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daglundberg
3y

Late night ramble warning.

I like to fix issues. I like to roll up my sleeves and fetch my keyboard or soldering iron on a mission to build a custom solution for whatever real world annoyance that has just triggered my problem solving caveman brain.

I have prided myself in that. I am the kind of guy who doesn't shy away from getting my hands dirty, I tell myself, and it's good because it makes my life easier, I tell myself. But increasingly, I've been wondering if this is really so. Am I really making my life easier? Am I fixing the world or just scratching an itch?

Example 1:
Instead of using conventional backup methods for my personal files like a commercial cloud based service or buying a Synology NAS or something similar, I decided it would be better to build my own linux server and set up a rather obscure configuration in order to address things like parity, ECC, bit-rot and the likes while staying cheap.

Learning a lot? Sure. Fun? Sure. Never have to worry about backups again? The opposite, of course.

While I set out to build the perfect bespoke solution to all my personal backup needs - it's as if I, by putting my time and effort into the nitty gritty of technical implementation, placed a vote for my future to contain more of that stuff. In reality this project has burdened my little brain with many new things to consider in regards to storing my files.

Example 2:
Qwerty and the conventional staggered keyboard layout are relics of past technical limitations and both of them inefficient and bad from an ergonomic perspective.

Possible solution: ignore and carry on or possibly transition to Colemak on a somewhat more ergonomic full size keyboard.
My solution: well, let's also hand build a tiny-ass super obscure ergo keyboard and spend two days to come up with my own layout for all special characters, numbers and function keys.

Fun? Somewhat. Learning a lot? I guess. Never have to think about keyboard layouts again? Lol.

I'm living in a world of pain with various key commands in various apps and edge cases. Could I fix it? Probably make it better but not without quite a bit of effort.

Anyways, it'd be interesting to hear if anyone can relate to this feeling of wanting to fix something once and for all only to find yourself deeper in it then ever before. Idk might be a just me thing. Anyways, goodnight lovely people.

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Comments
  • 4
    3y
    i can relate. sort of.
    if i'd use a soldering iron id prolly burn down the whole street + local precinct but whenever a task takes more than 30 seconds, i build a shell script for it (and most often binaries bc fuck awk and seds of the sort). even tho its gonna be the only time in my life im gonna use it.

    does it make my life easier? fuck no. instead of 30 seconds i end up wasting hours and sometimes days on a particular issue.

    but its more entertaining than doing drugs and gives me more satisfaction than sex:)
  • 3
    3y
    Can super relate to that.

    Needed a storage solution, so i looked around, but i thought to myself, how those NAS Solutions are way too expensive, so i got a cheap PSU, a RAID Controller, Banana Pi M2 and a bunch of drives and built my own solution, which in contrast actually makes my life so much easier.

    Also needed some solution for storing all that small stuff scattered around my desk and in different sized containers, but also didn't want to use a "good enough" solution but a perfect one. So i designed a whole set of different sized, stackable assortment boxes and started printing them. I had another smaller problem, that has to do with their ability to stack, but it's a minor annoyance. The labels might be covered by the boxes stacked ontop of them, but i have a solution in place for that aswell. It's a lot of work, to print all of these and categorize all my stuff, but in the end i will have a perfectly sorted system.

    All of that stuff took a lot of time and effort though.
  • 4
    3y
    I think a lot of us are like that. It's what develops us, what makes us learn new thing, keeps us curious and on the edge. Did it really solve that issue you had? Perhaps not, but you gained a lot of other things
  • 1
    3y
    Yeah, I'd go as far as to say this is most technical people. We all go through the "I can do that better than the norm!" phase before realising that it's way more work than we ever imagined, and then (often) just decide to say sod it and go with an off the shelf solution.

    Eventually I just transitioned to doing the same sort of stuff with a different mindset - I don't pretend I'll finish the project or end up with something super polished, I just do it for the fun and the learning experience.
  • 1
    3y
    This is why I use default settings on vim (the cli version). Since doing so, my time spent fucking with editors is gone and I can get stuff done. Screw those super-modded editors.
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