saruken · HackerTrans

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Funny, I did the same thing with a 5-pack of Zip disks a couple years ago. I ended up buying them though, for a couple bucks. Who else would have? I still have them sitting on my desk, keep telling myself I'll finish rebuilding the old tower PC I picked up at a thrift store, and I'll buy a Zip drive for it.

I used to have a Zip drive in my PC in high school -- I remember saving 3ds Max files to it when I was first learning to model. And Deadlock, a turn-based strategy game that came with some version of Windows, I copied it onto a Zip disk and distributed it to some friends. But as I remember they were too busy with Kingdom Under Fire and Brood War.

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

GBA is such a sweet spot for me. My SP is still one of my favorite platforms.

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

I had success running Slax on an Eee PC 901 a couple years ago. It was 1.6GHz with only 1GB of RAM.

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

I have an iPad 4 that's mostly used for email and reading HN/blogs in bed.

My daily Linux machine is a Thinkpad T430 from 2012.

I daily drive a 1993 Saab 9000 -- Can it run custom software? The electronics (HVAC, lights, wipers, etc.) are controlled by a Raspberry Pi, so kind of?

And some old phones lying around, including a working Razr and a Palm Treo that can still sync with Windows 10(!)

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

WhiteOps/HUMAN was behind the eBay thing too?

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Beech Rd SW. Here's a link to the FB data center location:

https://goo.gl/maps/UXrJePXbNNUZQG1H8

saruken

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

The capitalist dream! "Growth" can be infinite along a circular path

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> I roughly knew about TCP/IP (partly from seeing the option in StarCraft when connecting to Battlenet in 2001)

I feel seen

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I think you may have answered your own question, at least in part:

> I always seem to find an excuse as to why it's not worth continuing, *right before actually accomplishing anything* [emphasis mine]

Certainly "diminishing returns" and "the skill of consistency" are real issues, but is it also possible there's something psychological going on here, like a fear of success?

This is something I've struggled with for all of my adult life – not with success per se, but with the way succeeding at something defines who/what you are. For instance, way back when I was a freshman in college, I poured myself into a big assignment with singular focus, and created something that got a lot of attention and notoriety. Important people took notice, I won some awards, and everyone started asking what I was working on next. It felt great and I did start another big project, but quickly found myself crushed under all these perceived expectations... And although I finished it, the result was underwhelming. I sort of dropped off everyone's radar at that point, and I'm not sure I've ever really recovered.

Like other commenters have said, you could have written your post verbatim about me. I get into things with an initial boost of motivation that often borders on obsession, go deep down the rabbit hole, cobble together some sort of proof of concept, and then suddenly lose interest, as you described, right at the point where I could actually produce something.

So how do we get past this? Figuring that out may be my life's work. But speaking of life, one of the best tips that has helped me is, "If you want to figure out what to do with your life, work backward from your death". Which is to say, think about what your obituary will say, how you want to impact people, what your legacy will be. Then think about what you need to learn/build/accomplish to get there, and work your way, step by step, back to now.

It's not a perfect system by any means, but it does help keep me "on track" when I feel like tossing something aside because I suddenly lose motivation. I tell myself, This is how I get to point B, which goes to C, to D, to E. And the fact that I want "point E" is very unlikely to change.

The other tip I'll leave you with is: Trust your past self. You from [some time ago] decided [activity] was worth doing. So it probably is! It may not feel like that now, but trust that Past You made the right call about things, even if they may not have known the full scope of what they were getting into. I often struggle to put in another hour/day on some project I don't really want to do anymore, because the alternative looks so enticing: Start something new! Dick around on Reddit! Watch someone else do the thing on YouTube! Etc. So I remind myself that, for me 1) life isn't about relaxing; it's about doing stuff, and 2) when I do relax, I enjoy it so much more if I feel like I've "earned" it.

Anyway best of luck, friend. At least you've already learned you're far from alone on this!

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

x = y. Where do you think nation states purchase their tools?

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I've been meaning to get into IF forever. Do you mind sharing what system/method in particular has worked for you?

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I'd love to see a writeup/documentation on the backend issues you mentioned here. Sounds egregious! Do you have a link to point me to?

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Thank you for this. That's the primary thing I wanted to know from this post too.

Although I will say having my eyes immobilized also sounds scary. And I feel like I would constantly be "checking" that I still can't move them.

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> it's just hard to sustain belief that this all leads anywhere

I'm with you 100%. I don't want to be there, but there I am. And sometimes it all feels utterly pointless – civilization, the human endeavour, everything. My particular slippery slope goes like this:

    Humanity is going to waste the one-time gift of fossil fuel accreting the already-grotesque hoards of a few hundred individuals. Then these people will die, nothing will have been gained on the whole, and instead of infrastructure which we could have used to pivot to some recognizable future, our descendants will be left with nothing but unrest and some variety of ecological hot potato. And then we will all die out or revert to a pre-technological state, and either way all the gains of science and human ingenuity will be lost.

Is that how yours goes too?

I don't know what to do about all that, but usually I can convince myself that working on some tiny project to help things not go that way is a worthwhile effort. And of course it's pretty much all I can do.

Also here are a couple quotes that help me get out of such perspective ruts:

* "Even though I'm always in pain, it's worth sticking around to make my corner of the world a slightly better place." -Ricky Gervais' character from After Life

* "I cringe at my arrogance. Actually, cringing at my arrogance is just another, more rarified, level of arrogance." -Alison Bechdel

* "Goodness: You got to make it out of badness. Because there isn't anything else to make it out of." -Robert Penn Warren

saruken

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Sounds neat! I'd like to read a writeup on your build if one exists.

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