Tech refugee

submitted by [deleted] from (self.Introductions)

Standard issue disgruntled techie that's sick of basically the entire tech scene. My friends are too, we want out, and I keep running into old techies who have the same story: got into tech field, hated it, left for agriculture or day trading. Often both. I've been plotting my exit and getting back to my electronics roots by learning ham radio and SBCs, and I'm learning some 'prepping' type stuff like composting and canning. I started a garden last year, but I am a plant murderer of the worst degree. Little steps. Dunno what sadit's prepping scene looks like, but the tech/linux/programming and gardening subs look about my speed. Reddit had lots of good prepping subs, but then I'd still have to be on reddit and I'm done with that crap.

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[–]magnora7 14 insightful - 3 fun14 insightful - 2 fun15 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

Hey welcome to saidit. I'm pretty tired of the tech scene in a lot of ways too, I can relate.

[–][deleted] 10 insightful - 5 fun10 insightful - 4 fun11 insightful - 5 fun -  (10 children)

Thanks, it's pretty bad. My first computer was a Commodore something that was basically a keyboard you hook to a CRT tv and saved your progams on a casette tape. Nostalgia heaven for my age, from what I gather. It came with games, but you had to build them yourself and save them to the tape to play them. It was like doing magic and was definitely part of the reason I got into tech, but that magic is long gone and it's all SEO keywords, fending off bots and scripties, arguing with support people who you can't understand and realizing how bad the company you work for got ripped off by crap software vendors. I hate this crap and every aged out boomer tells me the same story: "I hated it and bought a farm" or "now I just trade futures, to hell with blah-blah-tech crap". And now I've got grey hairs and I'm as salty as they are and I'm getting out soon. It used to be a passion, now it's just a job I want to get away from.

I had intentions to make this site, that app, just for kicks or whatever, but that's not happening until I don't do it for a paycheck. It is tiring. It's not rewarding at all. It's just money, and that completely kills it for me.

[–]magnora7 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

My parents had a Commodore64 and the little 10" CRT tv I used to watch all the time as a kid, after they stopped using the Commodore. It was a bit before my time. My first real computer experience was DOS and playing games like Caesar II. My first personal computer years later was an IBM Aptiva with a pop-up cd drive and windows 95. It was awesome.

I was going to work as a CPU design engineer but after a few internships I realized what a nightmare it was, and how it was all boring incremental crap that was basically done by Chinese people for pennies on the dollar so it's very hard to get a job as an American too. Then I programmed fMRI machines for a year and then was fired the week I finished their research experiment codebase, when I was misled to believe it was a permanent position.

And software engineering has always been a turn-off for me, I like simple good code but I loathe bloated architectures. I've heard the same stories about leaving tech, it's high burn out, especially the stuff dealing with anonymous people online these days is pretty annoying because there's so many dedicated paid shill/bot farms now, and lots of people who realize they won't get caught. I can justify the work for saidit because I'm creating a public good that's beneficial for communication and culture (or that's what I tell myself anyway) which is at least better than some projects that just exist to make money, or don't even get used. So I've got that going for me. But yeah, it's just a lot of complexity to manage, it's tiring for sure

[–][deleted] 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

DOS was king. X-wing, Crystal Caves, Wolfenstein and DooM, I used to play DooM so much I would have nightmares about being in the game. My dad had DOS with Norton Commander as a file manager, and I remember being absolutely amazed when he installed windows 3.1 and it ran for the first time. That was when you did stuff in DOS and ran Windows when you needed to, I think it was better that way. It was like being headless but having a GUI on demand. He had a set of disks called the 'Windows Bible' that wasn't about the Bible but had a ton of free and demo software, and it included a lot of games from Apogee and Id (which I think are the same company?) like Commander Keen and BioHazard. Good times.

Didn't realize I was talking to the bossman, I like your show already, I've already been here for a couple hours and every time I click save there's a new response. Phew, gonna have to call off soon.

But yeah, it is an incremental nightmare, and it's all getting outsourced for cheaper and cheaper. I don't even do 'tech', I make ads and throw money at keywords, and solicit people on LinkedIn. No one needs me to write anything, they just want me to talk up customers and make sure the web site still functions. Occasionally I put out a dumpster fire by restoring a backup, or sometimes I stare blankly at log files wondering why someone would put so much work into trying to GET <script> into a company that, in the grand scheme of things, makes so little money. That fRMI burn sounds maddening, I would lose it. Good tech, I worked on RADAR, TACAN and ILS before moving indoors, so I get the RF stuff, but stories like that make me boil. It's not the first 'do this while your new to prove yourself, oh it works whoops you're fired' I've heard.

Well this has been fun, but I've just spent the past couple hours responing just to replies to my intro post (holy cow), thanks for running the place, what a welcome. I'm hoping it's been long enough from the rFMI fisaco that maybe you'll talk about what you working on at the time, maybe? I still really like RF stuff.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Thanks for the chat.

The fMRI stuff was detecting brain activity as part of a realtime feedback experiment. Basically we had a participant in the fMRI machine, then they would look at pictures on a screen telling them to think about certain things, or try to imagine doing or saying certain things. Then we would watch the brain's activity appear on the fMRI machine readouto, with about a 6 second delay. We could then correlate physical activity in specific brain regions to certain types of mental activity. I basically programmed the entire real-time feedback experiment myself for $12/hr, and then was promptly fired when it was finished. And not only did they fire me, but they created false allegations against me and I was escorted out by security on my last day, not allowed to return to my desk to fetch my belongings. I had worked in that facility for 12 years. I was put on retainer and full salary but I had to be accessable phone for a month, to ensure I hadn't backdoored the software somehow. It was terrible.

[–]bobbobbybob 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I used to program those fMRI machines and the software used in them. EDITED to remove self dox doh

weird that we have that in common. Where was it?

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

That's cool we have that in common. I was writing mostly overlays to interact with the machine rather than the machine functionality itself. I have a lot of respect for that though because it's certainly complex. I'd rather not say where so I don't doxx myself.

[–]bobbobbybob 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

fair enough. I've doxxed myself to three people at least if they ever read that post!

maybe i'll delete it. not been that careless before. But yeah, was working on the machine protocols themselves, mostly, plus lots of backend coding to try and manage massive datasets for the data analysis in the days before big data. Huge parallel drive arrays acting as swap disk for big endian unix systems. Did a bit of work on the aux systems running it all. Was heaps of fun LSD helped :D

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

That's a nightmare. Hell of a first job, especially the false allegations crap. Could they not have simply hired you on temporary terms to start? I can't understand the motives of people who do things like that. And there's so many of them.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah it was bizarre. I think they did it that way to ensure they'd have me on retainer for a month, to ensure I didn't build any backdoors in to the software, or something strange like that. I'm so glad to be done with that. It was a nightmare, you've got that right

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I'm a couple years older than you, but similar experiences. First computer I ever typed on was a Timex Sinclair 1000 at school, then I used an Atari 400 and 800 extensively and learned to code in BASIC. Eventually I got my own Atari 400 and a tape drive and some game cartridges. Kids today have NO IDEA what it was like.

I'm at a similar level of burnout. I make ridiculous amounts of money, I have gray hairs growing out my ears, and I hate everything.

I have an exit strategy. I bought a piece of land with 8 acres of woods and a creek. It's almost paid off now. Building an off grid cabin with solar panels. It is just barely possible that my small investment in Bitcoin will make me able to disconnect from the rest of society and punch out. If not, I plan on selling my house in the next 5 years and moving up there, and working remotely part time. Going to chop wood and carry water and put my hands in the dirt. Fuck society.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Very nice. I picked up a few acres also by a creek, but haven't developed it yet. Wife's not going to tolerate a cabin, but that's the general idea: woodstove for heat, deep-well instead of munincipal water, big garden and some egg generators. As off grid as possible, with most of our food bought locally, which we're already pretty good about.

[–]fschmidt 9 insightful - 4 fun9 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 4 fun -  (6 children)

Do you fundamentally hate tech or do you just hate modern tech? I am a programmer who hates modern tech. In fact I hate modern culture generally and I hate everything that it produces. So I developed my own programming tools so that I can program without modern tech, and now I like programming again.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

In fact I hate modern culture generally and I hate everything that it produces

Yeah I guess that is more accurate. I like technology in general, but the corporate culture, the endless marketing of cheap disposable nothings, and narcissistic quest for online validation have ruined it for me. Not to mention the spying, lying, and hacking from every direction. I think you're on the right course, and I'm not far behind. I don't want to use other people's software anymore, I don't trust it, I don't like it, I want back to enjoying the things I made to get things done. I haven't made my own programming tools, but I have started using my own stuff for tracking budget, scheduling, etc. Why should my budget be on some corporations' cloud server because I have to use thier accounting software? It's just a spreadsheet. I can make that myself, so I did. I don't have to learn some new program's interface, I made the interface. It's so much better.

[–]fschmidt 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Most programmers are very much part of the problem, writing horrible code. In fact I haven't seen any other programmer making posts in support of good programming. So I just naturally assume that decent programmers are extinct (except me). If you support good programming, you could make some posts about this. Here are my posts on /s/programming.

[–]BigPoppaMoses 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Most programmers are very much part of the problem, writing horrible code. In fact I haven't seen any other programmer making posts in support of good programming

I know this is an old post, but I'm a new member, so just seeing this today. So as someone who is looking to get started in programming, any tips on what to do/where to go in order to avoid horrible coding habits?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The obsession with "horrible coding habits" is primarily the occupation of egoists, whose inability to write useful programs must be made up for with the assertion that the way in which they write code is superior — and although certain conventions should be met, it is not a law that good programs are written in a prescriptive manner.

Take, for example: 8values. The code is not very well written, with the most notable offense being the tabulation of equal signs (an aggravation of mine, since it makes it annoying to edit), however this does not make the program bad; 8values is a respected political test, and I marvel at its usability and functionality — just not in the way it's written.

Try to focus on coding good programs instead of preoccupying yourself with ensuring everything you write matches every convention. It's good to make sure you're meeting the conventions, since they're conventions for a reason, but that should not overshadow the program itself. (Also, please don't tab over equal signs because you think it looks pretty.)

By the way, welcome to SaidIt!

[–]BigPoppaMoses 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks for this, mate!

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You're welcome!

[–]bobbobbybob 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

not sure about prepping scene either. I'm interested in a easily deployable complete mesh networking solution for communities in the event of grid failure, so people can communicate with each other.,

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

So I've got two routers that will run DD-WRT, which I hear is good for that, but due to burnout I've never sat down and spent the time learning how that works and getting it running. After work or trying to learn some new stupid framework that's worse than the problems it was supposed to fix I don't feel like working on pet projects, which was the whole point of learning all this stuff but by the time I'm free to work on them I hate computers in general and don't want to think about them.

What I did do that may be a little relevant is set up a raspberry pi as a web server hooked to it's own wifi router with no external internet and host a simple stol'd from github PHP 'chat' site that's accessible from phones or computers within the wifi's range. With a couple mesh routers in the mix, I think it would work for what you are talking about. I'll report back if I ever get of my lazy butt and plug 'em 'n boot 'em.

But this is what got me interested in radio and ham. You can run a router and a pi on a little solar panel and battery bank or generator, but in a grid down situation, what would you actually need to post to the mesh net when your mesh is just a router at your next three neighbor's houses? I mean, I know in some far-flung locations today there are mesh networks spreading a single internet gateway over a village or whatever, but outside of sharing a precious single working connection to the outside, there's not much use for a mesh net unless it covers a large enough area to be better than simply going to your neighbor's house or you're constantly monitoring for 'updates' from other users, which will burn critical power. So the mesh only works where you've got enough power for each router node and every device accessing it, or you get 'holes' in the mesh.

Now I'm not knocking it because like I said, I haven't tried it yet. I still intend to eventually. But a cheap (I mean cheap, UV-5Rs are like $30) radio will get you 5-10 miles of voice comms, or much further with working repeaters, with far less power consumption compared to an always-running mesh net ( I assume, I haven't done any math on that). I think that in an emergency of the scale that brings downs telephone and cellular for any amount of time, a radio will be not only more useful, but also more practical than a mesh.

[–]bobbobbybob 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

interesting. I was thinking of being able to hook into the existing cellular network and use it for local broadcast based comms - basically emergency broadcasting when the links to the main servers are down. everyone has a mobile phone. With a mesh local network (i live in a rural area, 40,000 people over 800km x 100km area) phones could tap into that if main links down. lots of solar and hydro here, so power not really an issue.

We had an outage on christmas day, when someone cut the cable out to civilisation, and there was nothing in place from any of the emergency systems or (expensive) council backed civil emergency systems.

i'm sure radio is great, but who has one?

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Well, it's pretty hard to "hook into" the cellular network, and will be triply so when the tower's deisel generator runs out (about 2-3 days, less for many towers). Cellular towers are like giant wifi routers. Think of the connection between the tower and your phone like the connection between your PC and your wifi router. The connection between the tower and the rest of the internet is like the DSL line, cable, or optic line coming out the back of your router and going into the wall. This is the hard part about hooking into cellular networks: the way in is through a fiber optic cable that's part of a larger network. The adapters that connect these fibers to the tower's routers are often expensive and hard to find outside vendor networks, and the software that runs it all is usually proprietary and also not easily obtained. It is all but impossible to jack into a tower at the base without exclusive equipment and esoteric secrets. And you can't just broadcast into the tower via a cellular device, the tower doesn't connect devices, it routes thier traffic to a remote server that handles the connections, the tower only broadcasts and transmits, it's a straight through transmitter.

I don't know where you are obviously, but there is likey a radio repeater network in your area for emergency services and law enforcement, and probably a local ham club repeater too. It used to be mostly older folks on the radio, but younger people are starting to lurk there and speak up some, and a CB radio will bring all sorts of intersting things to you, depending on where you live. It's much, much easier than taking over a tower, that's engineer grade stuff, I don't think it can be done without industry specific tools, good luck getting those without landing on the most horrible watch list ever.

I've worked on cell towers from the top to the bottom, inside and out, from field to National Operations Center. Ok, I didn't work in the NOC but I was on the line with them daily. They are too complex and resource intensive for emergency operations not carried out by thier operators. The fuel required for the distance they broadcast is far more than what radio offers, and there's no such thing as 'repairs on the fly'. You don't fix those components when they fail, you replace them. I had the same idea, take over the cell network when it all goes down, but there's just too much logistics and proprietary systems involved.

[–]bobbobbybob 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

We have engineers. looking to build a go-to emergency response tech that can be rolled out under emergency response / local and national government systems. i'm in NZ.

We had a failure and none of the existing emergency systems coped. it is like all the people that understand it got old and died.

I feel there is an opening for a new protocol that could be implemented at the operator and local emergency services level. A standard that can be rolled out worldwide for resilience

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

it is like all the people that understand it got old and died

That's pretty much what happened. If your cellular went down, you need to figure out if it was the towers that ran out of fuel, or the server farms that ran out of power, or both. If the tower is up but no link on the fiber, nogo. If the fiber is good and the tower good but no servers, nogo. You get the picture, it's the emergency infrastructure that keeps all this running that matters. These levels of complication compound quickly without structred support. If you go to a tower that has fuel, and you have a tech who knows that carrier's systems and has an authorization password / CAC / whatever to access and make the changes you want to the tower, you can probably do something, but short of any of those, it's going to be rough.

Better emergency response can be had through HF radios, I think. Keeping a repeater tower running is just easier and more efficient than running cellular towers. And emergency services already have radios in their vehicles. I thouroughly support any efforts to get your cellular networks to better prepare thier sites for disater, but don't overlook radios for emergency use. The hard part is encouraging people you know in the area to buy one.

Ugh, I feel like I wrote that with a chip on my shoulder, I'm still new to radios so I'm no expert.

[–]bobbobbybob 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

. If your cellular went down,

Fibre optic link to world cut

need some protocol that shifts automagically to an emergency state when main/failover uplinks are lost.

I like radios. I do. But everyone already has a phone.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Most major cell sites have a primary fiber, buried in concrete so that they are backhoe-resistant. If they are really important, they will have a secondary fiber going a different route, so that one singe fiber cut doesn't take the site down. Often this one is not buried at all, but just strung up on a telephone pole. As long as these are still connected to something alive, and everything has power, they work. Some remote tower sites are connected by microwave dishes and daisy-chain several hops to the infrastructure.

[–]bobbobbybob 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

we are 270km from a city, a single fibre optic link that travels across a fault line. There's lots of PTP airfibre links going in and out of the mountains, but we need something that will work when that fibre is down. an emergency sytem, located at the towers, that can communicate with its other nodes, and elect a boss node when the world is disconnected so that we get more than silence.

This is a software issue, really. some kind of failover routing

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

MeshNet has major problems that haven't ever been solved. I've been following it since the early days. You have trunking problems between major far-flung cities. I live in the Western CONUS and my major city (30 miles from here) is over 150 miles from the next major city. Even if you could get the neighborhoods interconnected, you'd never get the cities interconnected. You need long distance microwave trunking and extreme high bandwidth, which requires point-to-point microwave dishes, multiple tower hops, and FCC licenses. No way is Joe Sixpack ham radio operator going to do that for free. Those dishes are HUGE. The equipment investment would be very large (hundreds of thousands of dollars per 40-mile hop) and the licenses are not just available to anyone. The spectrum is very crunched up and in use already.

My plan for the off-grid cabin is going to be Starlink, once they get a semi-portable unit that doesn't use 250 watts.

[–]bobbobbybob 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

i was thinking as more of an infrastructure project for the region. Government backed, emergency response initiative.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you so much for this response. I've always thought meshes were interesting but the logistics involved in anything larger than a college campus or small town WAN just grow exponentially. Scaling up is near impossible, I may try to set up a mesh in my neighborhood with the neighbors I know, but it would just be for kicks if anything.

I have a friend who just got approved to be the first Starlink tester in our area, I'll try to remember to report back when he get's his gear installed. I really don't know what all is involved, I guess some kind of DirectTV style dish?

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's the idea. It looks like a small UFO on a stick. You point it at the open sky and you get internet out the cable. The first consumer version they have out draws too much power for off-grid use (on the order of 250W). If they can get it down to half that or lower, it'd be good for all kinds of uses such as people living in RVs, etc.

[–]solder0 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Welcome, you and I have many things in common. :)

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (9 children)

I think you're home bro. Protip: you have to prune basil in a certain way to get decent and exponential leaf growth

[–]NunyaDB 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

A pro pro-tip would include the sekret basil pruning technique!

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

You lop off the main stem above the suckers: https://i1.wp.com/www.humminghomebody.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/look-for-these.jpg

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That's totally correct, but you don't have to be that careful, just grab whatever basil you need off the top. Frequent harvesting promotes growth and it'll always grow two more branches from wherever.

I've got some basil seedlings starting now.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Hey thanks, just growing basil for fresh leaves this year because I have so much dried from lst year, but topping the plant has worked pretty well so far. One of my favorite spring time snacks is a tomato sandwich with fresh basil leaves, mayo and pepper. Delicious, especially when out of the garden. Apparently herbs are great for beginners because they're tolerant of so much more abuse. My garden is testament to this, I was lucky to have any tomatoes last year. Hoping to apply lessons learned and do a little better this year.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Nice! I agree about the power of basil. I've had a hard time with overwatering it too, now I just wait for it to get droopy. Keep it up man we'll post up our bounties in a month or two.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Do tell!!!

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

You lop off the main stem above the suckers: https://i1.wp.com/www.humminghomebody.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/look-for-these.jpg

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks!

Makes sense to see it.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

D3 is totally correct, but you don't really have to be careful, just grab whatever basil you need off the top. Frequent harvesting promotes growth and it'll always grow two more branches from wherever.

I've got some basil seedlings starting now. It's a useful and easy plant to grow. Only thing I noticed is basil hates water logged soil. It likes water but it likes to drain quick. Like most plants basil is way easier to kill from overwatering than underwatering.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I loved programming until I went to college for it. I just booted my computer up for the first time in something like 6 years. Can't stand it anymore.

Welcome.

[–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Recommended subs:

I working on setting up my basement into a year-round food garden (with more food and pot outside) and eventually some aquaponics and/or stills.

Some subs related to growing, food, health, etc:

You may find more knowledgeable answers than I'll ever have from the content or posters or commenters in there.

Edit:

Soon I also hope to create a bunch of open manifestos to declare and clarify sorely missed goals, morals, organization, etc. Some of this must include obviously include new technology paradigms.

[–]Airbus320 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I am taking the courses in the energy field. Like heat pumps, things operating with pressure, fridges and ventilation systems. It seems kinda fun. Isolation stuff is useful too

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It is fun! My AC quit last year, and this is the first home I've lived in that I've been responsible for the maintenance of. I've always rented rooms or apartments, or since moving to the boondocks, rented single and doublewides. So, since I'm stubborn and can DIY until I can't, I started working on it. Turns out the coils had not been cleaned apparently ever and had clogged up with ant mounds and grass clippings over untold years until it caused the compressor to pull too much current trying to cool through the clogged coils. This caused an over current from the compressor capacitor that blew the cap and burned up a couple wires to and from it, and burned out the power-on relay contactor to the compressor. Luckily the compressor itself survived, and after cleaning the coils out, vacuuming the partially clogged drain line from the condensor and the condensor itself, and replacing the cap, wires and contactor, it started running like a champ again. It was a pain but very rewarding.

[–]Airbus320 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Key word, rewarding. Thats what I will look for, a job that is rewarding. I was a little interested in IT but the programming stuff was hard. Specially c++ and python3...

[–]blowininthewind 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

though i got into tech (software) by liking it and don't planning on changing that any time soon, hey, welcome to saidit.