Thanks, I guess my real concern is it may be a few days/a week before my insurance decides to grace me with their decision on if they will cover my medication. I plan to talk to my doctor about it during my appointment tomorrow but wanted to be prepared (because anxiety of the unknown and all that).

I schedule “Focus Time” sessions in outlook tied to specific things I need to get done. This sets Teams to DND and I get the meeting reminder pop up that guilts me into either continually delaying the reminder or just doing the work. I set each period to a task/topic that needs worked on.

I also leave emails unread until I’ve dealt with them, my anxiety over having unread emails then forces me to do something with them.

It helps that we block pretty much everything in our work laptops and force use of a different browser that’s pretty slow and shitty for all sites that aren’t strictly work related. Combined with having a phone from work for work things means I can just put my personal phone away and not get tempted by it.

Perhaps for you, but for millions of Americans it no longer did. I mean I don’t disagree with you, but the reality is the increased presence and technology of airport screening is mainly an economic force to keep folks flying. The average American doesn’t really understand it frankly care that TSA doesn’t increase security in relation to the costs and hassle (and I’m not talking about the folks that ask questions like OP, or give TSA agents a hard time in line, or even uncle crazy that we all ignore at Thanksgiving as he rants about how mmWave machines give us all cancer, I’m talking about the folks that just grumble a little about how long it takes the once or twice a year they fly, then forget about it again, the 80% fliers).

So many have noted how the TSA is security theater, and even explained why it’s so bad, but I want to offer some reasoning as to why it’s still worth it. In a nutshell, it makes passengers feel safer. We all know that TSA is mostly useless at actually stopping a motivated threat. It’s really only good for stopping poorly planned or spontaneous threats which are generally uncommon in air transit. But for the general masses, that intrusive security screening feels thorough and so people assume their flights are safe and continue to fly all over the country. This keeps airlines in business, taxes going to localities and states from their airports, and creates a ton of jobs from gate agents to coffee shop clerks to rental car agents and beyond. The minute people stop thinking air travel is generally safe and secure is when all of that collapses. So we pour money into theater to make things look and feel secure (though most of the effort to actually secure things is behind the scenes, DHS/FBI/CBP/etc. using threat intel to stop planned attacks long before TSA would ever need to interact with anyone).

To your second question, we don’t really know if it scares away threat actors, but it likely does to some extent. It preps passengers to be somewhat more alert that they are in a secured area past the checkpoints, and complicates planning attacks at a minimum. No security system is 100% effective, especially one that needs to work at scales like TSA does, but the theater isn’t really an accident and for sure TSA heads know that’s all it really is, and they are fine with that.

Lastly, it’s not just the US with screenings like this, flying through Heathrow in the UK was just as bad in every way.

I’ve always known this as “analysis paralysis” and it’s super common in certain fields and certain people. I work with a lot of engineers and this is the bane of my existence some days at work. But I get it, I do the same thing sometimes.

I usually break out of cycles like this when something gets so bad I have to fix it which leads to a short period of hyper productivity that is exhausting but at least things are getting done? I also ask my wife to choose something to do, then I don’t get stuck letting perfect be the enemy of done.

The right answer is what you e said you don’t want, a NAS tucked away somewhere. What you’re asking for are generally exclusive, large drives mean spinning up mass and that’s going to make noise. If you want quiet you’ll want large SATA SSDs (Samsung makes up to at least 8TB ones, I don’t have the need or funds for any though so don’t know if there are larger options), but they are spendy per GB compared to Ironwolfs, Reds, etc. For any RAID array, for bulk storage you’ll want NAS drives, they will be a better price per GB and are designed for the storage tasks typical of an array like that. For the same price you can get a Qnap or Synology appliance and fill it with 10TB rust drives and be all set.

We don’t, we separate into bulky clothes (sweats, jeans, heavy shirts), everything else, and delicates. We wash with only cold water (modern machines and detergents don’t need hot water and it won’t get things any more clean, it just wastes energy). Bulky goes in first, then normal, then delicates. I’ve done this for at least 10 years with zero issues across a variety of machines and water hardnesses.

I hate when this happens to me, and it’s all the time. Usually I’ll finish a project and either leave the tools in the room I was working in (the project was done, so I moved on to other tasks, cleaning up is its own project of course) or they get piled my the basement door to eventually get put back in the tool chest. But then my lovely wife, whom I love more than anything, cleans up because either we have friends coming over, or because she’s stressed and cleaning is what she does. She’ll put away those tools, and the screws I left out, plus all those cords I need for that thing. To me all of those things are not gone forever. Even assuming I’d remember I left them out a month or three ago, they aren’t even there anymore anyways, they are where she thought they should go and I don’t know where that is.

I was also recently diagnosed in my mid thirties, I’ve strongly assumed I’ve had adhd for the past 3-4 years but never went to get a diagnosis because I’m generally successful at work, have a bs and masters in sorts difficult fields, and did pretty okay in school (I was just “lazy” and didn’t do homework, but would ace tests). Over the past year though work has gotten extremely busy and we’ve been very short staffed and it’s all caught up with me. I had a couple of episodes of near burn out that made me realize I needed to do something. Hit a fairly quick appointment with a psychologist to do testing and learned that I have combined type adhd but it was likely not noticed because my general intelligence is above average so I wouldn’t have necessarily shown the same classic signs in school. I’ve talked to my parents about it and my mom honestly never considered adhd, but as I described typical symptoms she could name tons of times I showed most of them. My brother dies too, as does my dad and uncle (we’ve always joked that the family gene was our knack of starting a hobby, getting just good enough to prove we could do it then jumping to something else, also our habit of just putting down tools and such when a job is done and never putting them away, turns out that family gene is just adhd). I’m not mad at my parents, they aren’t doctors and in the 90s/2000s add/adhd had a stigma around it for kids that had it, so if I wasn’t running in circles in the corner then of course I didn’t have it. Recently started on atomoxetine and it’s taken a couple weeks but I for sure can tell a difference. I do wonder how things like my social anxiety and overall productivity would be different if I had been on meds for the past 5 years, 10 years, etc. I don’t think I’d be in the same place I am now, but I don’t know that I’d be better out worse, just maybe a bit more satisfied in a more regular basis. Our struggles and experiences are what mages us who we are. You have the friends you do, interests you enjoy, and hobbies (maybe too many) you do because of your past. Sure it wasn’t the most fun, and certainly not easy, but don’t look at it like a loss or a waste, look at now like a new chapter that you are entering.

I started taking atomoxetine (generic Strattera, fun fact Lilly no longer makes brand name Strattera because generics ate their lunch) two weeks ago. I had a good chunk of side effects for the first week or so (nausea, upset stomach, drowsiness, dry mouth, waking up 2-3 hours early, and weird random chills/goosebumps even when I was warm). Most of those have moderated or gone away (I’m way less drowsy, I sleep more fully through the night, and the chills went away). Protein shakes when I take my dose helps the nausea/upset stomach usually as well.

I had a bit of brain fog the first week or so, but the past two days or so has been so much different. I can focus on work way more easily, and notice when I’m getting distracted and it’s way easier to pull myself back into the task at hand. It’s not perfect, and I expect my doctor to up my dose from 40 to 80 mg when I talk to him after Christmas (at which point I expect to get the side effects all over again), but the 30-50% better already is huge.

My doctor wanted me to try atomoxetine before any stimulants because of a minor pre-existing arrhythmia, and truthfully it’s a lot easier for me since my job has random drug testing and even with a script it’s a huge hassle if I’m on anything controlled.

Another plus one for Proton with your own domain.

Self hosting sounds good, but it’s fraught with mines that if you don’t know what you’re doing can take from “can’t send email because my domains been back listed” to “everything in my network is now sending spam to the entire world”. Sure, many folks self hosting sounds with no issues, but the price for configuring something wrong can be steep and IMO is just not worth the trouble and risks when there are good options for encrypted, privacy protecting email services for a reasonable price.

This 100%

There is a limit to how much I can excel under high pressure environments until everything falls apart and I spiral into what seems like incompetence.

It’s actually that fall that caused me to finally get diagnosed. It took a couple years, a pandemic, and multiple people at my job retiring in short order, but I finally couldn’t balance all the spinning plates any more.

In theory at least it’s because you pay for a specific bandwidth for home internet (the size of the pipe) but a specific amount of data for cellular (how much stuff you can get through a fixed sized pipe).

Home internet is a little unique in that way, almost all other utilities are consumption based with no real tiers in terms of how it’s delivered (you pay for the volume of water or gas you use, electricity is the same, just different units).

Networking equipment gets more expensive based on the bandwidth it supports, but it doesn’t much care how many bits you push through it. So ISPs charge based on their capacity to deliver those bits, and provide tiers at different price points. Cellular though is much more bandwidth constrained due to the technologies (and it used to be much more so before LTE and 5G), so it didn’t makes sense to charge you for slow or slower tiers. Instead the limiting factor is the capacity of a tower so by limiting data to small amounts it naturally discourages use. That model carried forward even now that the technologies support broadband speeds in some cases. As such and ISP could provide the biggest pipe (highest speed) to all homes and just charge based on consumption (they used to in the days of dial up, and satellite before starlink always has). Many ISPs instead are now double dipping though and charging for both.

Solid wood is generally understood to be lumber or timber, that is pieces of wood sawn from a tree. This is distinct from engineered wood or manufactured wood products which include MDF, plywood, and OSB. Engineered wood is made of fibers or strands that are pressed or glued, there is more in the final stock than just wood (I.e., glue, lignin separated via heating and pressing).

Our cat will put us to bed. When we turn the light off she will lay on my hip for 5-15 minutes then once she’s convinced I’m asleep (I’m not) she will hop off the bed and go do cat things (she tells us it’s catslified and we can’t know she does these cat things). She sometimes will lay on my wife for 30 seconds, maybe a minute but always lays on me. She’ll pace around too until I lay on my side so she can put me to bed.

In the winter she’ll come back and snuggle up with one of us because she likes the warmth and we keep it cooler at night. In the summer she’ll lays a bit further away near one of us (usually pinning the blanket down so I can’t get up). She is truly a creature of habit.

In case you’re looking for something more white collar, I have found working for government prime contractors to be a sweet spot. I know, it feels gross to work for “the man” or to be the ones taking in those tax dollars, but hear me out.

The work is well defined, they are very often unionized, even the office staff, and it’s essentially guaranteed employment as long as you want to work there. I’ve also found that putting in what I consider pretty normal levels of effort is highly rewarded because often the bar is pretty low by those that have been in the various companies for decades that no longer care. As long as you guard against professional apathy and keep driving yourself to do the best you can, it’s can be a great sector to work in.

I would suggest looking for ones you don’t already know the names of though (often small subsidiaries of the larger companies are fine). Battelle for instance operates almost all of the DoE national labs and I hear from colleagues they are a good company with labs all over the country that need scientists, engineers, accountants, IT pros, facility folks, etc.

Trees and scratchers are a must, cats usually scratch furniture because there isn’t something else nearby to use. Trees give them a place to climb and feel safe up away from things. You should also have places for them to hide (boxes, piles of blankets, a bed in a quiet room, etc). As for toys, it really depends on the cat. Ours is super picky and only likes specific rattle balls from Amazon, small rattle mice, and some kickers (there are few others but they are all small and easy for her to cray around). But for every one toy we found she likes we have half a dozen she won’t touch. You’ll likely need to try a bunch to find what yours will enjoy.

Please keep in mind that you need to seal that print before you use it with food. Because of the layers, there’s are a ton of places for dirt and bacteria to hide that are impossible to clean. Additionally, depending on what kind of nozzle you used, heavy metals can end up in your print which you don’t want to then leech into your coffee. General advice is to just not use 3d prints first good, but if you really want to you should coat them in a food safe epoxy before using.

I’ve not been formally diagnosed, but I’m 100% sure I have had ADHD. I talked with my parents about it a few weeks ago and they basically just said “yeah you probably have always had it, but we never argued your doctor about it”. The idea that I’m in my thirties and only recently really identified why I struggle with things is so infuriating. Worse yet is the fact that there were things that could have helped me succeed and be more comfortable in school is just the worst. I manage fine at this point with various strategies to be successful so it’s not really worth it to me to talk to my doctor and argue that I’ve always been like this, but man is it just hard sometimes.