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Wellness Wednesday for March 4, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I just discovered that everything looks better with the color filter in the Windows accessibility features, and I may have very slight sub-clinical deuteranopia, weakness of the green cones. I was just playing around with the feature and realized the desktop wallpaper on my second monitor looked a lot better!

So I took the https://www.colorblindnesstest.org test. Apparently there aren't supposed to be any "hard" guesses on the Ishihara plates (bubble numbers), but four of the plates took me more than five seconds to decipher.

I scored 100% but I have noticed independent of the test that the vision in my left eye is slightly less "warm" toned, presumably it's something to do with the cells that respond to red.

Almost a decade ago I was in the market for a new monitor for my PC. There was a lot of conversation at the time about high refresh rates for monitors for competitive gaming and how pros literally couldn't play with below 120/240hz because things became choppy, or whatever.

I had never had a high refresh rate monitor at that time so I thought I'd try it out and bought a highly rated monitor.

When I got the monitor however, I discovered that the colours were just god-awful and I couldn't understand how anyone could think that it was even remotely acceptable. I googled and found some claims that this had to do with bad default settings on the monitor, so I adjusted those and it helped a little but it didn't really fix the issue.

I talked with a buddy I played a lot with who had the same model and he claimed he didn't have any issues so I thought that perhaps I had gotten a dud. I then went over to him and he showed me the monitor and it was the same washed out shit I had on my monitor, which he seemingly couldn't notice.

I finally concluded that the panel technology (at least at the time) was just dog shit and that a large section of the population is too colourblind to notice even large differences in colour rendition.

Perhaps it's similar to smell, where you assume that people smell mostly the same things as you but apparently there is like 40% of the population that have a very limited sense of smell and who get nothing from any "sophisticated" cooking or things like fine wine, because they literally can't taste the difference.

Was RGB range set to full (0-255) rather than limited (16-235)?

I don't remember what the exact settings were, this was like a decade ago.

Apparently there aren't supposed to be any "hard" guesses on the Ishihara plates (bubble numbers), but four of the plates took me more than five seconds to decipher.

Huh. Several plates took 5+ seconds to decipher, and 3 were totally unreadable to me, but the results said normal vision.

I got stuck on one with extremely faint red/pink and first thought there wasn't a number there. When I finally found it and realised that there could be numbers that faint it wasn't difficult to pick out the number. I then redid the test and got 3 of those and easily picked them out as fast as with the other numbers.

I think the test kind of fools you by priming you with all the high contrast examples so when you get to a very low contrast one you feel like there isn't anything there at all even if you can pick it out and it takes a while for your brain to adjust.

Have you attempted changing the color filter accessibility feature to deuteranopia, and then looking at scenery pictures?

I've been made aware of many people that work in tech here. I have a network topology that im thinking of adding a proxy server to in order to simulate real business needs.

Im doing this primarily for monitoring, security, and speed that proxy servers supposedly provide. The topology and information associated with it is here. Any critique of my topology is welcome! The main point behind it is that its roughly based on a school that has Active Directory, to which ill apply group policy to various users in the school, and policy to the computers once i add them to the topology. Im also trying my best to add security where i can.

Notes: This is GNS3, i unfortunately cant find any L3 switches or working firewall images, so im trying to accomplish these goals to the best of my ability, utilizing the images i was able to get up and running (mainly cisco routers and switches).

I'm sitting in a waiting area at my father's local hospital. What should have been a routine procedure was not routine, and he developed an arrhythmia. His wife let me know and I violated several traffic laws making the trip down.

We can't visit yet, but the doctors have said that he should be fine, but it really was a shock. When he was first diagnosed, the doctors said that 90% of patients do not see the cancer recur. The routine biopsy nearly killed him, and we found that the cancer had not only recurred, but was metastatic. Now, he has had another near miss with another supposedly routine procedure.

You never know when someone is going to go. If they're important to you, spend as much time with them as you can. Believe me when I say that it won't be enough.

That really sucks.

Has he found peace with the life he has lived? I think much of the fear of death comes from the feelings of having things left undone.

His biggest concern is that he has another son that he had much later in life. He's afraid he won't see him graduate from high school.

Hmm.

But this younger son will (presumably) graduate regardless of whether his father is there to see it or not. And the essential thing for a father to succeed as a father isn't primarily down to how long they supported and loved their children, but more about how and what foundation they leave behind. Will anyone else be able to mentor your brother? Would your father recording/creating some audios or videos or other objects help him with enduring beyond death in some way?

So far, he's mostly focusing on maximizing the chances that he'll make it over that finish line. This has all been very sudden.

That seems like a sub-optimal strat, if I may say so. :/

Thinking of you.

Im really sorry man! I hope he does better

New year's resolutions check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week and again this morning. This morning I did three sets of deadlifts, but found I simply couldn't do a fourth, which I'm attributing to a) going to the gym on an empty stomach and b) running out of whey protein a few days ago. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1x for 8 reps and bench press .8x for 7 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
  • Have completed 8/11 modules in the SQL course. Will do the ninth this evening.

How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son? (Incidentally if any of you no longer want to be pinged every week, just say so.)

  1. Work: At a conference in Chicago this week, which feels like a bit of a vacation!
  2. Fitness: 11 hours last week, will be quite a bit lower this week as I'm mainly running at my parents' house and I can't do as high of volume of pure running. Expect to be around 8-9 hours this week. Feeling quite fit: HRV and RHR both spiked in the appropriate direction and my workout times have been getting better and better.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Finished Marx and a Pacific War book this week. Haven't been amazing about doing my Italian and Spanish while I've been at my parents'. Planning out blog posts for this month too.
  4. Finances: As detailed in a Sunday post, my parents are giving me a large sum of money to help with buying a house. I probably won't use it for that right away, but it's nice to know I'll be able to make a large downpayment if I want to. I am slightly worried that this money is going to influence my spending behavior, so I'm determined to stick to my spending targets for at least the rest of this year. Dividends and interest can just help me save more. To that end I was well below my budget of $3200 last month (2750) and also made about a thousand dollars more than normal (checking account deal, cat sitting, PT cash back, substack subscribers, etc).
  5. Dating: Masturbated once to porn this week, but otherwise was completely clean all week. Went on a date last Wednesday, but didn't really like the girl despite her being perfect on paper. have paused all the dating apps and am not going to seek out a relationship deliberately right now.
  6. Tarot: Really good session with my ex-roommate who's still a bit frustrating to talk to (he is really bad at engaging with his desires or using his will).
  7. Socializing: None really this week as I've been back in Chicago. Visited my godparents and their kids and played Mahjong with my parents which I guess counts.
  8. Screen time: 1.5 hours, which I think I can get to one hour with a bit more work

I am slightly worried that this money is going to influence my spending behavior

Since you have a rough timeline on when you plan to move, can you lock it up in a CD or bond?

Year over year spending is $1266.66 lower. Month over month spending is $63.26 lower.

Between rising gas prices and the upcoming dental work, I assume this progress will get blown to hell soon. All I can do in the short term is keep saving.