gives the ick

I think that gives you your answer right there.

I get a text pretty quickly.

There’s nothing that works as a simple YouTube client available. It’s my biggest sore spot with AppleTV. Apple locks down their app ecosystem and controls what makes it to the App Store.

Your best bet is to pick up an Android based streaming stick and side loading SmartTube onto it. Or pay for YouTube premium and use the official app on your AppleTV… (Shitty part of premium is you don’t see YouTube ads but there’s still no Sponsorblock so you still hit all that sponsored content.

Everybody laughed at me when I took a 10-port USB hub, installed a flash drive in every one, and set it up as a RAID array.

Today? With storage prices where they’re at? Think they’re still laughing?

Yes. They’re still laughing at me.

I used to have 3 grey hairs on my beard. Now she’s 3 and it’s all fucking grey.

“Well you’re probably just naturally greying anyway”

No. I’m greying because every visit to the toilet is an hourlong negotiation that didn’t have to happen.

Is this like a cautious first date or is there a good chance I’m bringing them home tonight?

If the former, let’s get some spicy Asian noodles with a huge beer.

If the latter, appies at a safe restaurant. Easy on the oil, garlic, spice, onion, and alcohol.

Japanese goods have a standard 12.5% tariff across the board afaik, so subtract $58 from your savings right off the bat.

And if they ship via courier (UPS, FedEx, etc), they will charge their own import fees on top of that (for the convenience of collecting the tariff money from you on the government’s behalf). IME this fee scales with the price of what you import.

And if you need warranty support you’re pretty much screwed.

It might be fun and novel to directly import something from Japan, but I wouldn’t count on saving any money.

I set this up before but ended up walking away. It works well but it always eats CPU generating the stream, which is a bummer if I’m the only user and not necessarily even going to use it once a day.

Talent is just something someone practiced a lot. Develop a talent based on something you love and you’ll have more opportunities to earn a living doing in a career you enjoy.

You sound like you already figured this out, but all those YouTube gurus are completely full of shit. Same as the books that tell you how to make millions of dollars in the stock market. If it was that easy to be successful, why aren’t they getting rich doing that? Because they’re full of shit and selling their viewers and readers a fantasy.

So go look at the world with new eyes. Literally everything you see on any day has got a career associated with it.

See a tree? Arborist. Landscaper. Forester. Biologist.

The sky? Pilot. Meteorologist. Rocket engineer. Fireworks technician.

A house? Painter. Plumber. Insurance agent. Christmas light installer. Organizer.

Think about what you like. What’s something you liked as a child and still like today? What’s not a fad and might be something to build a career around?

The safest path is to have a boss. Let someone else run a company and invest and take risks and come home with steady pay. Most people do this. You have a boss and limited control over how you work and how much money you can earn, but it’s safe and predictable.

You can be your own boss and have way more freedom, at the risk that your business decisions determine if you get paid at all.

Or there’s all kinds of in between. But I wouldn’t worry about that kind of thing yet. Figure out what you want to do first.

They recently moved a bunch of their production to the US.

Hey at least Dean Koontz would have finished the fucking thing.

The last few died.

There’s a large group of folks here that swear by renting a VPS. A common argument is that when you fully self host and expose anything to the internet (incoming connections), you’ve always got some security risk you might not know exists.

A VPS offloads a lot of the low level security concerns to someone else (it’s the whole cloud sales pitch) and if someone breaks in, there’s little for them to steal (assuming you’re not putting anything personal and sensitive on the VPS).

The nice thing is that you can start with a small and cheap VPS and set things up and decide if you even want to self host, or to what extent. Then you have data to make a decision as to whether you need to upgrade to a better VPS, or port your setup to a local server (which you can now buy with a good idea of what sort of specs it should have).

On the flip side, you could also self host on whatever computer you have laying around (leave the laptop open) and play with some services there. If you decide you want to open it to the internet, you could just as easily port your local playground to a VPS and keep going.

I don’t think there’s anything in the self hosting world that really paints you into a corner.

How old are you that you have the time and interest to do this?

20% pay increase for a 12% time increase. Honestly, those numbers aren’t big enough to entice me on their own.

But I think the bigger thing is job satisfaction. In your current job you spend 35 hours a week doing something you hate. Would a PA mean you’re spending 39 hours doing something you enjoy?

I would focus this more on your happiness than economics. Being miserable has no money associated with it but it’s the thing that follows you around 24/7.

If you just want to get away from bedside, you might want to keep shopping around for other degrees you think you’d like. If being a PA is something you know you’d like (never mind the 39 hours - just the tasks the job itself entails), that seems like a smart path to follow!

“Behold!”

“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!”

scene fucking EXPLODES into a high tempo musical number

Of course I do! I’m on speakerphone and holding the phone an arms length away from my face for some reason.

If it’s going to happen, just play cool. If they terminate you, you don’t have to agree to anything or say anything you don’t feel like.

7 years is a good tenure. You can apply for new jobs from a strong position. Learn to leverage your sales pitch for what you learned and how you grew in those 7 years - that’s the story your next employer wants to hear. What are you finally good at? What did you fuck up and learn a valuable lesson from? Tell stories about that kind of shit in your next interviews.

Establish lines of communication with coworkers you want to maintain contact with. LinkedIn is good enough. You just want to be able to contact them for a reference on your job hunt. Prospective employers want to talk to them - so pick people that will sell you the best. They aren’t going to call your previous employer and ask how you did - fuck the company. Keep lines open with people you want to, and set them up while you’re still employed and can exchange emails with them.

What do you want to know in the meeting? Just ask. You aren’t under any obligation to answer any questions but you can ask whatever the fuck you want. It is unlikely to have any impact on the rest of your life if you ask a question or don’t. You’re done with these people. Don’t feel like you have to be obedient or indulgent.

If this is how it goes, that sucks. I know the anxiety that comes along with it. The last time I got laid off, I was even looking into fucking military service. Don’t panic and make rash decisions like I almost did. A gap in cash flow is scary as shit but you will bounce back and hit a new stride. The uncertainty is just shitty.

Good luck!

Paying anybody a small compliment is free.