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Yep, did it a couple of years ago as well. One of the best experiences I’ve had! Definitely recommend.

Unrelated, out of curiosity. In a 300 page mortgage document, there’s probably >90% of boilerplate with a few pages of custom content. Hypothetically, you could generate those <10% and then stitch it together with the rest onsite.

The question I’ve been thinking about: what’s a better time to quit —- in a downturn or when things are going up?

If you can hold on to a job in a downturn, it’s a good opportunity to invest when the market is lower (which interestingly is not exactly the case now) so that you can benefit from it later.

But I guess the best time to quit is when you’re ready. Regardless of where in the cycle it is.

There are brands (and probably is market dependent too) where this isn’t always true. Where I live, a 3 year old Toyota or Honda costs 10-15% less than a new one. In that case, it doesn’t really make sense to buy a used one if you can afford it.

Still, I also buy cars used. But I go ~10 year old, from a reputable low maintenance brand and model.

> The fear of being in debt would also lead to better and more careful driving

Let’s try to apply that to a different area: “The fear of being in debt would also lead to better and more careful choice of which college people choose to go to.”

How well did that work out?

Try FIP radio. Free, no ads, and really good music picks to my taste. Beats Spotify and everything else I’ve tried in terms of finding new music or listening to something in the background.

TBH, I still have a Spotify subscription for listening on demand.

I’ve been thinking about this too. And it’s also usually used as a counter-argument to people wanting to get out of their jobs.

However, here’s what I realized: most people work in “regular” 9-5 jobs. That includes “tech people”, who like to think of themselves as artists, but are not. And it takes like 2 decades to get trained to do a regular job if you take into account k-12 (which trains you to be a 9-5 worker and discourages anything else), uni, and the first few years of professional experience.

So is it that surprising that once you get disillusioned with being a 9-5 worker it would take you at the very least few years to figure out how to not be one?

What I’m trying to say is it should be expected to not know what you want to do. Because even getting to the point where you could do what 90% of the population does take a tremendous amount of effort. So once you want to do something else, it will take a while to figure out too. And you can totally fail along the way as well.

> They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts

Didn’t we have this experiment during Covid where many people found themselves being paid, sometimes for 2 years, to just wait till their job comes back? I don’t think many became artists (surely, some did). But there were also a lot of stories of increased depression, addiction, and despair.

I’m not saying it’s better to do a bullshit job that getting paid to do nothing. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be as simple.

This is a good example, but it should be a problem of whoever finds themselves in that situation and not the rest of us. I’m eating a sandwich in Des Moins, Iowa and there’s no reason I should do a mental math of $6.99 + 10% tax + 22% tip. Why not just print the final price? Or at least offer two versions of the menu: for nerds and for the rest of us.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about the full extent of the metaphor I’m about to propose. But what you’re saying sounds to me something like “do you hate being in a relationship but love making love?” Yes, many people would prefer one without the other. But that’s not how it works in real life most of the time.

And not only engineering vs programming or relationships vs love making. If you pay attention, many other aspects of life are like this too: — do you like learning but hate school? — do you like hiking but hate waking up early, driving, and sweating? — do you like seeing new places but hate planning and getting there?

Granted, sometimes some people manage to arrange their circumstances such that there’s no dichotomy there. But most of the time, on average, this is what it is. There are two ways of dealing with it: accept it as a fact and learn to deal with it or try to change your circumstances with the understanding that there’s a high chance it’s going to be the same at another place.

>> either Ring or Nest is required in my neighborhood given our property crime issues

What do you do with that footage? I have a full resolution video of a dude stealing $300 worth of crabbing equipment from my porch. What’s next? Police is not going to do anything about it even though there’s probably technically a way to track him down.