The future of power in America is obvious. State governments will make corrupt deals with data centers and factories to keep their electricity costs low, and raise prices on residential users to compensate until poor families are priced out.
Buy your solar panels now. Before electricity changes from a right to a privilege.
I got into Arduino through my electrical apprenticeship. We had an electronics course to teach us electrical flow, sensors and boolean logic with integrated circuits. I was working on a project for lights and lighting patterns. Also had a couple other smaller ideas but eventually gave up on all of them.
My world view at the time was being challenged and changing rapidly. It’s far to easy to get lost in tech crazes because there’s always something new to distract you from the truly destructive nature of tech.
I kept a couple parts but sold off everything else for the price of a lunch. The person who bought everything from me was a teacher and said his students would appreciated the box of parts. I didn’t feel so bad since they would get used instead of collecting dust.
I’ve since been focusing on less tech related interests. I’m attempting to work towards a minimal tilling garden. I maintain my own bicycle. I’ve recently picked up whittling. I have a bunch of untreated wood I can use and the wood shavings can be used in my garden. I am working towards simplicity after burning out hard from technology related complexity.
I never planned on staying in the automation industry for long, planned to complete my apprenticeship and run. Management delayed my apprenticeship and then covid further delayed things. All the new revelations of abuse, waste and destruction ate at me pretty hard and little voice in my head wouldn’t stop screaming at me to get out. In an attempt to offset the damage feel like I caused, I planned to get fired and somehow took down the HR manager with me on the way out. Still got my severance pay and a ban from a large, international automation corporation. Maybe I didn’t offset my damages but it was still very satisfying.
It’s so similar to what happened to me, and I think quite a few others, one could almost believe some good forces of nature guide us towards better ways. I tend a garden, make colored pencil drawings that take a few weeks to complete. Walk a lot. Try to consume local as much as I can. For two years the burnout was so bad even other people and the need to use spoken words to communicate with them was too complex.