DataJunkie

I know I will never live to see a site like this that documents all of the innards of airports. Airport layouts are my special interest.

It may be my autism, but as a kid, I was always fascinated by infrastructure, particularly power lines. My dad once drove me down an Edison Road up to the top of a mountain just to see where the power line went. We had to stop at the top. I could see my neighborhood from a view that I had never seen before. Today I would consider it beautiful. Back then it was weird!

I had a fascination with how different the poles looked and how the equipment was mounted. It seemed like no two pylons were alike.

Based on this map, it looks like all of our power comes from hydroelectric.

I love this site. I just wish it was more complete. There are some major water and natural gas pipelines that aren't recorded. Maybe in time.

If I have a lot of time, I will mountain bike.

If I have a short amount of time, I will do some gardening. It's very relaxing and rewarding in a simple kind of way.

It really wasn't that big of a deal. The "hurricane" was full of hype, and a lot of people, experts included, are going to look like fools tomorrow.

The article on TWA 800 was excellent, especially for those that don't know much about what happened.

I've read the accident report, a few books, and even some of the conspiracy theories and this is the best "factual" summary.

I currently work at Google (though my time will be ending soon due to this shit show) and everything you said couldn’t be farther from the truth at least for me. I want to make sure everyone has both sides here instead of the rosey picture that so many want to paint.

Google is, by far, the worst place I’ve ever worked with the most useless work and uninspiring management and coworkers. I haven’t learned a damn thing in my time there. FB had its problems but I was at least learning there.

Googler here, opinion my own.

In some sense, it's PR, but not in the typical gimmicky way. Alphabet has had DeepMind for a while, and at this point with all of the competition in AI, it doesn't make sense to keep DeepMind at arm's length. I personally think it's a good move and gives me more confidence, but it doesn't affect me directly. I do worry what redundancies this causes with Brain and Research though.

I am in my late 30s. I feel like after the pandemic I started visually aging. Part of the problem was that I lost a lot of weight at the same time, so I do actually look a bit different. People tell me I am crazy. I feel like my hair is receding though nobody notices it and in photos it really looks the same for the past 10 years. I feel like there is me at my age, there is some illusion of me at my age, and me at the age I feel.

I feel young. On average, I feel about 25 mentally and maybe 30 physically, but sometimes I feel like I am stuck as a precocious 15 year old. I have a silly sense of humor. I feel like as my numerical age increases, the more I am expected to be boring and not be myself anymore. Quite frankly, it's led me into a depression.

Nah, it's still like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. You have people turning into blueberries with unknown fate, kids getting stuck in pipes with no way out and now 12,000 going down the garbage chute.

The Oompa Loompas are the sycophants that are still drinking the Kool-Aid.

> it's much harder to cram ads into a chat conversation.

Oh, I don't see that being a problem at all.

"Tell me about the features of modern digital cameras."

Chat bot: "Here's a bunch of information. And by the way, the Nikon Pipboy3000 has all of these features and they are offering 25% off right now. Do you want more information?"

That's very easy.

If done on an Assistant-like device though, that might be a bit different.

The amount of overhead there is, on top of teaching and preparing materials is exorbitant. Managing TAs can be difficult as they are students and are still developing their technical skills. Cheating and grade grubbing are par for the course, but it seems to increase quadratically in the number of students rather than linearly. I think part of this has to do with misconceptions about curving.

Revising materials is more of a milestone. As technology advances, we should be teaching more up-to-date stuff, so we typically revise what we teach and then share that with other instructors. Sometimes that takes considerable work. In some positions, the program strictly restricts what is allowed to be taught. I typically stick to the core content for about 65% of the course, and then add in my own topics for the other 35%.

I am also a Unit 18 lecturer in a computer science program. What Fox writes is true. The Unit 18 arrangement is weird. I do it because I am technically temporary and only teach once or twice a year. My full time job is elsewhere.

At my UC, there is a separate ladder called Lecturer Full-Time PSOE/SOE. It's not clear why she wasn't on that ladder. Perhaps Cal doesn't have one.

At Google, not only are many still worried about COVID, but we just finished the complete shitshow known as Perf, there is war in Ukraine, so they thought this was a brilliant time to announce this as if it's supposed to "cheer us up" or something.

I am really starting to question if my values align with Google's anymore.

Current Googler. Everything you say is correct.

Bingo.

Great equipment? I had to wait several months to get a modern computer since my previous 3 year old computer broke. I was stuck on a Chromebook that couldn't even process email. So, no, equipment ain't "great." And I am so sick of hearing "but the food!" Food doesn't mean squat to me over flexibility.

Top down entirely. It's based entirely on propaganda that Google has the best perks and that serendipitous hallway conversations lead to innovation. Zero evidence that that is the case. And other companies have the same, if not better, perks.

I think other companies will emerge as leaders with more progressive flexible policies. It just makes sense for that to happen.

Don't be so quick to assume others will follow Google. Google has not been a leader in anything during COVID.

I think the days of companies following Google ended long ago. Hell, Google mostly follows Meta's lead these days.

Cue the mass exodus! Backwards policy that is even worse than it was before (where managers could let people work on their own schedule, as an agreement between the manager and the report).

But those magical hallway conversations...

I like the Linux nativeness.

We used System76 at a startup I worked at several years ago. Out of the three systems we purchased, 2 had major problems. One had a problem with the graphics chip so we couldn't use an external monitor, the other had a problem with the SSD or the SSD interface circuitry. The problems took forever to fix.

That was the last time we purchased from them.

Working at a startup using those technologies would probably help more. It also depends on your motivation for the certificate. If it's to get a broader or deeper understanding of a set of technologies that you don't work with, they can be useful.

If you're using it to check off a box for HR, you may want to work on some projects that use the more major components of these offers (for AWS: EC2, S3, etc. but not all the niche components).

I am going to assume you will be taking classes for a while. Most of my advice is in regards to the dissertation.

This one is common sense, but I violated it. Pick an advisor that works in the area you are interested in. I ended up picking an advisor that I got along well with, and that had the same open-source philosophy that I had, but was not in my field of interest. While he was brilliant, it was bad. He ended up retiring and I had to pick a new advisor, this time in my field. I wish I worked with him the whole time because he was much more constructive regarding my field of research and probably would have helped me open more doors.

The biggest productivity win for me was Dropbox [about 5 years ago] (with the extended history option). I made several attempts at using Git, SVN etc. and Dropbox just made everything so much easier. The actual data I simulated took up TBs of space, so of course that wasn't in Dropbox, just my manuscript, research sources etc. I accidentally deleted chapters and the backup feature made them easy to retrieve. My work was synced on all of my devices.

After leaving a job, I moved to the mountains and dedicated 2 years to finishing the dissertation. Someone wrote a book about finishing your dissertation 15 minutes at a time. That's sort of what I practiced. During the day, I would keep active by mountain biking and hiking, and then in the evening I would spend 2-3 hours writing code or writing the manuscript.

It worked out nicely.

I know I am not the only guy that has done this... repeatedly... right?

Yep! I have some evidence to back it up though there were perhaps more important mitigating factors.

I used to never drink water. After having some health issues for about a week, I swore off sugary sodas (except for a few a week when eating out). I also started walking 4 miles every other day. I now drink about 50% diet soda and 50% water.

I've lost 35 pounds in 3 months.

I don't snore anymore, I don't get constant heartburn anymore, my skin in clear and I no longer take naps every afternoon. I think the water has enabled me to reduce my meals to one, maybe two a day, instead of 3, and I am never that hungry.

Someone always has to bring up food as a good reason to go the office.

For me, no amount of Google food is going to convince me to choose onsite work over remote or a more reasonable hybrid.

Because airlines don't share passenger information like this except through the TSA...

I took a couple years off after a job to finish my Ph.D. During that time, I lived in the mountains. I spent the days hiking and mountain biking, and the evenings (when I wasn't exhausted) working on research and writing.

Depending on how this return to office goes, I still plan on spending most of my time in the mountains. Hiking is a release of anxious energy for me, and a chance to truly be alone with myself and my thoughts.

Mountain biking on the other hand forces me to concentrate on something different. If a negative thought comes into my head while biking, I will crash. So, it's kind of trained my mind to try not to be so negative.

Aside from gaining additional hobbies, I don't check my work email or IMs after 6pm, period. I also do not respond to emails on the weekend (even if I choose to do work).

Southwest doesn't have that option. They can only ban passengers from their own airline.

If the FBI is involved (interfering with a crew member's duties is a federal crime), they can add her to the no fly list via TSA if warranted. And I think all of these people that act up should be, or in the case of psychiatric reasons, should be required to fly with a caretaker.

I am not sure why my other comment was downvoted to oblivion. ONE airline banning a passenger is NOT the same as being added to the no fly list. Period.

I had a few good teachers in high school. I had excellent teachers in middle school. It is a profession that should be respected but there is a chicken and egg problem:

1) teachers are not respected by parents, administrators and politicians, 2) so very few of the people that would make great teachers go into teaching

And in some states like California, it's very easy to become a teacher on an emergency credential. In the mid to late 90s when I was in school, most of our teachers were like 23 or 24 and were on emergency credentials. They were not the good ones.

I enjoyed this read. Rant:

My mother was a teacher and she had to deal with a lot of political crap because she taught what was important (phonics) in Kindergarten during a time when schools were banishing phonics and preferred whole language (early to mid 1990s). That was just one of the things that drove my mom to retire from teaching, the BS from the ivory tower. I gained a rebellious streak towards the K-12 education system based on my own experience and seeing what she had to put up with. Her students and parents loved her.

Elementary school was a joke. Middle school was very formative to me. I learned a ton. I was bullied a ton, which didn't help. Then I went to high school... Honors English? We read a few books that I don't even remember, and spent the rest of the time playing... I kid you not... Charades. Things only got worse when the athletic coaches would teach the Honors classes. After a couple of years of this, I became a very mouthy kid frequently talking back to teachers. (Oddly enough, I rarely got in trouble for it.) Point being, they had one view of what a kid should be doing, and the buckets into which kids should fall. They also had no desire to deal with different learning styes. I would have absolutely loved to take advanced statistics, advanced writing or computer science in high school instead of wasting time trying to help the school district boost its standardized testing scores.

One of these teachers really had it out for me (a video production teacher). She told me I would be in prison by 20 because I had no respect for her. Add to that, my counselor convinced me my GPA was shit (3.6) and would be lucky to get into a Cal State (is that a bad thing?). My parents and I had enough. I withdrew and took the rest of my courses via mail and graduated a year early and in the meantime took community college classes. And guess what? I learned to love math. That happens when the instructor actually understands what they are teaching. This caused some problems with the UC system, but we were able to convince them that community college basically replaced my senior year.

And that video teacher? I eventually ran into her again, as she was advertising some high school media program at the community college. She said "What a surprise to see you here!" She had earlier tried to convince me that ITT Tech, Devry, etc. was more my style. I looked her straight in the eyes and said "Go fck yourself, Nancy." It felt so cathartic telling her off. That Fall I started as a Freshman at UCLA.

Based on my experience, I am approving of parents choosing to do one of the following: 1) putting their kids in private school as a form a daycare. Private schools have the funds to offer tons of extracurriculars such as makerspaces for students to play around in. That's important to me. Public schools do not have the resources to do this. And then get a tutor for the important subjects. Travel. Do educational trips. Don't assume your children are learning anything in the classroom. 2) teach your kids that HS is a joke, and just get through it and don't let any of the teachers put you down. Work hard and do the best you can. If it's not working, get out. 3) Do some sort of personalized program (sometimes referred to as "continuation school" where you attend class or tutoring as needed, and the rest of the time is enrichment. Continuation school was always said to be the "troublemakers." In my opinion, it's those that refuse to accept the status quo, and perhaps do have some other issues that the comprehensive high school does not want to deal with, because God forbid these students actually act human. 4) test out, just know that some university systems will then require you to transfer instead of start as a Freshman.

University is totally different. I am proud of my public university education. I could not have asked for any more. I ended up going through to my Ph.D.

Now, as a university instructor, I try my best to not judge students and understand that their performance is but a snapshot of what they accomplished in a short period of time. Who am I to stop students from following their dreams? Who am I to make a judgment of their professional worth? I wish others would think the same way.