Cutey Zone

General Category => Cute Discussion => Topic started by: marbles-box on May 10, 2020, 01:14:13 PM

Title: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: marbles-box on May 10, 2020, 01:14:13 PM

today is April 40! how are y;all celebrating your 40th of april? i'm celebrating by eating and video game. merry april 40th tis the season! (im trying to spread positive energy)

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on May 10, 2020, 06:40:10 PM

Love this energy

Im going to work on at least one game today...

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: marbles-box on May 11, 2020, 01:46:53 PM

yeah?? games are cool.. though this may not be surprising since i am gamer
I've been thinking about working on a game myself but not until next week because i am already working on a game

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on May 13, 2020, 04:47:57 AM

I went and saw a movie and then grabbed a table at the local bar and grill.

?_?

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: suizinshu on May 13, 2020, 07:05:30 AM

thesis work is killing me and i wonder if it's almost literal.... i've grown envious of people who I feel can "enjoy life" or "enjoy living" or "have things to look forward to." i'm just so tired of everything all the time and it's not even like some sort of despair but more like i just want to lie down and stop moving forever. the anxiety of working kept going up until eventually something broke and i couldn't care anymore. like i've achieved some sort of bizarre fake enlightenment and now i'm going to throw my future away because i can't think anymore and there's just some hole where my head used to be and nothing will happen anymore. for a while i was getting by with "oh I can just live if I treat things like a series of short-terms" because that way i can just go from thing to thing and not worry about anything in the future and just not get overwhelmed but it was too late anyway and now I just ghost everyone like my advisor and don't show up to any meetings or anything like that and keep thinking about if I should continue to pretend to be dead or if it'd be a better thing if i just actually die because that would at least lessen the inconsistency, but that would be cowardly and foolish and so obviously i can't do anything like that, there's more things i have to do, like this and that whatever "ideas" and "projects" i have on the eternal backburner that i know i will never ever get to, i think that going into academia proper will actually really kill me though if i'm already at this point with just a master's thesis, why did i ever do this, why did i ever do anything like this, why did i get to this point and think things were fine beforehand, even though i thought, "i'm burned out, i need just a bit of time to recover," but mis-estimated as usual and just sent myself back into the fire before i was ready, like i have some sort of desire for self-torture, and some weak-willed nonsense lack of character to the point where i regularly start weighting "giving everything up completely" versus continuing to try on anything at all, like there'd even be a difference because after quarantine and before quarantine were more or less the same thing at that point but at the same time i figure the only thing keeping me suffering like that was myself, since anyhow "you can always dig as deep as you want, as deep as you can" the ability to make your own life hell is always open to you and i was and am continuing to be such a fool by not doing anything to alleviate that and now i'm just stuck in the middle of it like some massive headless ostrich

occasionally i walk the cat (wolfie, who is 8 or almost 9) in the backyard on his cat harness. it's nice, except when he just lays down in about the same 3 places for a long time.
there's a bunch of wild edible vegetables (wild garlic and ramps) in the backyard which is also nice. i'd like to cook more and be more active, but it's easy to be consumed by the feeling of not having time, which is much worse than actually not having time. it's the home stretch, thankfully, and i ought to hopefully graduate before ...june.. july.... august....

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on May 13, 2020, 02:51:57 PM

i'm sorry youre having a very hard time, and i hope that you do not give up on life. i don't know much about thesis but i know at least aimana and maybe dcco have some experience with that

walking the cat sounds cute!!!!! even with the extended breaks (-:

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: aimaina on May 15, 2020, 03:19:47 PM

i have completed a phd thesis but i feel like the circumstances of individual thesises are all different and hard to compare to each other...... i definitely got burnt out on mathematics and research in general though and i am now working as a sort of "course assistant" (not quite a teaching assistant, its like a full time version with more duties) instead of doing a postdoc and trying to become a professor. i feel like its a much nicer job than trying to go further in academia which seems like hell to me. my thesis ended up being me half assedly gluing together a bunch of papers i wrote but it still took an enormous amount of time to work up the energy to do that, i spent months making almost no progress on writing it. if theres any kind of shortcut you can take to getting it done, you should take it.... just the advice of a simple honeydew :honeydew:

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on May 15, 2020, 04:49:10 PM

It's always okay to fail.

Don't let those at "the top" tell you otherwise.  They're just unaware of their luck.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on May 19, 2020, 03:29:14 AM

i just completed my 5th year of my phd program (which is thesis), with probs at least 3 more years to go and yeha i can relate to a lot of those thoughts. i'll say the first three years were terrible and progressively more miserable.

it sounds like right now you feel overwhelmed and burned out - and even though you tried to mitigate it / deal with it - it didn't work - you still feel really tired, and you feel kind of foolish / weak for messing up "mis-estimating yourself", ghosting people, etc. like you've failed people, or failed yourself. but the first thing ill say is that just because you may have failed at something, does NOT make you a *failure*.

like tini said - there's nothing wrong with failing, and there's not even anything weird about failing. completing a thesis is HARD and failure at some level should be an expectation. at the same time - obviously it feels terrible to fail - and those are perfectly normal feelings to have as well. it sucks. thinking that you're "weak-willed" or "lack character" - i dont think you can use these experiences to gauge that, because i think that any normal person would have a hard time trying to do the same thing that you're doing.

for myself, the time i wanted to quit graduate school the most was the first time i failed my qualifying exam. it was embarassing how intensely i studied and how terribly i did. and i failed it a second time after that. and because of that and also some business with changing my topic of study like twice - im basically 2 years or so behind pace of where i should be as a graduate student. but that is just where i was back then as a student. it's inconvenient, and yeah still kind of embarassing when i talk to other grad students. but it doesn't reduce my worth as a human being. and likewise - wherever you're at in your program - it doesn't change your worth or value as a person.

i mention that first because i think understanding that concept is far more important and worthwhile than any thesis or accomplishment you could make in life. that you have inherent value beyond any of your achievements or failures in your life.

as for practical thesis advice - my situation might be kinda different from yours because it sounds like you're relatively close to finishing? but one thing i want to say straight up is that you should not equate quitting with "throwing away your future." just like i dont think there's anything inherently wrong with failing, i dont think there's anything inherently wrong with re-evaluating your life, thinking about what you really want, and deciding that you no longer want to pursue something. that doesn't make you a failure at life - it just means that you changed your mind about something.

that being said - it sounds like you're close enough where you may want to finish it anyway. in that case - one thing that helps me when i feel overwhelmed is to periodically evaluate, and just break down everything that i have to do in my life. just like "what are the things i have to do in a week, and how long realistically will it take me to do them." and when i say "things that i have to do" you do have to include things that you need to do to be sane. i aggressively schedule in time with friends, and even just free time. ive actually become a very religious person, and i schedule certain spiritual activities as mandatory because yeah i feel like i would crack if i didn't have those things in my life. it's not a rigid schedule, it's more just being conscious of what im supposed to do day-to-day, but scheduling in those things makes me feel a lot less guilty about doing them, and when unexpected things happen, it makes it easier to re-arrange stuff. like if i just have a week where im crushingly depressed, ill give myself a bit more alone time, and maybe work on research a bit less. if a deadline is coming up, maybe for that week i wont really hang out with anybody. and yeah sometimes you over-estimate yourself, and when that happens it's okay to make adjustments.

but yeah at the end of the day research is really hard. i definitely agree with aimana - i think different thesis programs can be pretty different - and yeah there's nothing wrong with re-assessing and setting a lower bar for your thesis if that's an option.

also @progressing further into academia - i think the kind of people who are successful in that realm are the kind who are willing to spend average like 60 hours a week working on research / teaching. And they enjoy doing that. Like I think it requires a different level of passion for intellectual pursuits, and I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. But that might be different for me because 1. I do CS where academia definitely isn't necessary for career success + 2. I go to a top-20 university for my concentration so people here might be more workaholic than at other places. But regardless if research is slowly killing you inside I would very much not recommend academia.

tl;dr - Sorry this is kind of a long response I just wanted to respond to your thoughts. It's okay if you just wanted to rant or vent too though. But you are not a failure, and however you end up finishing your thesis, heck even if you don't - you are not "throwing away your future" by any means!! Honestly even someone who took 5 years to finish a master's, I'm impressed with someone who can finish one at all - doing a thesis is not easy!!!! Here for you if you want to keep talking

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: aimaina on May 19, 2020, 12:28:59 PM

actually now that i think about it, about a month before i finished the first full draft of my phd thesis i sent my advisors a sad email saying i was considering quitting my phd because thats how burned out i was. and they were like "no dumbass you are extremely close to being done, just finish it", and that kind of helped me re-evaluate what i need to actually do to get it done and i managed to push through it.... im not sure if this is a useful anecdote but its kind of funny in retrospect that i wanted to quit even right before the very end

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: suizinshu on May 21, 2020, 12:51:16 AM

Thank you a ton for those responses, they really mean a lot to me. It really is the type of situation where I am really frustrated with myself because I literally just need to write the thing and then I'm just done. Like that's it. It hurts a lot because I had already been getting it through my head about failure and accepting giving up and cutting losses, because my advisor and I already had talked about lowering the bar with the content, but even then, I struggled. Not because of some "difficulty" of the material itself but because I was burnt out so much... It's pretty telling when it's nothing to do with the type or level of work but rather just its presence at all.

I kept convincing myself, "just a few weeks and I can be done with this, just a chapter per week, I can write quickly enough," and then getting stuck for week after week and then getting sick and then stewing in regret and pain and offering reason after reason, then excuse after excuse to my advisor, then shuttering myself entirely out of some combination of anxiety and fear, that somehow, somehow it will just go away if I ignore everything. I've been trying to convince myself that this is alright so far since I really do need to fix up my health first and foremost, since by the end of the last stretch I was waking up in dazes, unable to focus my physical eyes throughout the day as I stumbled about without energy, staying up until the light or not at all completing practically nothing of note or deleting everything I had written prior. That's reasonable, right, he even said to me that health comes first, because obviously what's the point of a thesis if I just die instead, right.

The last week has been a lot better. I'm really just trying to focus on fixing that, fixing my health first, forgetting the thesis or whatever. I think at this point, since I really did just miss the deadline for Summer graduation anyhow, that I'm going to just complete it on an as-needed basis and probably just... submit a waiver of registration and turn it in for the Fall. After all of that, I think I'll go for a local job to tide myself over for a while, while I sort the rest of everything out. That's probably reasonable.

Thank you for your support. It really means a ton to me.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on May 21, 2020, 02:43:17 AM

good luck pal :dancedog:

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: marbles-box on May 21, 2020, 01:22:13 PM

i dont have any good advice.. but i'm also wishing you good luck + positive energy and am very happy to hear that things have been getting better

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on May 24, 2020, 04:53:36 PM

yeah kaynato we here for you!  :watermelon: yeah take care of yourself - you can do it!

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on June 27, 2020, 07:04:33 PM

yo what's everyone been up to lately.... how's quarantine treating y'all

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: juner on June 27, 2020, 11:01:16 PM

started a new job early in the year and i think i've just about spent more time working from home than from the office now. it's ok but i'm finding it a bit tough to get help where i need it and stay motivated. kinda concerned that the lockdown is being eased quite quickly, so i'm not particularly eager to get back...

other than that i've found having a few things to look forward to each week helps, been joining a bunch of regular game music event quizzes at vgm-quiz.com and put together a games quiz for a few friends earlier this month. probably going to try and join the gmtk gamejam in a fortnight

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on June 27, 2020, 11:31:49 PM

I've been playing Satisfactory lately.  It's basically 3D Factorio.  Pretty good.

I spent the last 2 days digging into mail server configs to try and resolve some spam issues I've been having on my server.  Acronyms incoming:

So I set up SPF and DKIM which helped a lot.  I actually thought they were already enabled but I guess not.  Then set up DMARC which was more of a pain because it's per-domain, so I rigged up a system using CNAMEs to have a single canonical record.  Then had to fix an MX record that was missing on a subdomain.  Finally had to contact the host to update the PTR to resolve an SMTP hostname and banner mismatch, which was causing the forward-confirmed reverse DNS check to fail.  That was upsetting SpamAssassin.

I wasn't familiar with any of this before except for the basics.  Found some useful online tools which helped.  Might be a good candidate for a blog post.

Unrelated to that, I started growing some chili peppers.  Maybe I've mentioned that before but they're doing really well.  One is the length of my arm already.  I'm already in need of larger pots to transplant with.  I ordered some grow bags online, which were immediately marked as delayed.

I left them out yesterday which was probably a mistake.  Had some flowers wilt off from the excessive heat.  I'll be more careful about bringing them in when it's scorching out.

That's my memory dump of recent goings on.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on June 28, 2020, 03:26:48 AM

Quote from: SquareWheel on June 27, 2020, 11:31:49 PM

I started growing some chili peppers.  One is the length of my arm already.

That's a really long chili pepper.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on June 28, 2020, 04:20:45 AM

Me and my gf broke up after almost 7 years so that hasnt been great. need 2 find a place to live within less than a month, extremely lit. I made some music and games...

everything will be ok eventually~

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on June 28, 2020, 11:16:49 AM

Dang, man.  Really sorry to hear that.

Things are starting to unfreeze and it should be a little more possible to find an apartment or other place now.  Best of luck, hubs.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on June 28, 2020, 01:22:34 PM

i appreciate u :dancedog:

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: suizinshu on June 28, 2020, 10:29:31 PM

oh god that is horrible.... i'll do my best to also send you energy. you got this!

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on June 29, 2020, 05:07:39 PM

Quote from: SquareWheel on June 27, 2020, 11:31:49 PM

So I set up SPF and DKIM which helped a lot.  I actually thought they were already enabled but I guess not.  Then set up DMARC which was more of a pain because it's per-domain, so I rigged up a system using CNAMEs to have a single canonical record.  Then had to fix an MX record that was missing on a subdomain.  Finally had to contact the host to update the PTR to resolve an SMTP hostname and banner mismatch, which was causing the forward-confirmed reverse DNS check to fail.  That was upsetting SpamAssassin.

this truly is a lot of acronyms lol. also - you run a blog? i didnt know this whole time lol

also dang 7 years, that must be tough hubs u_u. Hope you're doing okay.

for me - ive just been doing my research - it's actually surprisingly difficult to be motivated though because even though i have a lot more free time, the lack of human contact is just very demotivating. ive also been drawing a lot more,, thinking of making a short comic if i ever have the time. also america is wildin in general so there's that i went to a BLM protest that was in my area.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on June 30, 2020, 06:17:14 PM

Acronyms truly suck.  I've lately been making the conscious effort to always type them out.

Always.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on June 30, 2020, 06:52:58 PM

Some of these are probably better known by their acronym than the full text.

Acronym	Expanded Form	Notes
SPF	Sender Policy Framework	Authenticates at the DNS level for a domain
DKIM	DomainKeys Identified Mail	Adds signature to mail headers to prove it came from your server
DMARC	Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance	Piggybacks on SPF and DKIM; specifies rejection policy and error reporting addresses
MX	Mail Exchange record	Where the mail server is for the domain in question
PTR	Pointer	Used for reverse DNS; points an IP to a domain
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
FCrDNS	Forward-confirmed reverse DNS	A check that the PTR and A record create a circle, proving complete ownership
DNS	Domain Name System
CNAME	Canonical Name Record	An alias of another record

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on July 01, 2020, 02:12:30 AM

Do free domain name system services provided by budget registrars make pointer records?

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on July 01, 2020, 05:38:31 AM

It would actually be at your server host, or whoever manages the IP address.  Sometimes it's available in the client area.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: Tinister on July 08, 2020, 02:48:07 AM

retrogamer subscribed to me on YouTube.

I thought that guy died.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on July 09, 2020, 08:50:29 PM

that name's a real throwback

speaking of throwbacks (looks around wildly for the qman)

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on December 11, 2020, 12:05:34 PM

Hope you folks are doing better now that some time has passed.  It's been a rough one, but I'm feeling more optimistic about 2021.

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on December 11, 2020, 12:05:48 PM

Also, pepper pics

(https://wescook.ca/img/peppers-2020/full/peppers-0423.jpg) (https://wescook.ca/img/peppers-2020/full/peppers-0446.jpg) (https://wescook.ca/img/peppers-2020/full/peppers-0505.jpg) (https://wescook.ca/img/peppers-2020/full/peppers-0628.jpg)

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: hubol on December 11, 2020, 10:14:15 PM

nice peps!!!!!

i am doing poorly for now but it will be ok eventually

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on December 16, 2020, 11:05:52 PM

yes nice vegetation.

im still trying to finish school. it's going okay but it's dull.

im also optimistic for now about 2021 and vaccine and not-trump

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: aimaina on December 20, 2020, 05:29:44 PM

ive been burnt out as fuck and cant make games anymore even though its prime game making season.... i think im slowly recovering though im going to try to make a games today :honeydew:

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: SquareWheel on December 20, 2020, 10:47:49 PM

Best of luck!

Title: Re: April 40 thread (real)
Post by: dcco on December 21, 2020, 10:00:00 PM

i feel like my productivity always dips during the wintertime. the coldness just makes me want to sleep all the time