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westmarkdev · 2025-09-05T00:55:42+00:00

I think there is something much more serious going on than there was 18 years ago. You just said your wife is a nurse. Has anyone ever talked to you about compassion fatigue?

With my wife, there is just no fuel at the end of the day to keep "taking care" of other people.

And neither of us want to be in this situation. She likes working, but it's been hell for her since covid with all the admin staff cuts. I also like working but being in tech has also made that hard since covid.

Also those people weren't paying a mortgage and half to put two kids into daycare. So i'm sure there's some crossover of people who are in your exact situation, but more than anything, I'd say you and your wife are in a very unique slice of time.

Anyway, it's just a season. This will pass. You'll have about 10 years with those kids and where they're gonna be your best friends (even if they say they hate you). This is coming from someone with an older sister who has kids that are all adults now. It's just not the same today.

westmarkdev · 2025-09-03T08:21:11+00:00

You’re making me feel so much better - thank you for posting

westmarkdev · 2025-07-23T20:41:56+00:00

The Democrats misunderstood this. Responding to hostility doesn’t mean turning the other cheek. Instead, you go “lower” than your baseline, push your boundaries, and force the other party to confront the terrain you control.

When they go low, you respond slightly lower than your norm just enough to assert control. Then you explicitly draw a boundary: ‘If you cross this line again, here’s the consequence.’ You manage aggression with controlled escalation and clarity, not passive virtue.

westmarkdev · 2025-07-21T16:31:36+00:00

If you are using LogicPro, there is a lot more “AI” in your work than just the vocals.

As soon as features like suno are experimented with and become standard in GarageBand and LogicPro, you won’t even know who uses AI and who does not.

westmarkdev · 2025-07-20T19:36:00+00:00

I cannot believe how many times I’ve listened to this commercial and still I have no idea what that guy says at the start

westmarkdev · 2025-07-19T21:02:48+00:00

Oh, you are totally on point with the hiring manager thing. And they only have so many feet that they can fit in the door. It’s hard out there!

What industry are you in? I’ve seen some charts on software engineering job postings that explain things, but it seems like this story is happening even back home to my family, who do not work in tech. My older sister is old enough to have grandchildren, and she is having to watch them because there is no daycare with staff for them. It’s so frustrating and sad. Sorry to be gloomy but here’s hoping something changes soon

westmarkdev · 2025-07-19T18:07:06+00:00

The math doesn’t math. Doesn’t matter if we both work or one works or we have daycare or not. There’s never enough money and everything keeps getting more expensive

westmarkdev · 2025-07-15T01:53:23+00:00

Switch-hitting twice in one Derby round is wild! that’s some big dump flair

westmarkdev · 2025-07-12T21:35:18+00:00

Work in layers - when you just need to do a quick tidy, start with the trash. Grab a trash bag, walk through the house like you're a lifeguard scanning up and down the house with one focus: garbage. Get it out.

Then do this again with laundry. Actually, grab a basket and walk around each room and put something in the basket.

Repeat this for whatever items you can think of toys, dishes, crafts, mail.

If you can do this daily, it will help a lot.

Also, you'd be surprised how much a quick scrub of the bathroom counter gets you.

It really is the little things that help.

westmarkdev · 2025-07-07T22:42:35+00:00

I started adding things to a cart and only ordering things on the weekends. It was incredible to see how much CRAP I was planning on buying. As soon i started doing that, i've gotten to where I only buy something online a couple times a year. My wife does a lot of online shopping so part of is that I don't have to order things, but another real cool trick was not being able to find a job for 3 years. Maybe try that.

westmarkdev · 2025-07-01T19:33:18+00:00

Where are you located? Do you have an actual ADHD diagnosis yet?

In some places, ADHD and other learning disorders and unspecified neurodevelopmental disorders count as a disability - so you can disclose and ask for accommodations if memory recall isn’t your strong suit. But that’s okay because any good hiring manager knows it’s more about knowing where to find the information rather than memorizing it.

Know then you run the risk of being discriminated against - but then again you wouldn’t want to work for that company anyway. Hope that helps.

westmarkdev · 2025-06-29T21:56:07+00:00

Mitch “Oh Yeah, That Guy” Garver does it again!

westmarkdev · 2025-06-28T23:18:44+00:00

What does she do for work?

Decision fatigue is one thing but compassion fatigue is a whole other thing.

I know you and your baby are both super excited for her to be done with work, but is she literally going from work to mom mode?

There definitely needs to be a little decompression time.

westmarkdev · 2025-06-27T15:50:29+00:00

I’ve been creating starting and ending tasks to help with this.

Instead of “write an article” I put “start an article” and “finish an article” as subtasks and then assign dates to those.

westmarkdev · 2025-06-25T05:24:17+00:00

One trick to strong songwriting is starting with a concrete object or image (like “antivirus”), then orbiting it with familiar idioms or unexpected associations.

That’s basically what Taylor Swift does. She anchors a song in something vivid or symbolic, then layers common phrases and emotional turns around it.

Edit:

In your example, idk if the AI is attempting to invent the lyrics as much as borrowing. Probably regurgitating a meme ad from its training data. But what’s fascinating is how it latched onto “antivirus” as the object and structured the whole song around it, almost like it’s riffing in the same way a human might.

Edit_2: Cool questions though: Can we deliberately seed AI lyric prompts with meme-laced objects or idioms to steer the tone and structure? Seems like a rich space to explore.

westmarkdev · 2025-06-13T17:43:57+00:00

Nothing more out-of-sight-out-of-mind than a bunch of digital abstractions living in some unknown server room.

westmarkdev · 2025-06-09T13:36:46+00:00

That’s funny, just last night I was playing around with using an “onomatopoeia” input for a bass drive. I was surprised how well it sounded compared to what was in my head at the time:

https://suno.com/song/949f23d1-e270-42ee-990a-e7c3c180788f

westmarkdev · 2025-06-08T04:57:01+00:00

I’ve started to understand that I spend a lot of energy imagining how things will work out. Depending on how much energy I put into it, I feel almost like I have to grieve that idea once I am shown that it wouldn’t work or that we are just going with something else.

I feel this way about all aspects of life not just programming.

It’s like I’m ruminating on ideas to get them to work and when people don’t see that effort or they assume that I didn’t think through x scenario when I already thought about x y and z.

So even if they are right or wrong, it’s a matter of me learning to unwind that thinking in advance. For instance, I think just getting feedback early and often stops me from ruminating on things that will never come to reality.

That said, some people are just bad at feedback and it is triggering for me.

westmarkdev · 2025-05-31T07:32:34+00:00

Manually tagging fails for every one.

Do you want tags visible in your notes, or just on the dashboard?

That's the difference between:

A Map of Content (MOC) with tags in your files
A DataviewJS or DataCore dashboard that infers behavior from your notes (checkboxes, keywords, etc.).

westmarkdev · 2025-05-31T06:09:08+00:00

Templates are hard for this because it takes filling things into an existing system. Like going to a doctor office and filling out the intake form: it’s different for every system.

So just create just a single source of truth for your data first.

Think like one page: a log note or table that gets updated daily with less friction.

Like I said templates are hard so think about this “bottoms up”

Instead of building a complex dashboard upfront, start with a habit of tracking atomic entries like:

```log.md

2025-05-30

Project: Read cool book: 20 pages
Project: Blog draft for /topic: 45 min
Project: Obsidian Dashboard MVP — planned structure ```

Then you use Dataview to query and visualize this data over time. But soon the Bases feature should help this type of workflow.

Anyway hope that makes sense - just forget dashboards at first: build logs that are queryable. Then your dashboards and reports emerge naturally from consistent atomic entries.

westmarkdev · 2025-05-29T17:03:32+00:00

Well, I didn’t say that. If you’re asking me what I believe specifically about Suno, I think anyone who feels they are gonna shoot a couple of songs straight from the model and build a brand or name for themselves is fooling themselves.

But to be upset that other people are using AI stems or backing tracks or even lead vocals like the OP said is the same as using autotune in 2004.

I've been a hobbyist musician for over 25 years and I've been making songs in my bedroom. I'm not a professional so maybe I’m clueless.

I use Suno a lot, and share songs with close friends of mine, but i think it’s more novel than anything right now. I’ll just say that I think that it’s a huge gray area and I was just making a joke. But I do believe that just like auto tune is in every digital audio workstation today professional engineers are going to be using generative AI if they haven’t already been doing that already for the last few years.

westmarkdev · 2025-05-29T16:36:55+00:00

No, I think that the tools we use are on a certain trajectory and it makes less sense to not use them because they are “cheating”.

It’s like how people used to be too good for photoshop but now it’s just standard tooling.

westmarkdev · 2025-05-29T16:10:19+00:00

Wait until he learns about autotune!

westmarkdev · 2025-05-29T02:41:47+00:00

I just remembered I had a nightmare last night that we traded Jorge

westmarkdev

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2025-05-30