hga
Joined 19 years ago
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Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
In addition to all the other stuff, I'll add that one thing employers like to see, in fact, it's one of the Official and simple metrics about whether a man will be successful in life, is that you got this one job straight out of school and stuck to it for two years. That shows some very good character traits, and as long as you didn't personally know of the companies ... issues, they won't count against your character, as long as you do, of course, get out ASAP.
Comment · 10 years ago
And buy or borrow a copy of his iconic book https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Lib-Dream-Machines-Revised/d... it's not long, won't take you too long to read the first time.
Comment · 10 years ago
Indeed, I can't disagree with anything you say.
But here's something that instead of entirely delegating, that at least for me is "hands on work": teaching (note also huddo121's recommendation that your formally codify your knowledge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13061109). In fact, I'd say that one of the single most useful things I learned in high schoool, was JROTC's section on teaching, the Army and military in general of course are constantly teaching people things, heck, not all that long after my father got posted to a radar picket ship in the North Atlantic in the mid-50s, he became the junior officer who broke in brand new officers (he was Grand Lakes enlisted->OCS/only in for 4 years; I would have gone SROTC if not for my eyesight). And perhaps I picked up something of how to teach from his deliberate teaching of me and my siblings of how to hunt, fish, shoot and drive.
So look for some opportunities to mentor your more junior developers, and in terms of delegating, look for opportunities there as well. This can be fantastically rewarding, a win-win-win for you, the mentee, and the company, one of my "mentees" remains to this day one of my best friends.
Note also the knowledge transfer can go both ways, in that above case, I was learning C++ for the project, which he helped, and I helped him drop down to C, he'd only done C++ in college, so like the first thing I taught him was C's new is malloc ^_^.
One other thing to try, perhaps, although I've never been a manager position where all my time could be spent on managing, is to make a very specific segregated task that you'll spend a very finite time "hands on" doing, and don't pull rank when you come into conflict with your subordinates as you're acting as one of their peers.
I'd almost certainly put doing that off for some number of months to a year or so, take in your mind an official vacation from "getting your hands dirty" unless faced with an existential threat, and just focus on the managing.
Other things, especially from the military viewpoint: make it your job to keep your "troops" well fed, healthy, protected from your sub-par superiors, etc. Maybe even explcitly look into the officer/non-commissioned officer/grunt distinctions, they provide a model of something that works, albeit imperfectly as all things human, and in our world of high tech you definitely have to avoid certain forms of that. I.e. D-Day no, mission-type tactics perhaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
Comment · 10 years ago
Well, you can always simulate this at home ^_^; my recent lifestyle changes (buying and renovating a home built in 1910, i.e. I'm cash poor right now) have resulted in my eating one of a variety of tasty Asian instant noodle dishes for lunch. As long as you're willing to spend a buck or two, here are some of the more unusual favorites I've found, besides the standbys of Sapporo Ichiban (although the Shio + some sesame oil is a new favorite there), and of course Nongshim's very spicy Shin Ramyun:
Nongshim also has a seafood Neoguri with "Udon Style Noodles" (i.e. they're a bit larger than normal); if you like seafood, this is worth trying out. They also appear to take pride in not using MSG, at least in the produced in the US stuff, so if you're sensitive to that their products are worth checking out.
Myojo sells an Ippeichan Yakisoba Japanese Style that's very tasty, and this style has no soup base. Rather, they have clever packaging that allows you to cook the noodles and vegetables (and a lot more of the latter than any other type I've come across) in boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain them without losing any of the food. Then you add a spice pack, a Worcestershire sauce based sauce, and mustard mayonnaise (why didn't we think of that??), the entire combination is wonderful.
They also sell a good Tonkatsu ramen, but as of late I haven't been able to find it for less than $3/pack and that's too much.
Moving further away, A-Sha Dry Noodle sells a variety of "air dryed", no preservative so the best buy dates don't tend to be more than 6 months out by the time you get them, noodles with sauce packets. You cook the noodles like pasta, 1.5-5 minutes depending on size, drain, then add the sauce packet. Mala spicy chili is great, as is spicy "BBQ" as in Sha Cha flavor if you like that, as I do, Mandarin is basic but good, the sesame oil and paste packets are a disappointment, but readily fixed by adding some sesame oil.
Moving even further away, you can get straight from Vietnam some solid attempts to make instant pho from Vifon, beef and chicken, and these have distant expiration dates because the noodles are rice, and the oil is essentially limited to a 17 calorie packet of spiced palm oil. Not really like the good pho I enjoyed in Arlington, VA, but there are hints of that, and they're worthy in the own rights.
Ask for links and I'll put up ones from Amazon, Walmart.com and A-Sha's storefront, although the Nongshim Neoguri in family packs is now on the shelves of my favorite Wal-Mart Supercenter in rather small Jopin, MO (!!!). Then again, it's really good stuff, and we really like our fish here, e.g. Bass Pro Shops world HQ is only 70 minutes NE on I-44 in Springfield, MO, now Missouri's 3rd largest city.
Comment · 10 years ago
Nor do I think some calculus balancing good posts versus bad posts is being done by the mods.
It is, though, based on ... dang's comments I think, in a previous incident.
They to date don't appear to believe that I "consistently drop hateful political rhetoric" nor to I believe I do, and I certainly try to avoid "regularly derail[ing] threads". Take this discussion, for example, what I've had to say is pretty much by definition on topic in a topic about "White Nationalism"
Comment · 10 years ago
Indeed they do, the national ACLU proper is a 501(c)(4) like the NRA, and both have 501(c)(3) charities for stuff that fits with and is legal to do under those constraints. E.g. the NRAs' does pro-bono legal work and the other "raises and donates money to outdoors groups and others such as ROTC programs, 4-H and Boy Scout groups" and in general funds education (and has been a contributor to the remarkable improvement in gun safety statistics).
Heh, and on the ACLU Wikipedia page, "In 2006, the ACLU of Washington State joined with a pro-gun rights organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, and prevailed in a lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District (NCRL) in Washington for its policy of refusing to disable restrictions upon an adult patron's request."
I'm sure this happened because a) the Second Amendment Foundation's 2 activities are running an important annual conference and b) lawsuits, and they're in Washington state.
And in either case, government censorship of their core political speech, which in theory reflects that of their members (not always entirely true for the NRA), is intolerable and why Citizens United was absolutely necessary.
Comment · 10 years ago
Classic NTP is hardly the only game in town. For example, see the NTPsec work in progress: https://www.ntpsec.org/ which I'll probably transition to someday, maybe even get an el-cheapo GPS receiver now that I'm not effectively living in a basement.
And I've personally be using chrony for a while, although my needs are significantly less than whatever level of accuracy it provides. There are some other clients out there as well, such as OpenBSD's OpenNTPD, although I have a vague memory of it having issues of precision, congruent with the distribution's focus on security.
Comment · 10 years ago
Good point, and for that matter, a Dark Pattern they could decide is a bad idea (especially if it's not authorized at a high enough level) would be a lot better than a regression to the mean, which is much harder if not impossible to fix.
I still have a higher trust in them than pretty much any other general on-line merchant (a finely honed BS detector and general suspicious nature about anything "too good to be true" makes a difference, plus watching my father get burned on an iPhone purchase on eBay where the merchant played eBay like a fiddle) ... but they're getting me to start to look at others, which is not what I think they want....
Comment · 10 years ago
Yeah, I don't do 1-Click (e.g. didn't start Prime until 2 years ago), and I've seen that sort of thing on my consolidated orders when I check out.
Sometimes I can get it isolated to one of the items in my cart, although it can't remember if they then came from different warehouses.
Don't know about this being a Dark Pattern, though, vs. Amazon regressing to the mean, as others have noted in this context in other HN discussions, there are bound to be consequences to treating your technical staff horribly, with search's eternal awfulness being front and center.
And the no longer in service Sea Dart was really put to the test in the Falkland Islands war, preformed pretty well and made a material difference. And the somewhat related earlier RIM-8 Talos got 4 MIGs in 3 firings, including "the first downing of a hostile aircraft by a missile fired from a ship" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos).