I hate that! Especially when it was the correct version and then magically one day it is some other one. One time it played that awful pop version of Professional Widow by Tori Amos and that was very upsetting until I found the normal version that sounds awesome.

I saw that thumbnail of the table and immediately knew what channel it was.

Fuck. I am so sorry. Being that age and having to take care of everything is just rough. All the death certificates, cancelling services, funeral, house, car, and a million other details while you are still coming to terms that they are just gone. I just sort of went on autopilot and then spent the next 2 years a total complete mess. I am 37 now and it still fucking hurts.

The one dumb thing that helped me grieve was to just talk to him. I used to call my dad everyday on my 25 minute drive home to work. So, I would pretend he was in the car with me and I would just talk to him.

All I can say is cherish the few mementos you really care about and don’t drive yourself insane on trying to hold on to every item they owned. Scan pictures. Get help and talk to someone. Get someone removed from the situation to help you clean things out. I paid a random handyman a friend had around a couple hundred dollars to just take care of the parts I couldn’t handle (dead body things…) and donated a bunch of items that flat out had no value to me.

Oh good! I didn’t need it anyway.

Those feels. I lost my remaining parent at 24 and I will never forget the smell of the house. In that one moment it no longer smelled like home. It was just a house.

No Amex?

The Casual Vacancy

I forced myself to finish it at the time, but I hated every single moment. They were all bad people and I had zero sympathy for any of the kids or adults, except for the one girl who died at the end. Obligatory Rowling can jump off a cliff too.

I didn’t finish the last couple books, but I did enjoy it fully knowing the subject matter was about Revelations. I mostly read it as a kid and re-read for a bit as an adult. I did not grow up in a religious household. There was a point though where the books went a little too off the rails, and I gave up.

Every single sign I see, I mentally note them as a monster. Nothing will change my mind on this. I have brought up these kids and the despicable camps they made even recently to my peers and just get a shrug. This whole thing is nuts and I will never forgive our current government for not making this right, as inconsequential of a detail this is for most people. This shit happened on our own damn soil, concentration/internment camp style. That fucking monster did it, but what about the last 4 years? Did anyone even try to help the people we tortured? Did anyone even care?

The worst part? A lot of these kids will not even be able to remember or identify their parents at this point. Hell, their parents might not recognize them. You basically need DNA tests at this point, and if you are not their biological parent, you are probably screwed.

I am entirely sure it is area dependent and very very different if you are male presenting, but I have no idea how to deal with the extreme anxiety of public transit. The tube in London was great. The subway in NYC was confusing and anxiety inducing, but my phone made up most of the confusion. I am terrified of buses. I need a clear display of the next stops and hopefully a route posted, as I usually can’t hear or understand any instructions over a speaker, if anything is broadcasted at all.

The worst part is being completely unable to relax. Having to wear headphones without music, and firmly not look at anyone to hopefully avoid harassment and block out the overwhelming noise. I can’t even draw on my iPad in peace without someone wanting to look at it and ask questions. I have to make sure I am not in the way, don’t take up too much room, and don’t miss some cue that I was supposed to do something. I hate being a woman. I hate that being in public is an ordeal and I can’t just go for a walk without having to prepare battle gear of sorts to protect myself.

It was the best custard ice cream I ever created. Made the base with a sous vide. Chef Steps has(?) the recipe, but I did some experiments with blueberries that was next level the best shit I ever made that I will unlikely ever be able to duplicate again.

Do you have a KitchenAid stand mixer or anything like that? Best thing I ever learned is making ice cream with dry ice. I just put the base in the mixer, start it with the paddle, and start putting in crushed up dry ice, one spoonful at a time. I managed to get dry ice in the little cubes or pellets, put it in a cloth sack, and then use a hammer or blunt object to break it up into small pieces.

Ah, so I really did mean the 10 & 2 for figuring out that positioning of the seat/wheel only. I absolutely agree that 10&2 is a terrible position for driving. 9&3 is much better.

I read an article a while back on how to position the wheel, as it is especially a problem for women. Airbags can absolutely kill you and I spent some time readjusting everything to make sure the airbag would not deploy in my face or too close to my chest. Adjusting the seatbelt height thing is also really important, but with breasts the damn thing still drifts to where it shouldn’t. Just not as bad.

Absolutely check with the women in your life about this as a lot of us don’t think about it until we get in an accident and the airbag and seatbelt do more damage than the crash. I am lucky I have only had a minor crash once with no airbag deployed. There are ways to get pedals adjusted by the dealership or swapped with longer ones. I assume mechanics can probably do it too, but I personally do not know how that all works.

I don’t have much experience with manual, but I do have severe ADHD. From my experience, it takes about 6 months of driving every day before your brain does most of it automatically. It is really awful at first having to constantly think about every step. Couple random anecdotes that may help. My assumption is you are driving on the right:

1. Drive barefoot or with minimalist shoes. You can really feel the car and road this way. Flip flops are a no no. All it took was them getting caught in the pedal once to never do it again.
2. Leave lots of space in front of you in high traffic situations. If you are sitting in the far right/exit/slow lane a lot it will help other drivers get around you. If it is a mulilane highway, it may be safer to stay in the middle lane until it is time to exit.
3. Look left first. Oncoming traffic hitting your driver side door is bad.
4. If you ever ever doubt when looking both ways, just look again. People can wait.
5. People get mad or do stupid shit. It is ok. We stop being rational people once “time” enters the equation. At some point, getting mad at other drivers all the time makes you a worse driver. Learn to just let shit go.
6. Try to space yourself where you don’t create blindspots for yourself or others.
7. Position your side mirrors properly. If you can easily see you car door, they are pointing in too far.

Adjust your seat and steering wheel. You want the steering wheel far away from your face. If you have an adjustable steering wheel, this will be a lot easier. There is a little lever you can pull to unlock it.

1. Unlatch the wheel and push it completely away from you.
2. Adjust your seat first so you can reach the pedals and feel in control of run. Test how it feels to push the brake, clutch, etc.
3. Now, adjust the steering wheel. Put your arms straight out. You want your wrists to touch the “10&2” position of the wheel.
4. Keep the steering wheel as low as you can, but still see the instruments, and make sure there is plenty of space between you and the very deadly airbag. You do not want it hitting your face and it needs enough space to deploy to properly protect you
5. Make final adjustments as needed and recheck your mirrors.

Eh? I have definitely gone around topless in NY a couple times and wasn’t bothered over it. To be fair, it was Pride. To be extra fair, it was almost 100 and everybody was dying. I do remember a couple times on the news where they would have to remind the police in NYS that it is legal on a couple roasting summers. I am definitely not the best at keeping the bits well covered in general. Still far better up here than when I used to live in Texas.

It was the SCADA view right? A lot of SCADA software is basically running on top of windows, though you typically would never see the desktop. Ignition at least is cross platform, but that is because the server is Java and Jython. A big part of why things are running on windows is due to OPC, which was traditionally all DOM and .NET. It is basically a standard communications protocol and is what allows your HMI/SCADA to communicate with PLCs. Otherwise, you use proprietary drivers and native PLC specific protocols.

SCADA programming/design is kind of an art and is usually written by an either an overworked engineer or someone who had far too much time on their hands. You basically build screens using specialized software, hook up buttons and UI elements to PLC signals, and pass some signals from the UI to the PLC. They are all heading in the Edge/iot/cloud/web based/techno-babble direction these days…

Ignition, programming software is free!: https://inductiveautomation.com

Some other random ones I have seen or used in the past: https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/simatic-hmi/wincc-unified.html https://www.aveva.com/en/products/intouch-hmi/ https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/products/software/factorytalk/operationsuite/view.html

Thank you for answering the question! I am genuinely both trying to make a point and still be open to try new things. To me, there seems to be a real downward turn on UI/UX in a lot of applications these days, corporate included. When they mentioned the bit about supporting corporate, I have a hard time believing they will get very far with that customer group right now.

I really wish software, especially FOSS, would stop making the UI the afterthought. I try to keep a holistic view when designing things and everyone has a seat at the table. I wonder if projects are boxing themselves in and making it harder for the UI teams to properly integrate, and vice versa? I will happily take criticism and ideas from pretty much anyone, especially outside my immediate teams.

I am pretty out of the game on that as I spent quite a few years doing controls engineering instead. I am back in Software now and I feel old and a little lost. I graduated back in 2012 and we didn’t have all of these crazy developer roles and more specialized degrees. They were trying to get a Game Design program started when I graduated, and it was supposedly a mess for a few years.

But my question is about the user experience and UI. I can run a docker script, but I care about the thing I can see and interact with.

All I read is Marketing Tech Speak that sounds no different than anything else that gets advertised in my face. At work, we use Teams. It is a pain sometimes when it gets a little buggy, but integrates into SharePoint/OneDrive and the noise suppression in meetings is pretty awesome. At home I use discord or GChat because that is where all my friends are. I don’t assume I have privacy on any of these platforms and they all work on my phone and computer.

How is the user experience? Ultimately, give me privacy, but if the user experience and UI don’t give any improvements over the corporate ones, I will have to try it some other time.

Yes. Even if you get bitched at. Decent people will just ask more questions until they get what they need from you. Better to give more information than none. Try your best.

Actually, sometimes going through every single step on how you ended up with the issue solves it… Done that a few times.