game genie was amazing! still remember the commercial where the tv screen exploded.. i got a cd burner for Xmas in 1998, next step was a mod chip for my ps1. soldering it in was such a high risk, high reward project for a 14 year old. from buying the chip online with my parents credit card to buying the soldering iron and solder at radio shack with lawn mowing money, to disassembling the ps1 and following the directions ever so carefully. that first boot up was nerve racking. for the remainder of the ps1 era my friend and I would rent games, burn them, swap with each other and by the end we both had 200+ titles to choose from..a magical time indeed!
i remember figuring out that i had one of the lucky early-model dreamcasts that didn't require mod chips. coincided with the brief period where you could find pretty much anything on megaupload. i'm sure all of my burned games have disintegrated by now but i had an awesome collection of games back then :)
Are they fully blind or can they see some things? There is a new line of thought called Cortical Visual Impairment. Its important to know the difference. Regardless, I find that holding my Childs hand is without a doubt the most reassuring thing I can give her in an unknown place. Your son will find his way, with love. Praying for your family.
When I was 11, I had the incredible opportunity to join him in the recording booth during one of his voice-overs for Bell South. I stuttered badly at the time, but he was incredibly kind and understanding. He took 30 minutes out of his day to sit with a kid he didn't even know and talk about the art of speech—it was life-changing. I’ll never forget that day.
A few months later, we received two large 3x3' posters in the mail. Blown-up photos of us working together that day. In the lower right-hand corner of each, he had signed them, "May the force be with you! JEJ / To my friend, Best Wishes, JEJ (AKA Mustafa)."
What an awesome guy. I just pulled those pictures out, and 29 years later, I’m still filled with awe and immense gratitude.
PowerShell was (and still is) the go to for me in any M$FT shop. People like to group VBA and PowerShell together but I am amazed by the vibrancy of the PowerShell community and the deep history it holds. PowerShell releases are frequent and I'm excited about what I continue to see and hear being developed.
This brings me right back to June of 2009, as the markets started to spoil and the derivative markets fells to shambles. A few hapless souls in Baltimore would be tasked with manning 2 standing 12 hour shifts for as many weeks as it would take to properly reconcile what could only be described as a tsunami of unreconciled data for a single large custody player in the sub-prime markets. It took about 4 months, and went through several phases of rebalance but we got it done. As I look across the landscape of LLM, the word "context" screams back at me. I think the processing power involved to make all the poor choices necessary to find the right choices and wonder how that could've been done without a teams of people thinking about the same problem from many perspectives.
I am going through something right now mentally as a middle aged man and being alone every day starting at 8:30am and only coming home to the same 3 people (who i love unconditionally) is kind of driving me mad. My professional life prior to covid had me weaving the halls of an office I knew and many of the people there were very special to me. To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by things hard to escape. I'm ready for a change but I don't know if that involves going back to a 9 to 5 with a commute. I really like the top post on here about creating community and understanding its an investment. I hope others benefit from this as well.
Often in threads about loneliness, especially Ask HN threads about how to connect with people, there are some extremely terse replies to the effect of "Get married; have a family." And while I support doing that 100%, it is not the trivial solution for loneliness or lack of community. Connection to a world outside your house is an extremely important thing.
I struggle with this too. Returning to the office and all that involves (commute, schedule inflexibility) isn't ideal, so I hope that I can keep WFH but find the community aspect with more intentional effort there. But I miss the ease of just getting that from the office environment.
The PowerShell Podcast had Doug Finke on back in mid February of this year, he made a great point at the end of the discussion.
Don't be afraid to drive in another lane. Take the opportunity when you see it.
In a previous life, I had a management who told me to, "stay in my lane" and this led to a series of events where I ultimately left. Anybody who tries to keep you down or limit you ability to learn and think needs to be avoided. Those who foster this type of growth need to be held close.
As a manager who told folks that maybe they should consider what their main lane is: There's nothing wrong with learning a different lane. There's a lot wrong with showing up in a different lane as if you had all the answers.
Our industry is prone to the latter. By all means, explore other lanes, but don't be that guy. By all means, learn, but please do this from a place of curiosity and humility.
Ask people who live in that lane how you can grow. Volunteer for the scut work until you deeply understand it. Be a partner to the people who spent a lot of time growing in that lane, not an antagonist. (I'm sure PP is aware of that, I'm using the generic 'you', not the personal)
> As a manager who told folks that maybe they should consider what their main lane is: There's nothing wrong with learning a different lane. There's a lot wrong with showing up in a different lane as if you had all the answers.
Also beware of neglecting to fulfil the responsibilities and expectations of the lane you are ultimately being evaluated in, especially earlier in your career. I've given the (common) advice to junior engineers to become the team expert in one thing relevant to the team (something akin to this was even in the SDE1-2 promotion rubric at Amazon), but occasionally that advice needs tempered by subsequent advice on not tunnel-visioning on that one thing (and/or choosing a more relevant thing).
Broadly agree with the article and the general advice here though!
I had my boss and the CTO (both Black) tell me I was no longer "part of their culture". This was after mid year reviews where attendance at DEI events was the center of discussion.
There is a thin line between personal and professional when dealing with DEI, and it is a tough line to walk. I agree that two things can be true at once.
I also believe that every individual has the ability to break cycles of hate and prejudice, regardless of what we have experienced and encountered. If we are to have hope in the human race, I pray the ability to choose peace is what saves us all.
