There is a good reason Mint is recommended as the no nonsense beginner distro. For someone more technical and willing to learn I might recommend Fedora.

One you get past those two distros you are pretty much in the realm where someone should be technical enough to choose their own distro and know what that means.

For me, it is meeting the people on the team where they are to support them. Some people need me to just get out of their way and let them do their job while being there for the occasional time they need some guidance, while others need some more attention because they seek out my guidance more often, or need a bit more steering to ensure they are making the right decisions.

I also try to be clear about my overall expectations. They should never be surprised by my reactions to anything, they know where I tend to be a stickler about doing something a specific way, and they should know where I’m willing to be a bit more relaxed. I show appreciation when someone does well, and provide coaching in private when something doesn’t go well. They know that I accept that mistakes happen, but my expectation is that they learn from it and avoid it happening from then on.

In North America and Europe, tap to pay was implemented prior to smartphones that could scan QR codes being ubiquitous. Most of us have had cards that support NFC payments for longer than we have had a phone that can read QR codes so it made sense for phones to pick up the technology that worked with the terminals businesses already had than try to implement a new system.

The QR code thing is primarily a Chinese solution to the payment problem (all other Asian countries I’ve been to have widespread NFC acceptance). Payment cards were never widespread within China the way they are in other places, until AliPay and WeChat Pay became a thing people still primarily used cash for their daily communications. If businesses don’t already have credit card terminals but people have smartphones then the QR code starts to make more sense.

One interesting thing about this is that even before North America was widely using NFC payments, people in Hong Kong were using their Octopus transit cards as contactless payment at all kinds of businesses throughout the city. Yet that technology didn’t seems to make it into Mainland China.

I unfortunately have to use Chrome at work and uBlock origin light seems to work well enough. When I’m at home the pihole does most of the heavy lifting for the adblocking.

The whole TV streaming space is just super depressing. Even though I try to self host as much as I can, nothing I’ve found comes close to the experience of Android TV even with the ads (though you can replace the launcher to fix that problem).

I’m a big fan of spicy food, but I rarely use hot sauce and am not a fan of buffalo wings. For me I like foods that have chiles where the spice is part of the flavour that makes the dish taste good.

If you have network issues generally best practice is to unplug everything for 30 seconds and then turn the devoces on one by one from where the internet comes into the house and let each connect before moving up the chain. So typically modem then router then computer.

I work closely with a company that uses Teams and every time I’m in a meeting that they organize I’m constantly shocked at how horrible that software is. Like I thought Google Meet wasn’t great but everything from sharing screens to the audio quality is leaps and bounds better than Teams.

I’ve become fed up with a job I’ve had for a long time. I’m confused about what I even want to do because the changes and decisions that management keeps making has me burnt out at even the concept of my job.

I’ve known for well over a year that it is time to make a change, but that has gotten much more urgent recently. The problem is that it’s really haste to leave a well paying job for another I doubt will pay as well.

I’ve been to China a number of times and it is a very interesting place with many amazing people. A government doesn’t necessarily represent the people that live there.

That said, it is up to you and your moral system whether to visit a country with a government you disagree with.

Most cars are black, white, gray, or silver.

I fucking hate these new vehicles with the paint that has no sparkle to it, especially the horrible grey one. So called Putty ass-whips

I’ve interviewed many people and most people are terrible in that situation, even when I try to help them along.

Nervousness is the number one thing that throws people off during an interview. Instead of taking a breath to calm down and think things through they either immediately start speaking without a clear plan, or they clam up and don’t give me anything to talk about. Using the STAR/START method of answering questions works great to give a framework.

The next is that they just don’t demonstrate their skills or that they learn over time. I’ll ask a technical question about something and they show no understanding of why they did something. I love asking questions about what a person learned while doing their work, so many people just don’t have anything to share.

Lastly, interviews are way easier if the other person treats it like a conversation rather than a one way Q&A session. I get a much better idea of what they will be like to work with and I’m more comfortable when I can ask questions that continue on the discussion. On the flipside, some people take over conversations and don’t get that our time is limited and answers need to be concise. That said, even if the interview is the conversation style, make sure to save at least a couple questions for the ending when you are inevitably asked for questions.

I recommend dual booting, not a VM. It is easy enough to choose which OS to boot into if you need to go back to Windows, while being enough friction that you don’t immediately fallback to going into Windows every time you don’t know how to do something in Linux.

I don’t code, but from the gaming standpoint, things are pretty decent on Linux these days. I’ve been on Linux full time on my laptop for well over a year now, and 6+ months on my main desktop now and find very few reasons to boot into Windows. I think I booted into Windows last weekend for the first time in at least 2 months because I had to upgrade the FW on a device that only had a Windows tool. Otherwise I do have a windows VM on a server that I use relatively frequently, because the state of 3D CAD software on Linux is horrible.

I bought a restaurant sized container of the Chipotle Tabasco a few years ago. Turns out that might be a bit too much for a single person to get through in a reasonable amount of time.

Not sure it counts as hot sauce but a chili oil like Lao Gan Ma is my favourite. Otherwise when I do use hot sauce my favourites are Hot Ones Los Calientes Rojo, Tabasco Chipotle, and Secret Aardvark.

Until I got to the specific shit I thought this was going to end with a punchline about Canada geese.

10+ years experience in product design here. There is nothing about a “simple” product that is cheap or easy. Say you hire a design engineering firm to design it, who is going to make the parts? Have you ever worked with manufacturing in Asia? Who is going to assemble it? Who deals with the inevitable issues?

Then you have to think about selling it. What certifications do you have to get?

That is just hardware, now repeat many of these same questions for firmware and app development.

Now you have a product, what are the customers and who do you need to hire to market and sell to them? Assuming someone is interested in purchasing it how much money do you have to pay for all the product up front and warehouse it?

There is a damn good reason why so many Kickstarter projects never actually ship. Hardware is hard even if you know what you are doing.

Obsessive apologizing makes a person appear not confident in themselves. If it is a person I care about I want them to be confident in themselves.

Additionally the more you repeat something the less meaning it has. So if someone apologizes too much for things that really don’t necessitate an apology when they have something they genuinely need to show remorse for and apologize for the apology holds less meaning.

I’d probably just say something non-pressuring but supportive like “I know with everything that is going on recently that things may be challenging for you right now. If you need anything please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I’ll support you in any way I can.”

Yeah this is pretty much what I’m doing. My subscriptions are pretty much spaces about my interests that post positive content, and even then I filter out keywords for the bullshit that leaks in. Trying to spend more time reading books and unplugging from the internet. It still feels so hard to avoid the depressing bullshit though.