Sounds like a partially stressful vacation in South Korea. Did you get in trouble for not having the correct visa? Or was that HR’s fault?

My retirement plan is go gliding in a wing suit. I want to experience gliding like the birds do.

The short story is that I lost my mind with how I was being treated and how things were being run. I brought up my issues at a Monthly meeting.

Then I brought up even more issues with the fairness committee member which included racism, sexism, ageism, abusive managers, unfair treatment of contractors (I was a full time employee), work culture and a few other things.

That lead to a 3.5 hour meeting with the HR manager and the fairness committee member where I was basically blamed for all the company’s lack effort to do anything.

Enter more mental breakdown.

Eventually we had an employee survey where I emailed the corporate HR manager about my company’s horrible management. Made friends and gained the trust of corporate HR by proving I was able to work with corporate to change the work culture instead of seeking retribution.

My company HR terminated me. I emailed corporate HR, then got a lawyer. Nearly a year later I filed for wrongful termination (my lawyer caught covid and was delayed). One month after filing for wrongful termination, my old HR manager was forced into early retirement and she was back in her home country of Barbados before I had my meeting with the Labour Board and my old company.

Because I made friends with corporate HR, I brought a lot of attention to my old company after my termination. That place was forced to make very expensive changes and upgrades, there was a huge crackdown on safety which caused even more costs, HR became such a useless mess because the replacement HR manager inherited an absolute shit show, and management began to crumble without the old HR manager who used to hold all the corruption in place.

The cost of all the changes, upgrades, safety, external lawyers (they needed better lawyers than they had in house) and my severance came directly out of the pocket of the General Manager who was top position at that company. This place had over 300 employees and 300+ contractors over Canada, America and Mexico at the time.

That HR manager was so fucking petty. I’m not a petty person but my sister taught me everything I needed to know about pettiness. When people play petty games everyone loses. The petty person is naturally a loser and the person on the receiving end loses because they are forced to deal with the petty game bullshit. If I was going going to be petty, I had to lose before I even started.

It took me 10 months to get terminated. Early on I decided I wasn’t goint to quit silently. They were going to have to pay to get rid of me. Even if we both lost our jobs, I still feel like a winner.

When I was in my early 20’s I gave up on the idea of retirement. I was watching the environment being ruined and realized my retirement was going to be awful and stressful. I decided then to live for the moment so I could be happy.

I travelled many countries, live abroad for a number of years, met many different people, tried many different things, learned many things, slowed down to enjoy the little things and even got an HR manager fired to top off my list of personal accomplishments.

I don’t want to grow old and lately I’ve seen how awful it is to slowly die in a body you are losing control over. Too many times.

I’ve already made peace with my own death whenever it comes. My retirement plan now is extreme sports. If I’m going out, I’m doing it living in the moment.

From my perspective, it’s strange to see so many people fight to live long, to live forever or to create a legacy that persists beyond their death. Eveyone dies and everything will be forgotten. That should be something beautiful but instead it fills people with fear.

All my personal data is on encrypted partitions and drives. The only data that would be left behind is whatever I was hosting on my Raspberry Pi’s. Anyone can do what they please with that data, it doesn’t matter to me. The encrypted stuff can be easily wiped and the hardware can be reused by whoever comes after me.

That can possibly be it. I experimented with many types of music. Anything harder than punk and they’ll make themselves smaller and lower. I have mostly chill music and they’ll be relaxed but less curious.

Punk seems to hit the right spot for them to be relaxed and very animated. Also Katy Perry. One day a neighbour had a party and were blasting Katy Perry all day and the momma dove was just vibin’ the whole time.

Every year a Mourning Dove couple returns to lay eggs in one of our planters that hangs off the backyard patio railing. It’s slightly covered by the roof overhang so they are protected from rain, direct sunlight and circling prey overhead.

I usually leave a bowl of water for them nearby the planter and my dad will gently water the soil for the plants with all the birds staying put.

They generally don’t mind when people are outside on the patio as long as there are no sudden movements or loud noises.

I’ve noticed they are even more relaxed if I go outside and eat or play some music at a reasonable volume. Surprisingly they the most calm, curious and active when I play any punk music for them.

They’ve been returning for 5+ years now and I’m looking forward to seeing them again this spring.

I know Alpine Linux uses IRC for development. https://alpinelinux.org/community/

I go there from time to time when I have an issue I can’t figure out myself.

It’s mature and simple which is why I believe it’s used more often by developers.

My store uses a similar tag. It points to the price of the product on the shelf to indicate the product is “Canadian.”

If you look to the right of the board, you can see the tag tucked into the shelf.

Canada

Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.

That’s very much what I did. While causing noise with management, I made friends with someone who worked for corporate HR. My first email to her basically predicated what would happen if I raised a complaint to management. I gained her trust by focusing on changing the work culture and not looking for retribution.

I got terminated, lawyers got involved and in the end I got a my severance and banned from working with that international corporate. The HR manager of my company was forced into leaving the company before her retirement. If I didn’t play nice with corporate HR, the company HR manager would have probably worked until retirement like nothing happened.

I now have a new hate for bureaucracy that’s on a deep and personal level but at least I came out with some wins at the cost of some sanity.

The trades are the same way, unfortunately. When the first woman apprentice showed up, all these guys started acting like they’ve never seen a woman before.

The quiet guy who I thought was one of the nicest people there told the apprentice that she belonged in an office. Others wouldn’t let her do anything “dangerous” or over explained all the simple shit to her. Others would just hang around her for uncomfortable periods of time. It was truly bizarre to witness.

She ended up only coming to me for work related questions because I was one of the few people who treated her like a person and not like a little girl. That’s how I found out all the gross and fucked up things the guys were saying to her. She didn’t last long and left for another company which already had women working there. I worked until I got terminated for bringing up issues with the work culture.

During the fight about work culture with management, the vast majority of my coworkers turned their backs on me. Treated me like an idiot and isolated me. They were all so fragile and scared they would have to change their awful ways.

I ended up quitting my apprenticeship and decided to never return to the trades. I can’t stand the culture and I no longer have the energy to fight alone.

Any woman that can remain in the trades or STEM is way stronger than I’ll ever be. I couldn’t imagine myself dealing with that shit daily for an entire life.

I was building an automation line that was going to be used to manufacture the battery tray for Hummers. When I found out in 2020 that my workplace was considered essential service during the covid lockdowns, I pretty much lost my mind. Stupidest fucking thing I ever heard.

There’s nothing essential about an electric Hummer.

I don’t work there anymore.

I don’t have any answer but I feel your pain. Years ago I wanted to learn C++ for Arduino and asking questions always seemed to have answers that talked down to me and made me feel stupid for asking.

I even tried proving that I made an effort to learn before asking. That didn’t work either. People were still rude.

I gave up.

Years later I got into into Linux and started learning POSIX scripting and self-hosting. I again tried asking questions but still received mostly rude answers but this time there were people in the mix of replies that did try to help. It was slightly better.

I tried showing off a script I was proud of but I did something wrong and people rudely let me know about my mistake. They took no effort to educate me on why it was wrong. I asked for a reason to understand what I did wrong but was left with silence.

I didn’t give up this time but I stopped asking for help and I’m still afraid to show off my projects.

It’s the exact same bullshit I experienced in the trades. I quit my apprenticeship and left the trades because people refused to understand that someone else with less experience won’t instinctively know all the basics. Starting something new is overwhelming and it’s hard to retain all that information the first time learning it all.

I feel like rudeness towards beginners is one of the biggest hypocrisies when so much of progress is built on sharing knowledge.

One lesson I learned from a this is that I either take the time to answer a question fully or don’t. I can at least feel good about the few times I spent answering a question. The people that asked the question were always appreciative of the time and effort I took to help them understand what they wanted to know.

I got a work/travel visa for Germany and spent a year living in Berlin with a bit of travel here and there. Early in my year, I stayed at a hostel in Kreuzberg.

I stayed there long enough to get to know one of the receptionists there. One day she adds me on Facebook. A few days later she told me she was creeping my page when she noticed a familiar hostel that I mentioned in a post. It was a hostel in Sydney, Australia where I also stayed for two years on a similar work/holiday visa. This was a couple years before my stay in Germany.

We got to talking more and it turns out we both were in the same hostel in Australia at the same time. It’s possible we saw each other at some point but neither of us remember. She did mention a specific weather event that happened during the time we were in Sydney so seems our time lines match up too.

We ended up staying friends for my time in Germany and even hitch hiked together to Warsaw and back at one point. One of the nicest people I’ve met in my travels, hope she’s doing well these days.

Not really, no. Although I don’t know if that is the result of ADHD meds, the antidepressants I used to take or just aging in general.

I love the smell of fresh coffee but caffeine just doesn’t agree with my body anymore. I’ve switched over to herbal and red teas now.

Every prescription ADHD drug I tried gave me anxiety and made me pee every 20-40 minutes. Then I’d get more anxiety because I’d have to pee so often. It also made all my normal habits into unhealthy habits. Ever since I took any meds, I’ve been unable to drink coffee now without the same issues.

Now I just raw dog life. People either accept me as I am or I just stop talking to them because no prescribed pill or social pressure is worth it for me anymore. At least I’m happier now.

I had a website that was set up for only my personal use. According to the logs the only activity I ever saw was my own. However, it involves a compromise. Obscurity at the cost of accessibility and convenience.

First, when I set up my SSL cert, I chose to get a wildcard subdomain cert. That way I could use a random subdomain name and it wouldn’t show up on https://crt.sh/

Second, I use an uncommon port. My needs are very low so I don’t need to access my site all the time. The site is just a fun little hobby for myself. That means I’m not worried about accessing my site through places/businesses that block uncommon ports.

Accessing my site through a browser looks like: https//randomsubdomain.domainname.com:4444/

I’m going on the assumption that scrapers and crawlers are going to be searching common ports to maximize the number of sites they can access over wasting their time on searching uncommon ports.

If you are hosting on common ports (80, 443) then this isn’t going to be helpful at all and would likely require some sort of third party to manage scrapers and crawlers. For me, I get to enjoy my tiny corner of the internet with minimal effort and worry. Except my hard drive died recently so I’ll pick up again in January when I am not focused on other projects.

I’m sure given time, something will find my site. The game I’m playing is seeing how long it would take to find me.

True, but there’s far more to this story than a few paragraphs can explain. She’s also very cruel and I spent far too many years in therapy because of her actions.

At least I have validation from my cousin’s recent interactions with her. He’s been unfortunate enough to see her other side and has shared those experiences with me.

He now understands why I have distanced myself from her throughout my life.

My sister has done a lot of good things for other people but I have an extremely hard time appreciating her actions. She spends so much time telling people on social media and real life all the good she has done. To me it seems like she is doing good to be seen doing good. As if attention to herself is a currency.

I rarely share the stories of when I help people because often when I do, I’m reminded of the privileges I have in life. That’s not something I feel comfortable bragging about. It feels like I’m using the situation to make myself look better than I actually am if I brag about helping another person.

I think one of the many reason’s she doesn’t like me is because I refuse her help. I deny her the ability to brag about helping her little brother. Doing good to bring attention to herself is far more important to my sister than doing good because it’s the nice thing to do.

A few years ago I was in a position where I was seeing two shitty, manipulative people taking advantage of three of my friends in three different situations. My three friends had all been warned about the manipulators but still felt the need to be nice, diplomatic and caring towards them anyways.

I ended up spending a lot of time talking with my friends, pointing out bad behaviour and encouraging my friends to put their own interests first. I never blamed my friends for their behaviour and instead tried to give them the tools for identifying and dealing with their manipulators.

Eventually they all came to realize of just how awful those manipulators were and I made myself available for my friends to vent when the time came. It sucked having to watch my friends go through all those emotions in the end. They all were really hurt.

I do think I did the right thing. They felt hurt but they did more than just get over it. They all learned from those experiences. We don’t talk as much as we used to but when we do talk, I’m always happy to hear that they are still putting themselves first and not giving any manipulators their time.

I also got to learn from all of that because too had been dealing several manipulative people in my own life at that time. Teaching my friends helped reinforce what I had learned and the results made me feel more confident in my own life choices that I had made in the recent past.