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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2024

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  • Hey. ADHD diagnosed person here. Only diagnosed this year after a lifetime of feeling like a lazy former gifted kid. This looks a lot like my over-analysis spiral from a few years ago. My psychiatrist broke it down like this:

    ADHD, like most things, is a spectrum. If your brain and body have trouble regulating norepinephrine then you’re probably on that spectrum. There’s no stolen valor here… Only treatment options based on diagnostics (educated guesswork). You meet the diagnostic criteria and I am confident that treatment is your best path forward to mitigate and control the reasons you scheduled time here in the first place.

    </paraphrased_dr_words>

    Some days my symptoms do not get in the way and I could easily pass for neurotypical. On “bad brain” days I feel like I’m losing my mind. Neuro-divergence is complex and life is weird. A diagnosis isn’t about having direct answers: it’s about narrowing down which mitigations, meditations, and medications we want to trial to increase our control over and quality of our lives.

    If you accept that ADHD diagnosis, start treating it, and the treatment improves your life, that’s a huge win. If it doesn’t? Also a win. You’ve eliminated an option via experimentation and you know more about yourself. Time to try the next option. The important bit is being receptive to the attempt at making your life better.



  • There’s some good advice in the comments already and I think you’re on the right track. I’d like to add a few suggestions and outline how I think about the problem.

    Ask if the vendor has installation administrator guides, whitepaper, training material, etc. If yes: ask that they send it to you. You may also be able to find these on the vendor’s website, customer portal, or a public knowledgebase / PDF repo.

    I would want to know three things.

    1. How do users authenticate through the application?
    2. What are all of the ways users may access the application (local only, remote desktop, LAN only, full server/client model)?
    3. Does the vendor have any prescribed solutions for defining who has access to the application, at what privilege level, with access to what features?

    i.e. What parts of the user access, authenticate, authorize pipeline do application admins or system admins have control over and how can we exercise that control?

    Based on some context I assume that the app is reading from Active Directory using RADIUS or LDAP for user auth and that people are physically logging into the machine.

    If this is the only method of authentication then I would gate the application with a second account for each employee who requires access for business reasons defined in their job description (or as close as you can get to that level of justification - some orgs never get there). You can then control who has access to the machine via group policy. Once logged in the user can launch the application with their second account (which would have the required admin access) via “Run as…” or whatever other methods you’d prefer. No local admins logging in directly and yet an application which users can launch as admin. Goal achieved.

    This paradigm lets us attempt balancing security concerns with user pain. The technically literate and daringly curious will either already know or soon discover they can leverage this privilege to install software and make some changes to the system. The additional friction, logging, and 1:1 nature of the account structure makes abusing this privilege less attractive and more easily auditable if someone does choose the fool’s path.

    I can imagine more complex set ups within these constraints but they require more work for the same or worse result.

    Ideally you run the app with a service account and user permissions are defined via Security Groups whose level of access is tied to application features instead of system privs. There are other reasonable schemes. This one is box standard and a decent default sans other pressures.

    If other methods of auth are available (like local, social, cloud, etc) then you’ll have more decent options. I would define the security objectives for application access, define the user access objectives from the Organization’s perspective, and then plot each solution against those two axes (napkin graphs - nothing serious). Whichever of the top three is the least administratively burdensome is then selected as my first choice for implementation with the other two as alternatives.

    An aside: unless there is only one reasonable choice most folks find one option insufficient, two options difficult to decide between, and four options as having one option too many - whenever possible, if another party’s buy-in is desired, present either three options or three variations on one option. This succeeds even when the differences are superficial, especially when the subject is technical, and 2x if the project lead is ignorant of the particulars. People like participating.

    I’d then propose these options to my team/direct report/client, decide on a path forward together, and plan the rest from there. There’s more to consider (again dependent on org maturity) but this is enough to get the project oriented and off the ground.

    Regarding FOSS alternatives: you’re likely locked in with the vendor’s proprietary software for monitoring the cameras. There are exceptions but most commercial security system companies don’t consider interoperability when designing their service offerings. It might be worth investigating but I’d be surprised if you find any third party solutions for monitoring the vendor’s cameras which doesn’t require either a forklift replacement of hardware, flashing all of the existing hardware, or getting hacky with the gear/software.

    I hope this helps! <3



  • I haven’t experienced what you’re describing. Previous experience suggests exposure is the next step for you. If a cooking class isn’t feasible right now then start with watching some videos online (best if they’re home cooks - you want to watch common cooking of foods you like to eat).

    You’re not trying to memorize anything or learn hard skills during this time. You’re only trying to become more familiar with people working in a kitchen so it doesn’t feel as alien and maybe not quite as scary.

    Do that regularly for a while. If it’s too much for you: dial it back. You do want to push your boundaries but only when you’re feeling ok about it. Small wins will turn into more small wins and eventually you might be interested in trying to cook something.

    If that happens, and I suspect it will, know that it is OK to start cautiously and take your time learning how to use the oven and stove top. Try turning a burner on with no pan or pot on top. Let it get hot. Turn it off. Let it cool down. Repeat that across a few days if the first one helps you.

    Once you’re comfortable you should do that practice again and add water to a pan until its half full. Once the burner is hot: place your pan of water on top of the stove burner. Let the water come to a boil. Remove the pan from the stove top. Let the pan and water cool down. Note how much water is missing (some of it will have steamed away while boiling). Add that much water back to the pan and practice this again.

    You can build your experiences, step by step, with safe extensions and new footholds, until you’re feeling confident about cooking something with the boiling water. You’re going to boil an egg!

    Complete your practice again but instead of taking the water off right after it boils: leave it on the burner for 6 minutes. Then remove it and let it cool. Success? Do that again using a pot instead of a pan. Pot half full of water. Grab a serving spoon or similar item. Once the water comes to a boil:

    1. Lower the burner temperature to half / medium. The water should be moving and steamy but the bubbles should be very gentle or cease. Dropping the egg into actively boiling water may cause the egg to crack prematurely.
    2. Use the serving spoon to gently place the egg in the center of the boiling water.
    3. Wait six minutes.
    4. Remove the pot of water from the burner.
    5. Turn the burner off.
    6. Use the serving spoon to lift the egg out of the hot water.
    7. Run the egg under cold water (this helps it from over cooking and helps make peeling easier).
    8. Enjoy your egg.

    You can absolutely boil any kind of pasta, lots of vegetables, and almost all starchy foods. Boiling is very safe because the water regulates the temperature for us. So long as there is water in the pot the pot is unable to meaningfully exceed 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point of water / ~212F). It is very difficult to burn anything or start a fire while boiling water.

    Best of luck my friend.


  • This is admittedly a bit pedantic but it’s not that the risk doesn’t exist (there may be quite a lot to gain from having your info). It’s because the risk is quite low and the benefit is worth the favorable gamble. Not dissimilar to discussing deeply personal health details with medical professionals. Help begins with trust.

    There’s an implicit trust (and often an explicit and enforceable legal agreement in professional contexts (trust, but verify)) between sys admins and troubleshooters. Good admins want quiet happy systems and good devs want to squash bugs. If the dev also dons a black hat occasionally they’d be idiotic to shit where they eat. Not many idiots are part of teams that build things lots of people use.

    edit: ope replied to the wrong comment




  • Start here: https://nesslabs.com/how-to-think-better This isn’t an endorsement (though I do like ness labs). That article offers practical evidence-based starting points and additional resources at the end.

    There are many people/systems/schools that will offer strategies and solutions. Some are practical and effective. None of them are a replacement for learning what it means to think well, learning how to think well, or actually thinking well.

    The next step is learning the jargon of philosophy so you can ask meaningful questions and parse the answers (this is true for any new discipline). I recommend reading anything on the topics of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, which resonate with you. Then find others to discuss what you’ve read. You do not have to be right or knowledgeable to earn a voice in the conversation: only an interest in discovering how you might be wrong and helping others discern the same for themselves.

    If you haven’t read any classical philosophy but are interested I recommend Euthyphro. It’s brief, poignant, and entertaining.

    I hope this helps! Happy to discuss further as well.