by throwanem | 2025-04-17 19:29:09+00:00
This is why parents and especially young parents need a community.

It's nothing for example I would shy away from administering for my neighborhood, tenant per family or account per family or whatever people want in each their own case - in the same sense we share other resources as a community, from a drop cord to a car or a bedroom. Indeed I have no kids of my own in large part because I was terrified I'd be homeless by 50, if I did not focus on building the kinds of skills that make this something I can do in a couple days without mostly at any time putting in a lot of serious effort - this was second-screen stuff I did mostly in bed with a cup of one or another of the embarrassing milk-and-coffee concoctions I like.

I never knew what I would miss that way, focusing on building a reliably remunerative career instead of fostering any other kind of social connection, until too damn late. I don't need to hear (and won't receive well) anything like "it's never too late;" no one else here is competent to speak to my personal regrets, and I speak of this one here only so I can cite it as one motivation among many to try to do something with that so hard-earned skill that makes a difference for folks whose lives are embedded among those of others in just that way I never learned the hang of. What else could I do that's worth more?

No one is asking me to do that for my community, not at the moment. I don't know if anyone else here would think of it; one major reason I bought here is because I've lived here enough years to know it is mostly unattractive to tech people and fast becoming more so. That's good; no monoculture is healthy and that one metastasizes.

So sure. In theory I could build something like a Helm chart or deployable Compose file, or some such awful useless other shit that no one with a life could ever make heads nor tails of. Those are all things I wasted too much of my one and only mortal life learning how to do, but there are no tools we make that a human can use so just that alone doesn't work. So then I'd have to turn it into a business, and pitch to YC just so I could say they rejected me, and eventually Alphabet would sue me into my next incarnation for threatening one Ads PM's metrics bonus best case, and all I ever really wanted to do was help the overworked parents around me make their kids happy in a way that was safe.

To hell with all that, it's for the chumps here whom I grant are in the majority but do not mistake me for one of them. I said before if you want my notes you can email me and I'll share them, Docker Compose file and all; if you don't have time to act on them then you can try to find a friend or family member or neighbor who does, if you still remember how to speak to any such person. Or trade someone for babysitting so you do have the time. Or let your kids learn something about what Daddy does all day! And if you're embarrassed of that, well, maybe you should be. Unless you know some grave occult evil of Jellyfin or yt-dlp, I don't see why you'd feel that way, though.

Any of those you're welcome to by me, or whatever else you like. Not my problem, but for whatever you find it to be worth, I would say any or all of them seems a better use of your precious time than to waste more of it whining to me.