Burnt Out?

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lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
59,088
9,505
126
Try Riddick Butcher Bay.
I think I played that when it came out. If I were to play anything, I'd like to go through HalfLife and RTCW again. I also wouldn't mind doing Max Payne again. I can do the previous two easily on linux. Not sure about Payne. I'd have to spend the time figuring it out, and I just don't want to put time into games at this point.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
61,111
16,546
136
I haven't really found a good setup for recliner gaming that I like, and it would mean moving a bunch of stuff around. I honestly kind of feel like I'm wasting my time if I'm in front of a screen unless I'm watching something semi-educational. I haven't gamed for more than a few minutes since October - it just lost its appeal for a while.
My solo gaming ebbs and flows, right now the living room is mostly used for couch co-op gaming. I don't fret about idle screen time because my doctor recently described me as "very active" and I spend quite a lot of time on my musical pursuits (which computers can be very useful for, but I've deliberately aimed for a setup that doesn't rely on them).
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
25,838
24,175
136
I think I played that when it came out. If I were to play anything, I'd like to go through HalfLife and RTCW again. I also wouldn't mind doing Max Payne again. I can do the previous two easily on linux. Not sure about Payne. I'd have to spend the time figuring it out, and I just don't want to put time into games at this point.
A half-life remaster with updated graphics would be dreamy
 
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JM Aggie08

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
8,304
914
136
I'm 13 years into my career -- I hate IT. I've had a number of technical and product manager roles, and they all feel so...hollow. I get more satisfaction out of cooking a meal for people or doing lawn work. It all just feels so pointless and devoid of real-world impact.
 
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nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
61,111
16,546
136
I'm 13 years into my career -- I hate IT. I've had a number of technical and product manager roles, and they all feel so...hollow. I get more satisfaction out of cooking a meal for people or doing lawn work. It all just feels so pointless and devoid of real-world impact.
Suppose it depends what you do, I've spent a lot of my time working on helpdesk software, so helping ensure people that call in because their shit is busted can hopefully get back up and running faster. Some years ago I wrote software that was used in some pharmacies for their stat board, it was a bit of a trip putting it together when one of the reasons for users to select for a stat prescription was "patient actively dying".
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Some years ago I wrote software that was used in some pharmacies for their stat board, it was a bit of a trip putting it together when one of the reasons for users to select for a stat prescription was "patient actively dying".
Web based?
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
39,939
9,625
136
Anyone else burnt out of IT?

There was a time, long long ago, when I could assemble some parts I bought online, build a system, and it was like magic. That was a very long time ago. I kept active in the field, but it's not the same.

More recently, experiencing burn out. I don't give a crap about newest windows, newest hardware, newest wifi, etc.

The magic is gone. I don't want to upgrade anything I have, which is very old tech already, nor do I have any interest in windows 12.

Why would I? I see people posting some SSD score or browser performance score and I'm like meh, if I blinked then I'd miss the few milliseconds difference.

Granted, I don't much get into modern 3D gaming these days. Too little time and can't justify the absurd prices for video cards that can do it well at 4K. Upgrading to a 4K monitor was the best computing move for me since Win95, so I've done that with several systems and still, burnt out. Even so, I have too many sub-4K monitors to count so it's not really about gaming.

AI is a little bit interesting, but still falls short.

What keeps you going, to keep excited to see the same old shit but just with higher benchmark numbers? Or just being some sort of maintenance guy that keeps things running despite the insistence of the new kids to try to change things for no good reason?

I'm very much starting to see a PC as an appliance that just needs to keep running to do it's job.

I suppose I went off on a tangent because I make my living as an IT contractor in other fields, but the whole magic-is-gone, thing, makes it feel more like a burden rather than a passion.
My 1st PC was a system assembled by an EE. I saw an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle for a used desktop (yeah, not a tower) in 1993 or so and took transit (BART train) maybe 20 miles and he showed it to me. I'd been taking classes at the local community college starting with DOS, then word processing (Wordperfect 5.0 and 5.1 for DOS), Lotus 1-2-3, then PageMaker 5.0 and finally FoxPro for DOS).

He was real friendly and after a couple of hours or so I paid what he'd requested and took that machine home with me on the train. It ran Windows 3.0. He'd wiped everything else, it was a plain vanilla installation. I asked him why he was selling it to me (he was making a living doing Autocad work, I think doing architectural design). He said he (and his wife, I think) had decided to use a laptop going forward. I figured that meant that he wasn't interested in building computers from parts anymore. The desktop he'd sold me preceded Visa Local Bus. It was a proprietary local bus system. Fast for its time.

I built myself maybe 3 systems since but now, I'm just into laptops. I have a couple of working tower systems but just about never use them anymore.

Really, I think the advances in computing are coming a lot slower now. I've had the lappy I'm working on as I type for around 4 years, another antecedent of it for 6 and I see no reason to want a "better" one. I need to reinstall Windows on those 2 laptops I mentioned, probably a clean install of 11 (I use some software that won't run on Linux AFAIK).
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
19,943
14,213
136
@mindless1

Time to change things up, is my advice. I've been doing IT maintenance work for nearly 30 years and just like you, I don't get excited by it any more.

For me, it doesn't help that Windows has been going downhill ever since WaaS became a thing. Now Windows has become what many old-timer technophobes feared it was when I first started my business, saying that Microsoft keeps changing stuff when in actuality, how much did say Win2k/XP/Vista/7 change over their lifetimes? A new version of IE, new wireless encryption support, that sort of thing. These days Microsoft have repeatedly made core apps worse by removing functionality (do people here know that for example, importing photos with the Photos app is no longer an autoplay option?).

That rant aside, I must have built at least 225 PCs by now. It is more or less the same process it always was, with a slight occasional twist. There's no continued excitement to be derived from that. Once one has at least a decade's experience in the field of seeing upcoming hardware, one sees it as far more of a steady evolution rather than perceiving such improvements as game-changing.

What I have been getting some enthusiasm from is more dev kind of work. My new business website is due to go up once everything has been given a proof read, and I've recently-ish made significant improvements to the backup system scripts I roll out to customers.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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The desktop he'd sold me preceded Visa Local Bus. It was a proprietary local bus system. Fast for its time.
Vesa Local Bus. That desktop must've been pretty expensive. I think it may have been using MCA bus. I'm so glad that PCIe came along and simplified everything for the most part. I remember the horror of AGP slots with different voltages. Then ISA slot resource allocation issues (IRQs and what not).
 
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That rant aside, I must have built at least 225 PCs by now.
Brands you don't think about twice? Brands you avoid? Any interesting anecdotes like, PC from hell where you were confident you could solve the issue but ended up wasting too much time on troubleshooting it or a PC you liked so much that you regretted giving it away?
 

brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,554
5,966
136
I really don't get the cloud thing, i feel like in 5-10 years from now we'll just go full circle and back to on prem. Ever since my company moved to cloud everything is so glitchy, and surely they must be paying more now too.

i've recently been getting into the cloud stuff, and yeah the prices can be eye-watering. and the architecture is so different that it's giving me headaches 5 days a week.

i have been burnt out of software development for well over 15 years, but am going to try to make it another 13 years if i can last that long. my original goal was to retire in 2028 but it looks like 2038 will be a lot safer.

retirement can't come soon enough.
 
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brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,554
5,966
136
as far as computer games go though, i am still interested in those even though i don't have as much time and don't finish as many as i used to.

today at 11 AM the oblivion remake trailer will be shown.

are we going to have 100s of noobs coming here posting "WILL MY COMPUTER RUN OBLIVON?" again
 

IBMJunkman

Senior member
May 7, 2015
852
355
136
I still enjoy shopping for parts and assembling them. What I dread is moving the software and recustomizing the setup. And then find out some of my software is no longer supported on the new OS.

See my sig.
 
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