Remind HN: Father's Day is Sunday | Hacker News Reader

Remind HN: Father's Day is Sunday

63 pointssant0sk129 comments

I know many of us are super-busy and absorbed in projects, so I thought I'd post a quick reminder for those who celebrate this holiday.

Still have a few days left to think of a way to show your dad your appreciation. I usually can't think of anything and end up getting him some golf balls (lame). This year I think I'll take him to a baseball game...

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And a preemptive congratulations to any Hackers celebrating their first Father's Day. (This will be my second.)

Congratulations on finding your father. ;-)

I was talking about becoming a father, not finding mine. But I guess I didn't make that very clear....

The winky face meant I was extra serious. ;-)

Thanks:-)

http://flickr.com/photos/26254919@N05/

A new baby (especially the first) is an interesting combination of 1. dang I have no time, and 2. I best get working so I can afford to but this little one through school!

Three weeks old today. Wowzers.

My daughter won't be arriving until around the 19th, so I don't get to celebrate this year. :(

You could celebrate by sleeping for 8 or 9 hours in a row, something I won't be able to do:-)

Special congrats to any founders with kids. It's hard work ;)

I wish there were a web app that recommends me gift ideas that doesn't suck. Because every holiday season, I struggle for days to find gifts.

Hey, there's an idea for the adventurous :P

Here's a thought: you tell it your budget, who you want to send stuff to, some categories they're likely to be interested in, and what dates/holidays. It nags you x days beforehand to pick a gift from the ones it's selected. If you don't it sends the highest ranked one within your budget. It would be cool if xmas/birthday cards could be semiautomated too.

Brilliant idea. To top it off, let's put it at verypersonalgifts.com

Sounds like something potentially very profitable, but very sad. After cards are automated, someone would be working on automating their contents.

I can't recall the last time I bought a card for someone. I can, however, recall the last time I made a card for someone.

That's probably overdoing it (especially the semi-automatic sending of gifts) but I genuinely think that a "help you select gifts" application would be a nice idea.

The way I see it working is that you start off by telling it basic data about your recipient (e.g. 55 year old male), and it makes suggestions one at a time, which you can rank from "not bad" to "terrible" depending on whether you think they'd like it. Every ten suggestions it gives you a list of "the best so far", and hopefully you'll eventually be sent off to Amazon or whatever to buy one.

This is actually a really good idea. It's not too impersonal, it's useful to a lot of people (much better than just browsing the shops looking for inspiration), it has a clear revenue stream, and people could be prompted to use it several times a year.

Here's a variant:

savemyass.com

How is Father's Day any more relevant to Hackers than it is to the rest of society? If no more relevant (as I suspect), then reminders such as this seem off-topic for HN.

It increases the sense of community. And from the title it is easy to avoid if you don't want to waste your time.

Imagine all kinds of similar events being posted to HN. Eventually, it would not be so easy to ignore them anymore. Better to be careful from the beginning.

At least these posts are more useful than some of the other stuff that's made the front page recently. The only way I know it's fathers day is from the ads on the radio, and even then I can usually only narrow it down to within a week or so.

Don't be a sourpuss.

Hacker News, at least to me, is much more that a "place for hacker news," it's a community. The news articles here are not just plain technology news - I could try CNET for that (Search "Father's Day Gifts" on CNET for a father's day related tech article).

HN is run by people like you and me. We're smart people and we typically post and up vote things that other hackers will appreciate. I tend to overlook birthdays and holidays when I am dealing with other things, and I appreciate the fact that someone was thoughtful enough to post a reminder for me.

So a short tutorial on how to set up Google Calendar with the holidays and reminders would preempt more of these?

A tutorial probably wouldn't help, because most of us already know how to set that up. It's taking the time to do that which is the hard part.

It's very on-topic:

Workaholic instant-noodle-eating late-nighters occasionally need reminders of upcoming calendar events.

Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlecalendar/tour.html

I agree - the top 3 stories on HN are the worst top 3 I've seen yet.

happy fathers day everyone ... remember you can always do something special like sending an e-card like this one :-)

http://fb-ec2.happywishes.net/images/fathersday/png/

Thats all it takes and you can't beat the price ;-)

I'm hoping to get a job. Can't think of a better gift for my dad ;-)

Damn - why did you have to post it this early? It's going to slip off the front page before Sunday.... and I won't remember!

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