I guess I have to put my foot in my mouth over a comment I made a month or so back. I had said an XBOX handheld would sell out against the Steam Deck simply due to brand recognition.

This was of course before I thought they’d be dumb enough to make a console twice as expensive aimed at the mass market. If this was targeted at the same price as the Deck, they might have had a chance.

I don’t know anyone that would consider one of these now.

Big Time conspiracy. I love it.

Fellow IM enjoyer in the wild! 🍄

10.8 by Deadmau5 and Mr. Bill

Pure ear candy

I’m the Supervisor - Infected Mushroom

I honestly recommend everything from them if you’re looking for unique sound. The He.art album by Astrix also has some weird.

Enigma also has some great soundscapes. My personal favorite album is MCMX A.D.

A progressive wave? Progress??? IN MY COUNTRY?!?!?!

Pointlesssites.com is a treasure trove of weird and interesting sites that’s still up today and still gets updated. If you find ones that don’t work, Wayback is your best friend for this site.

My personal favorite is tane.us

It’s like if the It’s Always Sunny characters took more effort to pretend they were good people, but silently ruin the lives of everyone around them.

I actually enjoyed it if only because it can give some context on how people justify some of the absolutely insane things they do. Very much a slow burn.

Yeah, even if it’s a big brand attachment or whatever, I’m never going to complain about a big charity donation. (as long as it’s not a bogus charity, of course)

Haha. Was showing in another comment what the first version of Blender I used looked like. These days I mostly make music.

I don’t think the person surrendering $120,000 actually cares about the console so much as they’re donating to charity.

tl;dr working with your hands can be better than working with a keyboard at times

Aside from the physical labor involved (there’s really no way around it), the actual things to keep in mind are very similar to the troubleshooting process on a computer. It’s ultimately about identifying there’s a problem and digging until you remove it. You’ll have to learn how to get better at filtering parts, debugging machine code (reading machine code is easy if you’re a programmer, and you have a good CAD programmer above you), maintaining the machine itself, keeping track of tools and orders…

And if you have an IT skillset, you’ll likely be one of the few that knows how to work a desktop well and can be the helping hand around the shop for that sort of thing, if you want. There’s lots of flexibility because there’s a lot less concern about public image. That being said, you might have to look around, because a lot of these places can get lax with safety and quality.

The machines are generally pleasant to work with as well. Instead of software made by companies that actively hate their customers, you get to work with massive machines that have hundreds of millions of dollars poured into development and another few hundred thousand in manufacturing. On top of that, most well-run shops will have you stick to your task. They won’t expect you to randomly cross-train on things because it can actually be really dangerous if you’re not well trained.

If you had to work Helpdesk, you no longer have to work with customer directly at all. You get to talk to other machinists, many of which have been doing it since they were teenagers or younger. It’s also a job where you get to constantly hone your craft and see the physical result. There’s something really satisfying about holding a finishing part in your hand.

I got lucky with a job offer, but you can often take a few-month fast-track course through a community college. It will run a few thousand dollars, but the course that my job offered taught me a ton.

I’ve since moved to screen printing due to poor management at the shop I previously worked, but the principles are all still there. If you’re good at working with your hands and enjoy seeing a finished product, try some local manufacturing places. A lot of them do offer training to get you in since skilled tradespeople are getting harder and harder to find these days.

I’m honest in saying that anyone who doesn’t want to do a decent amount of manual labor on top of having to use their full talent set (i.e. not tedious/mindless labor) is not a good fit and more importantly, it will probably pay less getting started than the IT industry, but if you get into something like programming or inspection, you can quickly be making double entry level rates in a couple of years. Just depends on where your skillset lies.

Hope my rambling gives you a decent idea of why I enjoy it compared to working at a desk all day. I get to interact with the world a lot more and when I look at the finished result, I know I played a significant part in that.

I ditched the IT world for production and manufacturing. CNC machining has a surprising amount of skill crossover and even more so in inspection. If you’re physically capable and have programming experience, it’s worth looking into.

realistic surgery

lifelike patient

I wonder how doctors could compare this simulation to a real surgery. I’m willing to bet it’s “realistic and lifelike” in the way a 4D movie is.

Biological creatures don’t follow perfect patterns you have all sorts of unexpected things happen. I was just reading an article about someone whose entire organs are mirrored from the average person.

Nothing about humans is “standard”.

Or just don’t finance any non-essential purchase. The idea of financing anything smaller than a couple thousand dollars is just wild to me.

I worked in one of these companies. Within months, we went from a company I would be proud to recommend to friends to a service I would never use myself, just due to the horrendous route they took to hire overseas support.

The line of tech work I was in required about a month of training after passing the interview process, and even then you had to take a test at the end to prove you’d absorbed the material before you ever speak to a customer.

When they outsourced, they just bought a company of like 30 people in an adjacent industry and gave them a week of training. Our call queues were never worse and every customer was angry with everyone by the time they talked to someone who had training.

I don’t blame the overseas agents. I blame all the companies that treat them like cattle.

I’ve definitely had the internal thoughts “leak” like you’re describing. I tend to think in almost another space outside of myself where sometimes I will forget my senses and have to actively return to them. Like I’m walking away briefly from the drivers seat to go take care of something in the back of the truck. I tend not to do this with others around as it can be rude. With others, I’m much more stream of consciousness.

I’ll have to upload it here when I get back into work on Tuesday, but I wrote a PDF guide for the most common Windows and Mac shortcuts that I consider to be the essentials.

I’ve heard at least a dozen guaranteed methods for solving hiccups. At this point I’m convinced it’s all placebo, including the method that works for me reliably.