bradleysmith

Anywhere we can find up-to-date titles on executives in organizations is very effective for leads generation. Linkedin, Manta, Businessweek biz listings, or ASKINT (cold-call with sole intention of finding out "who's in charge of XXX", build the lead and get the name only for concentrated calls later) all have been effective. We have identified companies of a particular genre previously, and targeted particular titles in those orgs. I personally like running a Manta scraper and vetting results by hand with Linkedin to confirm current titles. I strongly suggest getting Rapportive for Gmail for snooping networks associated with email addresses. If you want to get really snoopy, Maltego is a great tool for looking for connections elsewhere on the web.

We have also found trade-shows to be fairly effective at having companies self-identify as needing our service and providing contacts that you have early rapport with to help you find your guy in their company. More effective for bigger business development deals (which can distract as much as help, in my experience), but was moderately successful for us.

Bonus of tradeshows: company listings of all the competitors. Generally these will be great lead-list starting material that you can vet down to be high-quality leads (again, in our industry)

I appreciate this sentiment and attitude. I am perturbed by those that tout the scientific method as a catch-all epistemological tool that solves all problems of human thought. As you said, there are many things that sit squarely outside of the realm of scientific observation, and they are just as valid as science as attempts to better understand our universe.

its also fairly effective at storing and working with geodata. I really like the Geonames rss to georss geocoding API.

shameless plug for attention on a for-fun doo-dad I built: intelmap.com uses an RSS feed generated by a hackernews clone at news.intelmap.com and drops it on an openlayers map. a better example of geoRSS is syria.intelmap.com, that is a collection of more lively feeds.

I believe there's a natural intuition for reading the expected movements of the other player, and have seen this reproduced (if anecdotally by only testing between myself and her, and not recording results) hundreds of times. Like you, 10-12 streaks of ties were not uncommon, certainly less common than statistics would seem to dictate.

somewhat relevant, there's a competitive league: http://www.usarps.com/

I always wanted to see it in vegas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX4T20t6lU

EDIT: clarity

Happy to be corrected, just commenting for the sake of discussion. This is how I understand the 'efficiency' of such experimental energy to be determined.

If you are in sales, it's invaluable in finding individuals in organizations. Maybe some think this is a bad thing and that's fine; I do not. If you are job hunting, it is unbelievable to be able to put something directly in front of the actual person hiring before getting in the door.

Despite being filled with strangeness, many of their industry groups are good for finding specific knowledge. It's scummy (and much less knowledgable than HN or forums around the net), but that's just how some of the internets be, I guess.

It does seem a bit like MySpace; something almost exactly like what they are actually trying to accomplish.

I understand the disdain some have for Linkedin, but I myself have benefited from using it.

verbatim from the rules here[0]:

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

complaining something is on the front page, for all intents and purposes, is the same as saying it isn't appropriate for the site. Therefore, don't comment about it. Flag it. If you can't, than be civil and useful in comments until you can.

Not good enough for me.

This site isn't for YOU. It's for everyone, and you're breaking the rules. Play along, or move along.

IMO it's an overhyped show for the manchildren in a traumatized post 9-11 US (and, by it's cultural influence, the rest of the developed world).

Thanks for adding some actual content. It didn't really reply to my comment on this particular analysis, but I think I understand what you're getting at.

It's over-hyped, how? As in, popular and successful? or, heavily advertised? or just regarded better than it really is?

It's not really 'for' anyone but is meant to be appropriate for children, per the artist's interview in the article. Us man-children just like it, because it is poignant, intelligent, timely, and open-minded.

how a traumatized population in a post 9-11 US plays into Adventure Time is not 'obvious' to me. Perhaps you could enlighten all of us in 'bottom of thread' land as to what the hell you're talking about?

I respect your opinion, fellow internet denizen. I just don't appreciate your approach.

[0] - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

God, is this comment narrative old; If you don't think it should be on HN, go read something else, and certainly stay out of the comment thread.

I'm thankful it was hovering on second page on Sunday so I could catch the damned story. Best analysis of Adventure Time as an adult narrative I've every seen, really.

Given Adventure Time's regular toying with ideas like SCIENCE vs. MAGIC, boundaries of morally responsible science, D&D meta-geekery (character alignments), machine sentience (BMO), and all of the games it plays in gender & identity roles and other existential weirdness, I always assumed it's adult audience would be strongly represented on HN.

Not only was the article the most in-depth analysis of the show I've ever come across, but the comments here contain intelligent discussion and observation that lead me to similar analyses and content like Adventure Time.

This was a perfect article for HN, as I use it; identify things tangentially interesting to the 'hacker' mind, in all it's different forms, and provide intellectual discussion on it.

Thanks to OP for finding it and you (dang) for allowing the discussion to remain. Glad to have seen it.

EDIT: for clarity

At 21, I was pursuing a bachelors of science, and working two jobs. I was NOT paying my own way.

I'm now a VP at a startup working for a livable salary and commission. I pay my bills on my own (and have since shortly after graduating), and am paying my family for the money I borrowed. I have strong alternative job prospects in different roles in multiple industries, and have real experience in a variety of professional settings.

Could I have cut all my expenditures above what I was making at 21, enrolled in a different school, and paid my own way entirely? absolutely. Would I be more or less successful immediately upon doing so? What about now? Hard to answer either, but I am not worried in assuming I would be less successful in both time-frames.

You have a very narrow definition of success in your comment. You are welcome to your opinion, but that particular one will probably be misleading in understanding others. I think you've done very well for yourself if you are self-sufficient at 21, but to define this as success seems quite dismissive to me. As said in another comment, this is labeling all but a select few university students as failures which, as it seems to me, is a plainly bad assumption.

I like to think this is a fair assumption at 30 years old, though. I would imagine it is a source of shame if a person is not paying their own expenses at this age; it certainly would be for me. This term 'emerging adults' is describing those people going from adolescents at 17 to self-sufficient adults at 29+.

I think 'emerging adult' is a quite good description of a human growth stage. Having lived through that time period more completely than you, I know how much growing I've done since 21 both in my ability and acceptance of responsibility to sustain myself and in my understanding of others. I am also much more willing to accept happenstance as a contributing factor for my successes and others' failures, which is something I can suggest to you.

To old gray-hairs in the oil patch, management in tech companies, among VC lenders, or any other 50+year old 'successes', both you and I are still 'kids'. This is true regardless of whether we're paying our own way or not. That, to me, is a good working meaning of 'emerging adult'. The basic notion is that people still have some 'growing up' to do at 21 or even 25, which I agree with.

Thanks for the list!

The variance in technical ability of the 'average person' nowadays is pretty wide. There are still pop-up clicking grandmothers on IE7 out there, but there are also plenty of baby-boomers with the ability to set the clock on their VCR's, which is a much more fair analogy to the task of router configuration.

I think the important thing is getting the message out that such configuration is much more important than having the clock on your VCR right, which is probably how important the average person thinks router configuration is. As you said in another comment, routers are effectively shipping to average people broken. I think if this were more commonly known, people would take the time to learn and configure their networks. Not ALL people, but more average people than do today. The real problem is not that people are not technically capable of doing the task, but they do not know that it is a task that is really necessary; it's not common knowledge that a brand new router is a security risk.

http://www.vipukirves.fi/english/tale_of_vipukirves.htm

It seems this leveraged action (which is absolutely awesome, by the by) would necessitate the use of a tire even more. Beware of windows, cars, etc. without one.

A useful 'get started' mind-trick I've found in sales came from Zig Zagler (don't stop reading yet) and it is pretty simple:

Don't start by trying to make a sale. Start by trying to have conversations with people that use (or could use) your product or service.

start by trying to have (100) conversations with the exact people that would use your widget. If your product actually can help these people, it will sell. If it won't, you'll find out how and why it is not helpful very quickly.

flights from Austin to Amarillo are as cheap as they come; same with DFW, or Houston. You could probably still keep up with your daughter while working elsewhere; plus, the 6 hour drive isn't really a deal-breaker. I have a cousin that drives from Midland area to Lago Vista multiple times a month to see their kid; he's a painter, and makes it work on his wages. Invest in some audio books, point your car in the right direction, and press on the skinny pedal on the right!

If you're wanting to stay in that geography (I'm one of those rare people that actually LIKE North and West Texas), you can always look for work you can do remotely. There is a lot of this available, and companies in TX may be more likely to hire you if you are able to come for an introductory meeting and are operating in the same time zone.

best of luck!

"To sum up, for the last several months, while living in Russia, Snowden has been putting forward a justification for his acts (a) that he knows is not true, since it doesn’t explain his actions, (b) that is approved at the highest levels by the Russian government and (c) that gravely harms the US and helps Russia in its confrontations with the US around the world."

Thanks tokenadult, as usual, for the regular updates from an opposing view on Snowden. I'm still undecided whether the man was operating for attention from the start, or got scared and changed his plans after the leak already got under way. In either case, I've come around to accept Snowden as a non-altruistic actor.

I worked from home about 50-50 before this. As you may imagine, concentration and focus became impossible at my house, difficult everywhere else.

My advice is not meant to be callous, but: grin and bear it. Struggle through, and find the focus within yourself. You'll make it through this, regardless of what happens. How do you want remember making it through?

Some tricks I found that helped me work:

classical music on headphones,

small manageable tasks (decide tasks to be done, choose tasks you're doing, stay on target),

mental mantra's ("be vigilant, stay on target", "my time is valuable and irreplaceable" both did me well),

meditation (seriously; 20 min at morning and night thinking about nothing but your breathing does wonders to let you focus).

Spend free-time with empathetic and sincere friends (not coddling; the goal is not comfort but mental digestion and moving on emotionally; if necessary, seek professional counselling),

exercising,

and lots of outdoors (helped me put things in perspective).

I also found the poem 'Desiderata' by Max Ehrmann to be a big help (to each their own.) I've put the lines that helped me the most below:

"Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

Above all, forgive yourself for feeling like hell. It's expected, and acceptable. Best of luck.

EDIT: Formatting

[0] - http://www.stefanom.org/spc/?view=2974678

The 'fact-check' feature is fantastic, I'm excited to see how it plays out and hope you get some traction.

You don't happen to have an RSS feed being generated for grasswire, do you? I'd love to play with the feed via xml.

Would love to collaborate you if you need another interested brain to bounce ideas off of, feel free to email me.