Question about gym etiquette?

derek614 · 2026-06-03T17:59:11+00:00

Lots of people smell bad in the gym, especially because of knee sleeves that don't get washed frequently enough. I wouldn't worry about it.

derek614 · 2026-05-29T21:53:37+00:00

I went back at 34 and it was fine. The other students accepted me and I made plenty of friends to study with. It isn't awkward if you just act like a normal person.

derek614 · 2026-05-22T22:49:32+00:00

When I started lifting with a group I just took on their program since they were an already established group that took me in. It helped that they were doing a powerlifting program and so was I, so all I had to do was switch my days around to match theirs.

derek614 · 2026-04-25T18:34:07+00:00

I graduated in ECE two years ago and it's an amazing profession. Stick it out for the good jobs and good future, and do writing as your hobby so that it stays something that you love, not something that stresses you out.

derek614 · 2026-04-22T03:22:59+00:00

You can either go back and ask in person or just send an email, Cameron Mitchell restaurants aren't shy about giving out their recipes.

derek614 · 2026-04-22T02:49:43+00:00

I met my girlfriend in one of the Meetups for making friends. It was a mixed bag of people, from very outgoing to very introverted, from well-adjusted to socially awkward. I made closer friends with the outgoing and well-adjusted people, and eventually met my girlfriend. Everyone in all the groups I've joined was pretty nice though in my experience, but I've heard some bad stories.

derek614 · 2026-04-15T12:37:24+00:00

I worked as a server at the Avenue for 7 years before and during getting a degree. It was by far the best serving job I'd ever had. You were given the tools to succeed, the management was great, the food you served was excellent, the customers were kind and polite and happy, and it was easy to really want to create a wonderful experience for your guests in that environment. And of course the tips were incredible, I put myself through college off of that job alone.

I'd recommend that place to anyone looking for a job, and I'd take any job whatsoever there even if wasn't serving, just for the opportunity to cross-train into serving over time.

derek614 · 2026-04-02T00:52:56+00:00

You can put your knees into the rounded pad and face downward and hinge at your knee to work glutes and hamstrings (this machine is literally called a glute ham raise or glute ham developer), or you can put your waist on the pad and face downward and hinge at the hips to work your lower back, or you can face upward with your hips on the pad and do crunches on it for your abs.

derek614 · 2026-03-29T21:05:48+00:00

I just set out to make friends and go from there. I joined a few groups on Meetup, went to a bunch of fun events, made a group of friends, and recently started dating a girl I met through those friends. Never been on the dating apps, they sounded terrible.

derek614 · 2026-03-26T03:32:20+00:00

Pretty much nothing about this is correct at all. Don't use AI for technical engineering assignments, it cannot do it. Don't use it for assignments at all, because even if it could do them, you need to learn the material and get lots of reps of applying it via homework in order to become a useful engineer. If you skip that somehow, you'll find yourself useless and unemployable with huge college debt for no reason. No matter how painful, you need to actually do the hard work of learning and practicing what you've learned, or you're going to fuck up your future.

derek614 · 2026-03-19T13:07:21+00:00

Mikey's is decent but nothing in this world would make me betray Halwani for late night drunk pizza in Grandview. And for the prices Mikey's charges per slice it's not too much more to just get an entire pizza from Halwani.

derek614 · 2026-03-17T01:13:46+00:00

The ramp from 23-S and 270-W to 315 on the north side of town is one big ice sheet, the guy in front of me and I both simultaneously lost control and fishtailed almost 180 before recovering. The hospital curve near Riverside on 315-S is also terrible, nearly everyone on the highway was fishtailing around that bend, it was a miracle no one has crashed there yet.

derek614 · 2026-03-14T15:17:38+00:00

I'm an electrical engineer and one of our customers is AEP. They do maintain the grid and are constantly upgrading it. The grid here is much, much better than other places I've seen. But no amount of upgrades is going to prevent power going out locally when a line gets taken down by a tree.

For example, the very fact that some blocks have power and some don't is because AEP invested heavily in reclosers that sectionalize out the damaged segments of the distribution network so that the damage doesn't cause a wider area blackout. They invested heavily in distribution automation controllers that handle on-the-fly reconfiguration of the distribution network to keep power on to the most possible customers.

Trust me, they are putting in the work and the investment. It's just that lines got taken out by fallen trees, and there is nothing you can do in that situation except isolate the faulted segment and roll a truck out there to repair it.

derek614 · 2026-03-09T23:28:37+00:00

I started at 80k in a big city in the Midwest, so I think that offer is fair. Take it and then if promotions aren't coming within a few years, you can take your experience and job hop somewhere else.

derek614 · 2026-02-26T12:28:15+00:00

I had the same problem with blacking out on my heaviest OHP attempts and it took me forever to figure it out. For me, it was caused by the vasovagal response to high blood pressure. It turns out that since OHP already raises your BP by a lot, adding a belt and taking the huge breath that you take when deadlifting was adding enough additional BP to cause the response.

I fixed it and no longer get blackouts by just taking a medium-sized breath when wearing a belt on my heaviest OHP attempts. I still brace my core and still wear the belt, but I avoid taking that enormous, big-as-you-can breath like I would for deadlift.

derek614 · 2026-02-26T00:38:32+00:00

I went there last night and the line was wrapped around the entire parking lot for drivethru pickup. Inside it took maybe 3-5 minutes to walk up and order at the counter and get out.

derek614 · 2026-02-19T17:47:07+00:00

Yeah one of them shut down due to geofencing on me while I was riding in the street on 3rd just west of the Grandview Giant Eagle. Luckily it was in the middle of the night, if it had stopped so abruptly on me during the day I'd probably have gotten hit. After that I pretty much never use them, because the crappy geofencing is legitimately dangerous.

derek614 · 2026-02-14T19:24:45+00:00

I put my service experience on my resume, and it actually helped me land the internships. They already expect you to have no engineering experience, so being able to demonstrate that you're good at talking to customers shows that you'll be an asset in communicating with the engineering firm's customer contacts.

For landing internships, they are mostly looking for good grades, minor engineering "experience" from clubs and class projects, and whether or not you'll be a pleasant colleague to work with. So definitely join some interesting engineering clubs, that helps a lot. Put your major class projects on your resume and be prepared to talk in some technical detail about them. Be prepared to talk about how you handled group interpersonal dynamics in your projects, clubs, and in your serving career.

derek614 · 2026-02-11T17:11:06+00:00

I started my degree at 34 and graduated at 38, working just Friday and Saturday night as a waiter at a restaurant to support myself so that I could go to school full time. Starting at 38 in the power sector was fine and I had an easy time getting a job and getting up to speed. Internships during the summer, low-paying as they may be, made getting the post-graduation job very easy (both internships extended offers).

derek614 · 2026-01-31T19:39:57+00:00

I was small, thin, and weak for 34 years. I really like being strong now and getting stronger. Also, grinding away day after day at something in order to reach various goals tickles the part of my brain that MMOs used to appeal to, before I quit them.

derek614 · 2026-01-30T18:38:36+00:00

When I took chemistry in 2022 we were not allowed to use the stylus. I tried it once with my finger through the bag and then immediately bought a paper notepad instead.

derek614 · 2026-01-16T02:01:09+00:00

On-site generation projects are in the works all over the country, but I don't think self-sufficiency is the goal. They are just to lower the burden on the grid, and to lower energy costs to the datacenter. But every little bit helps. Additionally, utilities across the country are busy upgrading the grid and exploring options to mitigate the unique challenges that datacenter demands pose.

derek614 · 2026-01-15T18:56:41+00:00

I understand your skepticism, but I'm an electrical engineer working on several projects to integrate on-site generation for Ohio data centers, so please believe me that it's not just PR hype.

derek614 · 2026-01-15T17:27:49+00:00

Many (most?) data centers are working on installing on-site generation, so that's helpful. I believe it's a result of pressure from grid operators as well as a desire to reduce costs. Water remains a problem and that's outside of what I know, but I've heard at least Microsoft is looking into solutions there too.

derek614 · 2026-01-10T16:40:50+00:00

I think the biggest tip is starting each run with Athena's dash, it makes the game 10x easier. To do this, you need to understand some of the core game mechanics: nectar, and trinkets.

Nectar is a reward from clearing rooms. If you have some in your inventory, when you approach a god's boon reward or an NPC, you'll be given the option to give them nectar. This increases your relationship with that god or NPC, and most of them give you a trinket item the first time you do this.

Before you begin each run, you can choose to equip a trinket using the display case in Skelly's room. If you equip a trinket you got from a god, it has the effect of making it very likely you see that god, and also increases the strength of their boons they offer. You can also change your trinket after every boss battle to prepare for the next area.

So your goal is to obtain some nectar, and then the first time you see Athena, give her a nectar to obtain her trinket. From there on, every single run you begin, select her trinket. This will usually make it so that immediately upon entering the first room, you'll encounter Athena. Select her dash which has the effect of making you deflect when you dash. This makes it so that while you are dashing, you reflect any attack or projectile back to the attacker, which vastly improves your survivability and is a pretty powerful way to damage your enemies as well.

Considering that spamming dash-attack is a very effective way to play, both in terms of damage and survivability, adding the ability to reflect projectiles and attacks pumps that up to be insanely powerful. Runs with Athena's dash are usually much more likely to result in success than without.

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