artlogic

I'm also in Michigan and curious about the specifics of options 2 and 3. Would you be willing to share the details?

TLDR; the current situation sucks, and is not sustainable. Save your pennies.

I started freelancing in 2012 with BCBS of MI. Being young-ish and healthy with no kids, just a spouse, I was paying something around $200/mo for a PPO with an HSA (side note: get an HSA and save - it's your best option for not being screwed as a freelancer). 3 years later and the AHA has left me at $400 a month for a HMO (downgrade), higher deductable (downgrade), but thankfully I still am allowed to use an HSA (HSA compatibility is complete bullshit, BTW).

Everything is out of pocket except some bare minimum prevention stuff. Everything trip to the doctor involves me wondering if it's really worth the money and the hassle (thanks to the HMO I can no longer see my old family doctor).

Those of you bound to say that I should shop around using the marketplace - yup, I did. This was the best deal. Insurance is dependent on geography. I'd love to see an app that told me which address would give me the most reasonable insurance. Any takers?

My suggestion - budget something like $500/mo/person. Half for insurance and half for saving in the HSA. As a freelancer you'll likely make too much money to have any of your insurance covered by the government. It's outrageously expensive, but if you have serious health problems, a $12.7k deductible is way less than potentially ten times that in hospital bills.

As an aside - I do believe the AHA did some good. I had friends in states without a non-profit insurance provider like BCBS who simply could not leave their jobs due to pre-existing conditions. That no longer happens, thankfully. However - we can do better. It's insane that I have to weigh the monetary cost of going to the doctor in my decision to go. Of course we all go for an acute illness, but I believe there are millions with minor chronic illness that are simply not getting treated because they cost of even the most common diagnostic tests is astronomical.

The "long-term" qualifier is important here. The best programmers I know are willing to go to great lengths to be lazy sometime in the future. Why write and maintain comments and documentation? Because you know when it breaks in the future it will be easier to fix, thus allowing you to fix the problem and go back to whatever "lazy" thing you were doing.

Let's be honest, the term lazy is loaded. I use the phrase "long-term lazy" because it elicits conversation. "You're looking for a trait that's considered negative? Why?" It's much easier to pull someone in by saying good programmers are lazy (in the long term) than good programmers are prudent.

I've found the phrase "long-term lazy" is the quickest way to describe the first virtue: someone who's willing to work hard today so they can be lazy (or have more time for other things) later on.

I've been using the Orgzly (http://www.orgzly.com/) beta for a couple of weeks and quite liking it in comparison to MobileOrg. You may want to give it a try. I found it to be a bit easier to get started with.

I've been using Privacy Badger for 6 months and I can't recommend it enough for non-technical people (or technical people that don't want to debug websites all day long).

The one problem I've found is that certain services that use a bookmark/iframe combo (instapaper, for instance), create problems because you want to whitelist instapaper, but aren't given a chance. For that, I recently found: https://tsibley.net/provoke-the-privacy-badger/

You are, of course, technically correct. However, I'd argue that at the level of a CS1 course, it's all just semantics. True beginners don't even understand the concept of a function, let alone an anonymous function. For a student that's struggling to understand what's happening (not just type and have faith), blocks turn into one of those 'down the rabbit hole' pieces of syntax that requires a bunch of hand waving and earnest assertions of eventual understanding.

If you've got an explanation that would work in week 2 or 3 of a CS1 course, I'd love to hear it. I never found one better than "It's shorthand for a function."

I've taught both, and IMHO, the Ruby is less suited for the job of an introductory language because a block (i.e. an anonymous function) is a hard concept for a beginner to grasp and a core part of idiomatic Ruby. Python's syntax simply has "less magic" and is more regular. Ruby's syntax seems to be suited for either folks who don't really want to know what's going on (just give me a DSL and leave me alone) or students who have one language under their belt and are looking for to branch out.

That said, Ruby includes a lot of interesting concepts, and while I don't believe it's an ideal first language, those concepts certainly belong in a CS program.

For those interested in a video demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrQJxCDrfrY

I've noticed the GC problem that you mention as well. To me it seems very much that when objects travel between V8 and Python is when problems begin to crop up. Sadly, I have yet to be able to fix this. I believe this issue captures it most concisely: https://code.google.com/p/pyv8/issues/detail?id=193

I'll have to see about publishing my work publicly, as I don't explicitly own it. My biggest piece of advice is to always build from the latest branched version of v8, rather than the trunk. Right now, that would be 3.23. The branched version tends to be a bit more stable than the trunk. Sadly, since the PyV8 maintainer works from the trunk, I've often had to build a few revs back to get things to compile if there was a major structural v8 change.

If you'd be willing to share the details of your build environment, I can see if my work is even applicable and go about getting the permission to publish what I've done.

BTW, I want to be clear that in no way am I disparaging the PyV8 maintainer. He's been very responsive and helped fix some problems that would have taken me weeks to fix on my own. The project simply isn't focused on stability at the moment.

I've been working with PyV8 for nearly 3 years, and while it's an impressive achievement, I've had to start using a custom version to maintain stability. One of the major issues with PyV8 currently is that is builds against V8's master branch, as opposed to a known stable version. This means it breaks from time to time due to the speed of V8 development. There are also not releases of PyV8 per se. It's been v1.0 for quite awhile now, despite a year or more worth of fixes since the bump from v0.9 to v1.0.

I would LOVE to see tighter integration of Python and JavaScript, but if you are planning on using PyV8 in any production code (as I am), I would think very carefully about it.

In my experience, it's not straightforward. First you need to install an update from ZTE to unlock fastboot. Then you'll need to compile 1.1 on your own, and flash it yourself. I'm hoping ZTE releases an OTA update, but I'm not holding my breath.

Let's assume I don't understand what the word startup means. What is it about the definition of startup prevents you from building one inside of another company?

This sort of thing is exactly why I didn't install Sublime Text on my new laptop. After using v2 for nearly a year and buying a license, I became more and more uncomfortable that if there was a problem with the product, I couldn't fix it myself. Having already been burned by TextMate, I decided enough was enough and only installed Emacs. That was last December, and I'd say I'm much happier - but I also spend a bit more time tweaking my editor than I probably should.

This is not to say I have anything against Sublime Text. It's a beautiful piece of work. It's simply not open source, and that's a deal breaker for a tool as integral to my day to day as a text editor.

I may be splitting hairs here, but I'm fairly sure it's a bit more than just the kernel. Fastboot, and ADB function identically. The partition/imaging layout is identical, so much so that I was easily able to run CWM Recovery on my ZTE Open. On top of that the build processes are very similiar and a large number of repos that appear to be forks of AOSP are included. Perhaps there's another name for this shared part, but I just figured all a good part of the native base was borrowed from Android.

If I made it sound like Firefox OS was just a fancy application launcher, that was not my intent.

The ZTE Open is actually just a cheap Android device. Firefox OS runs on top of Android. If you don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty, the current build scripts appear to support a number of old nexus devices (galaxy-nexus, nexus-4, nexus-s, nexus-s-4g, and the galaxy-s2 among others). I have not personally installed a build I've compiled on anything other than a ZTE Open, but from what I read it's too difficult - maybe a weekend's worth of work.

The last correction is a little tricky. Out of the seven occurrences of the string "James'" only two are incorrect. In the other cases "James'" shows ownership, although there's some debate on if it should be "James's" instead.

Sorry for nitpicking, but my name is James, so I've dealt with this a lot over the years. :)

I own volumes 1, 2 and the PC version. I can vouch for the quality and understandability of the code. I've read a number of operating systems books, and I've found volume 1 to be one of the most straightforward - if you can get past the fact it's written with the PDP-11 in mind. I bought the PC version on a whim after reading volume 1, and found it to be lacking in a number of ways, using BIOS for many system services and glossing over memory protection (not surprising as it targeted the 8086).

One of the more interesting things about Xinu is that its security model is ring based, and if I remember right, it takes advantage of rings 0-3, unlike many modern operating systems. I can't actually remember if the PDP-11's hardware supported this, or if it was emulated by the kernel.

One of my rainy day projects has always been to get Xinu up and running on a PDP-11 emulator - too many operating systems, too little time.

If by readable you mean proportional, then I believe a lot of the resistance comes from vertical alignment issues. For instance:

  def func_with_lots_of_parms(parm1, parm2,
                              parm3, parm4):

In my experience that's pretty difficult to do consistently with a proportional font, and then when someone changes to a different font, the alignment will be off.

To me, formatting code is more about creating a good experience for other people (and future me) and less about pleasing present me.

I rarely comment, but I feel compelled to add to this discussion.

Algebra, as it is taught today in the U.S., is not necessary, and is probably detrimental in many of the ways stated in the article. I can't speak for non-traditional schools, but public schools, with their focus on standardized testing, have effectively destroyed the original spirit behind teaching mathematics.

Mathematics, much like other academic topics (e.g. literary analysis), was taught not as a practical skill, but as a way to improve your abstract thinking and problem solving skills. As another commenter stated, Mathematics (along with most later academics) should be a gymnasium for your brain. I like this metaphor, because if you think about solo athletics, all students are not expected to achieve at a pre-defined level. Rather students are evaluated based on improvement in performance over time.

Sadly, mathematics in recent years has become less about abstract thinking and problem solving and more about rote memorization, computation, and application. I taught basic algebra to college students for a semester. One of my most interesting experiences was with the dreaded story problem. Most of the students were simply unable to apply math to solve a problem. They were all very good all computation, but when faced with a problem in a form they didn't recognize they instantly began flailing.

Standardized testing has turned math into the process of recognizing a form, plugging in the numbers, and computing. We're now starting to see the first generation of math teachers that are a product of standardized testing, and the results are frankly, frightening. I've spoken with younger math teachers who couldn't explain the practical importance of their subject. While they loved math, they couldn't tell me why they were teaching it, other than: "It's on the [standardized] test."

This is the kind of Algebra we don't need.

* * *

Incidentally, the only way I avoided the shocking deficiencies of standard high school "math" was by fighting my way into an advanced program at the local University. It was there I was introduced to Euclidean geometry and really learned what math was all about. I think everyone should learn Geometry using the Euclidean method. I learned from a simplified book (Geometry, by Moise/Downs) which starts out with a few more postulates than Euclid did. I'd go as far to say that geometry (properly taught) will make you a better programmer/problem solver/thinker.

Forgive me if I've missed this, but does this library have support for multipart/form-data POSTing? That's a capability in the python library that's sorely missing - especially in 2.X.

Could you expand on "lexical scope is unnecessary and potentially even a bad idea"? I'm really curious given that fact that almost all the languages I use support lexical and not dynamic scope.

Hands down the best thing about giving up cable (and broadcast) television is that I never just turn the TV on to "see what's on". If I turn on the TV it's because I make the conscious decision to watch something specific. The first month, in particular was illuminating. I found myself thinking about turning on the TV, but then, when faced with the decision of what to watch, I found it was easier to keep it off.

Not that I know of, but decent VPSes are relatively cheap - for instance: $5/mo - http://prgmr.com/

If you can't afford that, you can always run a SSH server from your residence and use that.

Are you talking about sliding up from home row to the keys above (e.g. J to U)? If so I believe I'm lifting my fingers up slightly (maybe 1mm) when moving between keys. I'm not actually sure if that is good or bad for my typing health, but it does keep me from getting caught in the gaps on an angled keyboard.

There are always the Realforce 103U models. If you don't mind me asking, what are the other 33 keys mapped to on your keyboard? In fact, what keyboard has 136 keys?

Mechanical keyboards may have lots of travel, but you don't have to use it all. While a mechanical keyboard may have 4-6mm of travel and scissor switch keyboards (like Apple's) only have 2mm, on a mechanical keyboard you don't have to bottom out the keys. Topre switches activate around 2mm - the same as your Apple keyboard. The difference being that your fingers aren't slamming into a hard plastic stop after each activation (unless you choose to bottom out your keys). Furthermore, well made domes don't tend to wiggle much more than the keys on an Apple.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by big gaps - Apple's keyboard also has some pretty sizable gaps between keys. Unless you have tiny fingers I think you'd want those gaps.

More information here: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=START+HERE+--+The+Gee...

I'm confused by what you're saying here - do you have a keyboard with '#' as a primary key? Every keyboard I've ever used requires shift-3 to generate a '#'.

Your reference to 3rd level keys seems to refer to an international keyboard. Is your keyboard not a U.S. layout?

I can't agree with you more.

One thing I have not seen mentioned is that cyclists are effectively INVISIBLE to cars when on sidewalks due to their speed. I work on a college campus and have watched motorists tune out sidewalk cyclists on a number of occasions - they aren't tracking objects moving faster than a pedestrian. On two of those occasions, the cyclists were hit - one was taken away in an ambulance with head injuries. Any near collision I've had has involved a pedestrian walkway of some sort.

As a cyclist your highest priority is to be seen. It's much harder to ignore a cyclist riding in the road.

I'd suggest that your idea of the "normal" professional isn't quite accurate. I worked at a fortune 500 for a few years. Most people put in 35-40 hours a week. Many of them were impossible to get a hold of during vacation. I'd also suggest that teaching is vastly different than coding - for at least half of the day.

My wife worked for a school that was an outlier - I admitted that (see my original comment). I can vouch for the fact that her average work week was 60 hours (for what that's worth). Roughly 30 of those were in front of students if I remember right. It's certainly easier when you aren't a new teacher, but good teachers constantly change their lessons and approaches creating additional prep work.

I've met very few good teachers who weren't putting just as much time into their jobs as everyone here is putting into their startups. Passion is passion.