Ask HN: Have you ever gone without a computer or phone for an extended period?

First of all, if you are over a certain age, the phrasing of this question might feel surreal. Because before a not-that-long-ago date, everyone did this all the time.

That said, a few years ago I was forced to do this because I was on a beach in Mexico with no service.

It took several days for the addiction to wear off, and I had been already ‘on vacation’ for about 2 weeks previous, just I was still plugged in.

I highly recommend detoxing from screens regularly. Many Orthodox Jews I believe do this every week, and I have often tried to get myself to do the same.

I also have rules I never break: like never answer the phone during dinner.

There’s no good way to ‘moderate’ per se. Moderation will take the form of setting small strict rules and adhering to them.

I had the same thought, the 90s. And what did I do in the 90s? I smoked cigarettes.

All alone, at a bus stop, or waiting for a friend. It was torture just standing there as a teenager in the 90s. Had to start smoking.

I'm not saying smartphones made me quit smoking but mp3 players did give me an excuse to put headphones on and at least do something while waiting for public transportation and the like.

I did own a walkman before that but strangely it was never with me when I needed it, because of its size. It was a chore just to plan to bring my walkman anywhere.

Edit: This made me realize the first music player that was most regularly in my pocket was a Sony minidisc player. I also loved the format because it seemed so futuristic.

FYI, that resistor was probably there to bleed charge off the cap when power was removed from the circuit, to keep it from biting. Rather than bad design, it's a standard feature; as you've discovered, big caps without it can be mean, not only to careless fingers, but to the circuit they're in, besides. Granted, it sounds like the resistor had failed short as you found it, and without access to a replacement, cutting it out to get the bug zapper working again was a solid play. But now might be a good time to replace it.

Chesterton's fence is a useful principle for reverse engineering, and this is one example. Another is the snubber diode you find across switched inductive loads; the naïve assumption is that a reverse-biased diode can't possibly be doing anything there, and ideally you don't have to learn from expensive experience that, without it, the switch contacts will at best be eroded by arcing from the stored energy in the load finding a path to ground, and at worst that inductive kick will spot-weld the contactor and send the motor running away until switched out of circuit with a hammer.

i forgot to bring my phone to the toilet yesterday