Captain Janeway

My lazy hack for debugging any program is running the main executable from the command line. That usually streams the logs into the terminal and helps me debug from there.

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If you leave your phone at home for one day, take a walk, get some coffee, meet a friend - but don’t use your phone, schedule in advance and tell them you’ll be phone-less, etc. You’ll find yourself feeling way less overwhelmed by a lot of these things. Phones keep us constantly aware of the changes around us. They make it seem like the world is whirring around much faster than it is. Basically, I guess, I’m suggesting “touch grass”. But I do think phones, in particular, are the worst for making us crash out like this.

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Just a reminder, these corporations and not making razor thin margins. They can afford to pay better wages.

I’m no expert. I can only recommend what I’ve learned from the dog trainer I hired and my personal experience with a slightly “Nervous Nelly”. Find a treat that your dog loves and give it to her when the scary noise happens. Like someone else said, you don’t want to reward the fright response, but you do want to build a more positive association with noise. You don’t have to start outside. You can do this at home. Get something like a gun-noise app on your phone. Turn the volume down to 1%. Trigger the noise, feed her a treat. Slowly build the volume and start randomizing it so she isn’t expecting it.

Try to catch moments at home where she’s inside, but the landscaping equipment is running. Loud noise = treat. You want her to learn that the loud noise isn’t a bad thing. She’s possibly scared of kitchen noises as well because kitchens are loud. Pots and pans banging around, boiling, fans whirring, etc.

My dog isn’t food motivated generally, but string cheese and chicken will get her to do anything I ask. What kinds of treats are you using? Sometimes a scared dog isn’t going to be interested in food. If someone was actively breaking into my house and you offered me a cookie, I’d probably refuse the cookie. I think the key is to try and find ways to train in isolated environments that don’t cause her to go full flight or fight.

My dog used to be very scared of a vent outside in the city I adopted her in. She was afraid of the loud whirring noise. I loved the vent because it blew out hot air, which I loved in the -20F weather. I wanted her to not avoid it because it meant we both lost the heat opportunity lol So I always carried a treat bag on me and I fed her when we passed it. That’s all I did. As we approached/passed it, I gave her a treat and said “good girl”. By the 2nd week (of doing this daily), she was walking past it without even noticing. She even started to sniff it. I did the same thing with poles (she hates certain random poles. In a line? They’re fine. Alone? We groan.). I reward her if she investigates something that seems to make her nervous.

Another couple of pro tips, get a jar and fill it with 1/3 kibble, 1/3 random treats, 1/3 the best treat you can find (that’s shelf stable). Mix it all up. Put it on your coffee table or somewhere where she can’t reach it, but you can easily grab it. When she hears a loud noise in the house, try to immediately go “treat!” or some command. Then you can quickly grab the jar and slowly feed 1-20 pieces depending on your dog’s weight, treat size, etc. The slower the feed, the better. You only want to occasionally hand out many pieces at the same time. The key is being able to respond quickly. They say associations have something like ~10 seconds before they stop being effective. So, if you want to associate a noise with something positive, you have to be quick.

The only negative of this approach is - if you’re super successful - she might start looking at you for treats when a loud noise goes off. But hopefully that means her mind isn’t focused on the fear aspect anymore. And maybe someday you can redirect her to some other behavior like “place” or “crate” when she hears the noise. Somewhere that’s safe and comfortable for her to relax.

Again, this is just what my trainer recommended. Obviously there are tons of caveats. Maybe your dog just isn’t going to acclimate and you shouldn’t try this forever. Try maybe training to her to enjoy those head wraps that reduce noise (I picked a random website to illustrate the concept. this is not an endorsement). Maybe your dog just needs to go somewhere else sometimes to unwind (e.g., doggy daycare can sometimes be a nice reprieve for some dogs. It can help them relax and get some energy out playing with other dogs). But in my experience, my “Nervous Nelly” tends to be capable of confidence if I give her treats at the right time/place when she’s about to be scared by something.

The very fact that sexual abuse of a minor is being conflated with immigration shows how far we’ve fallen. This document from the National Institute of Justice shows that the data indicates illegal immigrants have a much lower crime rate than citizens. The issue isn’t that they are immigrants, it’s that they’re criminals. They were presumably committing similar crimes (or at least capable of doing so in Mexico). I’m not any happier knowing that a pedophile is now in Mexico/El Salvador. I want justice and reform. We should always strive for justice and reform. These illegal immigrants aren’t the only ones committing these crimes. As I said earlier: largely, it’s legal citizens committing these crimes. We need to create a system of justice and reform. We need to be able to handle citizens and illegal immigrants.

Obviously this administration would prefer to take every criminal and push them outside of our borders. Like I said, I don’t care if a crime is committed in or out of my borders. I want justice and reform. I want to live in a world where crimes like this are basically non-existent. And I want to live in a world where people with these issues don’t become repeat offenders.

Conflating immigration with these types of crimes is just making it harder for us to address the real issues with our justice and reformation system (lack thereof). Not to mention, we are basically just wasting money and time focusing on illegal immigrant crime when the bigger issue is crime being committed by citizens. It’s like we cut off our arm, but as the arm fell to the ground one of the fingernails broke. So, this administration is spending all of its efforts on fixing the broken fingernail - and failing to patch the profuse loss of blood coming from its shoulder.

First day on a job and a coworker took a pistol out of his briefcase/bag and began cleaning it/wiping it down. It was a small office of 5ish people. I was just basically there to help play a tech support role for some outdated software they were running. My coworker was an older sales rep for the company and he was responsible for hiring me (don’t ask me why). Anyways, first official day I was working he brandished his pistol. I don’t know why. He looked a bit like Kelsey Grammer which bummed me out because I love Frasier. (Shout-out to /c/Frasier ) He had other hangups and ultimately quit a few weeks later.

When he pulled that gun, time slowed down. With all of these mass shootings I just didn’t know what to expect. My mind raced but my body froze. I wish I could say I said something but I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut and pretended like nothing was happening.

People can be so unhinged. That was almost 10 years ago now.

This is the dumbest timeline.