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I would list the whole lot, website included, on Flippa. https://flippa.com/

Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover is my most life-changing book as well.

My life is much more peaceful now.

Often referenced in TTMM, is The Millionaire Next Door, which is also excellent. The common conception of millionaires completely wrong.

In an argument with a loved one, “winning” is often losing.

You have to let go of trying to win and instead try to understand. As soon as you stop trying to win, that’s the moment you find win/win.

For boring but sound financial advice, I recommend Dave Ramsey. His book “the total money makeover” changed my financial life in my mid 20’s.

I sleep much better being completely debt-free and knowing that I’m on-track to retire well even if I never hit it big or get another raise in my life.

I migrated from iCloud to FastMail about 5 years ago, and I'm very happy with FastMail. They do support YubiKeys, as well as TOTP.

Forwarding everything from the old account to the new account made it pretty easy so I only had one inbox to check, and I could take my time migrating all of my accounts to the new address. I also created a rule to sort things coming from my old account to a folder so I knew which accounts and subscriptions and whatnot I still needed to update to the new address. To this day I still have the old email forwarding, and occasionally something real comes through on it.

Fastmail also makes it easy to add other addresses on custom domains, so I have several email addresses that all deliver to the same inbox, with rules to sort them into the right folders.

It's probably because it's a business account and Google and LinkedIn have sold my address, but fwiw I receive about 100x more spam in my work gmail than I do in my personal fastmail account.

I don't think this was a bad approach; it may be better than the alternatives.

The "rip the band-aid" approach, while impersonal, avoids days of ambiguity over who is impacted by layoffs and who is not. I have been through a mass layoff; the most stressful part was waiting to find out who was impacted. I'd much rather know immediately, even if that means notifying me with everyone else at the same time, in a Zoom call.

As long as each employee receives a 1-1 follow-up call with someone in HR to review the details and get a chance to ask any questions, I think this was a sensible way to approach a horrible reality.

The problem is it's impossible to schedule 900 layoff meetings to occur at the same time, so you end up with layoffs ongoing for multiple days or weeks. Of course everyone knows what is going on within the first hour, so then there is a long period where all productivity stops while everyone waits anxiously to find out whether they should keep working or just pack up.

Whether leadership deserves criticism for getting to a point where such a huge layoff is necessary is another topic altogether.

100%

I'm confused... clicking on the PDF source data (Data through Jul 16, 2020 verified as of Jul 17, 2020 at 09:25 AM), it clearly shows a 13.4% overall positivity rate. Where is the 31.1% coming from?

How long have you been subscribing to Stoa? Have you been able to stick to it, and do you find it beneficial?

There was a period circa 2014-2015 that LastPass was pretty glitchy on Firefox in MacOS, but for quite a while I've had no problems at all with it - it just works. Even my non-technical wife has no issues with it, and sharing secure passwords is a breeze.

lastpass; office 365; fastmail; digital ocean; wallabag.it; you need a budget; twilio & spaghetti detective for 3d printing notifications; backblaze;

Unlike carpentry, the quality of our tools (keyboard and monitor, specifically) don't affect the quality of our output.

I think in many cases, people hide the fact that they're not competent with high-cost professional tools, because laymen use it as a proxy for talent that they cannot evaluate.

I think that's also why many exceptional programmers just use a 5-year old laptop -- they don't need to compensate.

A day-trader having 12 monitors mounted on the wall doesn't make him profitable.

I had a 34" 4K monitor in 2019, and it was a mess in Windows 10. I sold it and picked up an ultra-wide, 38" 3840x1600 (~109 PPI) and I couldn't be happier. I agree that a "good" monitor is a necessity, but I disagree with OP that "good" = 4K 120 Hz.

With any legacy application, and even many modern ones, UIs were either fuzzy, or tiny, or a mix of the two, even with all of the Windows per-program custom high-DPI settings tweaked. The UX was not consistent enough to be enjoyable, so I ditched it.

My observation:

Have you ever been convinced to re-read a horrible book you were forced to read in school, and discover that it's /brilliant/?

Have you ever been forced to re-read one of your favorite books on a strict deadline, and discover that it's a slog?

I've been paid for doing my hobby a couple times, and it quickly becomes work; I don't even enjoy those hobbies anymore.

My 2 cents:

Anything, when forced, is less enjoyable than when you're doing it just for enjoyment.

Don't kill a hobby by turning it into work.

Find tasks, types of work, etc. that you enjoy, and find a job that lets you do those things. It's still work, but most of the time you don't really notice it, and you don't kill a fun hobby.

I disagree with some of the advise on this thread so far. Scales are boring (I agree that you need them to get proficient, but if you start there, you’ll be bored to tears and give up before you get anywhere fun). Watching YouTube videos and trying to recreate what they’re doing is hard. Learning to read music from a human teacher is frustrating.

The traditional way to learn piano takes discipline, hours of slightly frustrating study and incredibly boring and repetitive practice. Though I tried a few times in my life to learn piano the way everyone said I should, I always found it mind-numbingly boring. Why does it have to be so damn hard?

I’ve only recently found a better way, and I’ve been learning faster, staying interested, and having way more fun than I ever did before.

The better way is: http://pianowizardacademy.com

(I know this sounds like a sales pitch, I’m not at all involved with the company, I’m just a happy customer and a big fan of their method.)

Basically the method hinges around software that turns playing a piano into a game. Similar to guitar hero, but where it leads you through a progression until you’re sight-reading the paper sheet music as you play. It makes it really easy to get started playing real music from day 1, then your excitement about your progress builds faster than the difficulty, so you stay interested.

Basically it inverts the learning. Play first, and learn reading music, notes, fingering, tempo, theory, etc as you go. It makes the whole process way less frustrating and way more fun.

The software looks straight out of 1998, and the DVDs are similarly a little silly - but it all works really well.

The DVDs are geared towards parents who have never played Piano, to teach their young kids how to play, while learning themselves. Watching the videos as an adult without kids, I sometimes feel a little silly playing along with a 4 year old, but since it works, I’m not complaining.

Generally, they explain the bit of music theory after you’ve been playing it for a while (ignorant to the fact that you were doing something deeply important to music), so by the time they explain the concept, it just makes sense - there’s no struggling to wrap your head around some obtuse concept that you don’t have a mental framework for yet.

Anyway - I highly recommend it. It’s not cheap, but so far it’s the best money I’ve spent on learning piano.

bjj = Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Flippa is decent, but there is a lot of garbage to wade through to find anything real. Empire Flippers is a little better, they vet the sites some before posting them. Bizbuysell.com is mainly focused on brick and mortar businesses, but there are some online businesses for sale there as well.

Having said that, finding a true "passive income" business that is profitable and someone wants to sell is challenging. Most of them (that I have found) end up being scams. Do your due diligence and scrutinize their income and expense reports, traffic figures, etc. I can usually "smell" when something isn't right.

I use Oppo PM-3's for just about everything right now; listening to music while working, gaming, travel, etc.

I got them because I wanted something that blocked external noise (I don't like the "pressure" feeling of active noise cancellation) and they came highly recommended from The Wire Cutter.

I consider them 'fine'. They're relatively comfortable for 2-3 hour stretches (after that, the lack of ventilation makes them start to get sweaty, even in cool rooms), they sound decent, and the build quality and carry-case are great.

On the minuses side, the clarity doesn't match my old Grado SR-80's, the noise blocking isn't as good as my Shure in-ear monitors, and the in-line mic is worse than what's on Apple's standard earbuds.

Bottom line, they're not worth the $400 price tag, but now that I have them, they're good enough that I'm not out looking for another pair.

I have to say, I'm not as impressed with them as The Wire Cutter review led me to believe I would be... and that has affected my opinion of The Wire Cutter. I probably could have bought a generic pair of closed-back headphones for $60 and been just as happy.

I know of at least two other people from small towns whose IQ and life stories are similar to those shared in the article. I think high IQ individuals becoming isolated, social outcasts is more common in small towns, where accelerated curriculums and gifted and talented programs are more rare.

If you know a highly gifted child, refer them to the Davidson Academy, a free public school for the profoundly gifted. http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu

The Davidson academy is free to attend, and they can coordinate providing IQ-appropriate curriculum and work to the child's school for students who cannot attend in-person. Finally, there are paid, online options as well.

A friend of mine works at Davidson, and they have elementary age kids taking physics classes alongside master's degree students. When they say "profoundly gifted", it's not hyperbole.

Getting gifted kids into programs where they are surrounded by people like them can go a long ways towards helping them learn social skills. They may never be socially normal in larger society, but they can find friends, meaning, and happiness that can lead to a productive and brilliant career and life.

I previously used the 11" MBA as my dedicated "running around to meetings" machine, and basically just used Evernote and MS Office on it. When the new MacBook came out, I switched to it.

The keyboard on the MB takes some serious getting used to (actually, in the ~8 months that I used that computer, I never became fully used to the keyboard), but the screen and physical size of the MB was better than the MBA. (Of course, the processor was noticeably slower... so YMMV.)

So IMO, they did the right thing, there was too much overlap between models. The MB still needs to get faster and come down in price, but I do think it will be just as ubiquitous as the MBA within a few years.

I agree with others that the current line up is sorely lacking an affordable laptop, but that will likely change (slowly; hopefully) as manufacturing & component costs come down.

Wow! Great article, thanks for sharing such a personal and challenging story. I wish I could upvote more than once.

[edit: thanks for sharing mainly directed at original author, but thanks to Dinah as well for posting it here!]

I've been in this situation a few times in the last several years, where I have had a good, but not good-enough player, and I have tried a new approach to the dismissal each time. What follows is what I should have done in every instance.

First, go with your gut and end it ASAP, do not try to mentor, do not try to grow them, just end it and move on. I have spent too much time, effort, and money trying to bring the performance of B-players up to A-player status. If someone has hustle, then you can point out shortcomings and they will stay up all night making it perfect. That's an A-player in the rough; don't cut those players. If you point out shortcomings and they continue to deliver mediocrity over and over, cut them and move on.

Recognize who is ambitious and who is not, and place people in appropriate roles. There's nothing wrong with people who lack ambition, but they can't hold critical roles in high-performing teams, they drag the ambitious, hard-working, self-motivated A-players down.

I agree with many other commenters that the right thing to do is to be honest that it's not going to work out, and offer a severance package. I disagree with some severance numbers that have been suggested... the standard number is a week of severance for each year of service - that's what I go with.

However, if the person made significant concessions to work with you, for example, if they moved their family cross-country to take the job with you, then more severance is appropriate. "Make them whole".

As for delivering the message, my advice is the Band-Aid approach, make it succinct, do it in a place where their co-workers can't overhear, and plan their exit in a way that they don't run into other co-workers. You don't want the person to have to answer "how's it going" as they pack up their desk. I disagree with the long heart-to-heart conversation approach. After just getting canned is not the right time for mentoring. They’ll find support elsewhere, you trying to ease their pain makes it worse. If you like the person and would like to help them, tell them that, but tell them to catch up with you later on and say you’re happy to talk when they’re in a position to. If they want to talk right away, by all means do, but don’t force it on them.

I have never fired someone too soon. In retrospect, I always should have acted faster. The fact that you’re on here asking for advice means that it’s time to act.

Finally, I realize that some of the above may sound ruthless, so let me make three comments on philosophy and _why_ being direct and decisive is the best course of action:

1) It is demoralizing to the rest of the team to see someone reaping the same benefits they get for doing better work. One bad player will poison an entire team. Even nice, pleasant, hard-working people who require too much care and feeding will sap energy from the team.

2) It is not fair to the individual to leave them in a position where they are not succeeding. Leaving someone in a position where they are not cutting it is cruel – s/he will find a better fit elsewhere.

3) In a start-up environment, you simply cannot afford a B-player in any key role. Everyone has to put up at least their own weight, and a single person not doing that reduces your odds of success. A lot has been written on this, so I won’t go on – but one wrong hire can destroy a small company.

Best way to reach me is tchad@me.com Alternately, linkedin.com/in/tchadrogers

Also, check out the Spotify Company Culture video on YouTube. Find a company like this to work for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpsn3WaI_4k

This isn't advice per se, but rather a slightly different perspective.

The frustration and friction between technical staff and management staff that you describe is reality in every company that I have worked, from 50 employees to 50,000 employees. I hear that some new engineering-driven company cultures (Spotify, Zappos) are different, but I think those companies are extremely few and far between.

I am a software engineer by training and hobby, and a Director of IT by profession. One of my teams that is responsible for some Linux sys admin and some web programming is led by a very diligent and smart manager, who happens to have comparatively little technical knowledge. When I first started overseeing the team, there were occasional flair-ups between some engineers and the non-technical manager, which made both sides miserable. Since intervening a few times and employing a specific tactic, things have become noticeably better.

First, here’s what I have observed that leads to manager/engineer friction, and if not addressed, eventual misery.

Generally speaking and in my experience, engineers want to create things that are engineered beautifully: robust, elegant, simple, extensible, and easy to maintain. That takes time, patience, care, and hard work. To be asked to call a half-finished project good enough, or worse, to throw things out and consider all of the invested time as wasted, is naturally infuriating to anyone, but engineers are asked to do these two things more often than most other professions, in my experience.

Managers are paid to make sure what is being done is in the best interest of the organization, which has financial obligations to maintain. Many organizations are just squeaking by financially; they don't have the luxury of taking the care and patience that most engineers want to put in, and it’s managers’ jobs to find the right balance between good technical solutions and good business. The results of those decisions are messy, and rarely will management and the technical staff see things eye-to-eye.

These different perspectives and different motivations lead to friction, but poor communication exacerbates it. Managers have their own language, which has been parodied all over (drill down, actionable, win-win, ROI, etc.) and engineers have their own language (insert programming jargon and/or tech acronym soup here) that has been similarly parodied, and the two don’t overlap much.

When this happened on my team, I took a lot of time to talk to everyone involved about what was going on. Since I speak both manager-speak, and engineer-speak, I pretty quickly understood that what both were saying was reasonable. They just didn’t have a good understanding of what pressures and job-realities the other was dealing with, and didn’t have a common vocabulary to communicate their respective frustrations and challenges.

To smooth over the fraying relations on my team, I sat down with the engineering staff, and the manager, first separately, and then together. To the engineers I explained the goals and motivations of the manager, what pressure he/she was receiving from me, and what pressure I was receiving from the CIO and CEO. To the manager, I explained the realities that the technical team was dealing with – the occasional unknowns of software engineering, and how estimates can be dramatically off in ways that is not incompetence or malice, but merely unforeseen technical compilations.

Over time, I was able to teach the two factions to understand each other a little better. I asked them each to over-explain problems to one other, in simplified (shared) terminology, rather than throwing up their hands at what they thought were unreasonable demands or seemingly insubordinate responses. Over time, they have come to realize that the other group isn’t malicious or incompetent, but merely functions very differently from themselves. They trust each other a little more now, so when the engineers say something will take a week, the manager trusts them and doesn’t demand that it should be done in a day. When the manager explains that unfortunately we have to pull the plug on a project because our funding was cut, the engineers can trust that management genuinely fought for the project, but business reality dictated otherwise.

So if I have any advice for you, it is to get more involved in the business side of your organization. Business decisions and playing politics are rarely as stupid as they seem once you understand them.

If you have aspirations of ever making a living from running an online business, what you would learn from trying to monetize these two would be worth more than the money. If you don't care about making money online and its just a hobby, then I think Jayd's suggestion of putting them on flippa is a good idea. You could cut ties, make some money, eliminate the monthly cost, and ensure they continue to be useful to people (to the extent that you can without doing it yourself, anyway).

With <1,000 users / month, I think advertising is unlikely to cover your hosting costs, and ads would impact the speed of Ninongo.

Trying to comercialize either would be a lot of work. Probably more than writing the original code bases, so only do that if you're really interested in learning how to make a business out of it - don't do it on a whim or you will almost certainly fail.

If none of the above sounds appealing to you, then add a "tip jar" and mention that maintaining the tool costs you money, if the visitor finds it useful to leave a small donation.