waivej

I got exposed to programming neural networks in the early 90s. It solved certain problems incredibly fast like the traveling salesman problem. I was tinkering with 3D graphics and fractals and map pathfinding. Though it didn’t occur to me how much more power was there.

“Data” was so much smaller then. I had a minuscule hard drive if any, no internet, 8 bit graphics but nothing photo realistic, glimpses of windows and os2, and barely a mouse. In retrospect, it was like embedded programming.

I love stuff like this and brainstorm ideas for the ones in my garage. Of course you could do a cheap ev conversion or do a 24 Hours of Lemons race. What if you simply took it apart to individual bolts? Make a bicycle pedal car? Propane or wood gasifier conversion? Turn it into a treehouse? Replace the glass with screens and use it for driving games? Tiny office/camper? Grill/smoker?

Great point! I just uploaded them to https://waiveris.com/books/

Coldest winter of my life was near London. Heater was wired to cheap middle of the night electricity so you had to plan a day ahead to have hot water or heat. Friends had to go to hardware store to get tokens to feed their rental heaters. Ran out at night? Put on a extra blanket and get there early the next day.

Our Omron arm cuff one reads 20 pts too high. We didn’t realize until a doctor had us bring it in.

My Charge HR with “sensitive” sleep tracking setting was one of my favorite features. It always knew exactly how much sleep I got. I switched to a Garmin 935 and never look at the sleep data because it’s never accurate.

I actually use an old version of Photoshop in a Windows VM because it's faster than a native modern version. As a perk, I don't worry that it's going to break if I upgrade OSX.

I asked my father (retired math professor) and he responded

"I am not sure what book to suggest. But if your friend wants to get away from the algebra of coordinate geometry maybe a book on geometric constructions.—How to do things with a ruler and compass."

I've been with them for 2+ years and am hooked. We use Green Chef as well for 6 meaks per week.

Everyone complains about the lack of convenience but it saves me mind capacity more than anything and I never have to go to the store. We also like variety in food. Recipes show up, I cook for 30 minutes and we have family meals.

$20/meal to feed three adults and a toddler is a bargain to me as well.

I prefer Blue Apron to others and cringe to think they might make it easier. Note, I could barely cook before and took twice as long. I just use a giant cutting board and a favorite spatula and knife and occasionally use more than one pan. I also overlap things like preheating the pans and chopping while things cook.

We recreate some of the meals but have a hard time getting the quantities to match up. It usually means I have to make a double batch for guests or have leftovers and need to stock the pantry with various sauces and vinegars.

My first experience with the "web" was a friend showing me this "browser" thing a friend was working on at another college. It was like the text link thing (gopher?) that let you read man pages on other college networks with inline images. It was so slow and boring. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. I went outside to mountain bike in the nice summer weather afterwards.

I didn't imagine it would have much use and was already annoyed by the guys that used FTP to download porn images. They would use terminals in the computer labs to amas collections that you could look at one by one with xv. The browser seemed to speed up the effort of downloading index files, manually typing in filenames, switching to binary mode, then back, etc.

I had to switch it to sensitive mode for the same reason. It's also more useful as a relative metric than specific number.

We have a toddler so time became extremely tight. Though it's been wonderful to have nice meals together as a family. The sheer time involved to plan and shop for ingredients makes it seem like a bargain to us.

Not having to entertain in a grocery cart or plan meals around ingredients that can't be bought in small quantities is even better. I suppose it depends a bit on the types of things you like to eat.

Occasionally there is one that I'll have a snack afterwards, but I tend to have a pretty big appetite and find the quantity fine.

Back when I worked for someone else, I switched to part time after I had been there several years. I would work Mon, Tues, Thurs and got paid 60% of my previous salary. I was more productive than ever and came to the office having thought through things and ready to type it out.

I also didn't notice the drop in salary because I had time to repair things and didn't "buy" progress in hobbies. I also had time to design things for work while sitting in a convertible by a lake rather than a drab office. It was one of the best experiences of my life. Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing working for myself but the situation is different.

The only tough part was not having time to socialize with coworkers. They would take breaks and talk about things but I felt my time was so precious that I wanted to get my work done.

This is the thing that will make me leave them. I hate cutting those open to recycle them. Yes, you can reuse a few but what if you get 8 per month?

If you go Air, the i7 are quite fast and can get 8GB RAM.

I think the audio jack was removed as a step toward not requiring cables at all.

As someone that has worked for myself for 16 years, I will sorely miss the the ACA. Let me know if you have any recommendations because surely I'm missing something.

- Before the ACA we had Blue Cross and I inquired about maternity coverage. My wife was looking at a shoulder surgery so we were locked in. Blue Cross offered us a $1000/month rider that had to be in place for 21 months before birth and then they would cover anything over our high deductible. It worked out to about $25,000 on top of our regular premiums before they would pick up the bill. We jokingly priced getting an apartment in another city instead.

- Then the ACA came out. Maternity was included free and the premiums are about the same. We had a baby and had to cover twice the deductible. The marketplace gave us some trouble due to stupid bureaucracy so we priced out getting a plan directly (non-ACA) but the price was so much higher and it covered less. So, even with the marketplace, the coverage and affordability made it an easy decision.

Anyway, I could live without the subsidies (we haven't qualified for them every year) and I wish the marketplace was a little easier to work with. Though I feel like our coverage is so much better now. Why take it all away?

This is awesome! Thanks for creating and sharing it at a reasonable cost.

I use Photoshop regularly (over 18 years) and earlier this year I gave GIMP another honest 2-3 week try. There are some big conceptual differences, but the small things like it not remembering what folder you last loaded images from slowed me down too much.

At that pricing, I'm curious if it makes sense to put blobs in the database rather than S3. Any thoughts?

I totally know the feeling and have had to really dig deeply in the past year. Here are some things that worked.

1) Be ruthless about what you need to accomplish. This means choosing what to "do poorly" at. Sure everything is "important" but it's time to secretly throw a few things overboard.

2) Do whatever you can to optimize your wellbeing. Go to bed early and sleep enough. (1/3 dose of melatonin if you have trouble falling asleep.) Plan simple healthy meals that don't require much thinking or prep. A media fast is really good. Try to throw in a tiny bit of exercise (20 minutes) and 10 minutes of meditation here and there. (ex: when you arrive at the office)

3) Do the work in cycles so you get time to think between bursts. As we get older, the work wears us down so I treat screen time as "toxic exposure" and set a daily maximum. That doesn't mean you have to stop working...Just step away from the desk and visualize what you're going to do. Then get in there and work quickly and efficiently and get out and plan the next burst.

Bonus: In a real pinch, you need to work every day of the week. Though extra cycles and wellbeing make this pretty easy. If you're working too hard, the weekends are necessary to recover.

It's hard, but put in the effort and finish the degree. Practice excelling. It'll be a lot harder to finish it later, but it can give you skills and access to better paying jobs later. Refine your ideas on the side. There's always time if you really want it.

Wow! It's 25% more than I'm paying for Comcast and 26500% faster.

I took two grad courses this Spring:

- Networking used Python with Mininet

- Software Development used Java with Eclipse (Android, Swing, JUnit, Google App Engine, GWT, etc.)

I finished my undergrad in 1995 and used C and assembly (RS6000, Spark, x86). C++ started to be an option when I left.

I priced and ran benchmarks for my last server upgrade. AWS was 2x the cost of collocating and some outages around the same time. I think it would have been only marginally more expensive since I could scale my server down to current need rather than project 3-4 years into the future.

AWS had the fastest network and but colocation allowed for cheaper CPU and RAM upgrades. As it turns out, my RAM/CPU needs plateaued at 4x my previous server so I have twice as much as I need. AWS got steadily cheaper over that same time and the servers got faster.

Upgrading to a new server is pretty disruptive. It would probably be easier to do slowly over time rather than big jumps.

I have a personal connection to him, but Mark Baral did a great job helping out the FIRST robot club while I was a mentor. http://baraltaxaccounting.com/

It's probably a busy week for tax preparers so my first step might be to file an extension to give a little breathing room.

Find a collection of experts you can turn to that are on your side: accountant, lawyer, web designer, insurance, business coach/advisor. You want your ducks in a row in these areas from the start even if you just have conversations and people picked out.

Understand the danger of early stage investment. It can shelter you from market realities. It can also enable something big that you own very little of.

My 6 month project turned into 12 years... It will take longer than you expect. The sooner you release something the better. Once you have people paying for something, it gets real and exciting.

How about "graphic novels". Perhaps pick some comic books young boys would read more than once. I've puzzled over some Dutch ones for years and heard of others using them to learn a language.

Every project has a price at which you know it is worthwhile. Sometimes it feels funny to estimate high...even 3-4x your normal rate. But trust yourself. Understand the additional costs in your time or energy. Likewise, some projects or clients are worth working below your normal rate.

I try to work no more than 9 hours per day 5 days per week. I schedule blocks of time on Google calendar and try to be super productive during those blocks and track the results week to week. (Pomodoro technique, phone won't ring before 11, etc.)

Usually this means 8-5 with a "go to bed" alarm set 9 hours before I want to wake up.

It's a daily struggle, but I feel like keeping the balance of time on projects is key. It's easy for me to fall into a rut and work on one area and neglect others.