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bippi

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It seems the parents that don't spend time with their kids, end up HAVING to spend time with their kids later in life with many issues that could have been corrected easier when they were younger.

A ham-fisted example: stealing a pack of gum vs. stealing a car.

I guess the workaholics I see, end up having this happen with themselves.

My most heartening point of this post and story, is that there are only 21 comments as of this post (22 after I hit 'enter'). So, while I sourly identify with this piece and want to post it outside of my cube wall... this isn't garnering nearly the crowd of other universal HN siren songs.

Phew.

One thing that everyone likes linkedin for (ok, most) is that your resume is there for your friends to see. Lie on your resume too much, you WILL get called-out on it.

So it's almost a sort of self-validating resume checker.

"Grove giveth, and Gates taketh away."

--Robert Metcalfe

Speaking as a software guy at a hardware company for TVs, one of the challenges is that there isn't a cohesive conversation between the hardware designers and software engineers.

On more than 3 occasions I could name off-the-top of my head, we've had to write workarounds or re-architect entirely for missing or over-promised performance of the silicon.

Likewise, some very useful features have been scrapped because they would add $1.00 onto the cost of a unit. While I get that 1 million units x $1.00 adds-up, the conversation about how this could either make a better product or that subsequently spending 2 million in software maintenance, isn't cheaper---is missing entirely.

This is a familiar refrain from other jobs and other engineers throughout the custom hardware industry. This doesn't even scratch the surface of how software engineers are essentially held to hardware engineering deadlines regardless of the complexity of the software they're being asked to produce.

Is the Toilet Free? 12 years ago

To add, as a software engineer that knows very little about hardware... the arduino is pretty bulletproof and also dynamic enough to handle very sloppily designed electrical work.

How Americans Die 12 years ago

An interesting theory that seems to make sense to me, is that in a sense who you're born to determines your eating habits. The recipes handed-down from the ages are my wife and I's go-tos, even when they are unhealthy at times.

Memories of Steve 12 years ago

Competent leadership is, I'm finding, incredibly hard to come by. Most tech leaders I've had the fortune/misfortune to be under seem to be of the sort where they were in the right industry at the right time, and they were the only game in town. When it comes to demonstrating leadership and innovation, their ideas end up closer to "The Homer" (car on the Simpsons) than even the worst products Apple has come up with.

There is a rumor in the company I work for currently that an employee went to go work for a vendor of ours. That vendor was informed that if they wanted to stay a vender, they wouldn't hire that former employee. The former employee wasn't hired. This was all kept in phone conversations and voice calls, so it was hard to legally track.

Since that time, anytime someone leaves, no one...and I mean no one... finds out about where someone is going until long down the road.

Having an elevator-pitch somewhere obvious where an idiot like me could see/find it would have been nice. They really could have put 'awesome' in 15 different fonts and sizes, and maybe some 'more awesome' in there and it would have told me just as much.

I'll save everyone the wikipedia jump: This is intended to be binary-compatible with windows NT-based applications.

my "cool story, Hansel" that goes with this: I worked in electronic bingo. One of the things we faced was that paper bingo card manufacturers routinely wanted to limit the effectiveness of electronic bingo markers so-as not to drive themselves out of business. One method they did was limit the number of cards that could be sold to any one person, electronically or otherwise.

Also, in some jurisdictions we had to have a paper copy of each card sold to match what was in the bingo machine.

Thus, the paper market would never, ever die. So-much-so that the electronic company we were, invested in a printing press.

[dead] 12 years ago

I don't think he's equating the people themselves with zero, rather the benefit to them. A good example where technology has really helped in Africa are cell phones. So many stories of fishermen being able to call and ask "who needs fish?" and they're able to get to the right markets with better fish.

I didn't see these as having that 'killer app' for the populace where it noticeably makes life better, immediately, for the people they're given to.

Even in the sanitary-pad case above, the man said he was illiterate, IIRC. The computer wouldn't have done much there...

I'm very sad it's come to this, but bankruptcy is what I was thinking.

That said, lets start the discussion:

a) They're only obligated to provide some treatment (Here's a band-aid for your tumor) to get to stability. That counts, right?

...and that seriously is the case. My aunt who had no insurance had to get a thyroid tumor removed. She got it done, but she had a less-than hospitable stay. Normally you get a day or two monitoring. She got...well... "Here's your homecare". I have to wonder

b) I've noticed they've gotten very good about seeing if you can pay or not. I don't know how legal it is, but like my elective birth control procedure was cash-n-carry (in a reputable clinic, even). My wife going to the ER got a scan of the discover card on admission.

I like the idea, but these were the principles they were supposed to be following in the first place but weren't. What makes anyone think that any amount of laws passed will be respected?

Anecdotal note: Our son wanted to watch Thomas the Train. The CGI version. We noticed that while he watched a ton of Team Umizoomi, some Paw Patrol and Diego... Thomas seemed to follow right along with some incredibly new behavioral issues. He was just a little badger.

We cut-off Thomas. Within 2 days, he was much easier to get along with. The books and toys were fine, just not that one show. His daycare said, "Yeah, he's been tons better. I didn't want to believe you, but he's had no timeouts and he's been much nicer."

Our running theory is that he was paying just enough attention to see when the trains were bad, but not enough attention to see how the bad behavior turned-out for the trains.

I think you described it.

In all likelyhood though, her income drops to zero, she qualifies for medicaid...which isn't great, ever...but it works.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm thinking like, college, multi-lingual private schools, a dad that takes time off of work for the sake of time off of work.

Toys are nice too, but we're totally covered. This kid won't know boredom until he's 60.

I know it is trite to say, "No one can afford having a kid." but it's really the truth.

For me, sure daycare, toys, and food aren't putting me in the poorhouse, but there is no way I can bankroll everything I think my kids deserve.

I don't know that startup vs. big matters as much as small vs. big. If you can work for a profitable small company where you matter and you wear many many hats, you will be far better prepared to make an impact on your own if/when you do start your own company.

I think this is all well and good, there are always things we procrastinate.

However, I think if you need to run your life like this... maybe look at what you're doing, as a whole. I don't think you should have to hack your motivation, or anything else, to get it to work.

What do we cut spending on? There's never any cost-benefit analysis of what we stand to gain by cutting what's left to cut.

It's frustrating, because the right wants a nice, happy round number to match their nice happy round-number of a tax rate they also think they should have to match the nice happy round-number of what's too big for a deficit.

Meanwhile, there's a society that, by definition of "government" is going to be impacted by what government does or doesn't do---regardless of whatever Randian fantasies one may have.