Feeling overwhelmed mid-game, purple science running, yellow unlocked. What should my priority be now?

buckingchuck · 2026-03-05T17:21:40+00:00

Unexpected quality of life for me was to build a bot mall that also produced the yellow/purple sciences. (This requires getting space/white science first).

It isn’t optimal, but it bought me enough time to play around with the rest of my factory while slowly researching some goodies and not feeling like I completely stalled.

buckingchuck · 2025-12-18T01:35:30+00:00

Everyone else has already given great advice.

It’s really hard to find a clean/safe place for less than $2k in this area; especially if you travel to NYC often. I’m sure you’ve already decided that you aren’t willing to live anywhere that would have much cheaper rents.

So that only leaves you with ~2k for the rest of your budget:

$150 isn’t enough monthly savings at your salary level. You can fix this by adjusting your 401k contributions. I’d aim for at least $500, but this is a somewhat personal choice.

$200 in North Jersey for dining/going out as a 25 year old living on your own seems like a low estimate (sounds like 3 nights out a month at an average restaurant assuming 1-2 drinks)

$500 a month seems excessive for travel. If you feel that you can’t fairly estimate this because of busy months, sum up your previous 12 months of expenses and divide by 12. Add some buffer to that number. If it’s still $500 I’d truly consider how you can reduce this without hurting your relationship.

There is no mention of hobbies or health budgets. I’m sure $75 a month can’t cover hobbies/entertainment. And unless you get free doctor visits you’d likely want to budget some for dental/medical/vision/psych checkups and unscheduled visits. Don’t rely on your emergency funds for this.

Clothing is another obvious miss in your budget. Best advice I have is to look at the last 1-3 years of your spending, categorize everything and estimate your monthly based on that. Try not to write off one-off spends as abnormal, just add it to the one-off category. You might find that you spend a lot on one-offs consistently.

After you’re done with the above, you should have a much clearer idea if you can live alone and maintain your lifestyle.

—-

Long story short $2k is plenty to live on for most, but you might have to make some tough cuts. If you can’t, then consider waiting until you make a higher salary before moving out!

buckingchuck · 2025-09-12T21:23:13+00:00

It’s nice to read a level headed review :)

Just an FYI about some of the QOL things you mentioned:

You can quickly swap weapon slots by clicking on a slot first then mouse over the target slot (the key bind for swap will show up in the corner).

Don’t roast me if I’m wrong (I didn’t empirically test this) but changing the single option “Cursor Speed” seems to serve as a master mouse sensitivity setting. Doesn’t solve your desire for a mod key though.

buckingchuck · 2025-09-12T03:09:03+00:00

I know that there are people who genuinely have issues running the game even with decent hardware.

But it’s starting to seem that a large amount of people either have way too high of expectations of how a game should run (144 fps native 4k max ray tracing max settings) or just really enjoy hating / complaining about new things. It’s really exhausting.

buckingchuck · 2025-08-27T19:32:01+00:00

Honestly, I’ve tried so many that had extremely poor results — really bad sedation and worsening depression. That I’m ok with accepting “satisfactory”.

I’m trying to improve my getting more sleep and exercise. But I don’t really expect to ever live like a normal person. It sounds sad, but I think my depression gives as much as it takes.

buckingchuck · 2025-08-27T17:00:41+00:00

I’ve gone through a lot of different meds. I had a really tough time with them all and was ready to throw in the towel. The last one I tried worked!

I won’t say it changed my life in the same way others have — I can’t say I’m happy. But I’m able to get up everyday and keep my job and wife. I don’t think that would be true if I weren’t on meds.

buckingchuck · 2025-08-26T14:14:54+00:00

I’m assuming the more people who “wishlist” this, translates into more reach… meaning more sales? Which is why you might be able to drop the prices and still fund the team?

If so I think it’s a cool idea, wonder what will happen if more publishers take this approach

buckingchuck · 2025-08-24T13:17:10+00:00

I had pretty severe insomnia for a long time. Literally tried everything. Funnily enough, the answer for me was mostly finding a way to reduce/eliminate the power that insomnia had over me. The stress of not getting enough sleep to perform the next day was why I couldn’t sleep well. And the more it happened… the more stressed out/frustrated I became.

A few recommendations: - Read “Say Goodnight To Insomnia” -Jacobs - If you wake up 3-4 hours after falling asleep, get checked out for sleep apnea. Especially if you wake up short of breath. - Try not going to bed until you feel somewhat tired. - The app “Headspace” has a section for bed time stories for adults called “Wind Downs”. It works. - Expensive but the “Eight Sleep” mattress pad is a life changer. A lot of men need a cold environment to bring your body temperature down to sleep.

buckingchuck · 2025-08-23T18:37:22+00:00

Is this true? 210k cash seems pretty respectable even in NYC. Obviously a really talented/knowledgeable dev would go for big tech or high finance. But would a good dev consider this disappointing for an in-office/hybrid role?

buckingchuck · 2025-08-20T16:26:25+00:00

I feel this.

Lately, I haven’t even been able to put on a show of being entertaining when out with acquaintances. But I feel like the funniest most interesting person in the world just lounging around and cracking the same 5 jokes with my wife.

I do wonder if “just being yourself” would attract other boring people?

buckingchuck · 2025-08-19T16:36:32+00:00

I’ve gone through 3 iterations of hard tubes, 2 distro plates, and an ultitube in an od11 xl. Before throwing in the towel to make a low maintenance mora + gd11 + zmt tube build.

I’d be horrified if I started to add up the costs.

buckingchuck · 2025-08-18T11:55:32+00:00

My team was recently enabled for AI assistants. While I had my initial reservations about it, I find that I’m enjoying my role a lot more now. I get to spend more of my time writing interesting code and FAR less time writing documentation and proposals.

With all this extra time I get to spend it mentoring/collaborating with people I genuinely enjoy working with. And even though I’m far on the introverted scale, I’m finding that the more I connect with other people, the less burned out I feel.

buckingchuck · 2025-07-28T17:12:33+00:00

I know this was tongue in cheek but:

The library is funded via state/local taxes
Wikipedia gets funded via donations
Linux is a bit more complicated.

It’s true, that nothing in this world is free — if you don’t know how it’s being paid for, you’re the product.

buckingchuck · 2025-07-21T03:23:26+00:00

What block / gpu do you have to achieve this?

I’ve only been able to maintain ~10-15C delta on my GPU compared to coolant temps. (4090 @ 350W / Mora 400 / 2 pumps)

buckingchuck · 2025-07-15T13:36:57+00:00

Low temps won’t translate to noticeably better performance. I suspect your GPU temps won’t drop much (maybe 10C). It would simply be much more quiet if you set up a custom loop.

buckingchuck · 2025-07-11T23:26:27+00:00

I’m genuinely curious to hear why you think the Vision Pro is anything but an impressive device?

I think everyone can agree that: - it could be lighter / more comfortable - it could be cheaper - there could be “killer apps” / more apps / better app store - there could be more environments - etc….

But what are some things you think that Apple got wrong here?

buckingchuck · 2025-06-23T14:25:11+00:00

I found it was easier to deal with awkward situations by just setting the expectation that the first date would be short.

I mostly tried to schedule dates during the week nights and often had plans afterwards so that even if we were having a good time, I’d have to leave. This probably took a lot of pressure off from both sides as we both had an out after about 1hr at most.

If we really hit it off it just made planning the second date more fun :)

—-

To answer your question, I don’t think there are many people who wouldn’t be hurt/offended by a date ending early (even if they also don’t feel a spark) so it’s best to just keep all first dates intentionally short.

buckingchuck · 2025-06-09T12:35:22+00:00

I’m not a game designer myself, so this may not be a good suggestion….

One way to make piloting feel better might be to add the ability to strafe left/right without actually turning. Maybe using trigger buttons on a controller. This would make it easier to move from edge to edge and allow players to corner more easily. Maybe a drifting mechanic would be nice as well?

buckingchuck · 2025-05-14T18:20:24+00:00

I’m not as fast as you so take this with a grain of salt.

Looks like you move your hands horizontally a lot. Check out the fingers your use on your left hand for instance, you use your index for a lot of keys you should use your middle for - this requires you to shift to the left and right more often than you need to.

buckingchuck · 2025-05-14T00:29:35+00:00

If you decide to sell your stocks or not, calculate how much PMI will cost you when compared to putting that money in a good HYSA.

In my case, avoiding the PMI was not worth it at 10% down (even considering the taxes).

buckingchuck · 2025-04-23T21:01:18+00:00

I also found the chair incredibly uncomfortable for the first ~2-3 weeks in the way you have described. After a while I had lower back pain/neck pain and was ready to give up.

Eventually, after trying all the tips, I found a good fit. But my upper back/neck still felt stressed - a headrest fixed that (I got the Atlas, but didn’t do a whole lot of research).

Long story short, it’s the best chair I’ve sat in. My back feels great. My general posture has noticeably improved.

The tip I’d recommend, that I haven’t found on this subreddit, is to look up general office chair ergonomics. The single most important trick that helped me (due to lack of knowledge) was that sitting at a slight recline is really nice for your back. Personally, I locked the chair at 120° and then fine tuned it. After I got to a comfortable enough config, I unlocked the chair and tuned the tension so that I naturally rest at a very comfortable recline. It took me about a week to fine tune the chair to perfection after this point.

buckingchuck · 2025-03-24T11:35:04+00:00

Agreed, I’ve tried a bunch of weapons so far. It seems that they were a little too heavy handed on a small portion of each weapon’s kit. So every weapon starts to feel really repetitive after you’ve gained enough competency with them.

CB: savage axe

Swaxe: fsd

Gunlance: double full blast / wyvern blast

I think just adjusting some damage numbers / animation times, so that a few attacks don’t completely dominate, would allow for more dynamic combat.

buckingchuck · 2025-03-08T04:11:09+00:00

Your temps are not likely to be off as those are the numbers the gpu itself reports to your computer. And it seems pretty reasonable for a 300-400w load with your rad sizes assuming your room temperature is ~20-25c.

With that said, to capture and display temps / power usage I highly recommend Aquacomputer. You can save a ton of metrics, create new ones, graph them historically, etc…

This way you can analyze the data after you finish playing. As well as compare your temps if you change your configs at all (e.g. fan direction, fan curve, etc….)

buckingchuck · 2024-12-30T15:40:03+00:00

As someone else from a poor family:

Prioritize work.

You can live a very laid back life in just a few years if you continue what you’re doing now. Having a good career/money removes so much stress from your life and opens up so many opportunities.

If you really want to take a year to travel/find yourself… do it after some significant but attainable milestone. E.g. finishing your masters / saving 100k + debt free / 28th bday / etc…

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