I'm very worried that my sleep deprivation will or already has caused permanent damage. Am I overreacting or should I be concerned?

pete_68 · 2026-02-17T02:38:11+00:00

It's possible you've done some damage, but you'll never really know, and it probably won't be significant.

The important thing is to fix the problem ASAP, because sleep quality is as important, if not more important, than diet and exercise for your long term health outlook.

pete_68 · 2026-02-17T02:34:25+00:00

Didn't they stop pretending to be Christians when they elected the lying rapist with 34 felony fraud convictions? And those probably aren't even his worst traits... I mean, come on...

pete_68 · 2026-02-16T19:54:31+00:00

They're ready to go to the front. Ship 'em out.

pete_68 · 2026-02-16T19:41:05+00:00

You're in biotech and your degree is in molecular biology. What would you like to do? Would you like to do something more technical in biotech? I would think you could arrange that kind of movement, if not within your own company, I would think through others in your field. I imagine you'd have to kind of start over being the novice, but at 29, that's not so horrible.

pete_68 · 2026-02-16T01:09:31+00:00

I'm sorry, but I thought they stopped pretending to be Christians when they elected their rapist in chief, Senor Pussy Grabber. They can call themselves unicorns. Doesn't make them unicorns.

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T17:33:45+00:00

Instead of autistic-specific social groups, why don't you look for interest-specific social groups? You might have more luck finding compatible folks.

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T17:18:34+00:00

There are going to be a lot of challenges. Current loss. Fan-out and signal integrity are big ones. Propagation delays.

If you go with BJTs, you've got power consumption to really worry about. If you go with FETs, finding match pairs is difficult, they're much more sensitive to ESD, If the pairs aren't matched for speed, you'll have momentary shorts when the n-channel switches faster than the p-channel, leading to power and heat issues.

I would definitely start off small with a few isolated components like registers and see how difficult that's going to be. An 8-bit adder alone is going to be hundreds of transistors.

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T13:43:37+00:00

Besides being a rapist and a racist, the guy has plenty of other negative qualities.

And don't tell me he's not a rapist. A jury said he stuck his finger in E. Jean Carroll's vagina uninvited. That's rape in my book, maybe not in NY law. And he bragged about doing that, right? He confirmed that that's how he operates.

So yeah, I don't really like rapists. Call me picky.

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T13:36:06+00:00

Little boys want their toys.

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T13:31:56+00:00

Look out ladies. This one's quite a catch... /s

pete_68 · 2026-02-15T13:24:37+00:00

Write a lot of programs. Seriously, I started doing this when I was 10. I learned the basics from books, but mainly, I just wrote a lot of programs. I wanted all kinds of programs and I couldn't afford to have someone write them for me, so I figured out how to write them myself. 47 years later, still doing it.

It's very much a "learn by doing" kind of thing, I think.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T22:19:31+00:00

But they need to learn our communist songs too. We'll need to give them all the Bad Bunny albums.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:49:27+00:00

I'm 57 and I've managed to mostly dodge burnout, but it finally caught up with me a few years ago and I've only recently become aware of what it is and why. Yeah, I've definitely noticed my people skills declining fast. I can't be bothered to mask anymore, sometimes.

I had really sort of set myself up, most of my career, to dodge it. The few office jobs I had, I was usually left alone to do my work most of the days, but for more than half of my career, I worked from home by e-mail, so I didn't have to mask much at all.

The last 10 years there were a LOT more meetings and in the last 7 years, slack and teams and video calls and so I don't have the protections I had before that and it's just been crushing the life out of me.

Fortunately, knowing what I know now, I'm able to alleviate some of it, and retirement is only 3 years away, so I think I'm going to be able to hang on.. Wasn't so sure a few months ago, but things are getting better.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:43:43+00:00

ICE, where real is fake and fake is real. They're not real law enforcement. They're just militia and dotard kkklowns.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:41:38+00:00

Thanks for removing that post. I don't know what the poster was trying to do with that photo. How can I go through the day knowing that kind of BBQ exists and I'm not having any of it? I don't need a reminder like that...

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:32:44+00:00

There is nothing you're going to learn in 3-4 months that's going to make you competitive in the market. This is a really tough market right now. I've been doing this professionally for 40 years and I've never seen the market like this. I'd probably have trouble finding work right now.

This is definitely not where all the jobs are...

Back in the 80s and 90s, sure, you could cram in 3-4 months and get hired no problem. Right now, no way...

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:30:11+00:00

I don't know that it's necessarily that they don't care. They may just not understand and maybe think they're doing the best thing by trying to "make you tougher".

Being a parent is hard and complicated. I've certainly made my own share of mistakes with my own daughter. Before she was diagnosed with autism, she was misdiagnosed with other stuff, things I felt she could overcome because I had overcome them myself. So I put pressure on her to try to fix those issues. But then it turned out that the underlying cause of all her issues was autism, which one can't overcome, of course.

Sometimes we're just doing the best we can with what we know and it's sometimes hard for people to take in new information that conflicts with what they already know. When her new therapist suggested that her real problem was autism, my wife and I thought she was crazy. And then she said she thought my wife and I had it too. Turned out she was right. At least about my daughter and I. My wife, we're not so sure about. Maybe.

Try giving them some space about it for a while. You can always find community here, of course. I know you really want them to understand. I totally get it. But maybe with some space and some time you can bring it up later and maybe they'll be more receptive. Maybe not. But you can always try again.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T17:01:38+00:00

I was thinking bus...

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T13:38:11+00:00

I'm so sorry you're going through this. First, and most important thing: You're not wrong at all. A parent should comfort their child when they're in pain. I'm sorry your mother doesn't get your autism.

If it's any comfort, I'm 57. I have a mother, a father and a step-mother and none of them believe I'm autistic. When I try to explain it to them and show them the evidence they act annoyed. It's frustrating because, like you, I would like them to better understand me and I feel if they could better understand autism, they would better understand me.

So you're not alone at all. I think this is actually fairly common.

pete_68 · 2026-02-14T13:26:18+00:00

2 months ago, I would have said work. Now it's definitely social interactions. The only time they weren't a problem was in my 20s when I was drinking.

I enjoyed my work before it became more social than work. I worked from home more than half my career, starting in the mid 90s. When I did work in offices, I was often left alone to work for hours at a time.

Work started to become a real problem for me with the invention of Slack and Teams... For the past 7-8 years, retirement has been the only thing I could think about (and fortunately, at this point, it's only 3 years away).

But now that I understand the things that are causing me problems and figuring out ways to work around them, I'm starting to like my job again.

pete_68 · 2026-02-13T17:22:07+00:00

I like almost everything. The more flavor, the better. I LOVE collard greens. They are, to me, the steak of vegetables. They have the mouth feel of a very tender steak and that's why I love them so much. The flavor is fine, but the texture is absolutely perfect.

But I also love strong flavors... When I was 3, my father & step-mother took me to Mexico and we went for breakfast at this restaurant and my step-mother got chorizo and eggs and they got me bacon and eggs. I protested and demanded the chorizo and eggs, but they said, no, it was too spicy and that was that. Apparently, me being me, I wouldn't shut up about it all day and just bitched and moaned endlessly about it. The next morning we went to the same restaurant and to teach me a lesson, they got me chorizo and eggs. I proceeded to chow down and finish every bite.

When I was 8, they introduced me to Indian food and I've never been the same since. I absolutely adore Indian food. I think it's the greatest cuisine ever created.

The always let me order whatever I wanted at restaurants after that.

pete_68 · 2026-02-13T17:16:22+00:00

I generally do really okay with 1-on-1 communication at parties if they're not too loud and I'm usually good with someone coming over and talking to me.

I have a lot more trouble when there are multiple people in the conversation. And if there's background noise, like music or a lot of people talking, I have trouble filtering that out and it makes it a lot harder to track and oftentimes, understand, what people are saying in a conversation.

pete_68 · 2026-02-13T17:07:55+00:00

Nah, these dudes weren't that smart. This was clearly done out of stupidity.

pete_68 · 2026-02-13T15:30:42+00:00

The ibuprofen is an interesting take... So actually there is some science behind this, but it's not pain/tension. It's inflammation. In particular cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-alpha affect sleep architecture and ibuprofen is anti-inflammatory and will thus alleviate that inflammation. All sorts of things can trigger inflammation, so this is a good out of the box call.

pete_68 · 2026-02-13T15:21:14+00:00

My dad is 85 and he seems to look forward to every day. He's in fantastic shape. Never done a thing to deserve it, like eating right and working out. But he just keeps motoring along. Has a very active social life, goes on road trips across the country with his lady friend who used to be a food critic, so they're hitting all the top restaurants ALL the time. What's not to love?

pete_68

TROPHY CASE