The gif maker workflow is fantastic, amazing how smooth it was an the output is clean and crisp. Beautiful UX I practically tripped over this feature without even thinking about it and it worked great.
I agree with the hamburglar (lol) you did awesome work and you owe the internet nothing. the 3d printing community is rife with "stl please" expectations that everyone wants to share everything and it should all be free. Give it away if you can, but I think its important to have some value to the creative work like this that is done.
> I've shared it for free with every single person who has emailed me.
Excited and waiting :) I think it's going to make really cool pen plotter art
I am taking care of an aging and physically limited parent. It's brought me to my absolute limit. I often say stuff about wanting to be dead but I don't think I've ever been serious about it. It's the kind of thing I am trying to discourage in myself, but I'm trying to be more compassionate with myself in the times that I do.
Why are you so certain? 15 years is a long time to look down that barrel why do you deserve that?
I don't know if I can answer that well; it's like me asking you how you can be certain you love someone.
But my best attempt would be to say... There hasn't been any contraindications to make me think that think that suicide isn't the correct choice in the end. It feels right to me.
> You don’t quit a job until you have another one lined up. You do your work the best you can for 40 hours a week and leave. If you don’t get all of your work done and they fire you, at least you kept getting a paycheck longer. Don’t let your pride or frustrating keep you from exchanging labor for money to support your addiction to food and shelter.
I don't know what to tell you other than the only different course of action was to kill myself and I didn't want to do that. Repeated trauma in multiple workplaces has effectively robbed me of my career. It's not all the fault of the employers I had, but it's also not 100% my fault either. I struggle with self worth because I cannot understand what my value is anymore. The experiences I have keep telling me I am worth less and less. People are less willing to hire me, to pay me, to even listen to what I have to say.
Having all of this playing in your head 24/7 makes it impossible to view authority as anything but abusive and willfully ignorant. I know they aren't all like that... but then why does this keep happening to me?
I want to go back but I don't know how. It's more than just someone being fussy there is something seriously psychologically wrong, but outwardly I "look" fine so I must be faking it / doing it for attention.
I am tired of pandering to the people who refuse to see me.
> What you described is neither hostile or toxic.
I... didn't even describe the toxic work experiences I have had. The entire impetus to take the actions I did are not written in this post on purpose. I don't want to muddy the waters with conjecture and hearsay. Having been through a nightmare and being told "that wasn't toxic" is the kind of mindset that I am terrified of interacting with (being abused by) in the workplace.
In all honesty I'm not sure I'd recommend you stay in development. You might want to explore possibilities in other fields.
I say this not because I know you, but because much of what you describe is "pretty normal" for this industry. And once you start doubting your self worth; once you need the recognition from others, well, let's say there's not much of that going around.
There's no shame in deciding its not for you, and exploring options in other fields which are more compatible with your needs.
He doesn’t work in “the technology industry” - ie companies whose profit center is technology. He (like most software developers including me) is just a corporate drone. Any company he works for or government he is going to have the same issues.
The problem isn’t your job - you’re the constant. I’m being absolutely serious. Getting another job is not going to solve the problem. Seek counseling. No sarcasm intended.
Leave your work at your job. Neither your employer nor your manager are thinking about you when they leave work and they probably aren’t thinking about you too much while they are at work. If you got hit by a truck tomorrow, they will have an open req for your position before your body gets cold and you will only be briefly remembered if someone does a “git blame” on code you wrote.
I was in a similar position from around 1999-2008 during my second job. I was in a mutually destructive codependent cycle at work where they wouldn’t fire me because I was cheap labor and I wouldn’t quit because 5 years in I let my skills atrophy and I my personal life was in the shitter.
Speaking of which, I was in a shitty marriage (divorced in 06 and remarried in 2012) that also affected my self worth and failing at a side real estate business. My only saving grace then is I took up teaching fitness classes that I was good at.
I said never again. I stayed at that job another 2 years after my divorce, did the bare minimum while I got my head on straight, up skilled and got another job and from then on I treated my job as a throwaway commodity where I worked 40 hours a week, did the best I could and stayed in my lane and have money deposited into my account.
That was my second job. My 8th job was at the most toxic company in the industry - Amazon.
Amazon put me “on focus”. This is where they continuously escalate the requirements to get off focus and then they give you an official PIP. At that point you can either try to overcome the PIP or in my case get $40K severance. But if you fail the PIP, you get 1/3 of the severance. If you try to dispute it and fail you get 1/2 of the 1/3.
I didn’t stress. I knew how the game was played. I did just enough to get my next vest of stocks, I went on vacation even though most people thought it was a bad idea and when the PIP or take severance conversation came, I didn’t even let them finish explaining what I had to do to get off PIP. I asked them where do I sign to get my severance and how much it was.
Then I took another vacation…
My coworkers were stressed about having to go through the process and bewildered why I was so calm.
Funny enough, I got a job quickly after being Amazoned and the same thing happened a year later - another layoff. I did the same, I saw the writing on the wall within three months of starting. I didn’t stress. I didn’t cancel our vacation to Hawaii.
I'm building a pen plotter machine that is purpose built for multi-color artwork.
So far I have a duet mainboard wired up to motors and a commercial gantry set (openbuilds). I've figured out how to wire up a servo control board to a GPIO pin, and the gcode necessary run the servo up and down.
I'm designing and 3d printing parts for the pen gantry, I have a nice rail / slider setup using linear bearings. I'm almost done working out how the pen holder fits into my gantry setup but I'm struggling a little bit getting this past the finish line.
I already figured out how to generate custom GCODE that takes into account the needs of having no z axis. I need to make a simple web interface that lets me interact with the duet over USB, and this will be running off a raspi. This will allow me more GPIO and flexibility vs just wiring buttons straight to the duet.
I already have some code and logic to generate trace data from bitmap images, I just need to figure out a way to automate it so that the output still looks nice.
The goal is to create technology that is indistinguishable from magic. People without the technical understanding of what's going on will just see it as tech junk, but my hope is that by breaking down all the individual parts it will allow people to learn about CNC machines, vector vs raster and what it means for something to actually be a robot.
I still have zero idea how to make money with this. Career is struggling really badly but I am hopeful that what I am working on will allow me to display competency and skill to an employer. That's the fantasy at least.
The guy in the cave having the midlife crisis and his wife sending him clothes had me in tears. The lost kid in the woods who can hear his dad. The lack of any meaningful gratitude... he just seemed so checked out. I felt so jealous of his wife who still cared. Who kept saying tulips take time.
Not even a complicated storyline but very poignant.
I really like those illustrations I hope you keep going with this progress. Looks great and I think it could be a very engaging tool because of its visual appeal.
Don't let the haters get to you. Let him cook people.
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