I keep myself busy with professional, family and social events, and everything goes into Google Calendar. Usually I add things from my Linux workstation, and those entries are all synced to my Google Pixel 2 phone. As something gets close, my phone will remind me, and Waze can also tell me it's time to start driving.
I had the Twitter and Facebook apps on my previous phone (a Nexus 5) and consciously didn't install them on the Pixel 2 -- I spend enough time on social media as it is, I don't need to be crouched over a phone when I'm out -- that's when I should be chatting with friends, family, and people in my network. I even use my smartphone as a.. phone. I'm self-employed, so my clients can call me with questions. I have a stand-up meeting with my main client every day or two. Sure, I could use a land-line for that, but if he calls me and I'm travelling.. pfft.
The smartphone's also my alarm clock and my camera. Giving up all (most) of the functionality of a smart phone isn't going to happen.
> Employees at Google's parent company Alphabet earned "a median pay package of more than $197,000" in 2017, around 18% lower than Facebook's median salary of $240,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, this illustrates the competitive "talent war in Silicon Valley, where talented engineers are in limited supply." These two salaries were more than $100,000 above Amazon's median pay, which sat at $28,446.
Typo alert. Amazon's median salary is probably $128,446, based on context.. and reality.
I made $28K CAD in 1983, living in Toronto. I don't imagine American engineers made that little anywhere in the last thirty years.
You've reminded me of the hilarious fleet of Ford Taurus wagons that my employer had when I was there years ago (mid-90's). Out of ten vehicles, I believe eight had to go in for transmission replacement. They were leased vehicles, so the company didn't care, but it sure was inconvenient.
I started with C in 1981, and used that (with a side-trip to Pascal) till about 1998, at which point I started tinkering with Perl. I have used Perl solidly since then, but just downloaded Go this week and started to tinker with that. So Go could be by next language. Who knows.
Exactly this -- the vehicle wasn't safe below a temperature of X, and it had been 15 or 20 degrees F below that overnight. They were arguing over ridiculous points.
This was a few years after I'd graduated with my engineering degree. I was working on a robotics project, and I would often bring my lunch and eat it in the lab/office that we had. So I was at my desk when the tragedy occurred.
My co-worker came in from the mall where he'd gone to get lunch, and said something like, "The shuttle blew up, eh?", and I was stunned. (Yes, I'm Canadian.) When I got home, I watched the explosion on the news, but after the first few times couldn't watch it any more. And for probably twenty years afterwards, that piece of tape was a trigger -- I would see the image of the flame leaking out from underneath the craft, and have to look away, with tears in my eyes.
I was most saddened by the excellent Time magazine article that detailed the arguments between the engineers "It was too cold overnight -- we're not sure the vehicle is safe to fly." and the managers "NASA going to lose a lot of face if we don't launch and postpone again." So NASA launched, over the objections of the engineers. And we know the rest.
And now I have a mortgage that's having it's 25th anniversary, and is almost twice the size it was when I started. Why? Raising a family.
I'm not bitter -- just continuing to pay it down. It might be paid off by the time I'm in my mid-70's, but the odds are I'll sell the house (a small bungalow in Toronto) before then. For now (touch wood) the real estate market is healthy, so right now I have some equity.. but not as much as you'd think after making payments for 25 years.
The last time I was debt-free was Fall, 1990. That was a long time ago.
I was very fortunate -- I went to university in Canada, where university tuition is lower. The tuition for my last semester (four months, Winter '82) broke $1,000 for the first time. My parents had also taken out a Registered Education Savings Plan for me, which kicked in, I think, $800 for the last three years of my four year degree. And I had my Co-op work terms. With all that, I still needed a loan (it was around $2,500) to get me through the last year (OK, some of that may have paid for the month's vacation I took after finishing school).
I paid $500 of the loan off in my first six months after school, then a few months after that, received a notice that they'd start charging interest if the loan wasn't paid off in full by the first anniversary. I was earning $22,000 annually, but my expenses were low, so I managed to make four monthly payments of $550 per month to get it all paid off.
It didn't occur to my to skip out on the loan, although it was a relatively small amount. The only other loan I'd taken out was for a motorcycle -- four $400 payments -- and dodging those payments didn't occur to me either. I'd borrowed money, I had to pay it back.
I think the writer of TFA is in denial. They need to mend fences and start paying off the loan. You borrowed some money and promised to pay it back. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it's the responsible thing to do. Grow up.
Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
I just hope it's not going to be one of those "Only available in the United States" deals.
This sounds like a great opportunity that comes at a small cost.
Keep in mind that joining a startup is something that will be rewarding on a couple of levels. You can help guide the technical vision, get to know a good group of people working together on something great.
You also have to keep your feet on the ground. Don't let common sense be overwhelmed by your local Reality Distortion Field. Don't let your mind wander off about what colour of Lamborghini you're going to buy with your stock options.
And I hope you left your previous company on good terms -- you never know when you'll meet up with that organization or those people again. The world is a surprisingly small place.
Yeah, and guess what happens to the person ranked terrible? Here's one of the replies:
They gave me nothing to work on at the end, things they knew I couldn't do while others couldn't do them either. I had automation skills while another couple of people did not. They still got rid of me after rigging my performance review twice in a row while discrediting me for my accomplishments. It was so incredibly obvious and demoralizing. Meanwhile they replace you with a fresh college grad ONLY. If you looked at the age of people they fired over 10 years vs hired/and those who left with the threat of being fired for example those who got a 4 and knew they would get a 5 ranking the following yer....you would have a huge age discrimination lawsuit!!!! It would be a one two knockout punch! If you get fired at Microsoft and collect unemployment, they do not contest it in fear of being sued. So they pseudo fire you for "perf" reasons when in fact its a forced bs curve.
Confusingly, the web site http://frdcsa.org/frdcsa/ is full of broken links. And how hard is it to sign up for a PAUSE id and upload modules to CPAN? About the only difficult part of that is picking namespaces for the 800 modules that he's written.
I also learned on the same model of Teletype as those famous guys.
It was Fall 1973 at MacDonald High School in the West Island, and we Grade 10s had access to a PSBGM [1] system over a 110 baud modem. Under watchful eye of Mr. Seddon, we programmed in BASIC and his own invention, MALASIM [2], with its own instruction set. You could also sign up for time after school, and the fights for the time slots were sometimes violent. (You know you're a geek when..)
The first major code I actually saw written on this platform was a program that my Dad wrote, to see how the distribution of blood types changed over generations. He's an actuary, so being able to simulate something was fascinating for him. Conway's Game of Life (as first seen in the pages of Scientific American) was also fascinating to him.
Part of my early fascination in programming was reading through the entire BASIC manual, trying to understand all of the available syntax. Thus, when our assignment was to format our output, I used an IMAGE statement (PRINT USING..), and was able to get very fine control for an invoicing assignment. Two of the four terms in Grade 11 I got perfect, but due to PSBGM's lame report card application, they'd only left two digits for marks, so it had to be recorded as a 99.
Good times.
1. Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. 2. MAchine LAnguage SIMulator. It may have been MALASYM, I don't remember.
This sounds a lot like I Crave TV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICraveTV). Only 13 years ago, and already ancient history. Interesting. Time moves quickly.
It seems stunning that the British military would go ahead with a purchase like this without any field trials, especially for something as critical as a 'bomb sniffer' -- lives depend on this piece of equipment to work properly.
Musk was smart -- the logs don't lie, and they don't jibe with what the reporter said. Now, this was in print, in the new York Times -- I'd be fascinated to have seen the same story reported with in-car cameras. I have a funny feeling it would turn out differently.
And for Top Gear to film a bunch of people pushing the Tesla they were test-driving -- implying that it had run out of go, when in fact it still had some juice left -- that's just rotten. Entertaining TV, but crummy journalism, and cheap.
Find a college in your area that offers something more practical, if what you're going to be doing is web development.
Then again, if you are interested in dealing with more complex issues such as schema design, business intelligence, user experience, and operational issues like proxying, high availability, replication, then staying in computer science might be a better call.
Actually, $foo[3] is the *fourth* element of @foo. You count the array elements starting at 0, just like in C and assembler. Yes, $foo and @foo are completely different variables. Welcome to Perl.
I stayed in Beijing for eight days in September 2012, and the air quality didn't seem significantly different from any Canadian or American cities that I've visited. I also don't recall seeing anyone wearing face masks.
Nice -- the last place I worked didn't really like guys a little older like me (50+), regardless of how good a job I did. I'm now happily working full-time on contract, and from what I hear, my last employer is working harder and harder trying to hire people.
Really, the key barrier to entry is, a) can you do the job, b) are you keen? Who cares about age, race, sex -- can you do the job?
Slashdot Mirror
I keep myself busy with professional, family and social events, and everything goes into Google Calendar. Usually I add things from my Linux workstation, and those entries are all synced to my Google Pixel 2 phone. As something gets close, my phone will remind me, and Waze can also tell me it's time to start driving.
I had the Twitter and Facebook apps on my previous phone (a Nexus 5) and consciously didn't install them on the Pixel 2 -- I spend enough time on social media as it is, I don't need to be crouched over a phone when I'm out -- that's when I should be chatting with friends, family, and people in my network. I even use my smartphone as a .. phone. I'm self-employed, so my clients can call me with questions. I have a stand-up meeting with my main client every day or two. Sure, I could use a land-line for that, but if he calls me and I'm travelling .. pfft.
The smartphone's also my alarm clock and my camera. Giving up all (most) of the functionality of a smart phone isn't going to happen.
> Employees at Google's parent company Alphabet earned "a median pay package of more than $197,000" in 2017, around 18% lower than Facebook's median salary of $240,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, this illustrates the competitive "talent war in Silicon Valley, where talented engineers are in limited supply." These two salaries were more than $100,000 above Amazon's median pay, which sat at $28,446.
Typo alert. Amazon's median salary is probably $128,446, based on context .. and reality.
I made $28K CAD in 1983, living in Toronto. I don't imagine American engineers made that little anywhere in the last thirty years.
Oh .. Ford Taurus transmissions!
You've reminded me of the hilarious fleet of Ford Taurus wagons that my employer had when I was there years ago (mid-90's). Out of ten vehicles, I believe eight had to go in for transmission replacement. They were leased vehicles, so the company didn't care, but it sure was inconvenient.
I started with C in 1981, and used that (with a side-trip to Pascal) till about 1998, at which point I started tinkering with Perl. I have used Perl solidly since then, but just downloaded Go this week and started to tinker with that. So Go could be by next language. Who knows.
Exactly this -- the vehicle wasn't safe below a temperature of X, and it had been 15 or 20 degrees F below that overnight. They were arguing over ridiculous points.
This was a few years after I'd graduated with my engineering degree. I was working on a robotics project, and I would often bring my lunch and eat it in the lab/office that we had. So I was at my desk when the tragedy occurred.
My co-worker came in from the mall where he'd gone to get lunch, and said something like, "The shuttle blew up, eh?", and I was stunned. (Yes, I'm Canadian.) When I got home, I watched the explosion on the news, but after the first few times couldn't watch it any more. And for probably twenty years afterwards, that piece of tape was a trigger -- I would see the image of the flame leaking out from underneath the craft, and have to look away, with tears in my eyes.
I was most saddened by the excellent Time magazine article that detailed the arguments between the engineers "It was too cold overnight -- we're not sure the vehicle is safe to fly." and the managers "NASA going to lose a lot of face if we don't launch and postpone again." So NASA launched, over the objections of the engineers. And we know the rest.
And now I have a mortgage that's having it's 25th anniversary, and is almost twice the size it was when I started. Why? Raising a family.
I'm not bitter -- just continuing to pay it down. It might be paid off by the time I'm in my mid-70's, but the odds are I'll sell the house (a small bungalow in Toronto) before then. For now (touch wood) the real estate market is healthy, so right now I have some equity .. but not as much as you'd think after making payments for 25 years.
The last time I was debt-free was Fall, 1990. That was a long time ago.
I was very fortunate -- I went to university in Canada, where university tuition is lower. The tuition for my last semester (four months, Winter '82) broke $1,000 for the first time. My parents had also taken out a Registered Education Savings Plan for me, which kicked in, I think, $800 for the last three years of my four year degree. And I had my Co-op work terms. With all that, I still needed a loan (it was around $2,500) to get me through the last year (OK, some of that may have paid for the month's vacation I took after finishing school).
I paid $500 of the loan off in my first six months after school, then a few months after that, received a notice that they'd start charging interest if the loan wasn't paid off in full by the first anniversary. I was earning $22,000 annually, but my expenses were low, so I managed to make four monthly payments of $550 per month to get it all paid off.
It didn't occur to my to skip out on the loan, although it was a relatively small amount. The only other loan I'd taken out was for a motorcycle -- four $400 payments -- and dodging those payments didn't occur to me either. I'd borrowed money, I had to pay it back.
I think the writer of TFA is in denial. They need to mend fences and start paying off the loan. You borrowed some money and promised to pay it back. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it's the responsible thing to do. Grow up.
Great advice! +1
Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
I just hope it's not going to be one of those "Only available in the United States" deals.
Disagree. I was pursued by Google in 2007 and in 2013 (both times they contacted me out of the blue). I turned thirty in 1988.
My understanding is that they want bright people who can think on their feet. I can still do that, even at my (heh) advanced age. :)
This sounds like a great opportunity that comes at a small cost.
Keep in mind that joining a startup is something that will be rewarding on a couple of levels. You can help guide the technical vision, get to know a good group of people working together on something great.
You also have to keep your feet on the ground. Don't let common sense be overwhelmed by your local Reality Distortion Field. Don't let your mind wander off about what colour of Lamborghini you're going to buy with your stock options.
And I hope you left your previous company on good terms -- you never know when you'll meet up with that organization or those people again. The world is a surprisingly small place.
Yeah, and guess what happens to the person ranked terrible? Here's one of the replies:
Sigh.
It seems this would be a simple job for a 3D printer -- 1) get the person's fingerprint; 2) print it out as a 3D object; 3) ??? 4) profit!!
Confusingly, the web site http://frdcsa.org/frdcsa/ is full of broken links. And how hard is it to sign up for a PAUSE id and upload modules to CPAN? About the only difficult part of that is picking namespaces for the 800 modules that he's written.
I also learned on the same model of Teletype as those famous guys.
It was Fall 1973 at MacDonald High School in the West Island, and we Grade 10s had access to a PSBGM [1] system over a 110 baud modem. Under watchful eye of Mr. Seddon, we programmed in BASIC and his own invention, MALASIM [2], with its own instruction set. You could also sign up for time after school, and the fights for the time slots were sometimes violent. (You know you're a geek when ..)
The first major code I actually saw written on this platform was a program that my Dad wrote, to see how the distribution of blood types changed over generations. He's an actuary, so being able to simulate something was fascinating for him. Conway's Game of Life (as first seen in the pages of Scientific American) was also fascinating to him.
Part of my early fascination in programming was reading through the entire BASIC manual, trying to understand all of the available syntax. Thus, when our assignment was to format our output, I used an IMAGE statement (PRINT USING ..), and was able to get very fine control for an invoicing assignment. Two of the four terms in Grade 11 I got perfect, but due to PSBGM's lame report card application, they'd only left two digits for marks, so it had to be recorded as a 99.
Good times.
1. Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal.
2. MAchine LAnguage SIMulator. It may have been MALASYM, I don't remember.
Either the site's slashdotted already (after twelve minutes, on a Sunday afternoon?), or it's The Most Boring Movie Ever Made.
This sounds a lot like I Crave TV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICraveTV). Only 13 years ago, and already ancient history. Interesting. Time moves quickly.
It seems stunning that the British military would go ahead with a purchase like this without any field trials, especially for something as critical as a 'bomb sniffer' -- lives depend on this piece of equipment to work properly.
Madness.
Musk was smart -- the logs don't lie, and they don't jibe with what the reporter said. Now, this was in print, in the new York Times -- I'd be fascinated to have seen the same story reported with in-car cameras. I have a funny feeling it would turn out differently.
And for Top Gear to film a bunch of people pushing the Tesla they were test-driving -- implying that it had run out of go, when in fact it still had some juice left -- that's just rotten. Entertaining TV, but crummy journalism, and cheap.
+1
Find a college in your area that offers something more practical, if what you're going to be doing is web development.
Then again, if you are interested in dealing with more complex issues such as schema design, business intelligence, user experience, and operational issues like proxying, high availability, replication, then staying in computer science might be a better call.
Sounds pretty cool .. and my classmate Chuck developed something like this for a workshop project of his .. in 1982.
Actually, $foo[3] is the *fourth* element of @foo. You count the array elements starting at 0, just like in C and assembler. Yes, $foo and @foo are completely different variables. Welcome to Perl.
I stayed in Beijing for eight days in September 2012, and the air quality didn't seem significantly different from any Canadian or American cities that I've visited. I also don't recall seeing anyone wearing face masks.
YMMV.
Nice -- the last place I worked didn't really like guys a little older like me (50+), regardless of how good a job I did. I'm now happily working full-time on contract, and from what I hear, my last employer is working harder and harder trying to hire people.
Really, the key barrier to entry is, a) can you do the job, b) are you keen? Who cares about age, race, sex -- can you do the job?