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A lot of people say things like “marriage is great, but its a lot of work”. Those are the people that I’m like “really? Sounds like you maybe did make a mistake there” because (and I’m not expert, I’ve only been married once) it’s really easy being married to my wife.

I think you may not be understanding the meaning of “marriage is great, but its a lot of work”. Its not like work meaning carrying lots of bags of gravel or something.

The “hard work” in marriage is being truly open to communication, working hard yourself to communicate accurately, and being honestly self reflective. Its recognizing your own shortcomings, and trying to better yourself, but also being open to being told by your mate where your thoughts or efforts or deficient. A natural human reaction is to be defensive, possibly even striking back with your own criticisms of the other person in the moment, but that’s immaturity. Its hard work making real positive changes in yourself as the result of all of this.

When you have a mate you love and a mate that loves you, you can know these are things not said in malice, but in a genuine effort to make you a better person. All of this is a balance with your own sense of self-worth and critical thinking to properly evaluate your internal and the external criticism.

All of that is hard work.

Then there’s another part too that I’m seeing in the years ahead: seeing your spouse’s health decline and being their caregiver as your own health is failing from age at the same time. Alternatively, being that first declining health spouse, and watching your mate grow ever more tired caring for you. All of this effort are expressions of love, but it is most certainly hard work.

Googling that truck name appears to show they sell for $250k-$260k. I can think of better things to spend that kind of money on.

That said, these things will never have no emotional toll. Nothing in life is free. To be totally detached isn’t being there for someone and that wouldn’t be the right way to handle these situations either.

Let me try again to explain what I meant with my statement on detachment. Lets imagine two people:

• Person 1 - They are someone you have no history with, but you are pretty confident they are a regular well-adjusted person just going through life. They’re no hero, but also they are no villain. Lets say you know “of” them, but you don’t know their personality, history, goals, or life desires. Perhaps they are an acquaintance of someone you know.
• Person 2 - This person is from your past that you had a deeply involved relationship with. You trusted them and were vulnerable with them, and this person intentionally harmed you emotionally because it got them something they wanted or perhaps your pain just was amusing to them or made them feel powerful. They used you and threw you away when they were done with you.

Your phone rings, its one of these two people. You’ve expressed you like to help people out in a jam. The person is in a jam asking if you can come and pick them up and drive them to their place of employment:

• If the caller is Person 1, then you are emotionally detached from them. You have only the slightest of history with them and no bad memories (or good for that matter) of interacting with them. They are totally benign to you emotionally. You’d grab your car keys and head out the door to pick up Person 1 and probably be thinking about what activities you’d be doing afterward or perhaps what you’re planning to have for dinner. There is no emotional cost to helping Person 1 out as you are emotionally detached from them. This is simply an errand no different than going out and picking up a loaf of bread from a grocery store or a bakery.

• If the caller is Person 2, then you are very much emotionally entangled with them from your shared history and the pain they inflicted upon you. You run through mental scenarios about if this is an emotional trap of some kind. You work the mental angles to see how you need to protect yourself emotionally and physically. As you leave the house you mentally prepare yourself and armor yourself against what this person knows of your weaknesses. You drive there filled with anxiety and worry about how you might be hurt yet again by this person that has caused you so much pain. In the driver’s seat you’re reliving the horrible events from your shared past and feeling those negative hurtful emotions roll over you as though it is happening for the first time. Even if you complete the pickup and dropoff entirely uneventfully, you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You drive home worried if letting this hurtful person back into your life will mean more emotional pain in the days ahead. Even without any negative things happening during the drive when they were in your car, this has cost you greatly emotionally, and it can for days afterward.

You are NOT obligated to be a tool of help to those that have wronged you in the past. The world is filled with millions of other people that have done you no wrong. You yourself are worthy of caring. There are so many other people worthy of your attention and goodwill. Leave the toxic people to their toxic lives. They are not entitled to your generosity. If they ever were, they harmed you, and lost any sense of privilege to your kindness. You don’t have to be hateful to them, but you don’t need to continue to invite them into your life at the cost of yourself.

Everything is “sold separately” these days. The main kit doesn’t even come with the Spear of Longinus?

but I get stuck at the question of who is worth being there for and who isn’t.

I think YOU are worth being there for. If those interactions are taking a mental or emotional toll on you to have, then why are these abusive and toxic people from your past “worth it” and you aren’t?

If instead you can have these interactions totally detached from yourself and you are strong and confident mentally an emotionally where there is no cost to you, then I don’t see a problem with continuing.

Its 2025. Write it in Mandarin for more authenticity. However, in another 10 or 15 years English will be applicable again though.

Just when you exhibited a moment of possible self-reflection, you just threw it all away and reinforced every negative connotation your prior statements have held.

There was a time I actually thought that Elon Musk wanted to help save the planet by making electric cars mainstream to displace fossil fuel vehicles, and by helping humanity return to space simply for the science and exploration value.

Musk’s “some kind of pedo guy” comment about the diver that dismissed Musk’s efforts with the cave children was the first WTF moment, but I wrote that off has him just having a bad day as he apologized later. Musk fighting the COVID lockdown was also more evidence that concerned me. This was all before Elon’s embrace of trump and GOP Nazism, and long before Elon’s double Nazi salute on national television.

Maybe MS couldn’t stuff enough ads into the old Start Menu requiring a re-write to allow for more ad space. /s

In every version of Windows up until now which has contained a taskbar and start menu, as far back as Windows 95. Not just Windows 10.

Sadly not true. Microsoft removed the Start button in a version of Windows before. It was in Windows 8 (and Windows Server 2012 for some godforsaken reason) with the cursed “metro” interface. MS did it for the same stupid reason they’re citing here “tablet and touchscreen users”. The uproar caused MS to release Windows 8.1 a year later where they returned the Start button.

Sure, it can happen. The anecdote sounds ludicrous to me: gatekeeping someone with that much experience over checking a box like that.

This is surprisingly common in many industries. It was one of the reasons I went back and got a degree as a working adult. It worked and I was able to land jobs that had that requirement which was a springboard into higher earning work. It was so strange the first time it happened. I got a call from a old coworker I hadn’t seen or heard from in about 12 years. He was a boss then looking to hire for a lucrative position. We talked for a bit to catch up, he said I had the skills he wanted then almost as an afterthought he said “Oh, uh, do you have a Bachelors degree?” and I said, for the first time in an employment situation “yes”. His response was “okay, sounds good. Show up on Monday, you’ve got the job”. That was it. Without being able to say “yes” there I would not have gotten that job. In the years since, received that same question and gave the same answer in a number of jobs after than each with increasing salary and benefits.

Also, no one asks when you got the degree. Everyone always assumes you got it after high school as is done traditionally.

I’m currently getting my degree in my 30s to increase my earning potential as well.

I did what you’re doing now at the same age. I can tell you from the other side that it worked out very well for me. It was worth it for both the personal sense of accomplishment as well as the professional success. Keep at it! You’ve got this!

My state has free non-credit tuition at state schools for senior citizens. Part of my retirement plan is going back for more classes in whatever I find interesting.

Going back to school when you’re employed means debt, earning way less or nothing during your bachelor or master, stress, opportunities you’re not aware of because you’re simply not at your workplace anymore

Don’t quit your day job. Do school in your non-work hours. This is how I did it. I stayed professionally employed and I went back at 30 years old. I did school for about 3 years part-time to get a 2-year Associates degree. Because I went with Community College and did only 1 or 2 classes per term, I never had to take on debt.

I used that Associates degree and got a better paying job that also came with a tuition reimbursement program. It paid 75% of books and tuition up to a certain dollar figure per year (IRS limit). Again, because I was going to school part-time in my off-hours, I simply never exceeded that IRS limit to extra the maximum reimbursement. I finished by Bachelors degree before turning 40. Again, I graduated with zero debt because I kept my professional employment and used the tuition reimbursement benefit. With that Bachelors degree I was able to get an even better job which lead to significant pay raises in the years that passed.

So, I disagree with your original premise that going back to school as a working adult has to means unemployment, debt, and loss of income. I’m not going to say what I did was easy, but what I did a little while ago is also still possible today. I have a close friend that is a year older than me that got his Associates around the same time I did using the same “keep your day job, do school partime” method, but he didn’t start his Bachelors when I did. However, he did so later. He graduates, getting his Bachelors, in two months from now!

Dopamine.

Now, what your particular wiring that triggers dopamine hits that are unique to any of us, we only find out by exploring ourselves by exposing ourselves to the many experiences in life. For some of those things we’ll instantly connect to it (because of a dopamine hit) or identify some part of the activity which will lead us to refining the experience to get the better result.

My thought is if we replace the small dopamine hits we get from these genuine experiences or interests with easy chemical dopamine sources (drugs or alcohol) in excess, we would become bored with life. If we can get a 10x hit from simply drinking something rather than the 1x from a small personal improvement in a skill we have an interest in, that drink will nearly always win out.

This isn’t supposed to be preachy though. Each of us gets to decide for ourselves. This is just how I figured out how I work.

I offered to tag along to their meeting, just to see his the look on his face when I walked through the door and introduced myself as her husband.

Oh man, that would have been priceless. The one-liners you could have used are endless:

• “Wait, this is the guy who thinks he’s the ‘master race’? Seriously?!”
• “Did you find out if he has to shop for his white robes in the children’s section?”

I misread the topic and thought this was about the “sexiest stereotypes” like a woman smart woman talking about a topic she’s passionate about or a man that frees trapped wildlife.

That will backfire on employers. With the shortage of seniors with good skills, the demand will rise for them. An employer that squeezes his seniors will find them quitting because there will be another desperate employer that will treat them better.

But inexperienced coders will start to use LLMs a lot earlier than the experienced ones do now.

And unlike you that can pick out a bad method or approach just by looking at the LLM output where you correct it, the inexperienced coder will send the bad code right into git if they can get it to pass a unit test.

I get your point, but I guess the learning patterns for junior devs will just be totally different while the industry stays open for talent.

I have no idea what the learning path is going to look like for them. Besides personal hobby projects to get experience, I don’t know who will give them a job when what they produce from their first efforts will be the “bad coder” output that gets replaced by an LLM and a senior dev.

At least I hope it will and it will not only downsize to 50% of the human workforce.

I’ve thought about this many times, and I’m just not seeing a path for juniors. Given this new perspective, I’m interested to hear if you can envision something different than I can. I’m honestly looking for alternate views here, I’ve got nothing.