@ConorMancone It's closed now anyways

Good morning, my friends! How is everybody doing today?

@ConorMancone Another security paranoid 1 rep user

@forest Are you here at the moment?

@J.J Hey, what's up?

Wait, what?

I just got to work

The magic of timezones :D

man, you really need to sleep more

At least like 7 hours

There has to be time for sleep

It's not wasted time though

It's time for your physical and mental health

What's more important to you? Getting work done or having a good health?

Ask yourself this: if you had a breakdown in your mid-thirties, would you say "I wish I had gotten more work done?" or "I wish I took better care of myself"

What is it that you want to achieve?

And then? When you have achieved it?

Is there a life beyond achievement?

Man, I envy you that you are in the position to buy a house

I have a BSc. and I'll probably never own a house

And is all of that worth your health?

What will you do once you "break", as you said?

And then? Then you are still broken

Our body is like paper. If you scramble it, you can still unscramble it, but the marks will still be here, and never go away

For what? Just to say you did it?

Satisfaction will never come with external incentives.

If you do this to be satisfied with yourself, it's a futile quest.

Did you ever think that perhaps your lack of sleep and healthy lifestyle and your lack of satisfaction with your life could be related to each other?

And you think it's beneficial to destroy your health for achievements?

I mean, I am aware that I can't dictate to you how to live your life. Afterall, I am just text on a screen. But what I am saying is that I went down a similar route. Sometimes I didn't sleep at all. I just took enough coffee to stay awake.

With a healthy life, you have all the things you have right now.

But for how long? Is it worth it to be "successful" and not able to enjoy the success?

Is it worth it to spend 10k on a holiday when you are too crippled to enjoy any of it?

And have you considered seeing help because of that?

A certificate is not a substitution for happiness, you know?

Did it help?

Why not?

What did they tell you?

Don't think blame-oriented.

Thinking in terms of blame is not constructive, and ultimately what you want is to be alright.

I suffer from depression as well, and so does my girlfriend. She probably even more than me.

I'll be honest with you, it depends very much on the country, and even more on the individual.

I understand your frustration.

Did you seek any help outside therapy? Support groups, perhaps?

I'm glad you stopped harming yourself

It was a big problem for my girlfriend as well, but as far as I know, the last time she hurt herself was about a year ago now.

I found my support group in politics

I know, it sounds hilarious

But it gave me something to work on, and the people supported me

I believe so. I never self-harmed, unless you consider nail-biting self harm

It's a habit I had since I was a wee lad :D

@J.J No, don't lie to yourself

Don't say there is no other choice when there clearly is a choice.

I agree that overthinking is not good, but having a healthy work attitude and a healthy sleep cycle are both not in contrast to that

And 3 hours of sleep is definitely not a positive thing. It harms you too, you know?

Working hard and taking care of yourself are not mutually exclusive either

But have you considered a model that maps more closely to the 8/8/8 system?

With 8 hours of work, you can still get enough stuff done

But your sleep time should be sacred to you

You think you are average?

You're quite above that

I think you have a very warped self-perception

You are fine the way you are. You're a gifted pentester, and you should acknowledge yourself as such. It's good to want to improve, but not at the expense of your physical and mental health.

And you see, I'm not saying that because of any ulterior motives. I'm not here because you pay me to be here. I'm here and saying that because I want to help you.

@J.J I didn't buy my first house until waaaay later than that, and it is harder every generation (blame the boomers :-) - but for me it was never a goal. Financially it became slightly better to own a house once kids started coming along.

@J.J I second what MechMK1 just wrote.

I am with you on the working to avoid thinking bit though - I don't like down time, holidays or anything like that, because my brain ends up going down self destructive routes. That said, you can look after yourself by taking other activities - for me they include music, going up mountains, sailing, and puzzles

You need to look after yourself, or else you will not be around to enjoy the fruits of your labours

@J.J You don't need to catch up to them - they have a different model

Mech is right - part of the problem seems to be the usual one - selfperception. You may be downplaying your skills and bigging up others

I see something similar in miniature painting. I started this summer, and I compare myself to people who paint like this:

Like...duh! of course these people are better than me.

A quick side-comparison: for many years my kids would complain that they were competing against better kids in swimming. And I said, yep, you can try and beat them and come home with medals, but I am going to reward you for improving your personal best times, not for medals. SO when they got faster they got a wee extra bit of pocket money.

Encouraging competing against themselves

If they got a medal I was obviously happy for them, but it wasn't the main aim

Improving themselves was

@J.J You're welcome! And if you ever feel like you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me

@J.J that does make sense

It's understandable, but knowing that you do is half the battle

One thing that I once read that stuck with me is this:

> You see the "Making of" of yourself, and the "Best of" of others.

I recall a colleague of mine doing the Flare-On Reverse Engineering Challenge for a belt buckle :D

he was soooo frustrated

Yes, one of them was like reverse-engineering a malicious windows kernel module

From a crashdump

Have a good time there

Bring earplugs, trust me

No really, I know you think I'm joking

But if you stand in the "wrong" spot, you can get permanent hearing damage

I didn't bring earplugs to a concert once, and I have a tinnitus ever since

Do you have an exit strategy in case things don't go well?

Are you going alone or with someone?

How far is the venue from your home?

And how far is the venue from the train station?

Can you get there on foot or with public transit?

Have you considered booking a cheap hotel room somewhat close to the venue for one night?

I went to Heidenfest in 2013 and I booked a hotel room for 19€

That's a good idea

So this is your second concert, right?

Are you planning on drinking alcohol?

How much?

How will you get to the hotel?

Do you know the town where the concert is?

And you're sure you will find the hotel if you had a lot to drink and you may have had a panic attack?

Do you really want to leave something like this up to the odds though?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "Don't go"

By all means, you should go to the concert.

I'm saying you should formulate a bit more of a backup strategy in case things go south

If the hotel is that close to the venue, then you'll really be fine

Is this a prod binary or some CtF?

Man, I should get my own life in order too

My girlfriend is making my life hell again

I've been listening to this track all day

@MechMK1 what's up? Obviously you don't have to go into details you don't want to

@ConorMancone Are you refering to my rant from 12:36?

@MechMK1 no, the getting your life together part

/girlfriend

Yeah, about that...

My life these days is dominated by my girlfriend's mood swings

No news there, I know

The past week or so was fine

But now it's getting awful again

She keeps bringing up the past, stuff that happened like 5 years ago

And I'm just so done with all of this shit. I just want a normal relationship, not a poor imitation of a relationship, deeply infused with her insecurities

I just want to be able to live my life without having to explain everything I do

Who I talk to, what I say, what music I listen to...

@ConorMancone Do you remember when I told you that that one knitted image looked similar to one character from a videogame?

My girlfriend freaked the fuck out because of that

3EZ5ME

@MechMK1 Not that it matters much, but why did that freak her out?

@ConorMancone Because she considers anything related to japan "dirty" and "overly sexualized"

Look at the picture I linked and tell me that that drawing is either of the two

Just for reference, this is a screenshot from the game:

I remember. They weren't.

As a brief aside I was going to post this article in an attempt to re-ignite the PHP flame wars:

dev.to/brewer1_jane/…

Here is a screenshot showing the characters more:

But then I actually read the article and realized it's very incoherent, and the person who wrote it clearly doesn't have much practical experience building web applications

> Based on the user-friendly feature

The what?

lol, that was just the start. /so disappointed

> This programming language supports the standard library which helps developers to build a website easily and faster.

The standard library.

You know, that one standard library.

There's only ever one

Used by all languages everywhere, including english

> PHP programming language is familiar with the Syntax, which turns the coding easily.

It even has the syntax! Unlike other languages, which do not include the syntax.

I would say that all claims are either not relevant to PHP at all, or are just plain weird.

Like, the advantage of PHP is that it has syntax. What the fuck was she smoking?

I get english isn't her native language (I hope so at least), but this point doesn't even make conceptual sense.

@MechMK1 Getting over emotional baggage can be a surprisingly long process, even for someone who is interested in getting better. I was effectively the first functional relationship my wife has ever had. Our marriage is preceded by a decade of dysfunctional relationships and before that neglect and verbal abuse at the hands of an emotionally abusive, alcoholic mother and her equal alcoholic wife. Her father is actually a health adult, and is probably the only reason she survived childhood

(her parents got divorced when she was young and she spent her childhood in a 50/50 custody split)

Despite all of that, when I met her she was really a very "emotionally healthy" person

@ConorMancone The situation is similar for my girlfriend. Her entire family is dysfunctional

However, there is still "impact" from those years of abuse and control, and it comes up sometimes in our marriage. It comes up less over time, but even after all these years of a generally "healthy" relationship (next year is our 9th anniversary) the emotional wounds are still healing.

And this is a woman who really has her shit together: she's a mature adult, actively wants to put her past behind her, has a healthy view of the world, and understands the impact that her past has had on her

@ConorMancone I wish I could say the same about my girlfriend. She's the polar opposite of "having her shit together"

But sometimes those very old emotional wounds still cause trouble

@MechMK1 My point in all of this is that changing is hard, and even for someone who understands their issues, is a mature person, and wants to be "better", it's still a very long and complicated process

@J.J Why so?

For someone who isn't really interested in change (either from lack of ability or just lack of desire), it's really never going to happen

That's pretty much the nature of relationships

@ConorMancone I told her the same. It's the same problems, coming up again and again and again and again

And I keep hearing "I'll change, things will be different this time", but it's always a lie

She detests that she's lying, and I say that it means she's either unwilling to change then, or unable to change. And both is equally terrible

It's actually kinda silly to break it down like that: those are literally the only options.

This is actually the loop in which I am stuck right now.

This will happen until I really can't deal with it anymore.

As much as I love her, I have given up hope that she will make any real changes.