Tom Barber Mars Data Engineer
boosted
Every once in a while a top-notch observation disguised as a meme comes around, and I think this is one.
As a contractor for the US government via a JPL proxy, with endless hoops to jump through because I'm foreign, I can't help but notice once more, it's not the foreigners stealing and sharing classified information....
Just saying.
Messing with GPT3.5 out of interest today and its fully making up Terraform support that doesn't exist.... 😎
Is it jut me that still emails pictures to themselves as I've not worked out a quicker way to get them from phone to desktop? 😒
American Lazyweb, I need an accounting service, that is US based, can do all my US based filing, is preferably SaaS based and I don't need to actually deal with a human..... what do I choose?
Guess they were listening to you @Quinnypig with Amazon Linux 2023, formerly Amazon Linux 2022 now GA.... https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/03/amazon-linux-2023/
Sat in the AA lounge and some Americans are complaining that the EU is going to start charging foreigners for entry from next year and one of them says "we should charge them too..."
Urrrrr we are charged in exactly the same manner today, it's called an ESTA 🙌
Having spent a day in Microsoft Devops and now Github Actions.... its safe to say I'm not friends with Microsoft or CI systems right now...
Tom Barber Mars Data Engineer
boosted
Mental Health
I should point out, Leave a light on is a shout out to the addict reminding him that there is a way back if he chooses to take it. I was lucky that song came on when it did and I paid attention to the lyrics.
There is a comment below the video that says "when you're happy you enjoy the melody, when you're broken you understand the lyrics." I don't know where that came from but it's very true.
Mental Health
I've told this story a few times in different places but its worth retelling, maybe for my own sake.
https://qoto.org/web/statuses/109922639244131292
Spotify tracking, I always enjoy the year in review, its interesting to see what went down. I also have a "random" playlist which has tracks I've enjoyed at specific points that I never delete from, only ever add to the list. In doing so you can also track pretty easily what my mood was like at the time.
I'll give you some idea:
Jan 11th I added a bunch of uplifting tunes, then Jan 17th I added, Please Don't Go, Beowulf, good sampling, resonated with me. Then the next few weeks nothing and again a few more uplifting tunes earlier in the month, then the last 2 days, Hang, Matchbox Twenty - a song about an abusive relationship, Rocket Man (cover), and then Sing For the Moment, Eminem, just came on, slapped it in the playlist, it happened to resonate, it'll be there forever and remind me of now.
So this brings me back to the year in review, and I've removed it recently but it was 2018, and I took a trip to Malta. When I booked it, it was just a break away, but when I was there, it was a full meltdown. Sat in my room, drinking heavily, trying to erase the past, and on repeat I had.... Eminem Lose Yourself and Leave a Light on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnkBdExjws
The latter appeared tonight and reminded me of that time, I look back on it as a time when I was lucky, because when I took that trip I didn't realise how my health would turn. During the day, I functioned like a normal human, did some sightseeing, but as soon as the evening arrived, the darkness fell and it was complete self abuse.
I look back now on a dark period of my life and sometimes those songs come on and I'm reminded, Leave a Light on, a song about substance abuse, in the song its really about class A drugs, but substance abuse can easily be a wide variety of different drugs.
These days it doesn't conjure up the same feelings of abuse and self loathing, but I'm aware of how close it came back then to all collapsing inwards.
Its like Spotify knows when I'm pissed off and starts playing Eminem in the random shuffle on purpose... its like they track you or something?......
Urgh the conflicting feelings are so strong 
https://jobs.esa.int/job/Noordwijk-Software-Data-Analytics-&-Processing-Engineer/905723401/
Nice to see the #ESA encouraging women apply(completely fair enough, I'm very much onboard with that), but not folks without degrees, they dont count 🤷♂️
That depressing feeling when you've got so much good work you could be doing ahead, but you know you need to leave and go somewhere new because you've been ground into the dirt so many times by senior management that you can't keep doing it... 😩
Time to polish up the resume on an RDO Friday!
Had a wonderful morning today, blowing away some metophorical and some literal cobwebs, testing out the culmination of a lot of hard work and a few injuries over the past few weeks in preparation on what will probably be my first trip of the year down to Northern France if all goes to plan in April. 🤞
The thought of being trapped with silence and my own internal monologue, is absolutely terrifying.... 😬
Booked a flight LHR to LAX to go to the pub... sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do....
