deepwave
A PSA test takes 5 minutes. It's a simple blood draw and you learn the results in two days. Like ovarian cancer for women, prostate cancer is the "whispering death". It's often too late if it's metastasized after it's detected, then your chances are even less. Get the test, doubly so if you are a family man.
Black Lives Matter is a false narrative.
Blacks make up 13% of the US population, but have a disproportionate percentage of young men involved in crimes. Young black men have no family life. As of 2016, 79% of all black children are born to unwed mothers. Those children grow up with no father present in the household.
No father equals MASSIVE instability. The ideal is a man and woman raising children together. Blacks lack this.
In almost every one of these shootings, after the dust settles, it's learned that the person shot had a record, had a warrant, was wanted for other crimes, was carrying an illegal or stolen knife or gun. The recent Charlotte incident showed the man was carrying a gun that was both stolen and illegal for him to possess as he was already a felon.
I've no problem with peaceful protests, but when your civil rights are no longer being civil, you lose your civil rights. If you start looting or damaging property, you get shot and deservedly so.
It's come to light in Charlotte that quite a few of the black people being arrested have out-of-state driver's licenses. This shows a growing trend. That the violence and looting are not organic. The local are being agitated by outside influences.
This is all being done by people with money, like a certain rich Hungarian in bed with certain high-level Democrats in this country. None of this is accidental. Professional agitators were found to be active in Ferguson, Charlotte, Baltimore, NYC, you name it.
Were I in charge and you were looting, I'd turn a tractor-trailer load of German Shepherds on you. Time to take off the gloves. Notice that in Russia, this never happens. Like him or hate him, but Vladimir Putin keeps a tight reign on civil discourse and political activities by the populace. People can peacefully protest, but when they start to act violently, they need to be quelled very quickly.
If you are adding value, you're doing it right. You are either a cost center or a profit center. Be the profit center and you will never want for a job.
I'm almost 50 and still in the game. If I'm honest, I still worry from time to time about being irrelevant, but if I'm still adding value, and I am, then what the other IT people around me think doesn't matter. Add value, learn as you go, gain in wisdom and understanding and you will always be cash-flow positive.
Don't make the mistake that so many do that you have to be working on something cutting edge or popular. Those jobs are nice, but I've learned--at least for myself--that I prefer the maintenance jobs. I enjoy taking something and making it better, even if it's just a quick fix, like two lines of code. Own everything you do. Be proud of your work.
You're still young with plenty of time to get where you will be going. Don't be in a rush to "prove yourself" to anyone but yourself and the man writing your check. Don't listen to naysayers, don't get trapped in the mindset that only the new, darling languages are worth investing in. Good programming skills are not language specific. Learn what you can. Use the correct tool for the job. Don't be a method man. Be the profit center.
I'm toying with the idea of getting out of IT because the writing is on the wall. I'm also almost 50, so the fact that I'm still in the trenches is against me. I don't want to be in management. I like pure IT, but what with the "cloud", hiring of foreign IT workers to save a little money, you name it, the system is against me.
Rob and the Fastmail team are most likely the best in the world at what they do, and as an IT guy with decades of experience, I don't say that lightly. They have more than earned my shekels every year. Give them a go... you will be very pleasantly surprised.
I've been in IT across 3 decades. That's a lot of years. I'm still in IT when almost all of my friends and acquaintances have moved on. In all of my IT years, I have worked with very few blacks, very few women. It's mostly a guy's world in IT. There are tons of whites, asians (oriental and sub-continent). This has happened somewhat organically worldwide (let's not even mention H1B visas). The notion that a company or even a field like IT should be artificially packed with a certain percentage of this and that is ridiculous. Blacks and women are, overall, not terribly interested in IT careers. If this were not so, the numbers would be different. Let's not pretend it's something it isn't. Let's also not pretend that everyone is cut out for an IT career. I've seen so many people believe they can step into IT, get wealthy and make an easy go of it. This happens to almost no one. Very few get wealthy. Most leave IT after a few years. It's all I've known since the early 80s and I cannot see myself doing anything else.
The political correctness that demands companies hire this and that needs to stop. Apple has a right to hire who they will -- SJWs be damned.