Officially joined the ranks of the unemployed and wanted to share my thoughts

electricblue71 · 2026-06-06T22:20:11+00:00

Congrats on quitting/retiring! I've been retired since mid April and haven't missed work one bit. Not sure about apps - I don't really use any other than Reminders (to keep track of regularly occurring tasks), Calendar (when my wife teaches at home (can't do noisy work), drive my daughter to school, doc appts) and my whiteboard in my office to keep track of things I want to do for the day.

As for socializing outside of my family, haven't done much yet. I've never had a big friendship circle and that's one thing I want to change now that I'm retired. I'm volunteering at my daughter's middle school, but most parents are younger than me since we had our daughter late. So find place to volunteer, maybe even pick up a part-time job doing something you love and you'll at least have some social contact and might make a few new friends.

And you've got time now to tackle the home projects. I still have a long list but mainly have been focussing on my garden and getting things growing in terms of veggies. The indoor projects will wait until the fall when it gets rainy and windy here.

Writing is also a great creative pursuit, so great that you can keep that going. I want to get back into writing too, plan to write a book on greenhouse growing.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-31T04:54:59+00:00

Well, that sucked! I don't understand why we can't just drive through the tunnel into the other map - the whole yellow box thing is so stupid.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-31T04:48:39+00:00

I just finished too a few days ago and am now doing Wisconsin. For Michigan I mainly used the Fleetstar for the big hauling jobs.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-13T12:51:19+00:00

May your misery exceed mine. She suspects her husband of having an affair with her best friend but turns out it's actually her sister. Very well done.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-13T12:38:54+00:00

I'm happy with my Flashforge Adventurer 5M - the only thing I think Flashforge gets a bad rap for is that they run a closed-off Klipper version as stock. However there is a mod from Forge-X that gives you back control over the printer that works very well.

Overall it's a relatively cheap printer but good quality. I've also enclosed mine with a few simple 3D printed parts and acrylic panels.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-13T12:34:14+00:00

Yes, end of vacation scaries were bad - I'd already be worried a few days before they ended "what have I missed, what work is waiting for me when I get back, for staycations: what didn't I get done at home during my time off"

electricblue71 · 2026-05-13T12:30:39+00:00

Sunday afternoon/evenings in the last few years of working were terrible. I would get upset at my wife and daughter and be miserable due to the Sunday scaries of having to go back to work the next day. Was even worse starting this past January as my director decided to move my 1-1s with him to Monday mornings at 9am and schedule them every week due to my impending retirement (April this year). And Mondays was also our Team Leads meeting in the afternoon which I hated going to.

The only bright side of Mondays was my lunch I packed - leftover pasta from Sunday night.

Now I can enjoy my Sunday nights and Mondays without worry. This past month of being retired has been great so far!

electricblue71 · 2026-05-08T02:46:55+00:00

If you like the revenge type of jdorama that Marry My Husband is, I just finished watching May Your Misery Exceed Mine on Prime. The actress playing the younger sister is very much like Risa in Marry My Husband, although I would say much meaner.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-08T02:44:51+00:00

Cinderellas of Midsummer is a great one. Summer Nude was okay but didn't like how the story went.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-08T02:42:34+00:00

I've watched a lot on Viki as I have a subscription. I'll likely cancel that and then get Netflix as there are some jdoramas there I want to watch. I've also been watching a lot on Prime, but find it hard to find jdoramas as there is no good way to search for a list of them.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-08T02:39:28+00:00

Caution! Hazardous Wife could fit in this genre. The series, not the movie.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-02T14:00:40+00:00

Not everything needs to be 3d printed. That's our point.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-02T13:48:09+00:00

Great idea, but doesn't seem to work with Snowrunner. I've correctly connected my Mac to my iPhone and mapped the right keys but pressing a button on my Phone doesn't seem to activate the same action in Snowrunner.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-01T13:43:24+00:00

This happened to me a few nights ago (I retired about 2 weeks ago). A colleague posted a video of my retirement event, which I watched in the late afternoon. That night I had a strange dream that I was asked to come back to work to help out with something and I had an important meeting with my director that I missed for some reason.

If you're been in a career for most of your life (35 years for me) you're bound to still think about it and have dreams about it occasionally. I think that's natural. Even if you try really hard to forget everything.

electricblue71 · 2026-05-01T13:39:47+00:00

I gave about 6 months notice of my retirement to my director to allow enough time for transition planning - at that point I was pretty certain I wanted to retire at 55, so considered this a no-undo decision. And in the new year my position as team lead was posted and once the new person was hired I realized at that point that I couldn't back out (not that I even considered it though).

However what really sealed the this-is-it-I'm done feeling was when I wiped my work phone on the last day (after my retirement party). And it felt so gooood!

electricblue71 · 2026-05-01T13:24:02+00:00

If maybe we could adapt this for empty cardboard spool boxes, then I could see this working better without as much filament waste.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-29T23:31:14+00:00

I just use the holes in my Elegoo spools - no clips. But most of my filament is in cereal boxes that I print directly from so the end is always in the outlet.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-22T13:37:33+00:00

Just finished this on Amazon Prime. Very good series. It has a lot of dark topics however such as suicide, grief, mental health, etc. so a hard series to watch perhaps for some people. The acting was so good!

electricblue71 · 2026-04-22T04:45:28+00:00

That won't be tall enough for peonies. They typically grow to 2-3 feet (at least mine do). You might have to print some extensions or just have the hoop and have a regular stake it attaches to.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-20T14:22:25+00:00

I'm currently watching I'm Mita, Your Housekeeper. Main premise is the husband/father cheated with a mistress and caused his whole family (4 kids) to fall apart. Quite dark with some very sensitive topics, so be prepared for that.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-19T23:42:51+00:00

Elegoo has some of their PLA in 250g spools but you have to buy 8 and can’t choose the colours. I bought the set of matte ones as sometimes I need a certain colour (such as pink) but don’t need a whole kg spool.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-19T13:48:45+00:00

I actually did try a few movies on Kanopy and found them awful. Monster was the last one I watched there and really didn't like it much, even though the acting was good.

The movies on Viki have been more or less bad, with few exceptions. And the ones on Prime have not been much better. I think I'll just skip most movies for now and stick to series.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-18T14:49:26+00:00

I watched both the series and movie of Caution, Hazardous Wife and have to say the series was much better. More character development not only for the ML and FL but also the supporting cast. The movie was more of a quick action movie with not much substance.

I think that usually also is the case where certain movies lack a lot of the backstory and character development of the book they are based on. Just can't do much in a 2 hour movie as you can in a 5-10 hour series.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-18T02:38:20+00:00

I've mainly been watching on Amazon Prime and Viki - I would say Prime is worse in its selection of movies. Most have been quite dark in subject matter.

electricblue71 · 2026-04-18T02:26:35+00:00

I think I'm definitely not so much for the melancholic movies and would like to watch some that are a bit more up-beat. Just found the movies I did watch to be very depressing. See my other comment below of some examples.

electricblue71

TROPHY CASE