That's the best scam. Just say "Oh, ok. Thanks for the ride then!" and get out. It's either a free ride, or the reader magically starts working. They legally have to tell you the reader is broken before the ride. Once I did have a driver try to run my card and it failed multiple times, so I called dispatch and gave them my payment info.
Same thing goes if they don't turn the meter on. Also a free ride. If they don't turn the meter on, ask them to right away. Or, wait until the destination and agree on a reasonable price or simply walk away.
If any cab driver tries to negotiate a flat rate ahead of time, it's usually a rip off. Though, I will do this after a busy event if we can agree on a price that's cheaper than ride share surge pricing and not outrageous. It's gotten so bad that if one does just turn the meter on at a busy event I give them a huge tip and say thank you for not pulling that crap.
MSI is one of the best museums - you can often find free or heavily discounted tickets as well. Most employers in Chicago have access to a benefit program where you can get free tickets by scheduling in advance online.
If you haven't been, highly recommend a visit. Especially if you're brining kids - hard not to have a good time when you can walk into a water vapor tornado.
In Chicago? Like, in the city proper and not the suburbs? I've lived most of my life in Chicago, and it's basically unheard of to get pulled over for a traffic violation.
Lately, blatant disregard for traffic laws in Chicago has gotten so bad that it's a little terrifying. It's become a common thread on the r/chicago subreddit with regular posts pointing out how bad it's gotten and how police never stop anybody.
EDIT: Wanted to point this out b/c I think it's a larger problem in general of people not following rules of the road, not isolated to specific cities.
Sure. Belsomra seems to work the best for me (tried another drug in this same class, and the generic of Ambien I believe). The Belsomra class of drugs block 'wake receptors' vs. making you feel tired and putting you to sleep. There's more to it than that, but that's what I was told and it seems to be accurate. The Ambien made me feel terrible the next day, and the other drug gave me a sensation in my limbs that I didn't like. Hard to explain, but it felt like heightened sensation or something like that.
Both my primary car physician and myself aren't fans of sleeping meds either, but I absolutely needed something to help me sleep at the time.
They absolutely are for short term use. I haven't needed the meds again since, but I have a prescription filled in case I experience insomnia again. If I do, I'll likely do a sleep study as well to rule out any other issues.
If you have having issues with sleep, talk to your doctor about it. The last period of burnout I went through, sleep was a major issue. I could not sleep, no matter what. The stress and anxiety from work would keep me up or make me have trouble falling back asleep whenever I did wake up in the middle of the night. The only answer I could come up with was to eat an edible and drink some whiskey. It helped me get sleep, but terrible, horrible quality sleep.
Eventually, I had to go to my doctor and deal with it. They gave me a few different sleep drugs to try, and I found one that worked extremely well at not forcing me to sleep like a sedative, but helping me fall asleep and to stay asleep. Using the sleep meds and strictly enforcing my work hours plus a 2 week vacation was all that saved me (at this point I didn't care anymore, I simply got done what I could in 8hrs and the rest could fuck off).
It took about a month of 8hrs minimum per night of good quality sleep, but man did it make a big difference. After that everything mostly fell back into place. I've since kept the more strict work hours and have taken on a role that actually has me learning new things vs. grinding out mass amounts of tedious but important work. I do work too much still, but I cap it ~ 50hrs a week and take as much flexibility as I can with it. No meetings until 10am and I was online until 8pm the night before? Cool, I'll be in at 10 and will hit the gym before work so I have more family time after work. No more bending backwards to get everything done.
Exactly the same for me. I'm currently in the "I know I should be doing X but not being able to bring myself to" cycle on a piece of a major project. It's not hard work, I know how to do it, but I just cannot do it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and have avoided the medication my whole life. Recently, I decided to try Adderall. It's like magic to be honest, and has helped tremendously in multiple ways. I can focus on a single task, less pain in getting started on tasks, can actually stay focused, can listen without the draining mental effort to force myself to, and am less forgetful.
But for some reason, this one project has put me right back in the same old 'cannot do this' state even with the Adderall.
I used to be able to learn new tech quickly, bang out tons of work, and be able to context switch / multi-task with ease.
I can't bring myself to do my taxes. I feel it's only a matter of time until I get fired. I try hard to get back into work, but my brain just won't let me. I'll then spend more time in front of the computer to try and catch up which just makes it worse. Doing any type of work is like pulling teeth just to get started. Don't know what I'm going to do. The worst part is I get angry about it.
Interesting to see an insiders breakdown of the caste system. As an outsider, I've always though that SRE was #1, and SWE second. SRE has so much more knowledge area to cover than SWE... I've been thinking of interviewing for SRE roles at FAANG, but I don't see why I wouldn't just go SWE.
I personally love it. RTFM is pretty much the basis of my career. I always at minimum skim the documentation (the entire doc) so I have an index of where to look. It's a great jumping off point for if you do need to google anything.
Books are the same. When learning a new language for example, I get a book that covers the language itself (best practices, common design patterns, etc), not how to write a for loop. It seems to be an incredibly effective way to learn. Most importantly, it cuts down on reading the same information regurgitated over and over across multiple blogs.
I was in a role that hit 1 & 2 for my first 'job' out of college in 2008. They told me that I couldn't go on vacation if I didn't finish my entire 2 weeks worth of work once... so, I automated all of it. A couple button clicks right before I left town and boom, all of my work was done.
Eventually the marketing department caught on that I had a really fast way to build reports and marketing targets that didn't require using a cumbersome db marketing tool and manually generating reports. I shared what I had built, and it royally pissed off everyone else in my role because they thought they were going to lose their cushy do basically nothing jobs. It actually turned into the team building out more tooling + automation, and most people learned valuable skills. The company even sent people to training and paid for tech books etc.
I left shortly after for greener pastures, but overall I think it was a net win.