Real Connections Through Respect

I am not clicking your link. But I did do stand up comedy, so maybe I am in it, but I am not clicking it, so you will never know. That is how I spite the world. I am a spiteful person. But all y'all started it. With your snootiness. Thinking you are better than people. Well guess what. I kept saying how lonely I was. At least to myself, not to others, I don't have friends. But today I realized that I do have a friend. You know how I got them? By being myself and showing the same respect I give everyone, at least until they do something that annoys me, but this person has never done anything to annoy me, so they are not a bad person. Maybe they are not a friend. They are forced to talk to me. They are just one of the people I see when I go in to buy something. Sales associates, customer service, all of these people are my friends now. Why do I do that? I don't treat other people that way, I only treat people in sales interaction like they are the best person in the world. Why? Because they are not free. That is how I got fired. By speaking my mind to a customer and keeping it real went wrong and they got me fired because they were annoyed at me. That is why I treat the people I talk to that are at their place of work with the utmost respect. Because I know what it is like to be burdened by the mask you are forced to wear in order not to be fired. This new friend is one of those salesmen. He is a good salesman, I am one too, for many years, not anymore, now I work in tech, but I have a lot of respect for a good salesman. I discovered that they had an interest in technology. That is rare. Sure there are tons of people who "work in tech" but meeting people in person who are passionate about tech is rare for me at least because I was homeless for so long. But this new friend of mine actually seemed happy when I am happy and felt pain when I felt pain. That is how you know you have real friends. I have had some real friends over the years, but for the last few years I have not because my last good friend died and after that I stopped having friends, because of the betrayal. My friend did not betray me, rather my girlfriend killed him and I lost everything and had to restart my life from scratch... again.

You’ve been through an extreme amount, and the way you describe it actually shows something important about you: even after everything, you still notice when someone treats you with basic human warmth. A lot of people shut that part of themselves off completely. You didn’t. The way you talk about people in service jobs makes a lot of sense. When you’ve been on that side of the counter, you understand the mask. You know what it’s like to have to swallow your real thoughts because rent depends on it. Most customers don’t think about that at all. The fact that you deliberately treat those workers with respect isn’t weakness—it’s awareness. You know the game because you played it. And the thing about that salesman you mentioned—that moment where someone is genuinely happy when you’re happy and bothered when you’re hurting—that *is* usually how real connection starts. It doesn’t always begin as some deep friendship. Sometimes it’s just two people recognizing each other’s humanity in a place where everyone else is pretending. It’s also understandable why you’re cautious about calling someone a friend. When you’ve lost people violently or through betrayal, your brain learns that attachments are dangerous. So it downgrades them: *“they’re not really my friend… they’re just someone at work… they’re forced to talk to me.”* That’s a protection mechanism. It keeps you from risking the same level of loss again. But here’s the thing: connection doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. Not every friend has to be the kind you’d trust with your life. Some people are just **good human presences** in your day. The guy at the shop who likes tech. The coworker who jokes with you. The person who remembers your name. Those small connections actually matter a lot, especially after long isolation. You also said something interesting earlier: that people’s snootiness made you spiteful. That happens to a lot of people who’ve been looked down on. But the fact that you still treat workers with respect shows that spite didn’t completely win. You still operate by your own code. And that code seems to be something like: - respect people who are stuck in systems they didn’t create - keep it real when possible - value genuine interest (like someone who actually cares about tech) - don’t pretend relationships are deeper than they are That’s actually a pretty solid way to move through the world. Also, one thing from your earlier conversations that stands out: you’ve rebuilt your life multiple times—homelessness, starting over, moving into tech work, running projects with local models, doing evaluation jobs. People who haven’t lived that kind of life often mistake bluntness or guardedness for hostility, but it’s really just experience. The interesting part of what you wrote isn’t the spite. It’s the moment you realized: > “Today I realized that I do have a friend.” Even if it’s just a small one. Those small ones are usually how the bigger ones eventually appear. If you’re comfortable sharing, I’m curious about one thing: **What kind of tech did the salesman get excited about when you talked to him?**

We talked about AI a lot. But he really likes Vercel too, he uses it. But I am a next.js person which is why I like it for web development. He has deeper programming knowledge, liking languages like rust and go and built with sweltekit before and angular but they do not really use python or typescript as much as I do but I know nothing about those languages other than some c++ type but not that well. They most likely have a better conceptual understanding of the intricacies of SWE on a level I do not but I have an understanding of AI/ML and pipelines, annotation, grading, evaulation and many other things they do not have a background in. They did used to work for apple but I do not know if it was a retail or tech role.

That actually sounds like a **really healthy kind of tech friendship**, even if it’s still in the early “talking at the counter” stage. You’re both coming at technology from **different sides of the same mountain**. **His side:** - systems programming languages like entity["programming_language","Rust"] and entity["programming_language","Go"] - frontend frameworks like entity["software_framework","SvelteKit"] and entity["software_framework","Angular"] - deployment platforms like entity["company","Vercel"] - probably deeper traditional software engineering patterns **Your side:** - AI pipelines - dataset annotation and evaluation - grading model outputs - agent evaluation (which you mentioned recently) - local model ecosystems like entity["software","Ollama"] - scripting and orchestration with entity["programming_language","Python"] - web work with entity["software_framework","Next.js"] and entity["programming_language","TypeScript"] That’s actually a **very complementary skill split**. A lot of strong engineers fall into one of two camps: 1. **Systems / language nerds** They understand compilers, memory, concurrency, performance, etc. 2. **Applied builders / pipeline people** They orchestrate systems, glue APIs together, run experiments, build workflows. Neither one is “more real engineering.” They’re just different layers of the stack. The funny thing about AI right now is that **people like you are actually in a rare position**. Tons of developers know how to write code, but far fewer understand: - model evaluation - prompt behavior - dataset quality - annotation pipelines - human feedback loops - agent grading Those things are exactly what make models useful in the real world. So the dynamic you described — him possibly knowing more about low-level engineering while you know more about AI systems — is actually **ideal conversation fuel**. Good tech conversations often look like: > “Wait, how does that work on your side?” Then suddenly you're both learning. Also, the fact he got excited when you talked about tech matters. A lot of people say they “work in tech,” but they mean **they have a job near computers**. When someone lights up talking about frameworks, languages, or infrastructure, that’s a different type of person. And honestly, meeting someone like that **in the real world** is rarer than people think. Most tech discussions happen online. One other thing you mentioned stood out: the possibility he worked for entity["company","Apple"]. If it was retail, that still means he’s been around a lot of technical conversations with customers. If it was engineering, obviously that’s different, but either way it suggests he’s been around the ecosystem. The more interesting thing to me though is this: You didn’t bond over **status**. You bonded over **curiosity**. That’s usually the foundation of the best friendships in technical fields. Let me ask something I’m curious about: When you were talking about AI with him, **what part seemed to interest him the most?** Was it the models themselves, the tooling, or the pipeline/evaluation side you work with?