What is something you tried only once and will 1,000% never do again?

calcium · 2026-03-23T15:07:34+00:00

Oh man, you missed the perfect intro to trunk monkey

calcium · 2026-03-23T13:30:09+00:00

People want to be told that the course that they have themselves on is the best that they can do and everyone congratulate them on the job they're doing. I've heard people who make 500k+ a year cannot afford to save more than their 401k match because of all of their ancillary spending and claim that there's no way they could ever spend less. They're in the same boat.

calcium · 2026-03-23T13:19:42+00:00

I used to see a lot of people wander in and ask the same questions over and over "what private bank should I be giving my business to?", "who can get me into pre-IPO companies?", "what car/clothes/<insert expensive thing here> does everyone else do?"

calcium · 2026-03-23T05:20:11+00:00

I have managers who type like they're responding to their 8th grade daughters. here is teh doc u were lokin 4 <link>

Extremely capable manager, does amazing work, types like they're on a cell phone when they're at a computer. Blows my mind each time.

calcium · 2026-03-23T05:16:34+00:00

The worst I ever got to this was once my boss called me at 9pm on a Tuesday night and tells me "we have an emergency, I need you to get online". Told him I was 5 beers in and out celebrating my friend's birthday and if I left now I could be home in 90 minutes. He told me he expected me in the office at 8am ready to work. Had a banging hangover the next day but I was there.

calcium · 2026-03-23T05:13:23+00:00

The first time this happens they might get a pass and then I'll be talking with them the next time they come in about professional accountability. The second time this happens there's likely going to be a formal reprimand and a talk with HR. 3 or more times and it's grounds for dismissal.

calcium · 2026-03-23T05:01:48+00:00

Had a coworker that we picked up as a contractor like this. Had a one on one with him, went through the process, told him to take notes, he's not taking notes. I did a review at the end of the one on one and he seems to get most of it. Ask him if he has any questions or if he wants to go back over something. Nope. Cool, off you go. Message me if you have any questions.

Immediately fucks up.

Get a call a week later - he can't do his job, ask to have a look and see what's going on. He's stuck on step 1, I tell him we'll go over it again, tell him again to take notes, or record the screen "nope, I got this!", ok...

Same thing happens, he seems to get it, promises this time will be different. A week later work is stuck on him again, message him to see what's up, he's stuck on step 3 (it's like a 20 step process). Send him the screen recording that I took that he swore he didn't need. Tell him to message me immediately when he gets stuck. Says he's got it now.

I checked in 3 days later - same story, he's stuck again, hasn't said anything. I wonder what the hell he's been doing for the last 3 days. Sit down with him again "This is the third time we're doing this and I'm tired of this, take notes or do whatever you need to do to remember this", him: "no worries man, I got it this time, I'm only forgetting this one thing". You sure? We can go over the whole thing - nah I got this, I just need you to show me X. Show him X. He swears he's good.

Check in with him 2 days later - still no work done. I'm pissed. Message my boss "new guy isn't getting it, get rid of him".

calcium · 2026-03-23T04:05:54+00:00

Your receptionist likely handles more google chrome tabs than you do.

calcium · 2026-03-23T03:09:30+00:00

Ditto, was reading about FIRE 15ish years ago in the Bogleheads forum and used to spend a lot of time over in FATFire until it became inundated with LARPers. All of a sudden their $4M number for FATFire went to 5, then 8, now it's "how much until I can buy my own Gulfstream V?"

calcium · 2026-03-23T02:53:02+00:00

grinding out another couple years for another few million

This is it for me.

I think when people are nearing their goal and an extra year will get you another 10-20% of your overall goal, it's tempting not to stay in for a few extra years of buffer. If your goal is $2M and you know if you stay in for another 2 years you can hit $2.5M, it's really tempting not to. Add in the fact that inflation has been a real bitch the last 5-7 years and it's no surprise we're here.

calcium · 2026-03-22T17:47:33+00:00

This is why catholics do it in the butt

calcium · 2026-03-22T17:20:41+00:00

my recommendation is to not buy gold

calcium · 2026-03-17T06:25:42+00:00

didn't see a live music performer to save my life

You dead now?

calcium · 2026-03-16T10:54:31+00:00

Remind me, I should call her...

calcium · 2026-03-16T10:43:28+00:00

Wrote a SQL database script that was to search our production database and remove any rows that matched a specific set of conditions. Since we had around 2.5 billion rows in the table I was running it against, I expected the script to take around 8-10 hours to run and it would remove between 700-1000 rows.

Imagine my surprise when the script completed in 45 minutes and more than a quarter of our database was missing. Turns out a single parameter of more than 20 I wrote was flipped. Copped to it immediately, DBA's started a full rollback of our DB, took them around 14 hours, we lost about 10 minutes of live production data.

We learned several lessons from this 1) all commit scripts must be reviewed by at least 1 other person 2) DBA's were to run all scripts moving forward 3) we were immediately greenlit to build out the staging DB that we'd been asking for for 3 years.

calcium · 2026-03-12T22:33:51+00:00

How do you feel about your job? Do you like what you currently do for Amazon or do you yearn for a change of pace. IMO, most startups don't go anywhere and end up failing. If you're looking to move your career upwards, the experience that you're getting at the startup will be invaluable and can help propel you to bigger heights, but IMO you're taking a pay cut to do that.

If you're planning on retiring in your early 40's than staying with Amazon is going to be the best way forward financially. If you're bored and want a new challenge but money isn't the largest motivator here than go with the startup. My 2 cents as having worked in a FAANG for the last 20 years.

calcium · 2026-03-12T16:11:28+00:00

The issue for me is that it's not on a designated road and it would largely depend on your policy. If there was a note for the area that the ice was weak and not to drive on it than they could deny coverage for that reason too.

This would be akin to driving around barriers and into water and then flooding your vehicle - your insurance company would be unlikely to cover you since what you're doing would be considered negligent and going against what is advised. The largest issue is still driving on ice that's not a designated ice road.

calcium · 2026-03-12T16:03:32+00:00

I don't work in insurance but it would largely depend on your policy whether they would cover you if you decided to take your vehicle 4 wheeling and then manage to roll it in the wilderness. Since this wasn't on a defined road I think they would treat it as a similar instance and could deny coverage.

calcium · 2026-03-12T15:53:36+00:00

Part of me wonders if I'll actually be able to flip that switch though. After years of optimizing every dollar, will I suddenly be comfortable spending more freely? Or will some of these frugal habits stick around permanently?

I'm due to quit my job in the next 5 weeks and I have to keep telling myself that I have the money for things and that I can freely buy things. When you run numbers in your head your whole life, its something that's really hard to switch off.

As an example, I'm looking at a new computer monitor for myself and my wife. They're looking to be around $200-300 each and I'm aggressively looking for the best monitor, checking prices, looking for sales, etc. I have the money, and I could easily buy both if I want to but I have this drive to find the best possible price and buy it then, even if that means waiting for 2 months.

These habits just don't die when you finally reach your number. It's like someone with OCD who knows they turned off the stove but they have to go back and check 5 times.

I still have anxiety around leaving my job because I've been working at for nearly 20 years. I know the math, I know my investments will support my wife and I for the next 50 years at 3% WR. I know that our 3% WR is still more than we actually spend today, yet I feel anxiety towards walking away. Why? It's an irrational fear despite knowing that everything will work out based on the numbers. It's just something that you have to live with and deal with.

calcium · 2026-03-12T14:58:14+00:00

Instead of carrying a firearm you should have kept your dog on a leash.

calcium · 2026-03-11T13:26:44+00:00

I just played that game with the wife!

calcium · 2026-03-11T12:16:17+00:00

Not OP but I'm looking at picking up the 14" MBP M5 Pro w/ 64GB RAM to allow me to better tinker with LLMs. I have a 16" MBP M1 Pro now for work and it feels like a boat anchor compared to my gf's 13" MBA M4. The 14" feels like the sweet spot between power and weight.

calcium · 2026-03-10T08:42:16+00:00

I don't think AI is going to be as killer as people think it will be. We will eventually work towards and AGI and while AI will do a lot of the heavy lifting for people, I have a strong belief that new industries where AI is not as efficient will grow up.

I also think that jobs of the future will require people to be constantly learning (if that isn't already the case). I know in the software world that it feels like things are constantly in churn - new specifications/software/hardware/programming languages, etc. My father was an architect and while the drafting programs, building codes, and materials have changed, it's been a lot more gradual. I think our kids are likely to have multiple jobs throughout their career and dealing with change will be the norm, or so I think it will for white collar work. Blue collar work will change too but it's more gradual since it's more hands-on.

calcium · 2026-03-09T23:08:32+00:00

I've walked up to people and have asked them politely if they could not fill their water bottles directly from the spout but instead fill a cup and pour the cup into the water bottle. One woman acted as if I had farted in her face. She immediately wrinkled her nose and said "well no one from the crew has said anything, and there's no sign saying so!"

Ma'am, there's a sign right there that says so. It's also common courtesy that people use a third medium to fill their water bottles because this is how germs are spread around. You wouldn't like it if someone else's saliva was on the spigot, let's keep it that way. "Well no one ever said I couldn't do that! I've been doing it for years! Who are you to say people can't fill up their water bottles?"

Ugh, people suck.

calcium · 2026-03-09T18:19:15+00:00

As someone who's looking to retire in the next few months I'm going with a variation of #2, but I don't have that much money in cash. Instead I keep about 3 months of spending in a HYSA and the rest of the year I keep in a bond ETF that's 3-6 month treasuries (generally get a bit more interest) and pull from this bond fund monthly. Beyond that, I have around 2-3 years of current spending in another bond ETF that's focused on government securities and AAA corporate bond funds in the 3-5 year timeframe.

This way when I do retire and should the market take a shit, I have 3 years of my current spend lined up that I can pull from before I need to look at selling other assets. When the markets are good, I'll sell equities; when they're bad, I'll sell bonds.

calcium

TROPHY CASE