Getting diagnised: I suspected that I was ‘different’ for many years. I thought I was autistic for a few years but didn’t really admit it to myself. Finally I decided that I should get tested and stop hiding from it. I still only tell people on a need to know basis at the moment, but is an open secret.

Telling work: People at work know I’m not NT shall we say, but being in a technical field it’s kind of accepted. Work wise however it has held me back. I’ve been given (well meaning) opportunities that I’ve not been able to thrive with. Things are getting a little more cut throat nowadays, with more severe consequences, so I thought anything that I can do to preemptively rebalance the deck must be a good idea.

It means that I can have a conversation along the lines of “you know I’m going to have difficulty doing X with Y people, so I’ll need some support there, but you know I’ll do Z really well. Can we work something out?” Previously I’d just struggle with, and probably fail the whole task, benefitting noone. I’d get over stressed so probably fail other things too. To be absolutely honest, I’m too old and too tired for that shit. Another aspect is that being professional is communicating where you are not able to do a task to a high enough standard. The diagnosis allows me to do this in an open and constructive way.

What do I expect to happen from this? Not much, immediately other than an amount of ‘process’.

I don’t currently need adjustments and am reasonably good at my job, so don’t have major worries right now. However, things can change. I may be given a task that would be easy for an NT, but very difficult for me to do. This could affect my performance, with potential negative consequences over several years. Now the company knows, we can work something out to mutual benefit, otherwise I’d be in trouble.

To say I want to weaponise my diagnosis would be unfair, but if I can fairly use it to help me exist in an NT corporate environment, where otherwise I’d have difficulties, then I think I’m taking the sensible approach. Time will tell. In the UK, compared to perhaps other less civilised places, we have a degree of legal protection, but it is a two way street.

I’ve done what I call a ‘good engineering fix’ to a garage door opener. It now works fine on my bench power supply and the fob needs its surface Mount switches replacing so requires a knack to use.

It functions, I understand how it failed and what I need to do to make it work properly… So job done!

It’ll now live in my pile of technical crap for the next decade.

While I have no experience of healthcare, I know that office politics and culture can be a nightmare in any workplace. What I also know is that we are or own ‘brands’ and if we want to be good at anything we need to develop ourselves as we see fit. This is part of being professional. You choose to do it in work break hours where you have the time and maybe are less tied. Maybe it gives you access to people who can help when you need it. All this is good, but I think it’s worth noting that you will miss out on some of the office culture (for better or worse). Professionalism is as much about what you know as well as your network, and people make snap judgements about others. You seem to have come off badly this time, these things happen, but are fixable one way of another. What if you (force yourself to) spend one break ‘socialising’ every now and again? You may be able to turn the conversion into something more worthwhile. You may find someone who will become a real asset.

I’m waaaaay along the spectrum and I too would rather learn than idly chat. The above is very hard for me to do, but I have reluctantly found that there are benefits. It’s a bigger picture thing.

Be you and do your thing, but do it strategically. I suspect that your ‘brand’ is very saleable, so if it’s not working where you are, you can always try elsewhere.

Bedtime doesn’t equal sleep time, but is a good discipline to start making ready for bed and putting devices away. Getting ready for bed at 10, asleep by 11 doesn’t sound bad to me.

Battery replacement is an issue, but is easily solved with good design. I don’t need the thinnest phone that’s difficult to hold, a few extra mm won’t affect my life negatively. I’d rather have something usable and maintainable.

My biggest gripe however is the built in obsolesce of software support life. Perfectly good electronics are rendered useless by the system not receiving software / security updates after a couple of years.

My problem with ‘likes’ is that it’s so context dependent. My favourite colour depends on whether we’re taking about paint for the walls, a car, a new jumper or the colour of my finger.

It’s the same as for music, my favorite depends on if I’m working, driving, relaxing or wanting to destroy something.

I really don’t understand how people can have ‘one’ favorite and stick to it.

On the excitement front, yeah, I don’t get people jumping around with joy unless they’re a 6 year old getting birthday cake… But then I’m British, and we don’t do that sort of thing. (Edited for typo twice!)

Surely the simplest approach is not to use a wifi ssid that you don’t trust. Yes, mobile broadband is slower and more expensive, but is also more under your control, it is however harder for your boss to monitor.

If I was an it manager I’d probably want to keep an eye on WiFi traffic, even on the open ssid, just to see what’s going on. I don’t trust free WiFi.

If you can’t use 4/5g, and can’t find a suitable firewall or VPN, can you set up a different user on your phone? - and be disciplined in is use.

Have you talked to the school? They may be able to help out, particularly if he’s already in the queue for a diagnosis. Maybe a note from your doctor would support this.

Help may be tuition support, guidance or even some extra time in the exam room - or doing the exam in a different area.

Anything you can do to stack the odds in your favor can help, and the worst they can day is ‘no’, so there’s nothing really to lose.

Finally, though exams are important, they are not the end of the world. They can be retaken later if necessary so try and remember to keep things in perspective and manage the stress accordingly.

Finally finally, good luck to you and your son.

Exactly. Thanks. This is a ‘non-domestic’ application shall we say. Measuring something with any buffer capacity at all should negate the water’s pH, so shouldn’t be a problem, but the manufacturers advice still doesn’t sit comfortably with me. But they should know!

Has a psion5, brilliant tech. Loved it. The calendar was way ahead of its time, 2AA batteries gave weeks of life and you could just about touch type on the keyboard. If I could get it to synch with office I’d be tempted to dig it out again, it really was the future.

Eyesight started going in mid 40s. Still not happy about it.

Long day!

When I was working in Switzerland briefly, people would speak Swiss, German, French and Italian as well as English all in the same breath. I was told they used whatever word was easiest at the time.

When I was a child we lived in a house in the countryside, so nights were very dark and very quiet. I’d wander around the house in the dark quite often and noticed that as well as peripheral vision, the acoustic of the room gave me information, I could sort of hear the sound of my footsteps change if I was walking towards a closed door rather than an open one. Similarly the air moved differently going from one room to another. None of these senses had enough information to navigate alone, but all added to the model of where I was and what was around me. Of course this was in a place I knew well. When walking outside, I could ‘hear’ the echo of the hedges and walls beside me which kept me in the middle of the path. At the time this didn’t seem unusual. It goes to show that we use all our senses all the time, one helps the other to fill in the gaps.

I’m much older now, the eyesight and hearing are both failing, but it was fun while it lasted.

Allows you to remove power from the plugged in device without unplugging it. This provides convenience to easily and quickly turn things on and off and prevents arcing when unplugging. 240V 13A can arc a bit, particularly if unplugged under load, or on older sockets where the contacts have worn. While a little arcing doesn’t do much damage immediately, over time it will cause pitting and make a high resistance joint that will generate heat.

The switch only disconnects the live terminal, but the neutral terminal should be similar potential to earth (depending on how the building is wired).

Truly the king of plugs and sockets. The plugs are individually fused according to the device needs, ergonomic to use and exciting to stand on.

I barely remember my birthday.

Unless I’m careful I find I obsess about things, and it isn’t sustainable. Either overload or burn out on it. Nowadays I try to pace my obsessions, do a bit at a time and enforce breaks, sometimes a few days or even weeks. It allows me to think about the subject, lock things down and make links. Sometimes less is more.

If it happened frequently enough, the government would find a way to tax it.

I have a couple of setups, one has poe ip cams writing to a surveillance nvr which looks after motion detect etc. The other system relies on the camera software detecting motion and writing to a Nas.

Both systems are on their own subnet and are firewalled from everything else. I VPN as and when required.

I’ve found motion detect with alerts to be difficult to tune to get good detection without false alarms.