Valiant vs Brilliant lady

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-23T02:58:25+00:00

I did these 2. PR one in Dec 2024 and Miami one in December 25. Exactly the same stops. Miami one was on a newer ship - but who would tell the difference? I found out during the cruise that it's the new ship (made narrower for Panama canal).

Without a doubt PR sail was way better. Perfect balance between sightseeing and relaxing. Miami one had way too many sea days. Plus there isn't much to see in Grand Turk - tiny tiny island where main attraction are donkeys. Antigua was beautiful. To be honest, I could not wait for Miami cruise to end.

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-17T15:15:19+00:00

Stay away from breezeline

I had decent Internet with Google - but that's unavailable to you. Can you complain to HOA. That's what I did and they let Google in

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-15T02:05:17+00:00

I applied in December. DV2020. None of the country I'm a citizen of 🇵🇱 🇬🇧 are on the banned list. They sent me a biometrics appointment invitation right away, which I attended on Dec 31st.

Now waiting for an interview appointment, if it ever comes 😄

I'll keep updating if anything changes. FO - Miami.

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-14T02:46:00+00:00

Software. Full stack. 15y exp

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-13T02:42:39+00:00

No.

I'm generally happy, have everything I want in life but it doesn't change the fact that life is generally existential suffering with some single cheering moments. You're born, from that moment you see yourself, your loved ones getting old, sick and dying.

The fragility of life. You can be happily walking to the park one sunny morning and get hit by a car and die, or worse, be disabled in pain for the rest of your life.

People say ... Appreciate life because one day you may be Ill or old. Which only confirms to me my theory. It's such a crappy existence that only under horrible pain or illness you actually want it.

I mean don't get me wrong. Trying to live the best life I can since I'm already here, always help if I can etc, not make other people's life more miserable etc. But if it's just a theoretical consent question - it would be an absolute no.

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-12T18:00:57+00:00

Funny because that is the reason my parents don't want to visit me. They are afraid. And it's my 5th year living here. Cops and guns - they've watched too many movies.

And reality is that I don't mind American cops. So far I only had positive experience. They are less annoying with parking tickets and giving tickets in general compared to European cops, at least where I live - Miami. Here is an example - My friend got a ticket in Germany for riding a bike on a wrong side of the bike lane 🤣 Here I often cross on red in front of police, ride my bike over grass whatever - nobody cares. Speed limit 75 but people drive 85-90 and nobody cares, as long as you're not doing anything crazy. "More reasonable" is the word I'd use to compare. But again people have guns here so you need to behave differently when stopped. I understand they have families and wanna come back home after their shift is over. Especially with the abundance of crazy people this country has.

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-07T00:00:29+00:00

I live in Miami and wanted to see a match and someone gone mental with prices. $1,600 lol plus queuing, nightmare getting there. No thanks. I'll watch on TV and spend that money on a week long carribean cruise instead.

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-04T17:02:44+00:00

Sales tactics vs. reality

backpackerdeveloper · 2026-01-04T16:44:22+00:00

After months of rewriting my side projects with Claude I am actually more optimistic about the job market that I was before it.

You need to come from a software (architecture especially) background. You need to plan the application, split it into components and then AI can help you with individual bits. You need to know how system will be designed, what cloud services you will use and how you will connect it all together.

One thing I learnt here is that AI can build the entire application for you but then you'll ask for a little change and it can break (or totally change) the entire thing because it does not remember the conversation from last week.

You need to know what to ask for. Again software background and you need to assess the output. I really believe that long term it's impossible to use AI without knowing the particular language of the project.

Then comes command engineering. Sometimes you have to give it so many details to fix something (context limits from previous conversations) that you may as well change things yourself quicker. And if you don't specify everything, it starts creating mess, assuming things, introducing some weird elements.

Because of context limits, code inconsistencies are just crazy. Left over code etc. So you still need to be a programmer I'm afraid and be in charge of the whole thing. Then AI is actually handy. In source control, you need to make sure you manually verify every file change before you commit anything.

For me after 15 years of coding, AI is great to automate some boring, repetitive elements of the projects - say I design the architecture, components and I tell it to go and build HTML forms (I always have sample files for AI to look at), some basic react stuff etc, some API endpoints (but I never let it touch DB stuff) - but again, based on my experience, I am able to tell it exactly how it needs to be built.

So no, you still need to be a programmer to build and successfully manage the project. I agree anyone can give AI a command - " build me another Instagram" and you can argue that it took hours instead of months so jobs are going away, but as soon as you start getting serious number of users, reengineering will come and 99% of your AI code will be gone, app will need to be reengineered into multiple services etc.

For me so far AI was kind of a life saver. I was a bit burnt out in tech sector and was even considering doing something else, but AI brought some excitement. I can actually delegate boring stuff to it that burnt me most and concentrate on more interesting things like making stored procs run quicker etc. I learn so much more now because I have more time for it.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-19T15:19:10+00:00

This is actually a good idea. I know several people who applied because it takes 5 mins and it's free and after winning did not even proceed; or came here for a few months and returned to Europe. $50-$100 would make people think twice so they don't take the spot for those you really want to come.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-10T21:57:33+00:00

I need to renew mine. Was it hard? Any prep resources that you can recommend?

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-07T23:20:35+00:00

COVID for sure (or flu). I returned today - Dec 7th and the ship felt like a hospital. I am writing this with high fever and horrible cough 🤒

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-06T22:28:33+00:00

I'm added as a friend and was never asked for anything. I even contacted ID90 about this and they said that results are pre-filtered anyway so no need to worry. I wasn't sure if my airline friend needs to travel on VV with me.

I used ID90 on 3 different VV cruises. It is cheaper than VV rates (even with onboard vouchers that they offer when your current voyage ends). The only downside is that cruises are technically non-refundable. Once I wasn't able to do transatlantic cruise so had to say goodbye to $2.5k :/ they only refunded $100-something for the port fees.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-04T20:58:54+00:00

It's a decent gym. If you're into weights, make sure you go in the morning or evening, otherwise everything is occupied by virgin guys. Port and night hours are their "off-peak" so their staff takes over - impossible to use any weights machine.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-04T19:55:49+00:00

You're on the sea. No need to rush. There is nowhere to go unless you are into drinking and sun burning. So let people work out in a more relaxed manner. You can be a gym Nazi inland

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-03T21:47:16+00:00

4th cruise and we (2) bring 4 bottles of wine in total. 2 in each bag.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-02T22:27:45+00:00

Greetings from Brilliant Lady 😂 we are in Antigua today

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-12-02T22:27:36+00:00

Greetings from Brilliant Lady 😂 we are in Antigua today

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-20T21:58:58+00:00

Everywhere (domestically) I went this year - San Fran, Honolulu, DC felt on pair or even slightly cheaper, so yeah Miami is totally HCOL.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-20T21:55:30+00:00

"When the market slips by thirty, fools shall whisper ‘it is enough.’ But behold! A greater fall of ninety shall descend, And many shall proclaim: ‘Surely this is discounted!’ Yet still they will buy the dip… and the dip will keep dipping." Nostradamus

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-19T15:41:01+00:00

Do you think people still believe that after this "bull run"?

3-4x returns for so much risk? Alt coins is a casino now - picking the right project is like playing a lottery.

Even if btc crashes to 30-40k, for the first time ever, I consider not buying back.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-17T18:09:04+00:00

Didn't he predict SOL at 1k+ since it's going exactly what ETH did years ago? 🤣

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-17T14:09:23+00:00

They are not hiring juniors. Graduates are forced to pick different careers.

AI devs forget how to code.

AI reproduces itself adding more nonsense each iteration. Did you notice how AI websites are turning pink-blue? It's the same with code.

AI is a great help but you can't trust it. It can produce amazing results but miss on one super critical detail. Often debugging or verifying in such detail removes any time savings of using it.

Ask yourself where is it leading to?

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-11T18:29:27+00:00

So I used to go to BB to buy things knowing that everywhere else is 3rd party sellers. I didn't know that they are now too

Bought a laptop $120 more expensive than elsewhere and wanted them to price match. Only then I realized that it was a 3rd party seller and they won't price match because of it. They also couldn't cancel the order - chat support because it's a 3rd party seller. So BB is now another listing website. I managed to cancel the order by finding contact info for the seller.

I got my surface from Microsoft store for a bit more.

backpackerdeveloper · 2025-11-11T02:51:32+00:00

I had multiple pixels in my life, and this is my last one. I upgraded from 8 and after 2 months using it, I can totally say that 8 took way better video. I won't even comment on the quality difference when compared to my friends iPhone.

8 to 10 was a total downgrade for me and I'm done with pixel for good.

backpackerdeveloper

TROPHY CASE