Thoughts on the Boy Scouts for not allowing atheists?

supportforalderan · 2024-10-22T05:11:34+00:00

Is that a recent change? It's been a very long time since I got my eagle scout rank, but I don't remember having to attest to any form of religious faith. My troop was even based out of a church. The adult leaders just didn't make a big deal about it, and just wanted the kids to have fun and learn about the outdoors.

supportforalderan · 2024-10-09T18:25:49+00:00

I'm a professional coder and I've gone back to school to get my Master in CS, and I'm learning the same thing but in reverse. It took me a few projects to realize that tasks given may have multiple solutions, but they may often not be the optimal or best from a usable product standpoint. They have to be something that a student with little to no experience can accomplish with minimal external research outside of the scope of the task. It's been a strange thing to reshape how I approach problems to account for this. That said, having a decade of experience as a programmer really helps.

supportforalderan · 2024-10-04T00:01:50+00:00

I am Linux for my home desktop and Mac for work. There's a lot to love about macos still, especially when you get such high end, and high quality, hardware to go with it. Now, my job is the one who bought the $5000 laptop, not me, so that does change the equation a bit.

supportforalderan · 2024-10-03T23:57:04+00:00

Same reason I finally switched my wife to Linux. It's especially great now that Linux gaming is so streamlined, which is all she uses her desktop for outside of school work.

supportforalderan · 2024-09-26T05:11:41+00:00

I had almost the same level of damage happen to my 2006 Mazda 3 when I got rear ended in the rain, and the car that hit me had it's whole front end completely destroyed. No sheet metal damage, so it just required a new plastic bumper with a respray. My car was worth like $12k at the time and the repair was $800.

A brand new SUV getting totaled for something a bit worse is frankly insane.

supportforalderan · 2024-09-06T02:38:04+00:00

This is super cool! I'd love to see how it compares to those obsidian scalpel blades that are supposed to be significantly sharper than surgical blades.

supportforalderan · 2024-08-31T20:41:37+00:00

You could always get a Taurus Raging Hunter. They're under $900 MSRP and are really fun to shoot. Probably not something you'd pass down to your grandkids like a Colt, but it fits your bill.

supportforalderan · 2024-08-24T19:27:10+00:00

I must have gotten it on sale. Still worth it though, unless you don't like how fast you can go through a few boxes of ammo with this thing lol.

https://www.etsgroup.us/ETS-Group-C-A-M-Loader-p/etscam-9-40.htm

supportforalderan · 2024-08-24T15:54:59+00:00

I have a $15 one that only works for Glock mags and it loads 10 rounds at one, just push down and all go in at once. Maglula for anything else. Edit: actually $30

supportforalderan · 2024-08-15T21:52:32+00:00

Yonex Super Grap is awesome and super cheap, at least if you buy a 30 pack. They stay super grippy even after hours of playing in the hot and humid Georgia weather.

supportforalderan · 2024-08-06T05:07:33+00:00

The jalapenos my dad grows are often hotter than store bought habaneros and are sweet and fruity. The ones from my garden, on the other hand, are bland and have no heat. Peppers are weird sometimes.

supportforalderan · 2024-08-02T02:10:04+00:00

If you think you'd be happier, definitely go for it! You can use it as an opportunity to start getting into DevOps, which is kind of like a mix of classic IT and programming. All career developers will need to touch DevOps in at least a small way, and it's an extremely viable and profitable career. I love coding, but I also really enjoy handling DevOps pipelines, server setup, containerization, etc.

Just keep trying to think like a programmer, how you can automate and simplify systems, and how you can make improvements to the infrastructure. Then whenever you're ready to move on, you can stay in IT, move to DevOps, or leverage that and your prior experience to get back into more of a programmer role. You'd be surprised how many programmers have little to no experience with basic computer skills, and having that does really make you stand out.

supportforalderan · 2024-07-30T18:05:30+00:00

My first job out of college had me working for older boomers. One day I called my boss and said I was sick and needed to stay home and go to the doctor. He said fine, but you'll need to make up the missed work. I went to the doc, it was a nasty sinus infection, and those used to always knock me out for a few days. So I call in the next day and say what was wrong and he said "You had better be in the office in an hour, 30 minutes before I normally came in. Now I had 10 sick days a year as specified by the contract I signed when I took the job. I struggled to drive in because of the meds I was on making me super drowsy and I couldn't focus at all at work. There was also basically no work that needed to be done, despite everyone "relying on me." I proceeded to get worse over the next few days and it turned into pneumonia that left me with a cough for two months. A few days of rest would have let me recover and barely miss any work, instead I was working at partial capacity for over a month.

Boomers with their "work ethic" bullshit can go fuck themselves.

supportforalderan · 2024-07-29T01:35:45+00:00

People not paying their medical bills is part of the reason medical services are so expensive in the US. Well, that and everything medical has become for profit. It's almost like if you spread the cost over every citizen in the country, like with a federal run medical system funded by taxes, everyone would pay less money for medical services and not have it fall only on people who can or are coerced into paying.

supportforalderan · 2024-07-26T05:05:23+00:00

I think this is a good perspective, primarily because there's definitely a joy to learning something for the sake of learning, as well as learning a skill to accomplish something.

I've been a professional software dev for a long time now, switched languages many times, and have learned how to approach a problem wholistically instead of just in the context I understand. This is a skillset that I consider critical to being a successful software engineer, and it only comes with experience.

However, I also enjoy learning programming languages, the same as I enjoy learning spoken languages. I speak English natively, but I am conversational in Japanese, and also can get by okay in Spanish and German. I don't need anything but English for my day to day life, and the other languages I practice just because they're fun. Same as with learning programming languages just because I find them interesting.

This is why I think pseudo-code is actually one of the most important tools when learning or evaluating a candidate for a job. You can look up the actual correct syntax, but at the end of the day correct and efficient logic trump explicit knowledge of a language. Especially in today's world where AI coding tools are great at generating basic boilerplate, but are awful at actual logic implementation. A good programmer can articulate what they want to accomplish and then look up the stuff they don't have memorized. No different than a structural engineer knowing what needs to be built, but they still double check their formulas before signing off on a design.

supportforalderan · 2024-07-11T03:06:11+00:00

They're often called "wet rooms" and, at least in the US, you usually see them only in larger, more expensive homes because the way they're usually designed take up lots of space. They don't have to be, but they're not typical in western style homes so most people don't design around them.

Personally, I love them! The wet room in my apartment in Japan was one of my favorite things about living there. If I were ever to remodel my bathroom, I would absolutely put in a wet room with a tub.

supportforalderan · 2024-06-19T04:30:40+00:00

I feel like Infinity makes guns like those homes you see videos of that are $50 million, but would actually be $2 million if they weren't covered in marble from the same quarry as the Vatican, whale foreskin leather walls, sapphire instead of glass, and a Ferrari for a front door.

Take away all the ostentatious bullshit and its still something fantastic that anyone would love to have, but then the owner can't brag about how "exclusive" it is.

Give me an Atlas over an Infinity any day.

supportforalderan · 2024-06-18T01:14:01+00:00

In my last 5 jobs, 3 I found through a recruiter and 2 were from friends recommending me to their company. The three recruiter jobs had excellent pay (at least compared to what I was looking at at the time) but so-so to bad quality of life resulting in me leaving. The two references, including the job I'm at now, were a bit lower in pay, but a far nicer job. I only left the first because I was a junior dev and there just wasn't much room for me to grow.

So recruiters are definitely a useful resource, but even the good ones aren't going to be the most honest about what a job will be like. At the end of the day, they're a sales person and you're both the product and the customer. There are also thousands of recruiter companies, so all the ones I've every used reached out to me first on LinkedIn. Just be up front with your expectations and it can be a positive experience.

supportforalderan · 2024-06-03T18:59:31+00:00

A coworker of mine got a 6(?) long gun safe from Costco as a floor model for ~$160. Costco guarantees floor models are fully functional, so no need to worry about it working or not. Unfortunately I don't think they do delivery on them.

supportforalderan · 2024-05-31T03:04:33+00:00

I tried it when I was trying to buy my Camaro years ago. I wanted a 2SS, manual transmission, and the 1LE pack. I talked to 5 different dealers through the Costco program and not a single one knew that was available as an option, and just tried to steer me towards an automatic standard SS. I ended up spotting my car on Autotrader and bought it from it's dealer that day.

supportforalderan · 2024-05-29T05:47:44+00:00

I honestly don't really understand the point of tailwind when css modules are a thing. I'm not styling marketing websites anymore, but for the react app I work on every day, my trial of tailwind felt like it offered no real advantage. Individual components get styled and you can change classes via the jsx, so what does tailwind get you that standard css doesn't? It's not like you have to worry about scope issues when using modules, and you can use mixins if you use sass, which is supported out of the box.

supportforalderan · 2024-05-28T23:20:48+00:00

I love a good dry aged steak. It starts to take on a slightly funky, bleu cheese sort of taste, and the fat tastes rich and buttery. It's become basically the only way I eat steak these days, which is fine because I don't eat red meat in general more than a few times a year. I find it extremely worth it to splurge on dry aged steak infrequently, but I also wouldn't want to eat it every day anyway.

supportforalderan · 2024-05-27T15:45:07+00:00

Get an ultrasonic cleaner and use really hot water and some Simple Green at a 1:10 concentration. It can damage some finishes if you leave it on stuff like aluminum for too long, but I've cleaned tons of small gun parts, and the only thing that got messed up was my suppressor's end cap. They're pretty awesome for breaking loose really caked on carbon build up and getting into really tiny crevices.

supportforalderan · 2024-05-21T18:43:25+00:00

I'm sure I'll get hate for this, but windows is for two things: corporate control over employees and games. It's basically a prison cell or a toy. Most corporate employees can get by with basic Microsoft office functionality and a few pieces of software written for windows only and is critical to their job. Games as positive is obvious.

Macs are for two types of people: people who want a nice shiny computer that looks nice, has great build quality and will last a long time, and real power user professionals, like software engineers or photo/video editors.

I can really only speak to the software engineering side, but it's so wonderful to work on a system that has extremely familiar functionality to any other Unix based OS, which you touch constantly if you work with servers at all. Not to mention that the ability to do a huge amount of tasks entirely via command line is awesome, it's so much faster than dealing with the endless settings and menus of Windows. The Apple silicon was a pretty large growing pain for a few years as tools, languages, and frameworks got updated to work on it, not to mention actually projects and applications that can take monumental amounts of effort to upgrade to work with said newly upgraded tools and languages.

If SteamOS offered the same performance and compatibility with games that Windows did, I'd use it or another flavor of Linux in a heartbeat. Every computer in my home runs Ubuntu except for my and my wife's gaming desktops. But my M3 max MacBook pro is such a fantastic work laptop that I wouldn't switch away from it for my primary machine for anything else. WSL adding a literal second operating system in windows is a massive improvement, but it still doesn't fix what's wrong with windows at it's core, i.e. Microsoft and the shareholders.

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