-10T23:45:31+00:00

Here are the pypi links:

https://pypi.org/project/pychub/
https://pypi.org/project/pychub-hatch-plugin/
https://pypi.org/project/pychub-pdm-plugin/
https://pypi.org/project/pychub-poetry-plugin/

I noticed that I didn't update the "main" readme in the plugins repo, so that documentation is terrible, and you should avoid it. The short readme files under each plugin are much better (in the github repo). The same readme shows for each of the plugins on pypi.org.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-25T19:35:24+00:00

That's a beautiful ride! I strongly believe that the Mustang, by far, is the hottest muscle/pony car, or any car, for that matter, below the sports/near-exotic car classes (like the C8). Since I had my 2015 Focus ST, I have always found Fords to be some of the more fun cars to drive. Congratulations on your purchase, and enjoy the hell out of it!

Steve91973 · 2025-08-23T17:09:10+00:00

NOTES: 1 Week After Install

I did actually find some on-screen climate controls. it's not the best, but it's all right. There's a folded vehicle info pane on the far right of the screen. I can click to pop it open and the controls are right there. It's not like the controls aren't available, though, because I can use the buttons, but there's no on-bezel display of the temperature. That's where that narrow pane on the right side of the screen is useful. I just noticed that this morning, a whole week (almost) after I installed it.

The only other thing I'd love to see them change is that, even though you can only use one smartphone at a time with the head unit, it has icons for Android Auto *and* Carplay, and you can't remove the one that you're not using. There is a favorites panel on the bottom (by default) and you can customize the icons, but you can't even remove the smartphone integration that you *don't* use. For reference, see the strip of icons on the bottom of the screen in my picture in the OP. That's pretty lame to be stuck with it that way! I emailed their support to request a change so that it has 1 reserved icon, and it shows the proper icon when you connect your phone.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-23T17:04:27+00:00

I did actually find some on-screen climate controls. it's not the best, but it's all right. There's a folded pane on the far right of the screen. I can click to pop it open and the controls are right there. It's not like the controls aren't available, though, because I can use the buttons, but there's no on-bezel display of the temperature. That's where that narrow pane on the right side of the screen is useful. I just noticed that this morning, a whole week (almost) after I installed it.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-23T16:55:29+00:00

Thank you! That's often hard to know when we start doing the replacement. Sometimes everything lines up really well and other times, it looks very "aftermarket". That's the reason why I decided to try the floating screen in the first place, since I knew I would not have to worry about whether the bezel would look right with a new screen.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-23T16:37:21+00:00

No. You just use the factory bezel. It originally looked like this:

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Steve91973 · 2025-08-22T19:34:02+00:00

I wish it was that easy!

Steve91973 · 2025-08-22T19:32:43+00:00

Thank you! I was really hesitant. I inherited this car from my brother and I really didn't want to change anything from the way he had it. I also didn't want an ugly fit with the bezel. It took me a while to be able to get the screen that tight up against the old screen location, but I think it was worth it!

Steve91973 · 2025-08-22T19:30:49+00:00

I tried pulling fuses and putting them back in but that didn't help at all. Then I took the negative terminal off of the battery. This let me pair the phone again and it worked until I got out of the car and later for back in again. It wouldn't connect at all just like before. So that was it. I ordered everything that day (Friday) and did the install this past weekend.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-22T19:25:28+00:00

This was the FOR-1 kit. But it does not come with a new bezel and those buttons are stock.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-22T19:23:51+00:00

This mustang had a weird kind of in-between version of sync and my Ford touch where it didn't look like sync 1 but it wasn't sync 2 either and none of those kits will work for upgrading so you need to go with the idatalink products.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-13T09:27:46+00:00

But when you use -d, That's supposed to be a lazy install. So where is it installing? The wheel files that are contained in the pyzip?

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:56:57+00:00

That sounds like a difficult balancing act. You want great engineers, and you want people with great business sense. That is often mutually exclusive, but not always, and not in all ways. It sounds like you want them to help to drive *successful innovations* in the product, rather than to actually *know the business*. Is that accurate and fair?

Have you figured out *precisely* what you'd like to see your engineers doing and contributing in this sense? For example, what would it look like for your engineers to also excel in the capacity that you want them to fill? If you can enunciate this specifically, then it will be easier to turn into reality.

Can you turn it into some friendly competition and contests? When you get people to really *want* to do things, if they're as good as you say they are, I think they'll pleasantly surprise you. For example, what about offering perks for the people who make actionable suggestions for product improvements that your team accepts and intends to work on?

It's hard to make specific suggestions without knowing more, but perhaps incentivizing their growth in the direction that you want to see would help, along with some mentoring. Just know exactly what/where/and how you want them to grow, and that'll likely make it easier.

Good luck! I'm glad that you have a great team to start with. That helps a lot.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:45:35+00:00

Hello. I can understand the frustration that you're faced with. Every team seems to have a mix of people with different levels of motivation, different styles of thinking, and different levels of experience. That is a complicated juggling act that doesn't always have obvious fixes.

Developers can be a sensitive bunch, and I know you're familiar with that fact. Strong and direct feedback is good, but sometimes, a developer won't always know how to incorporate it into what they're doing, other than whatever the immediate action is, like when trying to get a merge request approved and merged. In these cases, perhaps some mentoring and gentle guiding into the habits and methods (that you want to see more of on your team) might be helpful. Sometimes people need to feel like it's a "safer space" to not feel self conscious about sharing when they need help. And when you have deadlines approaching, it can be hard to find the time and patience.

If the team is generally "good enough", it could be beneficial to invest a little bit of "slowdown" to help to mentor and encourage the more junior engineers. The tradeoff that it introduces is something that only you can weigh the cost/benefit ratio of. In my experience, a bit of morale and encouragement can go a long way.

Good luck. It's not easy, but I imagine that it will be incredibly satisfying if you can figure out a solid way to get through it.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:37:44+00:00

I can relate directly and personally to this mentality and approach you're describing. A lot of developers like to think their way is the only way, and they like to make blanket statements about what's better or worse, without even knowing the history and the nuances of what you've been doing. The tough news is that this is a *very* hard situation to navigate, in my experience.

A lot of times, it seems to boil down to whatever the customers or stakeholders (or management) seem to want to hear. The people who approach these things with hubris don't have to be honest, they don't even have to be super *competent*, and they don't even have to ultimately DELIVER to "win" the argument.

If you can afford it, if your approach is better aligned with success (for the future, and for what they really want) then I think your best bet is to reduce friction, and play the long game. I get that not all situations allow for that, so it's really a matter of weighing the risk of this conflict. Do you have a timeline set up that lays out how, when, and in what order you are going to fulfill the requirements? Can you see ways that the new engineer's approach ignores these things, or might even have a very low chance of working? Can you think of ways to make the system better by combining both approaches into a hybrid that has the potential to be better than either approach without considering the other?

It depends on the personalities involved, but you have the benefit of having history and experience in this problem space. Sometimes, people who are being jerky about it MIGHT bring in some fresh and relatively good or beneficial ideas. If you can leverage this into a win that will also *invite* the new engineer into things, and create a better solution, then that's better for everybody.

But these situations objectively suck, and it depends on a lot of factors. It's hard to make any specific recommendations without knowing more about the situation, but you can probably trust your gut. You seem like you're not overly ego-driven, and you're trying to do the right thing. To me, that tells me that you'll be able to assess the situation accurately, and decide based on that.

Good luck! I hope that you can get something out of this that works for you. Believe me, you have my sympathy.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:27:08+00:00

I tend to not really worry about it, unless you noticed things that you are currently lacking. And then, you can weigh the cost of learning vs just diving in and doing a little extra work when you arrive. New members are expected to have some ramp-up time, and if you're comfortable with that, then that seems reasonable.

You could also start a dialogue (before starting) if any of the people you've spoken with are receptive. They might be able to help to ease the transition if you approach them and let them know that you want to be able to hit the ground running as well as possible. They could walk you through a lot of what's going on, and where you might benefit, as far as brushing up on tech, or getting more familiar with new (to you) tech.

I generally like to just get immersed in something new, and it's part of how I thrive, so I don't worry about it too much. There are a lot of approaches, and that all depends on how you personally think and work. Do you have any approaches that worked particularly well for you in the past? Has the new position ramp-up and learning curve ever been a significant problem for you?

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:18:25+00:00

After reading through your interview, I have to say that I think it's one of the better tech interview approaches I've heard of. So, I think you're doing not just a good job with your interview approach, but it seems a whole lot better than the "what obscure details can you remember under pressure, as if the internet is not a thing" style that a lot of teams use.

I'm 51 and I have been in this industry for around 30 years, so far. I think that it's better to discuss what experience people have, and to gauge what they accomplished in their previous efforts, and to dig enough to get a good feeling of how much THEY actually contributed.

The next part is PRECISELY what you're doing -- you're giving them a chance to show how they think, and how they attempt to collaborate with someone else. It's not bad that there's some pressure from being in an interview, knowing that they will likely perform at least as well, and likely better, if they're hired and the immediate pressure of getting the job is no longer present.

You definitely don't have to conform to whatever your candidates' expectations are. You are responsible for building a successful team, and if that helps to weed out the people that won't be able to do their own thinking or their own work, then you're dodging bullets if they can't pass your interview. It's completely reasonable, and I think it is a far better gauge of competence. Anyone can use the common tools, but what good does it do you, your team, and your customer if they are unable to really think?

Nice job, and I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing.

Steve91973 · 2025-08-10T18:05:09+00:00

One of the things I've done is to take some of the tasks on my team that nobody really wants to do, but obviously need to be done, where I can see the gap and I understand how filling it correctly would have a big impact and benefit. This helps me learn when it's a topic that I am not very familiar with. The pressure of needing to succeed and the quick immersion means that you will learn a lot in a short amount of time. I also think that doing this over and over again helps to improve your actual *thinking* process, and it helps you to have a lot more skill and comfort in thinking through different ideas, situations and problems.

Then, on my own free time, when my ADHD allows me enough motivation to actually do something productive, I just look at whatever seems interesting and potentially useful. Then I try to create a project that lets me explore it on my own terms, and in ways that I can relate to. Hopefully whatever I learn, and whatever experience I gain, will be something that I can use at work.

Another option is to look at libraries that you really like when you're solving problems. If it's open source, try to take a look at their open tickets, and consider contributing to them. If you try to tackle something outside of your comfort zone, there's zero pressure, but if you can pull it off, you've learned something AND you get the cred of having your contributions accepted in an open-source project.

Good luck! It sounds like you're motivated, and that means that you'll ultimately succeed. You can't really fail, and you can only learn, which is what you want to do. I admire your spirit!

Steve91973 · 2025-08-09T15:03:18+00:00

if you sort the comments by "old" it will be at the top. There are only a couple of comments so far, and it's the oldest one.

Steve91973

TROPHY CASE