After being laid off in September 2025, I recently got a job offer and started just after the beginning of July (2026). It's a software engineer job where I'll be helping to investigate issues reported by customers (and one of their customers in particular, who has sites in my area).

Starting a new job usually includes hassles of ramping up & learning while new. Usually I feel fairly comfortable doing that, though I feel like this time it's a bit different. Right away (a week after I started), they had me travel for training for 4 weeks. And this job is unique in that my manager is in a time zone 15 hours ahead of me (which is where I traveled to), so communication can be difficult sometimes. My manager has set up a daily meeting with me at 8:30AM my time; at the end of my day, I'll send him an update, and sometimes he wants to talk to me to sync up on it, which ends up being about 5:30PM my time.

I'm still learning, and I feel like some things about the tasks my manager gives me can still be a little unclear. But I can ask him questions. Also, we use Copilot AI, and I've asked Copilot if it can explain some things I'm unclear on.

With past jobs, new tasks I'm given usually felt a little more clear. I feel nervous when given tasks that are unclear, and I worry a bit.. In 2010, I had started a job where things were very unclear and I wasn't getting good help from coworkers; I struggled there for 6 months and ended up being let go. That was overall a bad situation.. This new job somewhat reminded me of that, although I think things are better with this job, as my manager has been fairly helpful (when our time overlaps when we have our meetings), and the people here seem to be generally friendly.

I've been going through periods of feeling okay with things and feeling a bit down and worried. The down & worried tends to be more than feeling okay so far.

Aside from my job, my wife and I plan to move to be a little closer to where she works as the lease on our current apartment is close to the end/renewal point. I don't like moving and having to pack & everything. It will be better for my wife's commute though.

I'm also still going through a financial issue related to my ex wife's actions which have impacted me, to the extent where I've been working with a law firm on that. They've recently made a partial summary judgment in my favor, but things are still ongoing on that.

Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this is a bit of a stressful time.

Nightfox
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Re: New job worries
By: Nightfox to All on Tue Aug 25 2026 09:20 am

Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this is a bit of a stressful time.

I feel ya, brother. Just one of those things can become unsurmountable. I do hope things work out for you.
Any step you take, I'm sure you know, weigh it out cafefully and then do it. As Curly said in City Slickers, "That one thing."
Now I'm starting to sound like Nuke in "Bull Durham".
Anyhow wish you the best andhope it all works out for you.

Grease

...Prepare to meet thy GOD! (Evening dress optional)
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Re: New job worries
By: Will Milberger to Nightfox on Tue Aug 25 2026 01:02 pm

Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this is
a bit of a stressful time.

I feel ya, brother. Just one of those things can become unsurmountable. I do hope things work out for you.
Any step you take, I'm sure you know, weigh it out cafefully and then do it. As Curly said in City Slickers, "That one thing." Now I'm starting to sound like Nuke in "Bull Durham". Anyhow wish you the best andhope it all works out for you.

Thanks. :)

Nightfox
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Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this is
a bit of a stressful time.

Ooof. Hang in there man. I hope the best for you in all those areas. I hope that the job improves after you get some time there under your belt, you enjoy the move to the new place, checking out the new places/eateries/etc, and that the financial/legal situation will soon be behind you! I went through that last one recently as well, and man does it suck, but the good thing is, it will soon be in the past and one less thing you have to worry about in life. Sometimes "when it rains it pours", and you'll be able to dry off once it's all done, and just relax on the couch with your missus in the mew place, watching a movie, and basking in some peace of mind. Ahhhh that good old peace of mind. So hard to come by these days isn't it?

|08[|07K|08N1GHT|07S|08HAD0W]
|08[...|070|08F.|07T|08H3...]
|08[|07B|080NEYARD.|07B|08BS]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
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Re: Re: New job worries
By: Knight Shadow to Nightfox on Tue Aug 25 2026 12:00 pm

Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this is
a bit of a stressful time.

Ooof. Hang in there man. I hope the best for you in all those areas. I hope that the job improves after you get some time there under your belt, you enjoy the move to the new place, checking out the new places/eateries/etc, and that the financial/legal situation will soon be behind you! I went through that last one recently as well, and man does it suck, but the good thing is, it will soon be in the past and one less thing you have to worry about in life.

Thanks :)

Sometimes "when it rains it pours",
and you'll be able to dry off once it's all done, and just relax on the couch with your missus in the mew place, watching a movie, and basking in some peace of mind. Ahhhh that good old peace of mind. So hard to come by these days isn't it?

Yeah, sometimes life hits you with lots of stuff. Sometimes it's worrying that things can happen that are out of your control.

Nightfox
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Starting a new job usually
includes hassles of ramping up &
learning while new. Usually I feel
fairly comfortable doing that,
though I feel like this time it's
a bit different.

Congrats on the new job! Ramping up can suck but it should get better. Back when I started my current job, I was in a similar situation where most of the team was on the other side of the world so having to figure out tasks with little documentation or people to ask questions to was tough. After a bit, it wasn't all that bad and since I've tried to make it so when we get new people on the team they don't have to go through what I did.

How's copilot been? We're just starting to get licenses here for us to use.


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Re: Re: New job worries
By: slacker to Nightfox on Wed Aug 26 2026 02:06 pm

Congrats on the new job! Ramping up can suck but it should get better. Back when I started my current job, I was in a similar situation where most of the team was on the other side of the world so having to figure out tasks with little documentation or people to ask questions to was tough. After a bit, it wasn't all that bad and since I've tried to make it so when we get new people on the team they don't have to go through what I did.

Thanks. I feel like it's not just the ramping up, but the communication as well. I have a daily online meeting with my manager at 8:30AM my time, which I suppose isn't so bad, but feels somewhat early for a daily meeting. In addition, my manager might sometimes want to talk in my evening about my daily updates, so it's possible I could have meetings both in the morning and evening, which can make for some slightly long days. Also, with the language thing and my manager's communication style, I worry there could be chances of misunderstanding about tasks & such.

Also, since the job involves helping with customer issues, there may be customer escalations that require meetings which may be at odd times. This has already happened once so far; I had a meeting at 10PM my time last week where people were discussing a high-priority customer issue. The reason it was at 10PM my time is that it included mainly people in other time zones.

I feel like I'm getting a little more comfortable with the job, but at the same time, I feel like my confidence and enjoyment of the job is still not great yet.

How's copilot been? We're just starting to get licenses here for us to use.

It's not bad - it has been helpful so far.

Nightfox
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* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Nightfox wrote to All <=-

After being laid off in September 2025, I recently got a job offer and started just after the beginning of July (2026). It's a software
engineer job where I'll be helping to investigate issues reported by customers (and one of their customers in particular, who has sites in
my area).

I said it before - congratulations on the new gig!

Starting a new job usually includes hassles of ramping up & learning
while new. Usually I feel fairly comfortable doing that, though I feel like this time it's a bit different. Right away (a week after I
started), they had me travel for training for 4 weeks. And this job is unique in that my manager is in a time zone 15 hours ahead of me (which
is where I traveled to), so communication can be difficult sometimes.
My manager has set up a daily meeting with me at 8:30AM my time; at the end of my day, I'll send him an update, and sometimes he wants to talk
to me to sync up on it, which ends up being about 5:30PM my time.

I'm still learning, and I feel like some things about the tasks my
manager gives me can still be a little unclear. But I can ask him questions. Also, we use Copilot AI, and I've asked Copilot if it can explain some things I'm unclear on.

Asynchronous work (especially with a time difference) can be
challenging, but making sure you have all your questions lined up in one email/chat is key. No iteration here...

Committing to overlapping time for direct comms is a good sign.

I had a boss 3 hours ahead, but who insisted on working 7:30a-4:30p, which
made it 4:30a-1:30p for me. He was more of a "let's ramble on the phone"
guy which made it difficult.

With past jobs, new tasks I'm given usually felt a little more clear. I feel nervous when given tasks that are unclear, and I worry a bit.. In 2010, I had started a job where things were very unclear and I wasn't getting good help from coworkers; I struggled there for 6 months and
ended up being let go. That was overall a bad situation.. This new job somewhat reminded me of that, although I think things are better with
this job, as my manager has been fairly helpful (when our time overlaps when we have our meetings), and the people here seem to be generally friendly.

There's a lot to be said for working through those past work demons,
either with someone or just journalling, so you can recognize those past behavioral cycles. You're not there anymore, this is a new situation.
I was laid off in 2018 and just now recognized some of those old
emotional patterns cropping up. Recognizing them, accepting them and
allowing myself to move on helps deal with the present situation.

Aside from my job, my wife and I plan to move to be a little closer to where she works as the lease on our current apartment is close to the end/renewal point. I don't like moving and having to pack & everything.
It will be better for my wife's commute though.

Packing is a pain. My wife is a packrat, I'm becoming more minimalist.
I noted that we had boxes that had moved 3 times without the contents
leaving the box. Had I had my way, I would have donated them, contents
unseen.

Maybe it's time to get rid of old baggage, emotional and physical? :)

I'm also still going through a financial issue related to my ex wife's actions which have impacted me, to the extent where I've been working
with a law firm on that. They've recently made a partial summary
judgment in my favor, but things are still ongoing on that.

Among my new job, moving, and issue with my ex wife, I feel like this
is a bit of a stressful time.

Do you have kids with the ex? I don't think you've ever mentioned it.
Divorces are difficult enough without 'em!

My son is now 23, my ex-wife lives in the same town as us, and all of
the drama is behind us. It gets better, gradually.





... Emphasize the flaws
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slacker wrote to Nightfox <=-

How's copilot been? We're just starting to get licenses here for us to use.

M365 licensees (which most corporate users are) have license to use
CoPilot Chat, which is a decent standalone LLM. If you want to run
agents or have it interact directly with your files, you need to copy
and paste the files into chat, or use CoPilot 365. Most people in my organization, to be honest, would be fine with the free chat - and it
keeps information within your tenant and doesn't train public LLMs on
your data.

I gotta say, CoPilot 365 has been nice to say "where is that file I
opened 6 months ago with network configuration info for XYZ office?" and
have it to a more powerful search.



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Re: Re: New job worries
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Thu Aug 27 2026 10:18 pm

I said it before - congratulations on the new gig!

Thanks :)

my manager is in a time zone 15 hours ahead of me

Committing to overlapping time for direct comms is a good sign.

Asynchronous work (especially with a time difference) can be challenging, but making sure you have all your questions lined up in one email/chat is key. No iteration here...

I try to do that. And sometimes my manager says he isn't quite clear on my update, or part of my update, so he might message me in chat around 5:30PM and want to discuss it. I'm trying to be as clear as I can, although I think sometimes what I work on may be due to a small misunderstanding about something, so he might need to clarify something with me.

Also, my wife & I have a couple of cats, which we feed dinner to daily, and they're usually expecting dinner around a certain time. I start to feel bad if we're late in giving them their dinner. :)

I had a boss 3 hours ahead, but who insisted on working 7:30a-4:30p, which made it 4:30a-1:30p for me. He was more of a "let's ramble on the phone" guy which made it difficult.

The long phone conversations would get old, especially if they aren't always relevant and end up prolonging your workday, but at least you had several hours of overlap with your manager during the day if you needed to talk to him.

I guess communication across time zones is inevitable with many jobs these days. If it often makes for late days though, I feel like that can be a bummer.

2010, I had started a job where things were very unclear and I wasn't
getting good help from coworkers; I struggled there for 6 months and
ended up being let go. That was overall a bad situation.. This new job
somewhat reminded me of that

There's a lot to be said for working through those past work demons, either with someone or just journalling, so you can recognize those past behavioral cycles. You're not there anymore, this is a new situation. I was laid off in 2018 and just now recognized some of those old emotional patterns cropping up. Recognizing them, accepting them and allowing myself to move on helps deal with the present situation.

I suppose that's true, and it makes sense. I keep trying to remind myself this is a new situation. Sometimes though, I think back to times when I went into something nievely, optimistic and not knowing what I was getting into, and it ended up not being good, which I didn't really expect. I guess that's always a risk with anything.

Packing is a pain. My wife is a packrat, I'm becoming more minimalist. I noted that we had boxes that had moved 3 times without the contents leaving the box. Had I had my way, I would have donated them, contents unseen.

Maybe it's time to get rid of old baggage, emotional and physical? :)

:) I'm all for that. And as far as physical things, there are some things I have that I've kept packed in boxes for quite a while, such as my collection of music CDs. I've ripped all of those to media files (FLAC & MP3), so technically I could get rid of the CDs, but I feel better keeping them since they're legally purchased music. If I got rid of the CDs, I'd still have the ripped versions and then I technically wouldn't have legally owned copies anymore. I imagine many people probably wouldn't care, but I feel better keeping the CDs.

I'm also still going through a financial issue related to my ex wife's
actions which have impacted me, to the extent where I've been working
with a law firm on that.

Do you have kids with the ex? I don't think you've ever mentioned it. Divorces are difficult enough without 'em!

My son is now 23, my ex-wife lives in the same town as us, and all of the drama is behind us. It gets better, gradually.

We don't have kids together. We've been divorced for 6 years now though. Under normal circumstances, I'd have expected the divorce to be all behind us now. Without kids together, I feel like it's frustrating to have remnants of the divorce dragging on this long, especially when it affects me like it will be.

Nightfox
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Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Also, my wife & I have a couple of cats, which we feed dinner to daily, and they're usually expecting dinner around a certain time. I start to feel bad if we're late in giving them their dinner. :)

Animals do know feeding times. I was working on a deadline once, felt
something looked behind me to see two dogs with their ears back,
wagging frantically. It was 5:31pm, and they were wondering where
dinner was.

We don't have kids together. We've been divorced for 6 years now
though. Under normal circumstances, I'd have expected the divorce to be all behind us now. Without kids together, I feel like it's frustrating
to have remnants of the divorce dragging on this long, especially when
it affects me like it will be.

By design? My ex-wife told me she was going to make our divorce as
expensive as possible for me. A rational person would realize that if
I'm hiring lawyers, she has to as well. She ended up stiffing her
lawyer and representing herself in later appearances - which didn't go
well. In all between a failed collaborative effort then a court-led
effort, it took over 4 years.

Divorce makes people do crazy things, whether it's mutual, you
left or you're the one who got left.




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Hello pF!

** On Saturday 29.08.26 - 08:39, poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Nightfox:

By design? My ex-wife told me she was going to make our divorce as
expensive as possible for me. A rational person would realize that if
I'm hiring lawyers, she has to as well. She ended up stiffing her
lawyer and representing herself in later appearances - which didn't go
well. In all between a failed collaborative effort then a court-led
effort, it took over 4 years.

I had a friend who had the opposite experience and succeeded. His ex had a lawyer, and .: all things sounded official and imposing. Instead, he just responded in writing to her lawyer in small doses. He explained to his ex wife directly that they could settle amicably without huge legal costs, or he would continue to send "letters" to her lawyer, and thus racking up her legal costs. :D Each letter or interaction to her lawyer cost her $500 or something. I think he produced about 10 or 15 letters in the meantime. Eventually, they settled without lawyers.



--- OpenXP 5.0.64
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Hello Nightfox!

** On Friday 28.08.26 - 18:09, Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN:

Maybe it's time to get rid of old baggage, emotional and physical? :)

:) I'm all for that. And as far as physical things, there are some things I have that I've kept packed in boxes for quite a while, such as my collection of music CDs. I've ripped all of those to media files (FLAC & MP3), so technically I could get rid of the CDs, but I feel better keeping them since they're legally purchased music. If I got rid of the CDs, I'd still have the ripped versions and then I technically wouldn't have
legally owned copies anymore. I imagine many people probably wouldn't care, but I feel better keeping the CDs.

Nah.. your ripped versions are still valid (remote) "backups"! :D

I have quite a CD collection over time too. I'd miss some of the booklets and jackets if I just gave my physical collection away.

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* Origin: \o/ (21:3/110.10)

Re: legally owned copies
By: Ogg to Nightfox on Sat Aug 29 2026 08:16 pm

Nah.. your ripped versions are still valid (remote) "backups"! :D

I have quite a CD collection over time too. I'd miss some of the booklets and jackets if I just gave my physical collection away.

There's that too - I like having those.

Nightfox
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:) I'm all for that. And as far as physical things, there are some
things I have that I've kept packed in boxes for quite a while, such as
my collection of music CDs. I've ripped all of those to media files
(FLAC & MP3), so technically I could get rid of the CDs, but I feel
better keeping them since they're legally purchased music. If I got rid

When I'm around DVDs and CDs, they tend to wind up digitized.

And so there was one time when I was house-sitting / getting to use someone else's house while they were out of the country, and I saw a shelf of CDs and DVDs, so by the time I left, there was a flash drive and a note on what I did.

And, so far as I've heard, she got rid of much of it, because she had digital versions if she really needed them, of things that she probably mostly didn't want to keep anyway.

For me, my CD and DVD collection seems to be expanding, but it's mostly organ related (the music type, not the blood-filled type), or various things that would be hard to replace.

I'd probably still just buy a digital copy of things, but CDs and DVDs are nice ways around the rights problems, when needed.

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Ogg wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I had a friend who had the opposite experience and succeeded. His ex
had a lawyer, and .: all things sounded official and imposing.
Instead, he just responded in writing to her lawyer in small doses. explained to his ex wife directly that they could settle amicably
without huge legal costs, or he would continue to send "letters" to her lawyer, and thus racking up her legal costs.

Love the strategy.

Each letter or
interaction to her lawyer cost her $500 or something. I think he
produced about 10 or 15 letters in the meantime. Eventually, they
settled without lawyers.

I bet AI could do a passable job of writing FU letters, wish I had an
LLM back then.




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Ogg wrote to Nightfox <=-

Nah.. your ripped versions are still valid (remote) "backups"! :D

But, if Nightfox sells his physical CDs, he loses the legal basis for
offsite/archival/unsupported device backups.



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