Random_Person

I'm 44 and have only achieved savings within the past year and a half. I live a very modest life and have always TRIED to live below my means, but living off of my government salary was challenging. I received a ~18k raise 2 years ago and I'm finally able to live "comfortably".

Yeah, some of them have been hilarious.

I've been rather unimpressed with Bard when asking it "common sense" type of information. It's limited memory is also a problem when trying to have a meaningful conversation with depth.

I spent a few hours last night trying to work on a story outline with Bard's help and while individual responses were sometimes okay, Bard regularly forgot about plot points and character traits we decided on earlier in the conversation and that was frustrating. ChatGPT is much better at conversational memory, but provided much less interesting results to individual queries.

Unlike other commenters, I think these artificial limitations aren't about spending or competency, but rather out of fear. Google is afraid of their bot turning racist, or saying things that could embarrass them.

I'm glad you pointed out the tags issue. I've been using Daylio for a while now because I like doing little entries throughout my day and I initially set up a bunch of tags. Lately those tags have started to feel like a burden because I worry about missing an entry related to those tags. That burden hasn't become significant yet, but it is something that's bothering me and I could see it be an excuse later on to just give up on the whole thing... i.e. the data junky in me says what's the point of tracking data if the dataset isn't accurate.

No, that was more coincidental than anything. We had been living as roommates for years before that year.

Twice. At 31 I left the Automotive field to start working in IT. It was a low paying government job without a lot of applicants. I started college at 32 and got an AA in IT. At 38 my state legislature shut down my agency and my wife and kids moved out. I lost everything in resetting my finances and digging myself out of the hole she created.

I had spent the past few years of my IT life learning PHP and at 39 I landed a job as a developer at another state agency. Not only was it a career reset, but an entire life reset. I turned 40 with absolutely nothing. I'm about to turn 44, and am flirting with 6 figures between my state salary and my side gigs. I have a savings for the first time in my adult life and a stable home life.

it's absolutely possible and I didn't even try very hard.

I've published almost 1,800 video diaries and this is a game changer for me. I've been wanting to do more with the back catalog, but don't have transcripts.

I keep a brown noise generator on my phone for reading. It helps me a great deal, especially in noisy environments when my brain is trying to pay attention to something else in my surroundings. Oddly, however, it doesn't help me at work. I focus much better with music when writing code. I can't read with music because I'll catch myself listening to the music more than paying attention to what I'm supposed to be reading.

I was a warehouseman in the Marine Corps in the late 90s. Our warehouse was absolute garbage. we couldn't fill something like 30% of our orders because we couldn't find the items or the inventory was off. We were also still running on nightly batches from some IBM AS400 system. I wrote a receiving program to print labels and properly assign stock locations to incoming inventory. Coupled with better control procedures we turned the ~$4MM operation around and ran at over 99% efficiency. Earned myself two NAMs for that work. It was 100% VB with a custom flat-file database.

Then I stopped working on software for ~15 years because I burned out

We sound similar, except for the 12 pack in a weekend thing. I don't drink much, but I enjoy it when I do. When I drink, it's one drink. Maybe two if I'm feeling extra spicy that day. I enjoy the ritual of the drink. I enjoy the little buzz I get. I enjoy socializing with my fellow drinkers. I DO NOT enjoy how it makes me feel an hour later... that night... the next day. I can tell that something isn't right almost immediately and that steals the joy from the ritual.

So, I just remember that when I want to have a drink. It's going to make me groggy. It's going to make me snore... which annoys my partner. It's going to make me wake up "foggy". Sometimes, particularly when I don't have any responsibilities the next day, or I'm away from my partner, I decide that it's okay, and I'll have a drink. Most times, I won't. I'll have something else instead. Try a virgin drink or a non-alcoholic beer. There's lots of tasty options that don't come with the negative side effects. My go-to is just tonic water with lemon/lime. I don't even miss the vodka/gin that's supposed to be in there. Have them add a splash of dry vermouth or bitters for a little extra special something.

I have found, in the situations where I took control of my desire and rejected the "need" for a drink, I have felt an even better "buzz" from that decision than I would the drink!

I was a parts department manager in the early 00's when Mercedes USA decided to switch all their systems over to SAP. It was an absolute nightmare for 6 months. The entire UX (at that time) was unfathomable. Even our regional representative couldn't figure out how to use the software when he was trying to train us.

At the end of that year, Mercedes hosted a "we're sorry" conference in San Diego and paid for all parts and service managers across the nation to travel and drink at the open bars for a week. I guess that part was okay.

I've been on KeePass + Dropbox since Dropbox first became a thing and I have yet to find a reason to do it any other way.

I've got one. I use it only for writing. It's been great for that because it's terrible at everything else. It is essentially a modern-day word processor for me. I can work for hours and hours unplugged and if I need to do a bit of research, I can without having to pull out my distraction machine (phone).

I built a tool for educators ~7 years ago at my previous employer. That employer shut down and I bought the tool then sold it to my current employer. This year, my employer decided to pivot and we are no longer serving software services. I now have ownership again with multiple clients paying $5k a year for the tool. I was restricted on my time spent on the tool while it belonged to my employer, but now that it's mine again, I can start working on needed improvements and seeking out more clients.

I also have a fairly large YouTube back catalogue of ~1,650 videos. While most of my videos get less than 50 views, I still generate ~$500 a year in AdSense.

Yep, I had the BASIC cartridge and used the tape drive almost exclusively for that. Coded up all sorts of little projects on that machine. I hated the membrane keyboard, but it worked!

I still have my Atari 400 and tape drive!

How about the third position (which I find myself in in): Staff->Line engineer.

I work primarily on an internal support product which the company decided to license to other entities... at a ridiculously low price. We support dozens of instances and thousands of users, yet bring in less than half of one developers net salary.

And, of course, my departments performance is judged on the Line work, not the Staff work.

This pretty much describes my day job and I love it. Is our codebase a hot mess? Yeah, we have lots of debt from previous devs, but we're working on it!

The opposite actually. I used to get hangry and be irritable all the time. I would also have blood sugar crashes if I ate carbs (hypoglycemic). Switching to 18:6 completely eliminated blood sugar issues and I am generally more docile.

I live in Northern WV and I'm fully aware that our rivers flow North, but for some reason, when I clicked on my area and saw the route run up to Pittsburgh before traveling South to the Gulf, I was taken aback.

Ah, you are right. My memory sucks. It's been in storage for many many years.

Oh, I forgot all about those little drawings! Seeing this now brings back a flood of memories. Thanks!

I'll have to dig it out. I don't remember the illustrations. I remember working on a blackjack program forever. Debugging line by line. Finding my typos and getting it to work. That was one of my proudest moments.

I remember really struggling to get the tape drive to work. Sans internet, it was quite a challenge to figure out how to get it going. That was quite likely the spark that made me want to learn anything and everything about hardware.

I still have my 800. It was given to me sometime in the 80s when my cousin passed. It came with the BASIC cart, a tape drive, and a book called something like 101 BASIC GAMES that were just copies of source code. That machine started me on an obsessive path of learning languages and programming at ~10 years old that was all-consuming until I graduated high school. I hated the stupid membrane keyboard, but the lessons learned on that machine were invaluable to my curiosity.

Last year, I started working on a randomly generated, text-based adventure game. I made random equipment and room generators. Started working on enemies, and lost steam. I turned it into a Mad-Libs style dungeon room/loot generator, and that's neat and all, but I've been wanting to dig back in and finish that project to some level.

I love my paperwhite, EXCEPT for the ridiculous place they put the power button. It's right where the device rests on my finger and I inadvertently turn the unit off quite frequently.

Just Google Docs. I made a template for novel writing and copy it when I start something new.

My girlfriend got me a refurb Paperwhite last fall and I didn't put it down for about 4 months. It's been great for my reading habits!

Chromebook C423NA - for writing. I intentionally bought the lowest end model I could find at Walmart. I wanted it for a single task - writing - and it's perfect for that. It is terrible at most everything else.

Softball glove - my kid has been playing softball and asked me to help work on some of their skills. I'm not into baseball/softball AT ALL, but I've very much enjoyed my time outside passing the ball. It's a very relaxing activity.

EXIT games - a series of tabletop "escape rooms" that kept me and the kids occupied many days over the past year indoors.

Biscuit Joiner - I've long wanted this "luxury" tool for helping keep things aligned when gluing planks for panels... it has become one of my favorite assembly tools in conjunction with pocket holes to make butt join assembly as easy as Lego.