2026-04-23 01:50:59
Yep. That's basically it. Not seeing it as a bad thing though, I really didn't have room to improve there. It was limiting my capabilities by a huge amount. I got enough to live for some months, meanwhile I'll try my best to find a new, better job.
It was my first job, learned a lot, built some cool projects, but it was indeed time for a change. I had been looking for a new job for the past 2 years. Now it's do or die.
3 and a half years of programming experience, but there's still a mountain of things to learn. One thing this job made me realize was that I really like backend stuff more. I worked as a full-stack dev, but in my position, without a designer or any kind of assistance, frontend was really annoying. I would like to experiment more with low-level stuff and C, I find it very interesting, but didn't have any opportunity to use it at work.
Wish me luck!
2026-04-22 15:21:00
The company I work for has gone all in on AI (artificial intelligence). We're meant to be using AI all the time in our workflows, creating emails, summarising emails, summarising meetings, summarising chat messages etc. etc.
The company I work for is also massively invested in acronym usage. KPI (key performance indicators) ROI (return on investment) B2B (business to business) WTFAYBOAYUA (what the fuck are you banging on about, you useless arsehole?); y'know, all the internationally recognised business acronyms that we all love. However, they also absolutely love creating their own acronyms.
So new projects spawn replete with their own custom acronyms that fail to explain what they're naming and meetings are full of people stroking their chins and nodding their heads, pretending to understand.
"So we've synergised the metrics across PHG, brought the SFS under the DFS umbrella and are monitoring the XJ output with CCG compliant KLFs"
"Does that work with WQZ?"
"WQZ requires a CXG overlay that UX will implement once AFS and SFS are combined using TKS for deployment to DFS."
That's how meetings and presentations sound, just modem noises for management software.
Anyway, the AI guru at the office is now encouraging us all to use his new tool that he vibe coded in AI that decodes acronyms on the fly during Zoom/Teams meetings. Just start it up when you join a meeting and it translates all the acronyms into human words.
Here's a suggestion: In order to save the planet from data centres sucking away all its resources in order to translate acronyms on the fly, how's about WE ALL JUST FLIPPIN WELL TALK IN ENGLISH SO EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU'RE GOING ON ABOUT?
2026-04-22 09:28:00
I've noticed that travel has become, of late, an act of collecting places. I've literally heard people referring to visiting a place as doing that place, as in "Have you done Japan?", assuming that one can do an entire country, and once that country is done it remains as such. As if a place is a product to be consumed and checked off the list. Why bother returning to a place if you've already done it?
I received a gift many years ago which, while being well-intentioned, typifies this idea: a scratch-off map of the world. Each time you visit a country, you can scratch off the metallic coating and the country is now done, according to the map. The work trip I took to São Paulo a decade ago? Brazil: done. Bus tour through Europe? Germany? Check. France? Check. Spain? You get the idea.
This kind of mentality is typified in the question I've heard asked many times: "How many countries have you been to?" This is often followed by a debate on whether layovers count towards your tally if you don't leave the airport, as if stepping beyond the airport boundaries bestows doneness.
Like many things, I blame social media. It's changed travel from an exploration to social status signalling. I started thinking about this a few years ago while visiting some waterfalls in Indonesia. I love a good frolic in a waterfall, but all of them were just lines of people waiting to take their photo under the falls, and then they'd better get out of the way for the next photo-goers. No frolicking allowed! People need to do these waterfalls!
I spent this morning in a beautiful garden outside of Kyoto, which exemplifies the cultural ideals of appreciating nature and meditating on the beauty that surrounds us. It was lovely during the early morning, but then the rest of the world showed up and all they wanted to do was take photos and move on to the next spot to do. There was one moment, in perhaps one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful places I've ever visited, where I was surrounded by about 20 other people, all of them either in the process of taking a photo, or looking at what they had just taken on their phones. No one was looking at the amazing stuff they were doing!
That isn't to say taking photos is bad. They're a great way to share an experience with others and save a memory of a time and place—but I think the threshold of what is enough has been crossed in the age of Instagram where images and video are socially valuable. Now beautiful places are commodified. And I don't know if we'll ever go back.
I appreciate that many places in Japan limit photos and videos, such as on trains or in gyms, for the sake of not annoying those around you. Perhaps once sunglasses cameras take off and people can record their entire lives they can finally experience where they are, instead of trying to capture it perfectly for later.
All that being said, I don't want to gate-keep. If this is the form of travel that makes people happy, then they should do it to their heart's content. Similarly to how some people collect Magic cards while never playing the game, sometimes the fun is in the collection itself. But perhaps look up from your phone once in a while. The world is prettier in full resolution.
2026-04-22 05:37:50
when i first joined bearblog, i actually didn’t post anything. i was obsessed with creating lists and edited the homepage of my blog more times than i can count. if i wasn’t doing that, i was reading what everyone else was posting about on the discover page (which is absolutely fantastic!!) i didn’t know what to post at first and i was insecure because i’d never posted anything before.
then i decided to take the plunge before posting anything by buying the lifetime membership.
bearblog is a part of me now and i’m having a lot of fun. what more could i ask for? 🌸
2026-04-22 04:26:56
I have never seen a company so completely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Microsoft had the entire world in their grasp, and instead of doing a victory lap, they tripped over the finish line and smashed their face into the concrete. This is the company that had a thriving gaming ecosystem (dead), essentially the most ubiquitous and extensible OS on earth (tarnished) with some of the strongest brand identity in history (now a complete joke), and they are still entirely unaware of how thoroughly they have destroyed their consumer reputation.
If anyone from Microsoft is reading this: you should be ashamed. Ashamed of the products you've created, ashamed of the piss-poor work being done on all fronts at Microsoft right now, and ashamed that, despite all of this being true, you're getting defensive instead of doing something to fix it.
2026-04-21 22:50:46
So, I just moved to a new apartment with my wife and daughter. One of the new acquisitions within the move was a dining table my wife bought off of Facebook marketplace. She wanted one so bad and asked me if we could get one. I didn't care personally, I didn't think a dining table made much of a difference when we had a whole couch for sitting area.
It got there on our move in day, and on that first morning in our new apartment, I made breakfast for my family, a simple dish my daughter excitedly calls "cheesy eggies", and my wife made coffee for her and I. I sat down with my wife and my daughter climbed up onto her seat, and that's when it hit me.
I pretty much grew up most of my life never seeing a dining table being used to eat at. My family and I growing up had basically always eaten on the couch in front of the TV, watching a show and yapping. Sometimes there was a little tray we'd have, but not much else. Dining tables were always reserved for big family gatherings or to play board games on.
But now I'm sitting here in the morning with my family eating breakfast and we're just there with each other, no screens, no other distraction. That's something I didn't think I was missing. It's such a small thing, but basically just being able to sit with my family and enjoy a simple moment of peace on a Sunday morning just means everything.
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I moved to my new apartment on Saturday, I basically was on my feet moving and then unpacking for 13 hours straight. I'm still tired, but we are almost fully moved in. I think my cats are happier. We basically had to segregate them to the downstairs living area because my MIL upstairs didn't like having cats around. So this move allowed us all to be around each other again. It's just nice because now I can set my own rules in the house again. I'm heading to the liquor store to buy the first bottle of wine I've bought in over 2 years (my MIL has a huge problem with alcohol because of her dad) to celebrate us moving in.