noughtnaut

The interview for the role was completely different from what I am now doing.

Isn't that the norm? Like the old joke about hell seeming to be an all-out vacation, and then it turns out that was just the marketing brochure?

I very recently landed a sweet-sounding well-paying job at a large international consulting house. Turns out, on the inside it's all gaffer tape and leaky abstractions. Not some of it, all of it. After having spent a few months sussing out the scope of the issues I determined that yes, this is unfixable by any one new hire, so I've done some interviews and will be starting a new position elsewhere presently.

Thanks for the excerpt.

a so-called CNC machine

Really? Framing it "so-called" makes it sound esoteric and rare, while in fact it's an utterly common machine tool used in many industries to create ... pretty much anything (eg. casting dies for Lego bricks). I wish they'd tone down the alarmism (unless they know it's ordered by "Ivan's Shell Mfg. Co").

I appreciate the imagery you bring here, but I'm quite interested in concrete examples of how TS "makes promises but lies". Don't shoot me (just yet), I'm not a TS developer, just a curious person wanting to become wiser.

This is such a strange phenomenon to me. In all the countries I've lived in, all but a few select stores have a dongle on each cart that takes a coin to unlock it from the chain of other carts. It's perhaps the cost of a back of toilet paper, but that seems to be sufficient for it to be exceedingly rare to see an abandoned cart. One can only imagine that any such carts are quick prey for enterprising teens looking for a quick boost to their candy fund.

Oups, I misremembered: the game is called Core War. In it, MARS ("Memory Array Redcode Simulator") is the name of a virtual machine that executes Redcode instructions. As a player, you write small programs ("warriors") to be loaded on the virtual machine where they try to prevail while klling off (overwriting) opponent programs.

I thought this would be more like MARS, but turns out to be bare-metal ~~MARS~~ Core War where I'm the scheduler. I'm not saying it a terrible experience, but I am grateful that my day job in IT is more higher-level.

They would likely perform worse. If ("if", ha) those fans are not in perfect sync, they're going to obstruct airflow. Also, consider that each fan introduces both audible noise and perturbations in the airflow which in turn, also will cause noise.

Incidentally, I have (almost) that very same case, an Antec P182. Mine has a super-quiet PSU fan, and a ginormous heat pipe cpu cooler (HR-1 if you're curious) with one fan ... and that is plenty.

I sympathise; this also happens to me. It's true we don't always have the luxury of leaving a project when it no longer holds interest -- especially at work. And yes, the harsh but ideal solution is to find a job that supports an ever curious mind ... which is obviously extremely difficult to achieve in practice. You're not the first to express an affinity for monotone tasks (running, picking up litter, washing dishes) -- I think it lets us get into a zen or spaced-out state where we "just do". If only washing dishes were as lucrative as an engineering position!

Any chance you can apply some "agile" methodologies to your engineering role? My point is, if you work on a series of tasks with a narrow scope and an imminent deadline, that might be more overcomeable (yes, that's a word ... now) than having fewer, larger projects that seemingly drag out endlessly. You know, get the drop on your eventually dwindling motivation by being done before that even has time to kick in.

That was quite likely Dr. Russell Barkley you saw.

Just the first 56 seconds of this video (by one of the foremost researchers) explains 100% of what the problem with adhd is. Symptomatically, adhd isn't even named for what it does to a person. Instead it's named for how it inconveniences others. Gee, thanks! I bet it was the same person who named the speech impediment "lisp". Jerk. 😅

How would you explain green to someone who has no concept of colour? The basic otherness of neurodiversity is simultaneously the defining characteristic, overarching difficulty, and blocker to understanding by neurotypicals. I very much like these ideas on how to make the effect of this affliction relatable to others.

You might also ask them to play this little game (takes 5 mins) about a little adhdinosaur who is really, really trying to do his best. However, as good as this game is, it may be too whimsical for its own good as people might not take it serious. Yes, the idea is to give the player a sense of frustration, but there's not really anything there to make them think deeply about why and how this affects people like us. But at least, the game page links to a "making of" presentation by the author, as well as other games and resources for/by neurodiverse folk.

What are you reading? Here are a couple of novels that I've grown quite fond of. Common to all of them are that they are freely (and legally) available online; I am not in any way affiliated with them; and they strongly feature female lead characters.

• Worm - An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one. [...] Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons. (Warning: this is longer than LotR and has a wi(l)der array of superpowers than Marvel.)
• Ra - Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, four teenagers defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security's attacks on the Bill of Rights. (Note: This is a contemporary analogue to Orwell's 1984.)

Android is, in my opinion, the "best of what's currently available." Mind you, this does not imply that it is "good".

I dearly miss PalmOS and the Tungsten and Treo product lines, as well as the Psion brand. Those terrific PDA's had features that modern phones still lack. Conversely, I think modern phones come with a plethora of features that aren't really positive. But then, I'm not really a fan of the whole style where you can barely touch a device anywhere without operating it in some way. This is just my personal opinion.

The #1 reason why I would never choose Apple's products is that, while they excel at what you're supposed to use them for, their platform is way too locked down for my taste. As a device owner, I want the ability to customise stuff and install (and remove!) whatever the hell I want (including ads!), and Android delivers that in far greater measure than Apple.