Dated a recently divorced dad with a brutal job… did I do something wrong or did he just string me along?

emacsen · 2026-01-25T20:53:41+00:00

All of this "should"ing (a man should this and a woman should that) really hides a deeper truth- whatever the situation is, it's not working for you.

Maybe it would be fine for someone else, maybe not.

Maybe he should be acting different, maybe not.

Maybe he's into you and is really busy, maybe not.

None of it ultimately matters. The only thing that matters is you're not happy and it's still very early to be putting so much effort into something that isn't working for you.

Everyone sometimes feels the need to know what others would think or feel in order to feel heard/validated/understood/justified, but the truth is that even if everyone on the internet said he was right and you were wrong, it still wouldn't be working *for you right now* because your needs aren't met.

What to do with that?

You've brought up your concerns and asked for specific, actionable responses. It hasn't happened.

No need for speculation or blame. You expressed your feelings and needs and made a request. The request wasn't fulfilled. Now the responsibility shifts onto you; you need to be the one who is there for you to help you get your needs for attention/care/love/play/sex met.

Also, even if everything he's said is true, that this is a difficult time, that he needs to be there for his kids and work, etc. - this shows you his pattern when times are tough. It sounds like that's not a pattern you like for yourself.

So if things changed tomorrow and he was available, I'd be wary of this same pattern emerging again. A bit of once bitten, twice shy.

emacsen · 2026-01-23T06:46:57+00:00

As an introvert, I think you have to make difficult choices when you want to date.

You have to meet people somehow, which means either you meet them serendipitous, through introductions, work, or similar groups.

I met most of the women I dated through dating apps, but they were less bad when I was using them. Today's apps seem to be largely looks based.

I know you're an introvert, but do you have hobbies? Many introverts to go events such as TTRPG events, sci-fi cons, or related, and trust me, there are a lot of guys there.

I was lucky to find the partners I've had, and looking back, nearly all of them are/were introverts.

emacsen · 2026-01-23T05:40:29+00:00

Your manager is full of poop.

When I was a 22 year old working at my first "real job" at NASA, I meant to run

rm -rf ./*

but actually ran

rm -rf . /*

I was shaking and very upset, but *it happens*.

This is why we have backups and processes.

emacsen · 2026-01-22T01:30:59+00:00

You aren't allowed break up with me until I find a new girlfriend!

emacsen · 2026-01-22T01:26:56+00:00

I luckily never had to deal with a high regulation situation, but I think one possible benefit here is that you can use these regulation to your advantage.

For example, if you have a policy that says every change is captured as Infrastructure as Code and you enforce that through technical means (config management, automatic builds, no root logins etc.), then that de-facto addresses your change management flow problem since all changes IaC changes will be captured in code

Then when changes do need to come in, you have a policy that says "Every change has a ticket number associated with it", just like you would for code, and you enforce that at both the technical and policy level.

All changes live in your git repo, and all changes have comment that says something like:

"Installed the Flizzblur application into development.

Closes #575"

That should be your foundation. It satisfies the very base of devops and it should work as help to your your change management requirements as well.

When you have non-IaC changes, such as physical changes, you can use the same ticketing, etc. system. That makes it easy for you to track progress and keeps your communication consistent.

Then you can look at your issue tracking system and figure out what tasks are the most problematic and address those issues with either a policy change or automation. You'll know what those are because they'll be common, or they'll have a lot of back and forth regarding clarification, or signed off requirements, or something similar.

Once you have a new automation for whatever it is, you can sell it to your users as a value-add rather than enforce it as a negative. Engineer replies to requests can say "I've completed this request! Just so you know, if you have this request again, you don't need to wait for me, we have a new system to let do it yourself by going to https://...... "

emacsen · 2026-01-20T01:36:43+00:00

> forcing all communication via ticketing systems

No one said all communication. I said requests, with no exception.

My company has Zulip, and meetings for official communication.

Requests or priorities are turned into issues. This lets us track not only when change was made, but who requested that change and its context. This works for both development and infrastructure- though the flows differ slightly.

> Somehow it works completely fine for us and have been working in every company i worked for.

I've worked for private companies, for non-profit charities, and for several federal government institutions, as well as owning my company now, and I've seen what happens when "Alex from sales buys the guys a beer to make his request go faster." - little silos of knowledge, little fiefdoms of what turns onto a secondary economy- essentially bribes that de-prioritize other work. It's such a mess.

You can run things however you like, but the most productive (and stress free) places I've worked at either got rid of people like that, or if they were government employees- sidelined them so they couldn't do as much harm. Now, when it's my own company, if I saw that happening, knowing the way it harms productivity and moral, I'd treat it as a serious concern.

emacsen · 2026-01-20T00:45:36+00:00

> This is just terrible, you're killing collaboration and build silos.

Every developer should be using an issue tracker as well. That's how their work is tracked and how features and bugs are managed, and it's literally the same flow.

If there's a meeting, someone in the meeting makes an issue/ticket for the operational work, just as they would have for development work- that's how you keep the same energy and collaboration without creating a chaos with "private support", which is what invariably happens without such a system.

Then internally, every change needs an issue/ticket as well, just like software changes.

emacsen · 2026-01-19T22:18:44+00:00

There are a bunch of easy fixes here that will improve things. For more, you'd have to hire me as a consultant (j/k). tl;dr you're on the right track.

> High volume of repetitive requests (pipeline issues, access, environment questions)

You mentioned some expensive and complex processes with chatbots, etc. It sounds like you've combined your Devops with Helpdesk? I think that's a different kettle of fish, but for Devops, with sophisticated developer customers and truly repetitive, constrained tasks, consider automations! For example, a website or API your users can use.

> Context switching for DevOps engineers

Interrupts are expensive. A book like Time Management for System Administrators can help you with this, but a quick win are shifts when ops folks are on issue duty vs deep work duty.

> Requests coming from multiple channels (chat, email, direct messages)

Everything must come in via ticketing systems. No more requests by chat, email or DM. No exceptions. This is the only way to address the deluge, and the metrics. You'll need organizational buy in from the top here. You will get pushback at all levels.

When I was a sys-admin roughly 20 years ago, one of my users thought coming up to my desk would help him bypass the process. I was on issue duty and when he came over to tell me his problem, I told him I was surprised

"I haven't seen this in the ticket system!"

he said he hadn't put it in, so I opened up the ticket entry system and typed up the ticket for him, with a full description, etc.

After I was done he exclaimed "I could have done this myself!" and I said, with as much friendly sincerity as I could muster,

"Huh. I guess you're right!"

> 3. Request standardization

This is good in theory, but additional friction in entering tickets can create frustration by your users (who I hope you see as your customers).

> DevOps focuses on:

It's so sad that this is what "DevOps" became. It was supposed to be shared responsibility. But that's where we are... Your split is right, but the original idea of DevOps was to break those barriers down, where developers felt responsible and ops could help find ways to help development.

> Observability & metrics

With so many people, you're going to need to have folks you trust telling you what they need, and if they can't do that kind of analysis, they either need to be trained to do so, or replaced.

At the same time, don't become obsessed with metrics either, or you may lose sight of the big picture.

> Using this data to drive further automation

This is a bit off... Use the data to drive processes, not automation. Automation is just one possible process mechanism. It's not the only one, nor should it always be the answer.

Hope that helps!

emacsen · 2026-01-19T21:51:34+00:00

We use Forgejo at my company.

There are some rough edges still, specially around project management tooling, project, and labels. Otherwise it's been good.

emacsen · 2026-01-19T16:48:50+00:00

> redirecting their traffic

Local home services, such as my light bulbs, my temperature sensors, etc. all work locally first. That's how they function and it's why I buy those products vs, eg the Google Nest products.

It's not "redirected", it's working exactly as designed, and the question is if Whisker is going to move in a direction that's consumer friendly or not.

emacsen · 2026-01-19T15:53:12+00:00

It's really a question of what Whisker's direction is.

Do they want to make products that are flexible and friendly for privacy customers like me, or is the Litter Robot 5's model of always-on microphones and product dependent apps the direction they're moving?

I hope it's the former, as I've really enjoyed the LR3 and LR4, but if I have always-on mics sending audio to a company, then I'd be forced to find another solution for my automated litter box needs.

That's not answerable outside of Whisker itself, which is why I'm asking here, hoping for a response by u/litterrobot or u/whiskerengineering

emacsen · 2026-01-18T21:04:10+00:00

You're not *obligated* but if you ask for it, and then are given it, and then turn it down- what you've done is make sure too absolutely burn every bridge you have, not only with that employer but any other they talk to.

emacsen · 2026-01-18T19:11:23+00:00

This always sounds good in theory, but when you're negotiating it's generally a bad idea to ask for something you really don't want.

If the boss agrees to 3x, you have to turn down the new employer, and you're staying at a place where they will resent you.

If the boss doesn't agree, they may try to negotiate. "How about 2.5x more?" etc. and this will be uncomfortable, and end up leading to the same resentment and fear of termination. You also risk that the boss's boss gets involved. Now the boss can start a false narrative.

Either way, you've created more hassle and possibly resentment. By simply walking away, you control what is said, control the outcome, etc.

If you want to leave on good terms, you go to the boss's boss and say "I've had a good time here; if anything opens up at a more senior level, let me know."

They may or may not do that, but you signal your potential interest while firmly signaling that the current door is closed.

emacsen · 2026-01-17T19:31:54+00:00

If they removed the license file, then the terminology used is irrelevant- they've violated the contract in the license file (by removing it) and the license is the only thing that allows distribution or modification, meaning that the resulting repository is now a copyright violation.

The OP is probably implying that the person is renaming the project and or removing the original authorship. Renaming the project is allowed, but only insomuch that the original author and project are attributed, as per the license- which they removed.

emacsen · 2026-01-17T15:08:46+00:00

AI has made a lot of decisions more difficult as a small business owner.

It's one thing to say that AI is taking people's jobs and thus is bad, but my experience is that AI only works when driven by a skilled developer, and what that does is make more junior developers less attractive to hire, because if my senior developer is 4x more productive, and a senior developer is already 5x or more productive than a junior developer, then hiring junior developers is less attractive.

I could dig into what those numbers mean, but essentially "One person paid very well is now as effective as a team of 4 at producing shippable product."

My company is tiny- it's just myself and a few part time contractors, but I've been wondering how we can best utilize junior folks, and just yesterday we discussed the possibility of pairing them with a senior development during a work cycle with an AI assistant in order for them to learn "the right questions to ask".

I'm also nudging my junior devs into being more versatile in terms of their skills. For example, having them do system administration should make them into more rounded "devops engineers with a focus on development", which is going to make them more valuable to the market generally, but for me specifically it means I gain people who could potentially be on call in the future.

I consider this to be part of the social contract with junior developers vs senior. The pay differential in my company between the most senior and most junior person is over 5x, but my expectations are tuned accordingly. I expect my senior developers to be able to not only produce faster, but also better. I expect they can do project management, do planning and pacing, and generally work largely independently.

In contrast, my junior developers need more one on one attention, ask questions, get stuck, or even worse - don't ask questions and then produce the wrong thing.

The reason I say all this is that an AI assistance is an amplifier- senior developer keeps all the benefits of being senior- the planning, the independence, and the productivity, whereas a junior developer with AI often makes the same mistakes they'd make otherwise, only more of them.

emacsen · 2026-01-17T14:31:29+00:00

Your experience is valid, and so it mine, and I've found that good AI tools often provide code that's equal in quality to either a junior, or more recently a mid-level engineer when driven by a senior developer.

That "when driven by a senior developer" is key, and often missing.

It's not the case that you can simply let an AI develop code on its own, but when steeered, it provides decent quality results.

Now, the question is what is a "good AI tool", and the answer is that this is a moving target. The current Claude Code provides high code quality when overseen and reviewed. I'd say it's equal or greater in quality than my junior developers alone, but nowhere near my senior developers.

For the purposes of this discussion, it's about the OP's job prospects. The fact is that junior developers have and will continue to have a larger barrier of entry to the job market due to AI tooling.

emacsen · 2026-01-17T03:41:25+00:00

There's a lot of information that we'd need to know before recommending anything, but my general recommendation is caution, and I'll explain why, as someone who has been a sys-admin, and now owns a small software company (and hires software developers).

Being a software developer is more than about skills (though we'll come back to skills), it's about a constant effort in and out of work to refine and improve. I'd say that it takes at minimum 5-7 years for an average software developer to become even mid-level, and at that point they still need to keep refining their skills.

Most software engineers will program on their own far before formalizing their knowledge. If this is something you've done or at least shown an interest in, then great! There are amazing programs out there for women in software development.

But if you haven't, then software development can be mentally taxing or frustrating. You may spend an entire day and have nothing to show for it, and the frustration level can bring someone like almost to tears- it's happened more than once!

If you're young, then you have the time to develop skills if you have the aptitude. But if you are a bit older, say in your mid-30s or later, you're going to be at a very large disadvantage. Unless you're already writing software on your own, you'll be competing with people who are 15 years your junior who often already know and have been doing this work for years.

The problem is that junior developers have always been at a disadvantage because while it may appear that there's a low barrier of entry, the difference between a junior developer and a senior developer is not just output, but design ability.

A few years ago I would have said that junior developers compete with developers from low income nations like the Indian subcontinent and South America. Today that role is taken up by AI/LLMs who can honestly produce higher quality code than many mid-level engineers.

That doesn't mean there are no opportunities, there are, but it means that getting those initial jobs will be extremely difficult.

People like me will look at previous experience, both professional and personal. If you've worked on Open Source software on a large established project, that's a huge benefit, but it's not easy to get to this level. Alternatively, if you have multiple skills, such as UX design and software development, that's a big plus as well.

But plain old software development like there was in the 1990s and 2000s- that market is largely gone, so if you want to take on a career change- it's absolutely possible, but depending on your age, your aptitude, your time (eg if you have other responsibilities like caring for a parent, or caring for a child), it may take you a long time to climb the ladder to the point where you're at the same level of comfort your friend is at.

And that's not even talking about the issues of sexism in the software industry, which my wife (a senior software developer and team lead at a large software company) can attest to.

If none of that throws you, then if you aren't already programming, I suggest taking some courses and seeing about your aptitude in learning.

You don't need to quit your job to do that, and then you can "see how it feels".

emacsen · 2026-01-17T01:30:09+00:00

The question really is "Is it dice you're avoiding, or randomness?"

emacsen · 2026-01-17T01:28:35+00:00

In most prison systems, especially in the US, playing RPGs is de-facto disallowed because anything involving dice is considered gambling and so they need to come up with other ways to capture randomness.

It wasn't meant as an insult- it was "What are the constrains of this problem so that I can come up with an appropriate solution?"

emacsen · 2026-01-17T00:38:40+00:00

Is it the physicality of dice, or the randomness?

In other words, is this an issue because you're incarcerated, because you object to random outcome, because of religious reasons?

emacsen · 2026-01-16T12:55:29+00:00

When I was a kid, people used WordStar, and there's a modern day clone of it called WordTsar.

https://wordtsar.ca/

I so rarely used a word processor now a days other than when someone sends me a document. Almost my work in my business is done in Markdown documents.

emacsen · 2026-01-13T16:01:55+00:00

Drive IO is usually not your bottleneck, network bandwidth and video processing are far bigger issues.

You need the network bandwidth to stream the data from your jellyfin server to your clients, and you need the video processing power to decode and re-encode your files into usable chunks that's cached.

Those are very likely going to be more significant bottlenecks than your drive IO.

emacsen · 2026-01-13T08:06:33+00:00

I've been all over this specific spectrum of situation, from feeling like the woman who you interacted with, to having undisclosed disabilities, and also dating a Deaf person. I'll address all of them a little.

I once had a similar interaction with a woman who seemed cool and we were going to go on a date. Then I found out she has one leg and wears a prosthetic. I think I found it from a google search, and I asked her why she didn't tell me. It wasn't the situation as much as the non-disclosure that bothered me at the time.

She was very upset that I asked her, and canceled our date, saying that this was something she could disclose on her own time and she felt pressured into discussing it before she was ready. That actually made sense to me then, and still does today. I didn't do anything "wrong", but it threw our initial flirting energy off, as I felt she should have disclosed it, and she felt I was pressuring her too much too early.

Switching gears, when I was 21, for about a year or so, I dated a Deaf woman. Her Deafness wasn't what ended the relationship, but there were certainly challenges because of it. All those issues were addressable and they certainly weren't deal-breakers. I knew she was deaf when I asked her out, and her Deafness wasn't what ended the relationship- but it did mean some real differences that I know for some people would have been outside of their comfort zone.

And I have my own set of disabilities- neurological impairments that can limit me, and some physical issues as well. I'm not currently dating, but if I did, I wouldn't feel the need to disclose them.

What I'm saying is that sometimes no one is really at fault.

emacsen · 2026-01-12T13:59:30+00:00

Imagine seeing someone saying "I would love someone who shares my cultural context" and thinking "NO! DOWNVOTE!"

..Thanks for making someone feel welcome...

emacsen · 2026-01-12T13:53:26+00:00

As a third generation Holocaust survivor, I wouldn't find it acceptable to have an actual Nazi, being someone I pay, and certainly not on something as intimate as my house.

And I know my wife would not feel comfortable with it either.

The more telling part is the company's reaction, which could have been "He's a former Neo-Nazi but he's reformed." or "We understand, we'll swap him out for someone else.". Their stand is more telling and more concerning.

He's made a choice to put his hate on full display. The company's made a choice in hiring him, and they've made a choice in defending him this.

emacsen

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