steverb

Joined 17 years ago

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1,824

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591

Member since

Aug 26

I'm Steve Barbour. I first fell in love with computers when I read a 1978 article describing Alan Kayes' vision of the Dynabook. After going through a succession of the early consoles I finally got my hands on an almost real computer in 1983, a Timex Sinclair TS-1000, which had a whopping 1K of memory, and no usable software. I worked my way up from there, through C, VB (don't hate), Perl, Cold Fusion, the .NET stack (mostly C#), Javascript + JQuery, and most recently Ruby on Rails.

I'm also loving Ubuntu, if that means anything to you.

Feel free to check out my CV at http://careers.stackoverflow.com/steverb.

http://strictlydev.com/devs/steverb

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Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago

So you're saying that 20 years ago you were making what is equivalent to $94,000 today (adjusted for inflation) working in a diner.

According to this US News and World Reports site ( https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/waiter-and-waitre... ) the best paid 25% of waiters made $30,000.

I think you might be misremembering how much you made, or perhaps you weren't working in a run of the mill diner, because making 60K per year as a waiter 20 years ago puts you far on the right of that bell curve even without adjusting for inflation.

Comment · 4 years ago

Thank you for this. As an amateur I knew the difference existed, but I was never sure how to tell them apart. And if I had ever actually thought about it I would have googled, but it's one of those things that never occurred to me until I was knee deep into a repair.

Comment · 5 years ago

And why so many Christian preachers use a very sing song tone (and even sing in some traditions).

Comment · 5 years ago

To summarize what I understood from the (too long IMO) article...

There might be something useful in the blockchain, specifically in how it seems to make a certain class of transaction easier/more reliable and there might be a good use case for NFTs in that space.

I really hate that the term crypto has come to mean 'crypto-currency' instead of cryptography in general.

Comment · 5 years ago

I mean, it probably was a "luxury" car when it was new. They do not hold their value though.

Comment · 5 years ago

Rather than regret minimization, I prefer to focus on try maximization. IE try as many new things as you can.

Obviously there are some things that you should never try. Things that you find morally objectionable. Things that have too high a risk of death or permanent disability. Things that will keep you from fulfilling your responsibilities (wife and kids will slow you down). You have to do your own maths on those, but beyond that you should try as many new things as you can manage.

You will fail. You will fail a lot. That's part of the fun.

As a 50 year old man, with four grown kids, in the middle of a divorce after 25 years of marriage, sitting at home with a leg I broke skateboarding last month I can honestly say that I have very few regrets so far. I travelled through a lot of Europe and most of the US before marriage, I've had interesting work, and I've learned how to do a lot of things just by being willing to try.

Remember, failure is always an option and is the expected outcome at least 50% of the time. If you're not failing, then you're probably not trying anything new.

Comment · 5 years ago

> But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on

This assumes the company will be around in 10 years and that I am still working there.

Comment · 5 years ago

Vaccination requirements were also litigated at USSC, over a century ago: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/08/vaccine-ma...

I am an independent software developer and like most business owners I contribute because it's required by law and failure to do so carries harsh penalties.

Are you telling me that you do not pay federal and or state income taxes? That you do not contribute to FICA? Are you under the impression that because you are not a federal employee that you are not required to pay federal income taxes?

If so, the IRS has plenty to say about it: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/the-truth-about-frivo...

Comment · 5 years ago

Driver's Licenses and the need to show ID and submit to a search certainly do apply.

I and a lot of people do have to save a write a check (I pre-pay estimated actually). You do not want to get on the wrong side of the IRS.

Comment · 5 years ago