544 karma · joined March 12, 2018
I left them when we had the August crunch back in 2019. We hit the $9/kWh and even though I wasn't home my electric bill for the day was still $150. I switched back to my previous electric company that afternoon. I decided that risk wasn't worth the savings. It was like picking up pennies in front of a steam roller.
Until one very hot August, when the wholesale price hit $10/kWh in the afternoon. My power bill for one day was $130. I didn't even wait till the end of the month. I switched back to my old power company that afternoon. Thankfully they were able to switch me back the next morning.
I have a couple of whitebox servers sitting in my office at home. I purpose went with tower servers as they are quieter than rack mount. Mine is just for lab stuff, so I don't need redundant power or anything like that.
Colo is another option, cost varies greatly from area to area. I've thought about doing it myself, but colo space in Austin is real expensive.
Over the holidays I replace it wit a Samsung CRG9 49" 32:9 curved display.
A single big curved display is much better than 2 flat monitors. Without the break in the middle is much easier to position windows in the middle of your field of view. I have my main window in the middle and my reference windows on the sides.
My Dad is an aerospace engineer and we were discussing the work that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is doing with their rockets. When my sister buts in and goes on a 20 minute rant about how it is unethical for billionaires to exist. It really pissed me off as I don't get to talk to my Dad much[1], especially about things he is excited about. That's not the only time she has done it, it happens all the time.
Or maybe I'm just an apathetic Gen Xer.
[1] I live 500 miles away and my Dad doesn't like to talk on the phone.
I've had a couple of failed attempts at creating one myself. What I keep getting hung up on is that I don't know front end programming. I've tried working on it in the evenings and get frustrated with the front end development.
I've thought about founding a company to work on it and hire some contractors to do the front end work, but I'm not really interested in running a company.
I've done therapy with mixed success. I just haven't found a therapist that I click with.
The big thing is that I have to be mindful of what my triggers are and avoid them. A big one for me is stress and uncertainty about what will go wrong next. So I have to be cognizant of that when I'm looking for a job. I avoid rolls where I have to do production support, and especially on call rotations. I did that for 10 years and it just wore me down to nothing. I've also learned that I need to avoid early stage start ups due to the financial instability causing stress.
Thankfully my last 2 jobs have been good for me from a stability point.
Recently I've been seriously considering switching to OneNote.
It wasn't until I went to college that I really learned to program. I know people like to say college isn't required to be a software engineer, but I learned a lot having to sit through all those lectures.
It doesn't pay as well as working for FAANG, and I'm not going to get stock options that will make me rich. I live in a medium cost of living area. I make enough so that I can own a house, 2 cars (both paid off), and have a nice retirement account.
For the most part it is pretty low key. If the build breaks close to a deadline, there is some pressure to get it fixed, but that doesn't happen often. Most of the time it is just working on my projects that have realistic deadlines.
Every once in a while I get a little bored, but then I remember those past jobs where everyone's hair is on fire. The thing I like is that I get to work at my own pace, and spend most of the day writing scripts. I enjoy writing scripts more than I do application programming. I consider my scripts to be my minions that I send off to do my bidding.
To this day he is still buying eggs.
I had a commute that would take over and hour with traffic and 25 minutes without. So I would leave about 5:15AM and head to a coffeeshop near the office. I would work on my project till about 7:45, and then head to the office.
I made a lot of progress, and then about the time that Corona hit, I decided to shelve the project for various reasons.
In the past 3 years I haven't worked a full year due to the companies I worked for going out of business.
$MEGACORP isn't all bad. The pay is about the same, but I have much better benefits. For the first time in 5 years I have a 401K.
I've decided that I'm not going to work for another startup, unless I'm a founder. That way I have enough potential upside to make it worth the risk.
I recently took a job with $MEGACORP after 5 years with start ups. I forgot how much $MEGACORP likes meetings. I found myself thinking about how gumroad has no meetings. I asked myself the same question as the OP.
Having a curved ultra wide display is much better than 2 smaller displays. I can put my main windows right in the middle of my field of view, and put my reference windows off to the side.
1. I have to live somewhere. 2. I was tired of living in an apartment, and my mortgage is less than what rent on a comparable house would be.
A lot times I see people mention that you are better off putting the money into an S&P 500 fund. However what they don't account for, is that you have to live somewhere. So you either pay rent or pay a mortgage.
Also you don't have to put down 20%. With an FHA loan you can do as little as 3%. You will have to pay PMI, but if you in a market with decent appreciation you can get rid of that in a few years.
I agree that buying a home is not for everyone. If you like to move around or don't think you'll be saying in an area for 5 to 10 years, you are better off renting. Also if your financial position is not where you can afford to deal with unexpected repairs, you are probably better off renting. I also don't think you should buy a house as an investment. That just leads to over extending yourself. Instead you should buy a house because you want to live there.
I'm trying to remember the exact number, but IIRC it was good for a couple of thousand transactions a second.
Also as you mention they have a really PTO generous plan. We also get several of the random bank holidays as holidays.
Another thing I like is they bought us a Linux Academy subscription, and we are given time during the day to us it. Which is nice as I like to learn new things, and this way I don't have to use my time to do it.
I actually chose this job over another that paid more because of little things like this.
I am a terrible house keeper, mostly because I don't like doing it. I had planned to hire a housekeep, then COVID hit. Figure it is not best time to have someone coming into my house.
Car repairs. I used to do all the work on my cars. Then I realized that I could pay someone, and not ruin my weekend by being hot, frustrated and pissed off at the car.
I'm in the process of hiring someone to build an enclosed patio on the back of my house. I could do it myself and save a lot of money. However I don't really know what I'm doing and in my experience with those types of projects is that it will look like it when I am done.
Right now my options at home at unreliable expensive cable, or slow DSL with a data cap. I currently have both, as I got tired of outages when I am trying to work or watch Netflix. I have a UniFi Dream Machine Pro that will auto fail over when the cable goes down.
Once someone starts offering fixed 5G service in my area I'll replace the cable circuit with it as long as it doesn't have a CGNAT on the IPv4 side.
I did recently move my DNS to Azure because I get Azure credits with my MSDN subscription. I do need to get around to building something for Azure.