Attitudes are different outside of Silicon Valley. The worst I've seen along these lines is a few of my peers who've done things blatantly towards adding to their resume vice being a professional at their current gig.

While "software engineering" isn't "engineering" per se (it's a lot of art(isanship)), consider that it's not all just a bunch of phony stuff that doesn't matter a hill of beans. And that those who strive to do software well in languages including C#, Java, and JavaScript would be as adverse to working on a development team with you as you would be with us.

I get that you can't unteach laziness and lack of follow-through, but you also can't teach a passion for doing software well. If you're satisfied with people whose interest is elsewhere but can easily learn a couple of languages, that's fine, but I sure wouldn't want to work with them.

tl;dr: "Someone who learns how to design can design anything" is about as true as MBA schools' "someone who learns how to manage can manage anything".

Yikes, add reduced reading comprehension to your list of side effects! Because that's what I was saying too, but just that it's not a bad thing (relative to reality). I know I would gladly trade 2 points off the top end to spare me 4 point drops at the bottom.

How do you know you could get any "real engineers" to work as programmers?

I consider good programmers to have deep interest in software engineering principles and techniques. My experience has been that it's a real crapshoot to find this in CS degreed people, and almost impossible in other degreed people. (YMMV.)

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen older people in HR in my career so far (and I'm later in my career) so maybe ageism is rampant in HR as well.

Ageism is probably rampant in every job function except top management, because age is thought to correlate somewhat with compensation, and upper management wants to keep a lid on expanding costs to the business everywhere but their ranks, of course.

(That is, everyone in every job function is keenly aware of the value they and their peers bring, so nothing different about the suits in this regard, where the only unique part is that they have the power to set expenditures policy.)

"Squeezed"? That's what normal is, in range of intensity of mood. Restoration back to normal human condition is a (unfortunate) "side effect"? This might be a like a former drug addict who misses the feelings of 10's and wonders how they can live with only feeling 8's max from then on.

Boo hoo. Welcome to the real world.

I get minor depressive episodes occasionally but they only last for half a day, not months. The side effects that you've been having definitely sound like no fun at all, but feeling a 3 (or maybe less in your case) for months on end is not what I would call living either.

Hoping you can find adjustments that make you happier. (Notice I didn't say "happy", which I don't think really is possible in this life.)

Why it really is that Slashdotters have an aversion to contact sports: painful memories from high school

No, because in today's world sexual preference and gender bigotry are disdained, but religious bigotry is not only acceptable, it's considered fully warranted. (Well, except against Muslims, because it could lead to harassment and discrimination. And they don't deserve that. *cough*Unlike Christians. And those among Jews who are religious and pro-Israel.)

The human race never progresses enlightenment-wise, we just periodically change what groups it's acceptable to hate.

Hmm, yes, that might be a tactic an air marshall would use, to introduce sudden chaos into the situation during which to try to get the upper hand.

Not grokking you on the second part.

From that latter link I learned that hybrids can only travel 0-2 miles on electric-only. I didn't realize that they then must have really only a fraction of the batteries that electric cars have.

And makes me realize that "hybrid" just means mix, and not in any given proportions. As in, it has two drivetrains, but it doesn't run on 50% electric and 50% gas. I see that the Yaris for example with a Toyota 1.5L I-4 is rated at 30/37 MPG. I guess to make that 51/48 MPG, in a larger and heavier car, with very small battery capacity to play with for assistance, what you're paying for actually is their clever programming.

1) It seems like, given a non-lead foot, the most power would be required at getting going and accelerating when already at a high speed. I wonder why they didn't do like GM did later with the Volt and, as I understand it, have it in EV-only mode as a rule, except only when extra oomph is needed, or when the battery is running low.

3) The no cruise below a certain speed thing might not be so much that CC shouldn't be used below a certain speed, as it shouldn't be used on the kinds of roads where you drive below a certain speed. I.e. we probably want no auto-pilot on residential streets, having driveways people can back out of, and kids that could suddenly run across. It's probably really only sufficiently safe outside of (busy) cities.

And the complete cancelling means you deliberately have to set the speed you want to use, when traffic conditions might've changed since the last number you picked.

4) Ah, so the Prius needs a "Stuck mode"!

7) I'm trying to imagine how roadside assistance organizations would support these vehicles. I guess be able to provide/sell you a spare battery for the trunk for booting/running the computer, then a gallon or two of gas for E1, and then a high voltage battery onboard the tow truck to spin M1.

Interesting; like a mini version of shotgun ammo, for one's pistol. And yet the FAMS eventually abandoned it.

And I generally agree about the door system, except for the one loophole of radicalizing an existing employed airline pilot. He uses the element of suprise and the cockpit pistol to blow away the other(s) in the room, and then can crash it into whatever he pleases. We really could use sufficiently advanced auto-pilot technology, where a signal could be sent from the FAA to a given plane and it would discontinue recognizing inputs from the onboard controls and switch to automatically proceeding to and landing at the nearest airport (approved for this and in the database of the system as such).

I was going to say that that's what our Federal Air Marshall Service is for, but I did some Googling on it, and found things like less than one half of a percent of U.S. carrier flights actually have an air marshall on them (and before 9/11 there were all of around 30-something of them for the entire U.S.), and employees complaining about poor training and corrupt, malicious bosses and joke levels of standards and being over-scheduled and tired all the time (that is, those in the service who don't have the desk jobs, as administrators).

A real pisser is that even for socialistic things that I would actually acquiesce on, like nationalized in-flight security, we can't even have those things done right.

So to your suggestion I'd say yeah, we need that, but not without some hesitancy. In a classroom for example, the only way I'm going to die from friendly fire is on the unlikely chance of being hit directly by a stray bullet. But in a pressurized cabin at altitude? Unless Hollywood exaggerates (!), maybe they should be rubber bullets or something, on planes.

Thank you RG. I'll probably take my sis up on her offer before I end up moving out of California, though; she was/is a recovering Leftie, and as such had a phobia over guns, and so found an ex-Seal dude in town who gives group and private lessons, to ease her into it gently, and she's offered to cover the cost of a session for me. (She and her hubby are very well-to-do, and they pay other people to do things I didn't even know there were people for.)