bryan11

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For me, early morning is best before I've been pulled into meetings or chats for various topics. That's the best time to block off time to focus on hard problems for a while.

The book 'Deep Work' by Cal Newport has some good perspectives on this.

Do: * Let me know what you see as 'next steps' based on my current position. This establishes that you've looked at my background and have at least a general understanding of what my current job title means. It may also show you haven't and are likely wasting my time.

Don't: * Ask my current and expected salary requirements

Refactoring frequently has to compete for resources with new feature requests and bug fixes. Even when team members are sure refactoring will help considerably, it can be hard to get traction.

Performance testing can highlight areas of the code that need help, so work to improve scaling and performance abilities can be used to justify resources to refactor related code.

Sometimes a new feature request can be used similarly where the refactoring and new feature development is a better option than trying to develop only with existing code.

I'm reading Deep Work by Cal Newport now and am finding it to be quite useful and have valuable perspectives

This looks great and very useful. Thank you!

Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity can be fun. They do home repair projects for lower income homeowners in local communities. It's generally a great group of people.

I built a system for MySQL a while ago so database patches (data fix, schema change, etc) are applied with code deploys. All database patches are written to be repeatable, which means they contain logic that checks if they've been run already. They also have release and sequence ID so they're tracked and may be run out of sequence if needed. Once everyone got accustomed to the system, it's worked well for several years now.

Mercury: Dental amalgams (aka silver fillings) Pesticides and herbicides

Added waterproof liner under kitchen and bathroom sinks so water leaks don't damage cabinets. Also added battery powered water leak alarms.

Got tired of carrying laundry downstairs, so I changed one bathroom cabinet drawer into a laundry chute.

When I asked, they said the insurance company forces them to collect two metrics or the insurance will reject the claim. That's why a nurse always gets your weight, temperature, and/or blood pressure regardless of the reason you're seeing a doctor.

I track all my projects in ~/Documents/projects/[current|pending|completed]. Each project has its own folder and a <projectName.txt> summary file. As each project progresses, the projectName.txt file is updated and the folder receives other spreadsheets, text files, images, and copies of e-mails. Large projects that have subprojects have a "=" in front of their folder name so they're easily identified.

Another +1 for Gitlab

Prioritize time carefully, read, and stay in tech. Use agendas to control and limit meeting time. Work with tech at a high level involving architecture and directions, then hand off sub-projects to your direct reports.

Read fiction. For me, science fiction broadens perspectives and increases creativity in ways that apply directly to work.

Excellent article. Great game.

Read books, especially fiction. For me, reading science fiction significantly increased my creativity and problem solving skills at work.

The self checkout systems I see locally are rather slow and unfriendly. First, there's a slow and loud voice prompting you for every step. The volume is high enough to be painful at times. Next, some tend to scan some items twice, but there's no way to remove an item without waiting for an employee to come over and help. If a price is incorrect, plan on an even longer delay.

Current self checkout systems appear to only move the work of a cashier onto the customer, then force them to wait longer for anything that needs correction.

Nice work!

Has the increasing cost of health insurance motivated employers to start using more contract workers?

Every few weeks, many cities in Iowa drive trucks throughout the city fogging the neighborhoods with permethrin based pesticides. A popular choice is called MasterLine Kontrol 4-4.

That is truly awesome.

First story: The Fireman by Ray Bradbury

This quote seems key: “Time is now currency: It is not passed but spent,” wrote historian E. P. Thompson.

Blair's After Death Sauce. Very hot but with good flavor.

You could work with dumbbells using one or both hands when listening to conference calls. It's good to get up and move around a bit regularly, so one can make a point to do ten pushups, burpees, or jumping jacks every time you start to step away from your desk. Small sets of exercise add up and can be very beneficial.

Check out used furniture stores and business equipment auctions for expensive chairs such as Steelcase. When businesses close, they sometimes sell great chairs for good prices.

Exactly. Perception is key. Communication determines how you are perceived.

When remote, the communication tools are different. Instead of walking over to talk to others, you're likely using chat, voice, or video calls. The meetings include shared screens with conference calls. After a meeting, you may chat or call someone for a private discussion. Those private discussions are likely how you build social bonds and get to know others personally. They can also make it clear you're available to help.

In the office or remote, your communication style builds a perception of how involved you are in projects, what you can contribute, and whether you're viewed as a needed or disposable.

Nicely done! I'll have to to play with this.

Innotop is great for watching things live. To review long or resource intensive queries, the Percona toolkit scripts create excellent summaries of the MySQL slow query log.

I use them to send these weekly reports to our developers: Slow queries, lock waits, transactions with the most rows affected, transaction by highest statement count, largest statements by rows affected, busiest tables, queries doing full table scan or full join, and busy writes.

By sending all those soot particles high into the atmosphere, will they create an effect similar to that of a volcano where the soot reflects sunlight?