@Taskerland It really was exactly that! With menus you had to tilt your head to read. It was awful, but it was all hand coded and he could *not* let it go.

His depth of occult knowledge was anything associated with the Blue Oyster Cult and a typical level of Crowley interest.

Meh

Tyros.

@Taskerland "listen, listen. You don't need to use big tech infrastructure. You just need your own domain and open source tech, it's free! Not the domain though, but listen, for 20$ a month you may set up your own website, forum and a communicator! Don't forget about the security and updates and if too many people use it it will cost more and there are additional costs and AI scrapers and..."

@Taskerland @Printdevil Yeah, that's when you call me in. (I learned it demonstrating games at conventions, but I've become the usual game teacher in most groups I play with, because I am actually quite good at it.)

@vdonnut IT professional with a blog: "It only takes 5 minutes to CSEM an A2M. Once the bespoke kernel's set-up and you've stabilised the quantum-tunnelling from your off-site server it's all doable using the drop-down menus in your bloopi account"

Me, googling acronyms: "Arse to mouth?"

Are you good at it? or do people just avoid you like a packet of Meat Flavoured Spangles at conventions.

Actually to be honest at most conventions because of "gamers" Meat Spangles would probably sell well.

Meat Spangles sound like something you'd get in #scarfolk

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I have been promoted repeatedly in my career for being mediocre at translating between my fellow IT professionals and … well, anyone else.

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I cringed this morning when I saw somebody saying 'oh, I'd love to set up my own blog but I'm not sure how' because I'm sure that at least 15 helpful IT professionals have now convinced them it is impossible.

(Although also, hats off to people like @_elena@mastodon.social who are actually doing the hard work of writing guides that make sense to the rest of the population)

@mavnn aw I totally understand! when I wrote on here in the winter of 2024 that I planned to set up my own self-hosted Fedi instance, I was met with an avalanche of posts warning me about security... which made me scared to announce what my new self-hosted account was.

For blogging, most hosting providers allow for one-click installations of Wordpress. I would recommend that, it's super easy (and you can federate a WP blog with @pfefferle's plugin ActivityPub for WP)

@SJohnRoss @Taskerland

@Taskerland Tellingly James is a designer and artist as much as a tech person.

It's one of the challenges when you find others with whom there is mutual intelligibility!

I am grateful when I speak with others, who tell me things such as: "grey, I didn't understand about 60% of the technobabble you just said."

Alas, not many individuals ever remind me of how confusing I may sound to others.

My ex-wife would get furious with me when I would use words she didn't understand. I grew up in a house hold where we had a full OED set and would spend a lot of time just flipping through the pages when I was a kid. So to me, looking up unknown terms in a lexicon or dictionary or whatever is just second nature. I am a polyglot and do such things constantly.

Yet, I do desire to be understood, just as I strive to understand others. I tend to accept the onus of doing my best to learn more; but attempting to adjust my own expressions so as to be better understood? Feels a lot more challenging.

I've also worked as a chef professionally, though I am vegan, so a little more niche. Having written as much, I have encountered some coworkers on occasion, who wouldn't document recipes with ingredient amounts. It's one thing if you're watching a YouTube video of comedian Nigel Ng playing his Uncle Roger character saying to cook: "with feeling" but if you're in a kitchen, shared by others, with customers, who expect some level of consistency? That doesn't do for a recipe that can be repeated. Such things are more like a magician's notes than particularly helpful.

I also find that "well paid" is rarely, if ever true when it comes to IT. I've had more than one job, where I was effectively making less than the minimum wage and on call 24x7. A horrid combination. I'm 50, and have never known a livable wage no more than 40 hour work week.

There's a term in Japanese ブラック企業「burakku kigyou」which loosely translates to: "Black Company" but is more or less representative of illegal business practices. That encompasses, almost the entirety of my employers throughout my career history. Though there have been, rarely, exceptions. Once I even worked for a place where I was part of a union! Once that job lasted a few months.

Out of decades of working. I was forced to work, unpaid, as a minor as well. Writing Excel macros and similar BS for my dad under threat of not having a roof over my head if I didn't do his bidding.

"well paid"? Maybe Bill Gates broligarch billionaires who plagiarize others' creations? But I wouldn't really call that honest.

But gosh, can I ever do some things in IT that most cannot comprehend with our "Martian" as you phrase it. ;-/

CC: @Taskerland@dice.camp

@SJohnRoss@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp I needed to speak to a plumber about irrigation for a large garden a few years ago, and yeah. Whole new world of plumbing knowledge and terminology I didn't understand layered on top of horticultural terminology I didn't understand.​

@Taskerland @SJohnRoss "It's a thing grandad's car had. Why are you crying?"

S. John Ross Indeed. There is, of course, a relevant XKCD for this.