The thing I remember being most annoyed about was cleaning all the bottles. That was really obnoxious.

On the topic of Electron, I’m really torn. I can’t help but feel some gratitude for the fact a few of the work tools I need work on Linux (stuff like Slack, Teams, Zoom).

I have to wonder if some people use these systems to make themselves feel more important than they actually are.

Unreal works okay for me, but I’ve had to submit a few patches upstream to work out some Wayland issues. Other than that, it’s about as bloated/buggy/slow as it is on windows. Most of the time if I think there’s some Linux-specific issue I’ll open the same project on windows only to discover it was the same.

- There’s a record of decisions and the thought process behind them

- When asked for input I can take time to consider a response and therefore give a higher quality reply

- I can refer back to conversations or search them when I inevitably forget some detail

- I don’t miss key information because I was out sick or had to take a bathroom break

- There’s a paper trail you can copy/paste when there’s a disagreement in understanding

- In meetings it can be frustrating to try to get a word in: there are often too many people or just one really chatty bastard who won’t stop

- It’s easier to scroll past chatter about weekend plans and sports than it is to sit through it in a meeting

The problem with meeting notes is they only reflect one person’s understanding, and often the person taking notes only has half an understanding anyway. Meeting notes are like JPEG compression set to the lowest possible quality.

I work with a team that spans +9h and +16h from me and it’s great because there are few meetings and lots of written communication. It’s very easy to search past communications to find old materials or decisions, and that’s not just hypothetical: I do it ALL the time.

We’ll use meetings, but for more tactical purposes: troubleshooting a specific problem, or doing a demo of some feature (although even then I would suggest demos are better as a recorded video).

Most objections are really something like “wah, I don’t want to read or write, it’s too haaaard.” Reading and writing were some of the earliest inventions in human civilization and everyone learns them starting in pre-school. It’s a low bar for a grown professional.

I do clench my teeth a lot from anxiety and get muscle pain in the sides of my face on occasion. I wonder if that’s related.

Now, I’ve had useful tips for infants since they’re basically a brain stem with a mouth and a butthole, but when they get older it’s my experience that kids are just too different to apply any one broad set of strategies to them all.

I have a lot of respect for teachers, I don’t know how they command a whole room full of them.

The good news is that at their age right now I’ve been noticing more and more moments where they’re nice to each other, help each other out, etc. Still plenty of rivalry, but it seems to be on the decline in the past six months or so.