Welcome to the internet.

Have a look around.

This has never been forbidden.

Hey, could you kindly shut the hell up?

I already feel old. You don’t have to rub salt in the wound.

Can we talk about the willenium now?

No apology needed. No offense taken.

I know that text replies, especially terse ones can be interpreted in many ways. Often I tend to be rather verbose to get my point across accurately. Some then complain about the verbosity of my replies.

It’s a struggle to find the right amount of terse while being verbose enough to not be misunderstood.

I usually want whatever is best for the majority. I’m done college, and I paid my student loans, I’ll vote for student loan forgiveness and a restructuring of that system so others don’t have to go through what I did.

I’m pretty healthy and rarely need hospitals but universal healthcare is something that everyone should have.

I would also vote for UBI, though I would get no benefit from it, as I’ve been employed pretty much non-stop since I left college.

I would also vote to raise the minimum wage, though my salary is significantly amount the minimums.

My principles are in line with what most people would consider to be the greater good for all people. I believe in true equality, and I don’t feel like that’s what we have, some people just aren’t given the same basic rights, especially in America with roe v. Wade being overturned. Bodily autonomy and the right to love, and marry whomever you want. I don’t believe in lowering the bar to give the illusion of things being “fair”, eg, allowing people who are otherwise mentally or physically incapable of doing a job, to do the job just because they’re a particular race, gender, or something else (making it more about who they are than whether they’re the best fit for a job).

I don’t think I need any convincing to vote for what’s good for someone else.

I get a stipend every month for home office costs, it’s a modest amount, IMO, but it’s to partially cover everything I need to pay for to work from home, electricity, internet, even my cellphone, since I occasionally will need to use my personal phone while working (no company issued phones at this place). So if I need to tether to my cell to work because my ISP is down, the stipend covers any costs associated with doing so.

The expectations are significant because of that stipend, but not unreasonable IMO.

The amount is separate from my pay, and untaxed. It’s basically a reimbursement for expenses.

Vehicle costs are separate, if I need to drive anywhere for my job, I can submit the distance driven and I’m reimbursed separately, a set amount per unit of distance.

It hasn’t happened for me yet but there’s a nontrivial chance I may get deployed to another area of the country, in that case, I get airfare, hotel and a meal allotment daily, as well as a rental car to travel to customers sites for the duration I’m there, all at the company’s cost. I’m reimbursed 100% for travel in those cases. Anything local is just by distance travelled.

About 80% of our client base is local enough that I can drive myself to their location when needed. It’s rare that it is needed. I have not needed to go to a customer’s location in the 6-7 months I’ve been at the job. Others have, and for the most part, they’re closer to the customers that they traveled to, compared to me, but I should be ready in case I’m ever needed to travel, whether local or nationally.

Due to the work we do, and our relative size, we’re only (currently) servicing clients in our country, nothing international right now, as far as I know. Our business model allows for it, but our specialty, which is our main marketing point, is pretty specialized to our country, so I don’t think that will change anytime soon.

The last couple of jobs I held, had similar, but not as generous rules. Talking to the management, they’re primarily interested in ensuring that we, the workers, are happy and healthy so we can work efficiently. IMO, it’s the best management team that I’ve worked under so far. If things continue the way they have been so far, I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.

From what I know of my management (it’s a fairly small company), unless I quit fairly soon after I claim the credit, maybe within a year, I don’t think they’ll bother making an issue of it.

There’s an economic argument to be made, since most people would challenge such a demand, and the time and effort of the managerial team to pursue it, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to issue the correspondence to say that I should comply, among other associated costs would start to eat away at any benefit from getting the $1000 repaid they would end up spending more money chasing it down.

I think my employer is financially intelligent enough to know that. I also didn’t see any such provisions or clauses in my employment contract. So it’s borderline impossible to enforce to begin with, you can’t really argue that it’s breach of contract since it’s not in a contract that I signed. So it needs to (legally) be pursued as damages, which is a bit harder to prove without a drawn out legal battle. The cost of the lawyers alone to get to that point makes it a triviality in terms of cost.

If they can threaten you with minimal cost to them, and you willingly pay it out of fear, that’s on you.

Only people who penny pinch on principle would even bother doing anything more than issue a threatening letter demanding repayment.

I’ve known business owners that have that kind of mentality, and they are honestly some of the worst people to work for.

Well, if they want to come and unbolt an 80lb battery from my rack and take it away after I’ve gotten a few good years out of it, I’m okay with that. By that time I’ll already be saving up for a replacement.

My work gave me $1000 for office stuff to work from home. They also provided a KB/mouse, three 1080p 24" monitors, a UPS, brand new laptop, a dock for the laptop, cables, a headset, etc.

I already had my system set up for work from home including two 1080p displays, a 1440p display, mechanical keyboard, wireless mouse with charging mouse pad… Even a headset and KVM.

I spent the money on an additional battery for my homelab rack (which will extend the uptime of my firewall during a power outage.

I’m pretty happy with my setup, I combined everything, and decommissioned my oldest display, and bought myself a laptop stand, so when I’m on my PC (selected from the KVM), I have five displays, three wide, and two above. When I select my work laptop, the laptop screen becomes a sixth monitor, and the stand props it up to be one of the top displays, so I have a 3x2 grid of displays.

I’m usually fine with three for my personal use, but more are not unwelcome, at work I was pushing from three to four pretty consistently in the past few years.

Though, I find that having a 1920x1200 or 1440p display set up in portrait is usually pretty helpful for work. So I can see more of a page. I wouldn’t recommend doing that with a 1080 display, since most sites that have a static width are optimized for screens that are at least 1280x768 (around 720p) and going down from 1280 px wide to 1080px wide, results in some horizontal scrolling… Which is never fun.

Why? How does knowing how politics worked before I could vote, help me as a voter today?

I understand enough about politics to cast my vote and beyond the act of voting, I generally don’t follow politics. I vote based on party platforms (what they intend to do) and the likelihood of those things happening. Eg, if a party was to say that they’ll make everyone rich, I would consider that statement to be delusional, unrealistic and not something that could be fulfilled even if that party was voted in. This is an extreme example, but I think you get my meaning.

Beyond doing my due diligence in figuring out who I want to vote for, and then voting for that party… What else do I realistically need?

My district always elects the same party anyways, whether I vote for them or not. I’ve landed in a gerrymandered location and that party basically always wins, but I still vote regardless.

IMO, I shouldn’t need to take a political history course to be considered to be a responsible voter.

You think politics are in my control in any way, shape, or form? They’ve gerrymandered my vote to irrelevance.

I still vote, I look at the platforms and vote for whomever I feel serves my interests the most, not that the party’s platform means jack or shit. They’re all just pandering to whatever they know you want to hear, and once they get into power, they do whatever the hell they want.

My district leans a particular way, and whether I vote with them, or against them, the same party is elected to govern. I’d say my vote is pretty useless in that context.

I was too young to vote, pre-9/11, and had even less interest in politics than I do now. I’ve vaguely followed along since I got registered to vote when I got old enough to do so, but it’s not like learning about what happened before I was registered to vote will help me in any way. I make the best choice based on the information that is available, and in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

Alright, just stay off my lawn and we’re cool.

Yeah, what’s this fucker on about? I’m an adult that doesn’t even get carded at the liquor store anymore, I fucking swear whenever I damn well please and as often as I give a shit to. Nothing wrong with some cursing, especially at those young fucks that won’t stay off my goddamned lawn. Shit, they’re at it again.

Brb, gotta yell at some asshole kids.

I was alive for 9/11 and I don’t know the difference.

I don’t care for politics.

This is the way.

I find this does the opposite of helping.

One of two things happen: more commonly, I break it down too far. Now, the task isn’t “clean”, it’s about 28 steps of get x cleaner and y supplies and scrub this clean and wash that and do the thing over there to tidy up, etc. Then, once I’m done making a task list for this one very simple thing I need to do, and micromanaging every aspect of it via a list of things to do, I’m now overwhelmed by the massive list of things I need to do in order to accomplish this one very simple task.

On the flip side, if I don’t micro manage myself into task paralysis, I end up breaking it into smaller sections, like “clean living room” and “clean bedroom” etc… And make an agreement with myself to do one today, one tomorrow, etc, until everything is cleaned. So today I only need to clean room x, and I’ll do room y tomorrow. So I clean room x, but I don’t want to put away all the cleaning stuff, I’ll just need it tomorrow, so I put it in the corner ready to go for tomorrow. I accomplished something, I cleaned a room. I’ll do the rest later. About three months later, I’ll wonder why the cleaning supplies are sitting out, and remember I was supposed to clean room y. Feeling like a failure, I’ll be unhappy with myself and instead of getting back to that task I’ll just put the cleaning stuff away, because if I’m going to start over, I’ll need to clean room x again. You see, the dopamine from getting room x cleaned that one time basically made my brain say “yep, task is done, we cleaned” then file it away in the completed file, never to be thought of again.

For me, I have to go all or nothing and just fight my task paralysis head on. I don’t often win, but if I don’t, things never get finished.

That’s quite the lesson you just laid down.

It’s actually made things a lot more clear for me. To put it as tersely as I can, UTC is the international time, GMT is a timezone, which also happens to be UTC+0.

So GMT is a place/zone/region of earth, and UTC is a time coordination, with no physical location (beyond the prime meridian, which is where it is tracking the time of).

Awesome.

When I need to sleep and can’t, my go to is a relatively mindless game that I’ve gotten exceedingly good at automating my way through. Something like Sudoku, solitaire (specifically Klondike), or something. Usually on a digital device so I don’t have to move too much to play and I don’t have to worry about physical cards, shuffling, etc.

If it’s a particularly bad night I can pair that with some music. I find either ambient trance or something similar, to be the best for this. One of my favorite “go the fuck to sleep” albums is called “Dreamland” by Robert Miles (may he rest in peace). Alternatively, I find nature/rain/thunderstorm sounds to be particularly calming for me, though YMMV. The calm pitter-patter of raindrops falling seems to really put me in a sleeping mood.

Combining these generally gets me ready to snooze the fastest. The other option I have is mediation, but you need to be practiced at getting into the right headspace for it to be effective. Meditation isn’t really what you’re after since you have said that basically sitting around with nothing going on is when you start to panic, which is generally how mediation begins, so I’m not sure it will be super helpful.

The only additional advice, which is a bit of an offshoot from the mediation thing, is that trying to not think is a contradiction. You can’t try not to do something; unless you have some issues with impulse control, the “act” of not doing something is the antithesis of trying. You can’t try to clear your mind, you clear your mind by not thinking, if you’re thinking about clearing your mind, then that’s a thought which, if present, precludes you having a clear mind.

You have to stop thinking, not just try to put things out of your mind, but stop all active thought and analysis. It is way easier to say, than it is to do, and I wouldn’t pretend it’s easy at all. I learned how to do this through meditation, and it’s a fat departure from how you normally operate mentally, and not an easy thing to achieve. One of the strategies I’ve used is when your brain assaults you with a thought, you recognise it’s existence, but refuse to interact/engage/analyse it at all, and just let that wash over you, and into oblivion. Again, easier said than done. Not allowing your thoughts to latch onto ideas and allowing your mind to be quiet, without commenting on, about, or examining every passing thought, does not come naturally.

I think of it a bit like this: take the example of your mind being a street in a busy city, every individual on the street is an independent thought you might engage with. This idea is a bit like sitting by yourself and watching everything around you without getting involved. Someone walks past screaming about some topic, like how the world is going to end and you just watch them walk by and don’t comment on the matter. You recognise they’re there, you just don’t get involved. Your passive demeanor does not and should not imply you either agree, nor disagree with their statements or viewpoint, you are just present, observing them making a scene. Eventually they move on to yell about it in another location and you give it no further thought.

I hope that makes sense. Of course, modern society with all the social interactions we have, whether online or in person, always gives us the option to engage in discussion about everything and we’re often encouraged to do so. People will outright ask for your opinion when having IRL conversations at times, which is a prime example of this conditioning. If you’re able to break away from the need to have an opinion on everything and anything that crosses your path, and value people’s opinions exactly as much as required, which isn’t much, then you can break free, and you don’t have to bother yourself with everyone’s opinion and making yours heard. IMO, there’s no value in sharing your opinion, especially when the recipient of that opinion has their own opinion which obviously will not change based on what you could say, so why bother even having one? It takes mental effort and time away from what’s important to you to engage in such trivialities, when the outcome is unaffected by anything you think or say. Why invest the time and effort having an opinion when nobody cares what your opinion is enough to for it to have any impact on what happens? This isn’t a value statement about you or your opinion, this is a value statement about any would be recipient of your opinion, they don’t care, that’s a problem, but it’s a problem for them to solve; your opinion is valid, and if they can’t see the validity in your opinion, why waste your time and effort creating one just so they can ignore it.

You cannot control the actions of others. You can’t change what they care about. Both of these things are issues that the opposing individual must address about themselves, that you have no way to change about them. Save yourself the grief, and just don’t bother with it. It sounds like you have enough on your plate, you don’t need to add their crap to your pile.

With all that being said, it’s a radical departure from the accepted social “norm” so it’s a lot of stuff that’s easier said than done. I’m sorry that you are going through this. I don’t know all the details and I don’t have the answers; but I’ve been though some rough shit, and it always sucks. I value you and your opinion, so if you want to reply, I’ll be happy to hear anything you wish to share. IMO, it sucks right now but the fact that you’re reaching out to anyone for help is a positive sign. Do not be afraid to ask for the help you require, it is not a sign of weakness to need help, it is a sign of strength and character to recognise that you require assistance and you are willing to ask for that assistance. It’s brave and demonstrates a strong understanding of when you are unable to handle things alone.

We all need a little help sometimes. If you want to DM me, to inquire further on anything I’ve said, or to simply rant/vent, or if you just want to chat about technology (or literally anything) as a means of distraction, I’m happy to oblige. I believe my matrix account is linked to Lemmy, so that’s also an option.

All the best OP.

IMO, the biggest problem with timezones is that the people who initially created them were fairly short sighted.

That and there have been way too many changes to who lives in what timezone. The one that boggles my mind is that apparently there’s a country in two timezones, not like, split down the middle or anything, but two active timezones across the entire country depending on which culture you’re a part of, or something. It’s wild.

I still don’t know if there’s any difference between GMT and UTC. I couldn’t find one. They both have the same time, same offset (+0), and represent the same time zone area.

I use UTC because I’m in tech, and I can’t stand time formats, so I exclusively use ISO 8601, with a 24 hour clock. Usually in my local time zone, via UTC. We have DST here which I’m not a fan of, but I have to abide by because everyone else does.

My biggest issues with time and timezones is that everyone uses different standards. It drives me nuts when software doesn’t let me set the standard for how the time and date is displayed, and doesn’t follow the system settings. It’s more common in web apps, but it happens a lot. I put in a lot of effort to try to get everything displaying in a standard format then some crudely written website is just mm/dd/yy with 12h clock and no timezone info, and there’s nothing you can do about it.