If we’re trading war stories, one of my first software jobs was developing an electronic medical records system. We didn’t use VCS. At the end of the day/task, you send the director the file you’ve changed with a txt file of which lines were changed.
The director made sure things compiled, then we would drive down to the hospitals and copy the dlls into each PC one by one. And because hospitals can’t shut down their computers willy nilly, we could only deploy on weekends or public holidays. Not weekday nights because the directors have to be home for the kids.
That was in 2014. They’ve worked that way since the late 90s and ‘no point changing what works’.
Because this style of game appealed to two clusters of gamers. The first one is small and niche, and thus not profitable. The second one are the griefers who only want to play if they have victims available, which isn't going to happen in a small & niche game.
These kinds of games *do* exist, they're just, well, small & niche as they've learned to either build in protections against griefers and/or stay small enough to not attract notice. If you find yourself in the first cluster and not the second, you may want to check out the latest project from Raph Koster, aka Designer Dragon from UO. [1]
I played on the JP/KR asian servers in a PK/APK/PVP guild so maybe it was just my bubble but it was pretty common to see players with 7 skills maxed out. If I remember correctly
- sparring
- swordsman or fencing
- magic
- magic resistance
I don't remember the rest. It's not quick or easy like modern games, but we would regularly power level each other's alts and it took maybe 2 weeks to max out all 7 skills? We had a bear trapped in the guild house so we could power level wrestling and other combat skills.
I've done web dev work on the 12" retina macbook. Sometimes docker goes crazy and needs to be restarted but otherwise it worked surprisingly well. I used it all the way till the M2 air came.
I also have a (relatively) beefier mac mini at home if I needed to something more powerful.
For some relevancy, this issue is still on Japanese minds because last year, corroded pipes led to one of the largest sinkholes the country has ever seen, swallowing a truck and drowning the driver in a pit of shit and piss. It took months to recover his body.
Many plumbing companies have since spoken up about how they’ve been requested to fix this infrastructural issue but without the appropriate funds because “how expensive can replacing some pipes be?” And “who cares about leaky pipes under the streets? The water just goes back into the ground.”
I’ve been fantasising about getting certified as a CPA. People don’t believe me when I say this but my childhood (<14) dream was to be an accountant. I was poor and I enjoyed counting all the coins I saved up (that my dad would eventually borrow to pay the loan sharks) and also watched ducktales a lot.
Having run a business for almost a decade, I’ve accumulated a lot of accounting and tax knowledge that I think would be cool to properly certify. Also it would be to re-live a childhood dream.
Despite (or maybe because of) my upbringing, I’ve had the fortune of mostly doing things I wanted to do. Not exactly as I wanted, but more or less in the general direction.
Which is why I’m now in the position to choose whether to study to be a CPA or go back to work.[0]
It can take a long time to get in position like that, a lot of focus or both.
Maybe not focus first on the goal(s) but the improved ability to keep options open.
I think I've always been comfortable having more viable options than I would ever be able to act on in one lifetime.
Always needed something to fall back on anyway.
It would be self-defeating to think that not doing all these things is failing to live up to your potential though, when just having more diverse options open when you need or want them is a feeling not everybody has.
Maybe a good way to bring the option of a sabbatical onto the table, is to have it on the menu to begin with.
I've found used snowboarding gear is best for when you need to muck around in the snow.
Mittens keep your fingers warm while still letting you handle stuff like shovels and grab at things. You can dig through snow in mittens.
Used snowboard boots tend to be fairly water proof, soft enough that you can walk in them, hard enough that you won't stub your toes and are fairly good at keeping the snow out.
Snowboard pants and jackets are both water _and_ wind proof to keep the weather out. They're baggy so your movement is not restricted. They also have a million pockets so you can carry stuff. Jackets usually have a hoodie so you can put on headphones.
When shovelling snow, don't use a shovel. Use a snow scoop. Push instead of lifting. If you have to use a shovel, use something metallic that easily slices through snow, then push them out of the way with the scoop. Don't lift.
Or get a snow blower.
If your city plows your streets, clear the snow onto the streets just as the plower passes by your house. Then you don't have to get rid of the snow yourself.
My little village is built on the site of some ancient Japanese village [0] and any construction that involves digging up dirt often also unearths some kind of archaeological find that stops all work for half a year while the archaeologists do their stuff, if they can even be bothered to come.
It’s happened often enough that it’s a wink and a nod that nothing was found. Foremen and anyone ‘in-charge’ will not be on site until any kind of digging is complete.
The director made sure things compiled, then we would drive down to the hospitals and copy the dlls into each PC one by one. And because hospitals can’t shut down their computers willy nilly, we could only deploy on weekends or public holidays. Not weekday nights because the directors have to be home for the kids.
That was in 2014. They’ve worked that way since the late 90s and ‘no point changing what works’.