Survivor’s Guilt and a compulsive need to justify my continued existence in the role, coupled with sheer terror of losing my income, my home, and all the auxiliary benefits thereof have made me NEED to be seen by management.
My code commits are up, my bug finds are significantly higher, and I’ve taken on educational and sales initiatives to drive adoption and revenue in much bigger ways.
I was a poor Welfare kid who never had any idea about seeing the money I have in tech. Now, even though I’ve got 6 months of savings and skills that I’m sure will land me just fine, I’m pushing harder after watching a 25% layoff happen and seemingly more low-profile layoffs and reorganization.
It weird the first time you get paid a SV compensation, but live in the Midwest, making your income stretch, saving, and getting a few nice things: there’s still that inner poor kid who isn’t sure where the next meal’s coming from, or if you’d be able to pay for vehicle repairs or get your kids’ braces taken care of; all things that seemed unimaginable just five years back working IT regionally.
There’s the underlying fear that it’s all going to go away and you’ll be back to paycheck-to-paycheck after learning life doesn’t have to be that way.
That’s what keeps me motivated; I cha fed my stars, and I’m looking to make sure I keep them changed and give my kids a life I couldn’t have fathomed.
So, I push harder and work even more to make sure my place at the table is either secured, or a great portfolio to have on hand to show the next place.
I can’t tell if this is noble or pathological, but I know I’m stretched thin emotionally and am not sleeping because of it. Here it is 3AM, the soul’s midnight, and I’m thinking about a few projects I still need to do initial commits on and start some regression testing…
Means don’t care about home repair, particularly foundation repair, new windows to remove draftiness, and siding repair all hitting around the same time, draining your savings right when layoffs start occurring.
We do quite well, living well within our means, allowing us to be able to cover these types of big once-in-a-home owner’s lifetime surprises, but a layoff could mean we’re simply making the place nice for the next folks while we bail out to find something new.
Life ain’t cheap and the social safety net has been used and abused to the point bad timing can destroy everything you’ve worked for with one unexpected meeting with HR on some random Tuesday.
This is the number of people you will spread the infection to.
Flu has a R of 1.
Covid Alpha/Beta have a R of 3-5.
Delta has a R7-9.
Omicron is allegedly 15+, and unlike anything we’ve ever seen outside Measles.
Giving you a death rate of 1% infected, to keep it easy. Current numbers in the US are 1.56%.
So, 1% dead of spread of a R1 is going to be a lot slower and manageable versus 1% of R7. The exponential (Logarithmic?) rise of infections will kill a lot more, a lot faster, and have knock-on effects everywhere within the healthcare system, and society as a whole.
The only hope is that by rule, typical virus evolutions are less virulent, but we’re still not sure of that at this time. The big fear with omicron is that the spike protein mutations are immune-system dodging and faster infecting/more contagious, but that the payload within is still functionally the same. The mutations not on the spike are not changed enough that virologists are hopeful at this time.
Sorry, wall of text. Hope this addresses the question.
He actually explains that in one of his other replies: after 10 days of infection, you’re not fighting the virus anymore, so monoclonal antibodies are useless.
Covid, the virus, doesn’t typically kill you directly: the cytokine storm that some people seem to have afterwards is what kills them.
That’s why people making statement about “my
immune system is strong” are speaking from a position of ignorance. You don’t want an over-reaction of your immune system in response to viral load. This is what the vaccine helps with by giving your immune system a chance to develop an immune response without having to go nuclear trying to clear the infection.
The storm is why people are ok at day 7-10, then suddenly crash on day 11-4, seemingly out of the blue. They have a hyperactive response that begins destroying healthy tissue, particularly the lungs and the heart, given the concentration of ACE-2 receptors, which is where the virus binds easiest to. Your immune system, still trying to develop an answer to this novel infection, goes scorched earth to attempt to clear any and all rogue RNA that is detected.
That’s when you lungs start to hardened and fill and pneumonia kicks in; it’s all the dead tissue in your lungs from your now CoVid-induced autoimmune disorder.
This is why steroids are given - they blunt the various inflammatory responses a cytokine storm brings on. Problem is, your immune system do go hard in the paint, and sends EVERYTHING it has.
This is why using an anti-parasitic in this moment makes a whole lot of no sense.
This is why HCQ makes no sense at this stage.
The new oral anti-virals have the same issue: you have to get tested, diagnosed, and get these into you AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. The oral antivirals that are being tested stop the replication process of the virus, or that’s the goal.
The less viral load, hopefully a more blunted immune response, the less or no organ destruction.
As someone who has lost friends and family to QAnon, I find your statement ignorant and unhelpful. Your anecdotal experience isn’t even remotely reality. I really really wish it was.
Q is fake, but there’s a whole subset of seemingly rational people who are being sucked into the void of this cult.
Hundred to one, it was NetBus or BO. You could view active windows and get window freeze frame.
The message dialogue would have looked like Windows 95/98, with a reply option. BO was more extensible; ButtTrumpet would run and announce to the person who installed it that you had come online. Another BO plug-in allowed you to change how the message interface worked. My guess is someone saw your IP, and someone checked out your IP to find you open.
I’ll tell you, when I found someone who had open BO/NetBus, I would assign a password to their configuration so they weren’t open to anyone other than me. I have to imagine that hash was was easy to crack, but at the time, I thought it was a solid way to keep people from getting messed with by anyone other than me.
You single-handedly made me interested in computers deeper than playing Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. You made a 12th grader who didn’t have a decent computer at home start learning DNS and saving his dollars for a Pentium to start programming on.
I got into so much trouble my Senior year of High School with your software, but it put me on a path.
Your software and NetBus was all I needed. We owned EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING in our town until we got found out. Naive me at the time thought it was really cool, until the Detectives showed up…
BO and NetBus nearly got me arrested on the Friday before my Prom.
I want to tell the rest of this story, but I worry about the statue of limitations and whether the crimes committed are still prosecutable.
I didn’t, at the time, realize what we were doing outside “near, we’re in the ISP’s computers?” but, uh, I found out when the Detectives knocked on my door and took a 16-year-old me downtown to discuss “what I’ve been up to on your computer.”
That story ends with my friend getting kicked out of High School, The HIPAA law guidelines being drafted around some of his actions, then his passing away of an unknown heart issue at 20.
His naive partner-in-crime going on to having a great career in IT.
Side note: we had almost every teacher’s Netware login before we graduated. =)