mttyng

Yeah, note taking posts have been ramping up in the last few days/weeks. I’ve noticed that as well. I’m enjoying it, to be honest. I’m always looking to make my process (which, currently, is rather hodgepodge) more streamlined.

I wish I had the link, but last week someone linked to something called `bash_log` which was someone’s bash function that created time stamped md files for simple journaling. Nothing groundbreaking, but for me it was a step up.

Currently, I’m using StandardNotes, the forementioned bash utility with GitHub pushing, and god-help-me random moleskins. I’ve also tried Dynalist which was nice but I didn’t like that I couldn’t lock it down and link it to GitHub.

If anyone has any suggestions in the context of what I’ve posted, I’m all ears. The article gives me some ideas, as does your response. I’d be interested in more concrete examples of what you’re doing if you wouldn’t mind.

That’s what’s happening? Oh man, that really started to be prevalent for me in the last week or two. Very frustrating.

God, I want to mess around with one of these so, so, sooo badly. But with a 14 month-old toddling around the house it would probably end up just sitting, untouched, for a indeterminate amount of time. But still...

Sent.

Ah, I like that. I actually try to go to the gym to keep my leg strength up _for_ skateboarding. I partially blame my passion for programming (i.e. sitting for long stretches of time) for it. Realistically, I know it's partially my age catching up with me, though, I'd rather not admit that ;).

I have such a deep love for skateboarding. I go through bouts of depression that seemingly nothing can pull me out of, but stepping on my board always parts the clouds.

But, it’s tricky. Partaking in it and becoming so wrapped up in its subculture can pull a kid, if left without proper mentors, into a very self-destructive world. At least that’s been my experience. It’s a world of extremes, both physically and behaviorally. I’ve seen the subculture (well, its negative sides) destroy a few people in my 25 years as a skateboarder.

I on the other hand, much like the article highlights for these kids, have no idea where I would be if not for skateboarding. I truly believe it saved me. It kept me active and pushing (pun!) towards a goal my entire adolescence, when academic pursuits meant nothing. Without it I likely would have fallen into something more destructive and anti-social.

That aside the lessons I see it imparting on kids are hard to find in team-based sports. Self-reliance, learning how to mute the fear and self-doubt in your inner monologue, persistence...these are hard lessons to get in one sitting, but they’re ever-present in skating.

Ha! Good point. Although, I don’t think I was the targeted audience. It seemed to be more geared towards individuals that label themselves as “writers”. I remember practically nothing from my grammar education. Terminology like “definite article” might as well be Mandarin.

It’s exceedingly difficult to write clearly and get your point across, and this is especially true for technical subject matter. Steven Pinker calls this the “blindness of expertise” which prohibits us from explaining concepts we’re familiar with in a clear way because we assume the reader to have more knowledge than they actually do. Reading his book, “A Sense of Style” made a lot of things clearer to me in terms of writing. I recommend the book highly, even though it gets _super_ deep on grammatical structure and, from my perspective, that tended to be a little dry (and over my head).

Whoa.

That gives me pause. It makes absolute sense, but it never occurred to me.

> What's the on-call plan/schedule? (what's the pay for standby and call-out)

I’ve never been in a position where we were paid for on-call (i.e. fix prod at 2am) work. Is that not typical?

With respect to your daily medications, did your physician sign-off on this for _that_ duration (a few years)? From what I’ve heard these medications were not supposed to be taken for longer than a few weeks at a time.

I’m asking out of curiosity and as a near-chronic sufferer of reflux. It seems that anything other than room temperature water gives me indigestion.

Is that via Twilio? Or something else?

How did you set this all up? It’s really interesting to me. Is there an article somewhere?

I’m sure the following statement will lead to my e-crucifixion, but:

As much as I love dogs (RIP to my passed, canine buddy), I think the “take your dogs everywhere” thing is out of control now. Maybe that’s not that dangerous of a sentiment, but I shouldn’t have to dodge your dog in the supermarket.

At what point do we as a society start pushing back on this?

TL;DR: “How does Amazon choose its choices? Do humans have a hand in the decisions, or are they governed by an algorithm? The company won’t say.”

...followed by theories.

Yeah, but it “solves” it at a monetary and privacy cost (albeit relatively small for the former).

It bothers me that we tolerate various personal possessions (in this instance privacy) being taken away and then given back, generously (/s), for a small fee. I would rather be groped and spoken down to then hand more information/money over to another poorly-managed organization.

Moreover, the Airline-Security group has always been reactive rather than proactive. I don’t see how TSA pre-check prevents anything in the first place. What’s to stop someone from deciding at some point after the Pre-Check process that they want to create havoc on a flight? Nothing. Then we’ll have Super-Pre-Check, for only $190 and this time you “only have to” give a DNA swab. Sorry for the cynicism, etc, but I doubt I’m alone in calling the whole thing a facade.

Anyway, I forgot my initial point, but there’s my rant.

I think “DoorDash orders” in this case is referring to the individuals working _in_ the establishment. Not the drivers.

I've followed a similar path as you. I was a late-bloomer, academically. Just sorta bounced around until my mid-twenties when I got bored/depressed (or did I simply realize I would be miserable later in life?) with what I was doing in my minimum-wage jobs. I somehow got interested in Physics, put myself back into school, at which point I became incredibly interested in Software Development during an internship my Junior year and the rest is a standard Tech Industry story.

I work really long hours, not because I feel some need to satisfy my corporate overlords or because I have too much to do, but simply because I find it fun. I'm sure most everyone here can relate, but that feeling of banging your head against a wall for (x-amount of time) and then suddenly nailing a solution is exhilarating. I don't think that I can hit burnout with that, but maybe I'm wrong.

I see two things with this:

1) I (and this cannot be stressed enough) got _really_ lucky having an inherent interest in something that also aligned with a market need.

2) In the course of "bouncing around" in my late-teens and early-twenties I had a lot of time to ruminate (consciously or not) on who I was and what I wanted with life. This isn't some profound thing I'll say and I've certainly seen it echoed here before, but pushing young people (let's be real... they're kids) to make an extremely costly decision that will impact the entirety of their life without knowing who they even are is...crazy.

Like you, I'll contrast that with my wife: High School -> SATs -> college application process -> enter a curriculum for (insert here) -> graduate -> get a job (not even in your mid-twenties yet). Maybe some people do know who they are at an early age, but I'd wager most people don't really know themselves until ~25.

And now, here you are, coming to terms with yourself after having invested god-knows-how-much money and four years into something you'll likely evolve out of, but still needing to put in the hours to make ends meet and climb the ladder (we all want to be middle management, right?). The key to loving your job in the age of burnout is to not take your job until you know who you are. And even then your interests may not even align with an economic need. So what do you do? Especially when you need to feed yourself and, potentially, your family. It seems to me that finding a career that you like and that feels like fun, rather than work, is a total crap shoot. Sort of like a romantic relationship. Ideally, you want a partner that grows with you, but as we all know that's hard to predict because people change at varying rates or not at all.

TL;DR: If you're (really really) lucky and happen to fall into a career path that grows with you, you might not experience burnout

That's really interesting, for itself and other reasons. The US sending a commission into Japan (in '45!) for the sole purpose of studying survivability related to atomic blasts seems sort of mind-blowing to me.

Thank you for the podcast reference.

Assuming we (Earth) get some reasonable warning time for a problematic impact, the logistics of alerting -and then moving- a large metropolitan area like NYC, for example, are interesting. Where do we place these people? What about the city's infrastructure? Do we just stand by, brace for impact and hope for the best? Or is there something more we could do to mitigate the disaster? I know a lot of that depends on the amount of time beforehand, but I find the problem intriguing.

I agree with the improbability completely (not that I speak from authority, but your reasoning is sound).

That being said, there’s something about the depth of the ocean that has always fascinated me to the point where I teeter on the edge of “abandonment of reason”. Maybe it’s the child in me that wants these creatures to still exist, yet evade study in defiance of of humanity’s technical dominance, but I could sit for extended periods of time and let my imagination run wild with it.

> bad patterns for some people

I have definitely seen that in other people when I was doing my physics undergrad. And to some extent, I probably experienced that myself.

I was on the road to starting a Cosmology PhD with incredibly high aspirations but my (then) girlfriend gave me an ultimatum: physics or me. To be fair, she was the primary bread winner and a graduate lifestyle would have been an even greater strain on the relationship. So, I opted for the latter and went into software. Also, like you, I have no regrets.

I still miss physics incredibly and, you’re right, there is something exceedingly sexy about solving those (including mathematics here) sorta problems. I sort of see it as a way to reach across generations and walk the same paths as the giants have. Anyway, I do find a great amount of joy in software problems, but nothing beats that first love.

Not that this is intended to be the end-all-be-all of "Must Read" Software Engineering books, but I find it refreshing that Clean Code isn't listed. It has some good points, but I think in the wrong hands it proves to be too dogmatic and can create friction within certain teams.

Then again, I'm just some random dude on the internet, so what do I know.

Edit: ugh, nevermind it _is_ early. I know that answer. Thanks for the cool functions.

> this gets the git branch to display when I cd into a git repo

It's early and I'm lazy... will this always parse the branch upon entering any git directory?

Some simple things, but little timesavers:

  function mk() {
    mkdir -p $1 && cd &1
  }

  alias gpm='git pull master'
  alias gcm='git checkout master'
  alias grh='git reset --hard HEAD'
  alias gs='git status'
  alias gd='git diff'

  alias h='history | grep' # Use like, "h ssh" to see all ssh in your history

Thanks! I just started reading that last night. Pretty good so far.

What if -and I'm sorry to hijack- by low-level OP means a position as a C/C++ developer (asking for ~a friend~ me)? I've always been insanely attracted to the C variants and messed around with them to minor extents, but what might someone _need_ to know to be competitive if they're trying to make a move to that area of SE?

That depends heavily on your philosophical interpretation of mathematics: Platonism vs. Formalism

Someone linked the BBC video, which is great, but there’s also a wonderful book that discusses this and many other facets of mathematical philosophy:

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-about-Mathematics-Philosophy...

(Sorry for the link spew) I highly recommend that book to anyone remotely interested in the field.

This might be overly cynical (and I'm not going to address the utility of such a USB safety net), but I can see this being used as a way to only allow <insert your multi-national tech corp. here>-approved chargers.