An apology to Blunell (update – significantly pruned)

[LongRunner]

Read the warnings on the first post

Old comments aside, you still do the loveliest art I've ever seen; with nice OCs, good taste in general entertainment, and your old music still sounds awesome.
The “Students Attention Chart” has strengthened my conviction to stay out of college and university too
(I've recently checked the local art galleries out of curiosity; there's nothing worth getting there, which is why only old people bother )

Before I finish, though, I'll just address a more-general concern:

The Golden Rule
The best reason to follow it isn't even for your opponent's sake – it's because each time you're harsh on them, it increases the risk that they'll snap at another innocent person (or get clingier towards people they do trust). I've suffered through far too many overly-harsh people before (including during 2022)

Let's face it, every competent person I know has been at the limit of their time and energy – and far too many “professionals” I've encountered are idiots who lack a basic understanding (like child psychologists who wanted to just bring me down to average intelligence ), or don't even try to help once it gets even slightly hard (Can Do Albany recently tried to pin the blame on me when a young woman there was feeling uneasy – way to kick me while I'm down).
Those useless “services” like Can't Do and Headspace (their heads are comprised of empty space), unsurprisingly, are readily available…

I also find it triggering when those people talk to me (and generally act) like teachers; I think much the same of them as Satou-kun's Hopeless Squad does:

Sadly my teachers didn't actually glomp a student, so we couldn't punish them like the Squad did in the next scene. Maybe in an alternate reality…

Die, Kaieda-sensei!.png (1.09 MiB) Viewed 14693 times

So I'm not completely better-off than you

[LongRunner]

Read the warnings on the first post

As much as I try to confess in full, there are details which still take a while to recall. Here are some of those:

• Although it may have seemed a bit personal of me to suggest instant-messaging in my email, I had a perfectly platonic reason behind the suggestion:
  Instant messaging is far easier to course-correct when (not if) it wanders off, than is the case for delayed communications. With no tone-of-voice in text, this is genuinely a big deal (and no, I'm not putting my voice out there – I could try a computer voice if you need a compromise)…
• My own forum thread was actually my attempt to get away from clinging to you, by trying to gain interest from other members.
• It's OK to be overwhelmed, but it's important to be able to say so gracefully (without antagonizing the other person).
  Invoking “discomfort” is less effective than it may seem, since as often as not (including in our case), it is/was mutual on both sides.

Anyway I've removed some of my earlier post sections which were pushing it…
It's not that easy to get them right though, because I have to somehow be both creative and judging, and as Yanni said a while ago:

Creativity and judgment are opposites. They are both valid, but they cannot both exist at the same place at the same time. Creativity is a form of surrender. It is a frame of mind. As soon as you use judgment, you terminate the creative process - walk outside it, observe it and ask thus you're not creative anymore.

Therefore you can judge his music all you like, but you can't reasonably put the burden on him

(Come to think of it, that probably also makes it very hard to be simultaneously good at both art and law, even if you were individually capable at each.
Something to ponder )

Hope
For years, I had little hope of finding a solid (new) power-board; I got there early last year.
I had even less expectation of finding good anime/manga; I've found that too (more than one, even! )
As most people would be, I was also anxious about moving from Windows to Linux (Windows 7 being the last version I could tolerate), but that wasn't so hard in the end either (granted, I already ran mostly-FOSS applications or failing that, at least stuck to standard file formats) and I was soon relieved.

Obviously none of those are really related to your problems, but the general point is:
Sometimes you'll only find an answer by straying from the beaten path (or indeed all visible paths), but it's usually out there somewhere…

Being overbearing
I fully understand that it probably triggered you, and I'm absolutely sorry for it. That's the big problem when your Mum is the last family member in contact
But with some insane courage, I finally managed to bring her back down-to-earth, and (while staying in my own part of the house) she's mellowing out…

[LongRunner]

Read the warnings on the first post

While there have always been many great artists (Katsuvy to name my current favorite), the art from your heyday (≈2014/2015 to early 2019) truly stood out in that we could rely on it to look great (nearly) every time – almost in the way we can rely on the older Seagate Barracudas (ATA IV/V and 7200.7/8), high‑end Seasonic and Delta PSUs, and Panasonic and Rubycon electrolytic capacitors; your detailed yet exceptionally-clean style of the era radiated sheer joy (and still does ). Your “Students Attention Chart” in particular stood out for earnestly highlighting a social issue, yet depicting it in the most adorable way ever
(Not that I can blame the students, of course – lectures were originally meant to be transcribed by the students, not learned from directly…)

Moreover, your work was analogous to the (defunct) CPU company Cyrix, in rising against the deck to achieve above‑and‑beyond competitors vastly more‑resourced than yourself. I won't name names in public, but just beware of the National Semiconductor (so to speak)

Using Yanni's music as a comparison – your older work was genuinely imaginative and inspiring (like Optimystique, and its follow-ups to a lesser extent).
Be under no illusion, your recent work is not on the same creative level: Think of Yanni's albums If I Could Tell You and Ethnicity, when he begrudgingly embraced the “New Age” classification imposed on him from outside – they may have sold better for a while, but at the cost of betraying his original core fanbase.
Fortunately, Truth of Touch was a very-welcome return to his form; so perhaps you can later make a similar comeback…

Anyway, there's no need to be ashamed of falling off the career path(s) you once cherished; 20 years ago (back when Windows XP was functional-if-insecure; when Maxtor and Seagate were archenemies, Maxtor's junky DiamondMax Plus 8 & 9 put to shame by Seagate's ultra‑reliable Barracuda 7200.7 with 5‑year warranties on all capacities; and when the second-generation Western Digital Raptors provided 10krpm speed in desktop-friendly SATA), IT would have fitted me like a glove.
Nowadays we have the hopeless Windows 10 & 11 (Linux is improving but still far from a wholesale Windows replacement); Seagate's “Rosewood” laptop drives which barely survive the 1-year warranty (their desktop counterparts may barely-survive 2 or 3 years); equally cheaped-out consumer SSDs which may or may not survive their 3‑year warranty (I only trust enterprise SSDs nowadays, and they aren't overly expensive in the grand scheme of things), then will severely lag (far worse than the HDDs you moved away from in the first place) and may or may not corrupt the data; consumer networking cards which are flaky from new (why I ended up keeping my 2011 TP‑Link TL‑WN781ND in my main PC, demoting the new and conspicuously-unshielded TL‑WN881ND to an older PC in the lounge); and overstressed, burning-out CPUs from both Intel and AMD. (Sure you can get much better PSUs now, but that's insufficient consolation.)
See also, my essay on the rise and fall of HDD reliability…

The point is, Millennials in general (including me although I'm rather on the Millennial/Gen Z borderline) share the burden of having been born in a relatively-sane world (even much USA entertainment of that era seems saner than that anywhere in the current world!), and having to face the modern insanity head-on as we grew up. And no other generation can fully comprehend the sheer depth of that degeneration, the way we do (Baby Boomers cling onto their crude entitlements, they and many Gen X have also grown too apathetic to care; while younger Gen Z and all Gen Alpha never experienced the older saner world)…

[LongRunner]

Read the warnings on the first post

If I wanted to run a PC business, these would be my ethical standards:

• New HDDs are only accepted with 5‑year warranties (or longer if it ever becomes available), i.e. “enterprise” or adjacent (Caviar Black, FireCuda).
  Used HDDs shall have good S.M.A.R.T. parameters, and once out of warranty, pass rigorous health (and performance) testing before being resold.
  Models prone to head crashes or other catastrophic failures (75GXP/40GV/60GXP made in Hungary, DM+8/9/10/11, 7200.11/12/LP, many Samsungs) will not be resold even if they pass testing, and if kept by the original owner, I'll warn about their failure modes.
• New SSDs must be explicitly enterprise-grade (like the Exascend SE3 as in my signature, or indeed the related PE3), again warrantied for ≥5 years.
  Used SSDs shall again have good S.M.A.R.T., and once out of warranty, pass rigorous data integrity (and performance) testing before being resold.
  Models prone to sudden death (Samsung 870 EVO or 980/990 PRO) will again receive a warning and not be resold; those known for silent corruption (Kingston V+200 and possibly other SandForce-based models of the era) would be condemned outright, even if I have to replace at my expense.
• PSUs must have full uncompromised fault protections, with properly-rated +5VSB capacitors, and pass every test you (or rather we ) can name.
  Used PSUs, once out of warranty, must pass full load and regulation/ripple testing before being resold.
  Models infamous for premature, catastrophic failures (old Fuhjyyu-ridden Antecs, Worstec ATX-250-12E etc.) must be repaired or condemned.
  Those non-compliant with safety standards would be either remedied (if practical), warned about, or condemned outright depending on their severity.
• Every contact which is supposed to be gold-plated as standard (expansion cards and slots, with the possible exception of ancient slow-and-uncritical ISA; USB and most other data connectors, apart from the outer shell where nickel is normal; SATA/SAS, both data and power) must be so.
  SIMMs (ancient RAM modules in the 1990s) may have gold or tin contacts (both were normal), but must be correctly matched with the slot.
• USB (and other powered external) ports must have proper resettable short-circuit protection (whether PPTC or active), no one-shot kludges.
  (As you can see on the FireWire card I repaired here, among other hardware items.)
• If I accidentally break a customer's HDD(s), I'll pay for professional data recovery myself, and offer monetary compensation for the downtime.

But everyone doing IT for a living is fully aware that it's simply impossible to uphold such ethics, under the industry's merciless competitive pressure.
If you were pondering a niche high-end business, that won't work out either (almost everyone so-informed about quality can build their own PC anyway)…
Ultimately – just like every other trade, in the modern world – the bare-minimum (if even that) is the only way you can do it for a living


The heady days of late 2004 when Seagate provided leading reliability as a right (rather than a premium option), giving 5-year warranties on all of their internal HDDs.
(Fearlessly facing-off Maxtor; although that tragically fell apart once Maxtor's vicious managers invaded Seagate, running the 15-year-strong Barracuda name into the ground…)
But both drives have clean bills of health, over 20 years later; the ST380817AS still cheerfully boots Linux Mint, and the ST3160827AS has backups of various special items.
Although unknown in the “consumer” mainstream, the 2.5″ Constellation nearline drives (500GB ST9500530NS, then 1TB ST91000640NS and 2TB ST2000NX0253) from 2009 onward are super‑adorable mini‑Barracudas (the Japanese would approve ) and finally outdid the legendary Barracuda ATA IV & V's cherished fast/quiet/reliable trinity; in their form factor, they don't need the much‑missed AAM feature. I recently obtained a used ST2000NX0253, and hope to install it in an SFF desktop later this year…

Boundaries are in the same boat, really; I never willingly press other peoples' boundaries (unless I know them well and times are desperate enough to call for desperate measures), but some people have seriously struggled to respect my own boundaries, disrupting my sense of space.
(I understand that you may have had the same issue at times, so I'm neither claiming the high ground nor holding it against you.)
Everyone knows in some sense that “the world's gone mad” – but the computing industry was (and remains) truly at the forefront of madness…