MEMORYC_RRUPTED

It's not even code for me, but the prose it writes. For some reason, the way Opus 5 "talk" elicits frustration in a way that 4.5 to 4.8 never did. Can't put my finger on why, but I've flipped over to Codex because what it produced wasn't worth the frustration.

Unsure how long ago this was, but I recently registered with KvK and didn't have to show up at all, just pay 80-ish euros.

I live in a dense European city and all I ever do is order groceries online. I can order larger amounts in one go, so, batch order once every two weeks or so.

Instead of having to fight with a machine to give back my empty cans/plastic bottles, I can just give the delivery person a crate and get my money back.

Doesn't capture all my groceries, I love biking or walking to a smaller shop on occasion, or if I have a specific craving, but 90% of my groceries is delivery.

As someone who is a chronic procrastinator, and has diagnosed ADHD, I relate to this. While yes, scrapping tasks and limiting concurrent in-progress todo's helps with peace of mind and feelings of guilt, I am _significantly_ more productive the more I get on my plate. As long as A I have a clear set of small tasks for each project, I can actually make more progress.

That said: there's definitely a price to pay for this. I'm very bad at managing energy levels, or making sure I do all of that in a sustainable way, so, it's super productive, until I'm not. At all. Usually quite suddenly. The risk for burnout is quite high.

I'm starting to accept that I'll never find the right balance, rather, I'm just getting better at recognising the symptoms that I'm headed towards burnout, and just accept that it's alternating periods of very high, intense productivity, and periods of basically nothing.

Putting one thing on my to-do list is the most surefire way of me not doing the thing.

While I don't disagree with the general statement, I do want to add the nuance that this isn't true for small amounts of cash money. Recently, the government even recommended people to keep more cash on hand in case of emergency / large scale disruptions to the financial system.

Even with large amounts of money, it's not like they're knocking on doors, looking under yer bed.

Goes even further than purely French speaking, we do the exact same thing in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium!

I really enjoyed it when ConcernedApe added a journal to stardew valley: per villager it keeps track of which gifts they enjoyed. Practically it's not all that different than looking that information up on a wiki, but the fact that it is in game and integrated made the experience way more pleasant. You still have to try out a ton of items, but at least you don't have to remember which ones worked for who.

It's the same thing with open world quest markers. Nowadays, a lot of open world games give the player the option to remove quest markers outright. It's great to have that choice. But compared to, for example Morrowind, it often turns out to be an exercise in frustration, because the quests and the world haven't been designed with that in mind ("Go south from Vivec and turn left at the third tree", followed by an internal dialogue about if you should count a stump as a tree and a four hour detour is one of my best memories).

There's also this middle ground: in Ghost of Tsushima you can summon the wind as a compass to guide you to your next quest marker. Mechanically it's the exact same thing as an arrow, or line to guide you. But the fact that it's so well integrated, and thematically fitting into the game, makes my brain experience it totally differently. Not needing it would be even better, but the way they implemented it is at least pleasant.

I wish more games had a journal to keep track of things :). Why do I need notepad open, or a wiki open when playing satisfactory? If I make the effort to calculate the exact amount of iron ore I need to perfectly match my iron rod production, it'd be great if I could keep track of that in game.

Tangentially related: I've been struggling with the decision to go for the technical track or the management track in my current org. I'm lucky to work in a company that has a technical ladder (though one can certainly argue that everything above staff isn't really realistically achievable). Certainly has my preference.

But being in Western Europe, most companies don't have this, and with the current state of the industry, with somewhat regular lay-offs, if I have to change jobs and want to stay an IC, I'll basically have reached the plateau of where I can get career-wise. The only way to get past that barrier is becoming an EM.

I hate to even have the thought, because, purely on principle, it's the worst reason to become an EM. But career-planning wise, I'd be crazy not to.

Anyway, your post is another argument in the column to stay on the technical track a bit more, we'll see what life brings :).

Belgium and The Netherlands have it too, though it's optional. Most mortgages have a 30 year runtime with a 10 year fixed rate. The longer your fixed rate, the higher the rate becomes.

For the Netherlands: While it differs per bank, legally you're allowed to pay up to 10% of your mortgage extra per year (some banks offer higher rates, I can do 20% for example) without extra costs. When the rate changes (due to going from fixed to variable, or variable with a large change in a year) you're allowed to pay back as much as you want, without extra costs.

If you want to pay back more/faster, the bank calculates a fee ("loss of income due to lost interest payments") that you have to pay, which is still cheaper than just doing your regular payments.

The above statement also applies if you want to refinance if, for example, your home went up in value. They can and will drop your rate but you have to pay a fine. That being said, in the past, when rate drops were really large, you could go to a different bank, have them take over your mortgage pay the fine for you just so they can get you to come to them (though I'm assuming they're no longer so keen on that).

Yeah, I'm not going back either. Worked remotely for a few years. Got impacted by lay-offs and joined a hybrid company. Would still have been able to work 4 days from home, and 1 from the office. Went to the office 4 times, and spent 90% of my time either alone at my desk, or in an office room in a meeting that should have been an e-mail. Sure, in person collabs might (!) be easier for ideation and greenfield work, but in all honestly, don't get to do that all to often anymore.

Needless to say, I'm back at a fully remote place now. I'm fine if they offer hybrid, not everyone has the room/situation to work from home. I can imagine that for some, having a desk at an office is a net benefit, but don't make me come over and waste my time because you have control issues.

Spain does it, Portugal does it. Sweden does it.

1. AI/ML stuff. I'm very much of the "let's get stuff shipped" persuasion, but also like to understand the basics. So, no deep math here, but, incremental building blocks, focussing on how to deploy and maintain applications 2. Gardening: we bought a house with a sizeable plot of land. Want to get better at managing it. Grow some stuff, build some stuff. Focus on permaculture, and working within the parameters of our environment.

And to give an anecdotal counterpoint: I live in (relatively speaking because small country) the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands, I have 8+ charging stations (each with at least 2 chargers) in my small town and a fast charging point with 20+ chargers within a five minute highway drive.

Not that there aren't any problems, and there are definitely "dead zones" so to speak, but the situation you're describing isn't valid everywhere.

Another recommendation for Dungeon Alchemist, simply because it saves me time. I love drawing intricate maps, but I just don't have the time for it any more (though DA definitely allows you to still do that, just not what I use it for). It doesn't help that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and even quickly hand drawing maps is somewhat frustrating to me. DA can spit out nice looking maps quickly enough that I've even used it on the fly if my group went in a completely different direction than I expected them to go.