More horespower but brain power stays the same. I'm sure that there's no way this will go wrong.

I can't bring myself to close tabs. I find myself with my hand shaking over the 'x' in the browser like a junkie trying to flush his last hit down the toilet. What if there's a comment that's really interesting? Or, worse, what if someone is wrong on the internet? What if I want to re-read that article? How will I find it again? I opened up that Stack Overflow page for a reason. I better leave it open until I remember what it was. Of course I can't close the gmail tab, what if there's an important email. Better leave twitter up because, reasons. Any new articles on Reddit? Oh, yeah, that was that Medium article I meant to read. Let me finish up writing this comment on Slashdot.

When demand for housing is high, if you zone to restrict change by limiting size and density you will increase the cost. This is great for the established home owner / NIMBYs. It keeps the renters and young people out while inflating the value of their homes. On the other hand, it's terrible for those poorer, younger people and it's also terrible for traffic as they get pushed farther and farther from the jobs. This is exactly the trade-off that San Francisco has made: keep the neighborhoods from changing and keep the existing homeowners happy at the expense of the poorer, younger workers. I'm assuming that Seattle will eventually make that same decision because homeowners have a lot more political clout than renters.

The following is a dramatic representation of a conversation in Seattle.

Scene: an artesian coffee shop, a late-forties white person is talking to another late-forties white person
Person 1: When I cashed in my Microsoft shares in 1998 and I bought a house here it was a quiet residential street.
Person 2: Yeah, I thought it would always be a quiet residential street, but then THOSE people moved in and I can't find parking.
Person 1: This is the single worst thing that has happened in the history of human existence. You know the first thing the Nazis did when they invaded Poland... took all the parking.
Person 2: I know, right? I have $500k in equity in my house but I can't find parking. If I sold my house to cash in my equity I'd probably have to move to Lynnwood or Rainier Valley.
Person 1: I heard there's a new locally grown, gluten free, Vietnamese Banh Mi restaurant in Rainier Valley now.
Person 2: Really? I heard they have quiet residential streets and plenty of parking. Maybe I should move there.
Person 1: Good idea. I can cash in some of my Microsoft shares and start a new shade grown coffee shop. Get off the rat race, you know?
Person 2: Yay! The people of Rainier Valley will really appreciate it. Let's go talk to our brokers.

Thank goodness you didn't learn Puppet. That would have been a waste of time. Everyone knows that Chef is the devops tool of choice. However, by the time you read this, Chef will probably be supplanted by Ansible or Salt so don't learn Chef, either.

As a 40+ developer getting job offers has (as of yet) not been a problem for me. Getting offers that equal my current salary (much less result in even a minor raise) is much, much harder.

That's a tough call. A code copied off the web that works is often a better solution that one engineer's half-baked, bug riddled reinvention of the wheel. A better criteria: you copied it off the web and it works, do you have any idea why it works?

I think he might have stolen the idea from G.R.R. Martin? Valar Morghulis.

Ah, you work in government contracting too?

... its coming right at us!!!!!

Possibly the most insightful (and correct) comment on this thread.

I don't know if that's totally true. I put a non-trivial portion of my salary into a 401k every month because I've been told, repeatedly, that to be old and poor is much less fun than being old and middle class. Why wouldn't I make the same decision to act now so that my elderly years are less impacted by climate change?

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil", Donald Knuth

It's interesting that you bring up smoking. I, as an ex-smoker, have believed for a long time that adult ADHD drugs, for some people, fills the niche that smoking, before it became socially unacceptable, used to fill. I would love a minor, stimulating alternative to coffee so long as it didn't become the addiction that smoking used to be.

Statistically speaking I'm 5% closer to death. I'll put that down as marginally worse off.