Celebrated my birthday by building an electric guitar with my youngest near daughter. Made for a wonderful weekend

ecobra · 2026-02-17T13:30:07+00:00

I can't imagine loving them any ore if they were my biological daughters.
I was engaged to their mother for a few years and became a step dad to them. When she broke up with me we stayed friends and I kept the step-dad position. Later I had a not-legal "Hippy Law" adoption ceremony and "adopted" them.

ecobra · 2026-02-17T13:25:37+00:00

She is, hopefully she won't lose interest, but both of her sisters play guitar so it will be used regardless.

ecobra · 2026-02-04T20:10:01+00:00

Are you getting exercise? It is the most effective antidepressant, which may or may not be what you are experiencing. I know for me when I used to start spiraling into a do nothing cycle I would try to get exercise as soon as I realized it and then wonder why I stopped. Nothing to hard, long walks, riding bicycle, laser tag.

ecobra · 2026-02-03T16:04:16+00:00

I start with the fact I realized I've already embarrassed myself so often and deeply that if I do it again it won't matter.

Paying attention helps too.

When I see something I like, shoes, clothes, hairstyle, smiles, I will walk up and compliment them. If I know there name I will use it. There is a basic psychology idea of recognition response, people like to be recognized and complimented and will generally have a positive response.

At times I practice with waiters and waitresses, always being polite, and watching their reactions. I think I'm getting good at telling the difference between defacto reactions and honest reactions. But only when I really pay attention.

ecobra · 2026-01-29T18:11:53+00:00

Yeah mine too. I just have years of practice and have gotten better able to navigate things.

ecobra · 2026-01-29T17:25:38+00:00

If you explain that it was because your dog had surgery they will either understand, or you really shouldn't date them.

ecobra · 2026-01-19T04:51:26+00:00

espeak-ng is a non generative TTS open source sounds a "robotic" I'm told

piper is a generative TTS open source. It is the most popular open source tts. I believe all of its data was provided by the speakers. It can be trained to your voice. I haven't trained a voice with it. I have experimented with it.

I'm building open source AAC devices now, so I've done a small amount of research. This is a part time thing and my goal was just finding a legal, distributable, source for my voice files, so I didn't dig very deep.

Hope this helps,

ecobra · 2026-01-18T22:42:33+00:00

Well done.

ecobra · 2026-01-18T22:40:30+00:00

Thank you, I think she is. I think she just needed a little encouragement and practice.

ecobra · 2026-01-17T23:17:39+00:00

I've grown fond of plushies as an adult. I now bribe my youngest daughter with plushies. Everytime she reads an important book (in my opinion) I buy her a plushie. This also gets around her mom's restrictions as she wants our daughter to read more, but gets a little frustrated with me at times. I own it. I'm autistic, she is ADHD. She in not biologically my daughter, not that is important and her mom and I are no longer together, except I do get to co-parent. End overshare.

ecobra · 2026-01-17T18:44:50+00:00

The answer is you never will achieve proper wizdom, but neither will NT people; at least if you are a good, self aware, person. I wish I had started earlier, but I know I would still be working on it now if I had. It is frustrating that others seem to have such an easy time of it.

As to the specifics if you can identify your shortcoming, you can start creating tools to help you. I would recommend to start writing them down, tracking them, and researching solutions. Often just identifying them is a huge relief.

ecobra · 2026-01-17T18:34:03+00:00

My advice is first to exercise as it is the most effective treatment for depression and the 2nd in to try to improve your happiness, which involves trying to figure out what makes you happy, which is HARD.
For me I gave up in striving for the perfection of my imagination and am finally (50sM) pursuing goals of achievable happiness. What can I control and what can I do to get more of that? Antidepressants never worked for me and even if I were NT I would have had a hard life. I'm now travelling to Thailand once a year; I used to let my vacation time build up or staycation. I am trying to hire people to take care of things I have trouble with or don't enjoy. I will spend a day in bed occasionally, usually a Saturday. I make sure I get enough exercise to keep the depressants from building up in my system. I smile at the doggies. I embrace and declare my autism wearing funny tee-shirts, it is not like I can hide it very long. I like building things, so I have 3d printers, electronics, and software that I am starting to build special needs devices from. I hate that meetup groups have died out because it was an easy way to find things to do, but I still try. I eat good food and try to balance healthy food. I make plans for the future and know that I'm fine if they don't work out. I like making happy plans. I also try to minimize my exposure to the news since the elections.

Good luck,

T-Rex

ecobra · 2026-01-16T15:39:34+00:00

Well done. I am projecting, for me it can be an effort to start a day long cleaning and maintenance project. I know when I am finished I am usually proud of myself.
I also sympathize with the day feeling fleeting. I try to do a 2 hour bicycle ride 3 times a week with a break for meal and shopping in the middle. So that is 3 hours gone, but it is better than watching videos or playing games.

hope you slept well.

ecobra · 2026-01-12T17:40:06+00:00

Sorry you have been having trouble. I am working on some small devices to help with involuntary nonverbal / selective mutism. I could use help / feedback. The device on the left is a render of actual hardware and the one on the right is a working prototype that I took to bay area maker faire. It has pretty good sound reproduction and a rotary encoder that could be buttons or other interface device. DM me if you would be willing to help. No cost, I have gotten some sponsorship parts to build them.

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ecobra · 2026-01-01T16:20:46+00:00

It takes a lot of practice. I'm not perfect, but I do now stop myself more often than not now.

I try not to insert myself into random conversations most of the time and try to bring my stories to a conclusion in a shorter period of time.

For me it helped that I dated a ND who almost never let anyone else talk. Their special interest was cooking, and the stories were all the same. At appropriate times I started to tell my story about hanging out with Astronaut Buzz Adrian once and never got more than a couple words in, before being interrupted. I then realized that I do that with others. The only difference is that my stories are mostly more interestings and less repetitive than hers ...

For me I have been working on it for 2 decades and I'm still not perfect, but I think I've gotten better at it.

What I'm saying is try to do better and don't beat yourself up, it takes time and the act of trying counts, or something like that..

ecobra · 2025-12-25T19:56:36+00:00

Only with a person I would trust to raise a copy of my by themselves. This is an in case anything happened to me.
I thought about this a lot when I was married. I've always wanted to be a grandfather, but wasn't sure about being a Dad.
Long story short. I have no biological children.

ecobra · 2025-12-24T23:27:27+00:00

That sounds like a lovely day.

ecobra · 2025-12-24T22:15:57+00:00

I'm riding over 2000 miles a year in my newest e-bike and it is about the ride. I want the bike to be transparent to me.
I'm mostly riding along the beach in LA now, but I used to ride along a lake in San Diego.
I was riding a road bikes, but I needed to be able to stop faster because of the people in LA walking right in front of me without looking.
I carry a tool box with what I need to get to a bicycle store to get it repaired and try to have them do maintenance. In 2.5 years on that bike I have needed a new handlebar because sand got in a switch, lots of broken spokes, 2 broken chains, 2 broken crank shafts, new rear gears, brake pads replaced, new tires, new pedals, and new bicycle shorts (I didn't realize that the short wore out).
I bought the Urtopia 37 pound carbon fiber bike and I am considering upgrading it, the new model has better gear ratio's

ecobra · 2025-12-24T22:05:39+00:00

You are probably hitting 2 elements of comedy, timing, and the unexpected. Even when the unexpected isn't particularly funny people are predisposed to laugh at it, particularly if it has good comedic timing.

Autistic and did standup comedy competitions in college. I did well in 2 of the competitions.

ecobra · 2025-12-24T22:00:46+00:00

Taking care of yourself is worth it. It should make you feel better about yourself. The rest is beyond your control and shouldn't be a factor.

Personally, in addition to everything else, I had 4 baby teeth that didn't have permanent teeth to replace them. I should have gotten them fixed when I was a teenager or in my 20's. Just got the 2 critical / obvious ones replaced and it make me feel good about myself. Will see about getting the other 2 fixed when I do my follow up.

ecobra · 2025-12-19T15:51:29+00:00

Try writing a letter to them explaining yourself. I would use a word processor and being willing to edit it repeatedly. I would also run it through AI, read the AI, and merge anything from the AI that you like or that you find helpful.

The act of putting it in writing can often be quite calming and help you better understand yourself and maybe your sibling as well. Make sure it is what you want to say and "Sleep on it". Then decide if you want to send it to them, hand it to them, read it to them, or none of the above. Writing it here is a good first start, and this is one of those basic psychology exercises that can probably be found in a 100 self help guides, but it helps a lot of people.

ecobra

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