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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Personally…I embraced my curly hair and started learning how to take care of it.

    It started with the No-shampoo movement. The thing about most shampoos, especially dandruff shampoos, is that that are very harsh. “The tingling tells you it’s working” is bullshit. That’s your skin drying out from the chemicals. And the more you use it, the more dandruff you have when you stop and the more you need to use it. It’s a vicious cycle. Then you have to use a conditioner just to try to put moisture back into your scalp, but silicones can’t hydrate like natural oils that your scalp produces can. The biggest confusion is not washing my hair for a few days, and ending up with dandruff and greasy hair.

    After not shampooing for about 3 months and then only using shampoo once every 2 weeks, I found that my dandruff almost disappeared. Almost…because I was still using harsh shampoos that would strip all the moisture from my head and dry out my scalp. My hair would be oily for a few days and then return to normal after a few showers. That’s when I decided to grow out my hair and learn to take care of the curls. I discovered that most shampoo are harsh because of the sulfates, parabens, phthalates, alcohols, and other chemicals designed specifically to strip your hair of oils. Switching to sulfate free shampoos stopped that cycle immediately. Learning about conditioners and other hair products brought out curls that practically every woman I meet would kill to have for themselves. And I haven’t had dandruff or itchy dry scalp ever since, even on the coldest and driest days in the winter.

    Treat your beard the same way. The skin underneath still needs the oils it produces to stay healthy. Use the same sulfate free shampoo to wash your beard and allow your skin to heal and rehydrate naturally.









  • I turned down a job.

    It was 2003. I had been working as a programmer in legacy language on an ancient AS/400 system for a year and a half. I had interviewed with another company, working in VB6 which wasn’t great but at least it had some growth. But the pay was only slightly above what I was already making, and I wasn’t keen on VB6 when the web was taking off. I thought I could do better. Fast forward to the bust of 2004, and I’m being laid off from that legacy programming job.

    I spend a year applying to every development job I can find, but it’s difficult with a glut of programmers all looking for work. I finally take a tech support job just to get by as I continue looking for a dev job. Little did I know that dev job would never come. I bounced from a few different jobs after that, most being some form of tech support and usually ending in layoffs. I spent 16 years trying to get another dev job before I finally gave up and left IT work altogether. I had to eventually face the fact that my development career died in 2004, all because I turned down a job.