Rubenerd

This is not a autobiographical post… or is it?! What this post is supposed to be is addressing the issue of work satisfaction more broadly; or at least, what I’ve been reading about it.

I keep seeing articles in newspapers and journals that Zoomers and Millennials are wanting more from their employment than previous generations. I’m not sure that’s broadly true; nobody wants to get nothing from what they spend a significant amount of their lives on. But these generations do seem more vocal about it, at least based on the recruiters and managers I know in Singapore and Australia.

It’s manifesting as “The Great Resignation” across the world, at least based on how reporters are discussing it. People are realising there are opportunities elsewhere, so why put in the proverbial 110% into somewhere inflexible, or for a hapless manager that makes your work miserable? The great lie that large swaths of humanity need to be permanently based in open-plan offices with long commutes and helicopter managers have been exposed with Covid work-from-home arrangements.

This is a key piece of advice I see: follow your passion, and don’t stick around with a job that doesn’t respect you. I can see something to that.

Here comes the proverbial posterior prognostication: but… I’ve been seeing the angle that fulfillment at work isn’t the issue, its wanting it in the first place. The argument goes that people tie too much of their self worth and energy into their jobs, which results in disappointment and stress when you internalise and onboard too much of it. Advocates of this view will use terms like “work/life balance” and “healthy separation” to encourage workers to distance the two. Professional detachment is a skill, but it extends far beyond how you talk with clients.

Even in my early twenties when I worked at a job I didn’t especially enjoy, I did derive satisfaction and security from knowing I was pulling in money I could save and spend, or to take the family out to dinner, etc. There’s something alluring about reframing work in that context again, rather than introducing myself as “someone who works at X” before saying who I am.

It reminds of that US-centric advice of the “side hustle”, which someone I read recently responded with “mine is spending time with family”. Maybe that’s the key: what is it in life you want to prioritise? In the words of Scotty from Star Trek, if something is important, you make the time.

As much as a coffee fan as I am, there’s still a lot I haven’t tried, and plenty of experiences to be had.

• Home-made coffee ground with burrs. I’ve always used bladed coffee grinders on account of cost, though I hope to rectify this soon.

• Coffee specifically with James. Clara has never been to Scotland, and we especially want to make the trip up there to say hi and meet the IndieWeb’s premier coffee blogger himself.

• Espresso in Italy. One day!

• Coffee with creamer. I’m not a snob, I’ve just never felt compelled to add it. I don’t think I even knew what coffee creamer was until I saw James Hoffman review various flavours. Not to be confused with crema.

• Tim Hortons, in Canada. Clara and I had it in New York, but I was told it was better up north. Though I’ve also since been told that’s also gone downhill since they were bought. Oh well, time machine anyone?

• Coffee with butter. As above, though I know people like Dan Benjamin swore by it back in the day.

Prolific writer, emacs aficionado, and friend Michał has consolidated many of his previous disparate thoughts into one site over on CrysSite, with its own RSS feed. This is the more rational thing to do, as opposed to me sharding off something else for no good reason!

I especially like the visual representation of his site structure on the sidebar. It’s clear and easy to follow.

I’ve updated my blogroll, but thought you should all know.

Also, happy (belated) birthday!

I switched to my current Times New Rubenerd theme earlier this year, because I wanted something new, and I secretly liked serif fonts. They render my thoughts the way a newspaper or book would, which is fun.

But I’ll admit I kinda miss my paper theme, which itself was based on my pseudo-Wikipedia theme from 2010-ish. I always loved how 11 to 12-point sans serif fonts rendered on *nix desktops and macOS, and the shadows and paper motifs helped visually separate posts without needing a tonne of white space.

That’s the biggest problem with themes you write yourself: you’re never satisfied 📺. Or maybe that’s just me.

A lack of discoverability was the biggest issue with that old theme, as many of you pointed out. I’m wondering if I can add some more context to posts in that one, like links to metadata and archives.

Right now I’m updating that theme with the latest Hugo syntax, particularly around pagination. We’ll see.

I had to get my ten thousand steps in today, but I’m coming off a bad cold and was feeling melancholic, weak, and lethargic. So I started walking in one direction down the street, at a steady and gentle pace. Walking outdoors does wonders for mental health, and I swear it helps with ailments too.

I didn’t listen to a podcast or any music; I put the personal phone in my pocket, and left the work beeper and headphones on my desk at home.

I was walking, watching where I was going, but otherwise not really paying attention to anything.

There were so many chirping Australian birds!

As I approached a few intersections, I’d see the green man come on indicating I could cross. Rather than run to make the crossing in time, I kept the same slow walking pace I had been. I arrived at the crossings just in time for them to go red, so I’d stand there and wait. I wasn’t impatient or frustrated, it just felt like something that was happening. I had no agency over the situation, nor could I impact it any way, so I just let it play out. I felt zero impatience.

I got home after an hour, and it was probably the best I’ve felt in weeks.

I’m always rushing somewhere. To work, to the shops, to the train, to nowhere in particular. I slow my gate somewhat when I’m with Clara (on account of her much shorter legs!), but we still power walk. It’s probably good for exercise, and does get us where we’re going quickly.

(A crush I had as a kid once joked once they’d tried to run after me to say hi back in the day, but they couldn’t catch up! There’s a metaphor in there somewhere).

I’m a transport nerd, so to me it felt like the difference between taking a commercial flight, and a cruise… of sorts. I wouldn’t say I reached any level of zen, nor would I pretend I was meditating, achieving mindfulness, or being “at one” with my surroundings. I just found the act of deliberately walking slowly to be one of the nicest things I’ve done for myself in a long time. I was letting the proverbial idle mental CPU cycles be just that. I suspect this was easier on account of my head being full of cotton wool with whatever cold this is I have, but the outcome was still pleasant and calming in a way that’s profoundly difficult to describe.

Find a park if you can, and give some slow walking a try. Recommended :).

You know that feeling when you’ve inadvertently skirted something potentially dangerous? Dodging the proverbial bullet, as they say?

I was transferring the last of Clara’s domains over to our shared registrar, when I noticed they didn’t enable transfer locking by default. I then realised that none of our domains had it enabled. Some of them had been with this registrar for years.

What is it they say, the cobbler’s child walks barefoot?

Suffice to say, is a phrase with three words. I’ve fixed that little personal whoopsie doodle, and took the time to remove a couple of old devices I’d left accumulate in the multi-factor auth screen. One of them was a phone I hadn’t used since 2018. Cough.

If you have a spare few moments this weekend, and have some domains you maintain for yourself or family, maybe take a quick peek and make sure everything is configured correctly. Best to find out now, not when you get a transfer authorisation request.

My new coffee page now lives at ruben.coffee! It’s going to be my evolving collection of hardware, shops, links, travel, recipes, wish lists, roasters, and anything else I can think of. It started on Clara’s and my wiki, but has now evolved into its own thing using my Omake format, because why not?

Okay, there are a lot of reasons why not. Unlike drinking coffee, which is always appropriate. Except when it’s not.

I wanted to thank James for inspiration, and Wesley for his kind words. Because remember the golden rule of coffee and XML: if they don’t work, you’re not using enough.

Did you know masculinity is under threat? Worse than that though, it may be in irriversable and terminal decline, from which mankind will never recover!? Scary! We hear this every couple of decades or so, along with the requisite pearl clutching and moral panic over what it represents, what society should do, and why young men in particular are letting the world down every time they refuse to whistle at a woman on the street.

Wait, maybe I shouldn’t say pearl clutching, only women wear those. Um… modded light truck steering wheel clutching? With their hands! Phew, nailed it.

The most recent episode of Behind the Bastards took a lighthearted look at the modern “manfluencer”, who’s here to tell you that men need help, and they conveniently have the solution! Which seems to involve a lot of stereotypes, lobster sociology, and counterproductive behaviour. Oh yeah, and buy their overpriced protein powder that w-will also block 6G, or whatever it is we’re up to now.

This is an issue far larger in scope and importance than a short blog post, but there were a few lines that host Robert Evans opened with that had my blue and pink scarf all a quiver:

I graduated high school in 2006. I think I was in a sweet spot that only lasted for a couple of years. Really briefly, for the last two years of high school, things were kinda healthy for young men, comparatively. There was a switchover that happened between junior and senior high for me. When I was in middle school or junior high, I’d get bullied a bunch for being “the kid” who had D&D books, and played Warhammer and shit. That… didn’t go well for me! Then when I was in my junior year, World of Warcraft came out, and suddenly all of that stopped. And it was about the same time people started getting less shitty, and then a lot less shitty towards queer kids in school.

There was this brief period where […] all the weird kids stopped getting that shit. It didn’t last very long.

I graduated high school around a similar time, and this absolutely mirrored my experience. Despite being on the other side of the planet and going to an international school in Southeast Asia, there was a noticeable shift in attitudes among the cohort between my mid and late teens.

My friends and I were bulled mercilessly for our interests in Star Trek, computers, Japan, and trading card games at the time. I was picked up by the neck, had my locker filled with shaving cream, and was the target of endless practical jokes by the cool girls… all the usual fun stuff! A few of us didn’t come out till many, many years later, but even at the time it was clear the way we conducted ourselves wasn’t quite what young boys were supposed to do. And wow were we reminded of that!

Then something changed around year eleven. At the time, I attributed this to teenagers growing up and being a bit more mature, and computer nerds beginning to become well-publicised billionaires. But overnight we were treated differently. I wouldn’t say we were treated well, but there was a common understanding. We were all a bit different, but we should treat each other the same. Not doing that made you a dick, and being a dick around people wasn’t a good look.

My Australian Zoomer friends now say modern schools are generally very accepting of people with divergent identities and personalities, which is heartening. But it’s also hard not to see the rise of people idolising these hyper-pseudo-masculine dudebros who treat others like shit. It’s incredible to me that so many vulnerable, lonely men continue to be played like fiddles by these grifters. History has taught us just how lucrative—and dangerous—that is.

A bit of a heavier topic today, but I’ve had messages from some of you that talking publicly about my experiences like this are helpful. There are more of us out there than you realise.

I was struggling with some flaky, tethered Optus Internet earlier this week, so I tried to ping Quad9:

64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=115.004 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=199.378 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=71.115 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=271.379 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=445.797 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=95.156 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=98.663 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=19.403 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=7 ttl=55 time=153.812 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=8 ttl=55 time=209.375 ms
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=8 ttl=55 time=201.306 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 9.9.9.9: icmp_seq=9 ttl=55 time=92.014 ms

There’s some output I hadn’t seen since I used TM Streamyx in Malaysia back in the 2000s! I still remember what a shock it was after having spent years using Singaporean cable.

As always, the manpage for ping(8) had more details:

The ping utility will report duplicate and damaged packets. Duplicate packets should never occur when pinging a unicast address, and seem to be caused by inappropriate link-level retransmissions. Duplicates may occur in many situations and are rarely (if ever) a good sign, although the presence of low levels of duplicates may not always be cause for alarm. Duplicates are expected when pinging a broadcast or multicast address, since they are not really duplicates but replies from different hosts to the same request.