[adamwill]

OP here. Thanks for the interesting discussion, everyone! There's some really great posts in here. I really liked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879141 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884730 especially; that dilemma of not wanting to spend all your time sysadminning things (I've got a phone, four servers, a desktop, two laptops, a router, an HTPC and god knows how many little trinkets to take care of) yet also knowing too much to be OK with just telling Google or Apple to take care of it all (assuming a certain ideology) is a big part of this, I think. (Full disclosure: after getting that post out of my system I ordered a new laptop and spent half of this weekend planning a bunch of changes to my mail server...)

I also really liked the wider culture comments, especially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879035 , but I wanna emphasize something I wrote in the comments on my blog: this is a very personal post. It's just about how I feel, and I don't think how I feel is 'right'. I think there's actually an awful lot of really interesting stuff happening in all the spaces I don't personally care about - new video platforms and VR and all of that. I'm self-aware enough to realize that part of this is just me wanting the kids off of my lawn. But since it's my blog, I can wave my stick at them as much as I like ;) But I wouldn't want to claim that just because I'm okay with what I know, none of this stuff has value, as a lot of it does.

Finally, just to note that when I wrote that I still like my job, I meant it! The post wasn't meant as a cri du coeur, exactly. I'm actually perfectly fine with this stuff. It doesn't keep me awake at nights. I just do my job, and use the tech I actually want and find useful, and forget about the rest of it. I just wanted to write it down, I guess.

Oh, and since 'guess my age' seems to have become a popular game...I'm 34. :)