Ask HN: What are your problems?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6559477

by umrashrf • 13 years ago

12 12 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I think every month we should ask fellow readers about their problems like we ask who's hiring and who's looking for work. If this post gets any traction, I will do it every month. I am a bit late for October but anyway there we go.

Please be precise and clear :-)

yohann305• 13 years ago

I cannot get muscle mass without having to work out.

evacuationdrill3• 13 years ago

Is this a joke? I thought that's actually how it's supposed to work.

TaffeyLewis• 13 years ago

I second that opinion. Were yo expecting the muscle mass to simply grow forth from the shimmering air?

lgieron• 13 years ago

I'd like to eat large amounts of chocolate without consequences ;) Seriously, someone who figures it out (and manages to not screw up the business side) will be the next Rockefeller.

evacuationdrill3• 13 years ago

I remember a book I had when I was young that had all these inventions. Many of them were actually plausible, but they were all a little farfetched, and most were the sort of "inventions" or little life hacks a child might think up.

One of them was a very fine mesh in a resealable pouch for you to put food in, so you could taste it and feel it, but you wouldn't swallow it. It was pretty absurd, but I figured you should know that somebody's working on it.

ElongatedTowel• 13 years ago

My biggest problem is knowing whether an idea is worth spending time or even possible. Or just parts of it. There is no place to throw in questions like:

"I need this in my database but im pretty sure it won't scale, will it?

"I wrote this small gadget to solve a very specific problem that I use quite often, does anyone else have that problem?"

"I'm using library X, how would I subclass Y to allow path prefixes?"

deadfall• 13 years ago

I have this problem "knowing whether an idea is worth spending time or even possible". I you are not sure if an idea is worth spending time on ask some friends what they think about it. Just some questions I ask myself: Is the idea something that people need? Would it be a good learning experience? Would I use it? Is it fun or entertaining? People spend a lot of money on entertainment and some take advantage of these extremely well. Better than I, for sure. Everything is possible the technology exists. If it doesn't, how can it exist?

I just ask myself a lot of questions, but the down side is I hardly finish the projects I start. With all the information available and ideas floating it is hard to stay on the rail.

pjungwir• 13 years ago

I'm a freelancer, typically with several engagements at once (1 major, a few minor), and my biggest problem is figuring out how to take a vacation. I can take two days off, and I suppose I could take 2 months off, but how do I take 2 weeks off? I'm sure how to do it!

stevejalim• 13 years ago

To quote myself (see my profile for source):

""" The pressure of working full-out as a freelancer can lead to burnout quicker than you might imagine. You may find your conscience won't allow the kind of Friday-afternoon messing around/slack time that many enjoy as a staffer, for instance. (Although hopefully you still get [compiling time](http://xkcd.com/303/) or its equivalent.) Similarly, it's easy to end up over-subscribed, which is exhausting.

So, allow yourself time for vacations, holidays, anniversary celebrations and the like. Work is important in life, but it isn't life, after all. Also, it's unlikely that client projects will always fall into your lap with the perfect timing to allow for a proper summer/winter vacation, for instance. So make sure you set aside enough time for yourself, and don't (sometimes accidentally) promise all of your time to your clients - it's an easy mistake to make.

### Arranging time off * Give your clients a decent amount of notice (at least four weeks is good) and they'll generally be fine with that. * If possible, try to avoid taking time off when you know it'll cause a genuine headache for the client (and therefore you), such as launch deadline dates. But don't let any non-critical grumbling put you off your hard-earned R&R. * Let your clients know if and how you'll be contactable while away, and in what circumstances (unless you're going off on a honeymoon or something similarly significant, it's worth leaving some kind of channel open, even if it's simply "I'll be checking my email once every two days"). Whatever ground rules you set your client, respect them yourself, too. * Let your clients know when you'll be back. * Remember to set up an out-of-office (before you're on the airbridge at the airport).

### Holiday money It's worth bearing in mind the invisible cost of holiday time when working out your annual income (which is something you'll need or want to do quite often as a self-employed individual). If you conjure up your expected earnings based on billing a client for every one of the 250 or so working days a year, one of three things can happen:

1. You'll refuse to take holiday, because you'll be “earning less”. 2. You'll fall into the trap of negatively pricing your time off ("Sitting on this beach is costing me £X, dammit!"). 3. You'll take the holiday (well done!) but you'll be (falsely) annoyed with yourself for missing your targets.

So, remember to keep the cost of holiday time in your mindset from the start and treat it as a necessary dip in your potential earnings. It's not being slack, it's being human. """

Nicholas_C2• 13 years ago

If I open up one excel workbook with a lot of links excel freezes for 30-45 seconds, sometimes more, and I just have to wait it out. If I could change between workbooks while it froze it wouldn't be so bad. My work laptop has an i5 and 16GB of RAM, so I don't think it's a hardware issue.

evacuationdrill3• 13 years ago

It just might not be that hardware. Going through all those links may max out your R/W speed.

Nicholas_C2• 13 years ago

I assumed that wasn't the problem as the excel file will open up then freeze as it grabs the data from the links.

Ask HN: What are your problems?

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