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Comment by CliffStoll | Hacker News Reader

Sigh — for all the time it saves me in carrying boxes from the crawlspace under our house … I probably spend as much time fixing, maintaining and improving the thing. Much fun, of course — I’ve built a line following device for it and played with PyTorch to get it to semiautomaticly pick boxes from stock. Yep - every minute it saves me goes right back into fooling around with the three-wheeled beast.

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Oh boy! Ever since I listened to The cuckoo's egg I wanted to reach out to tell you how much I loved it, I enjoyed ever single minute out of the almost 13 hours so thank you very much for it.

I'm looking forward to reading or listening to Silicon snake oil and High tech heretic but those are not available in Storytel so I'll have to wait until I have time to read them in paper.

+1 I think I was gifted a copy of the book when it came out.

It sat on a shelf for a few months, and then I casually picked it up late one workday evening ... and didn't put it down again until the last page.

Just in time to leave for work the following morning, lol.

Yeah, not only the story was really interesting from a technical point of view but the storytelling and the social aspects of his relationship with his SO and their social circle were really enjoyable.

I even chuckled when he got mad and went to the garage to sand stuff (I won't spoil the rest) because of how close to home the entire thing hit.

You're doing extremely well if you're breaking even!

I think sometimes it's all about the journey, not the destination.

"You're doing extremely well if you're breaking even!"

The automater's slightly underwhelming battle cry! :-D

Well I happen to think that's a good general strategy to live life. Replace non-fun labour and time with fun labour and time. No matter then, if the fun version is all about automating the non-fun version (or vice versa)!

There's a book called "Automate the boring stuff with python."

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

Cliff, I just wanted to take a moment to say that The Cuckoo's Egg was formative in my youth and was definitely one of things that led me into getting into IT and programming. You just seem like such a nice, wonderful, fascinating human. Hope you have a great day!

Thanks to you, GTMTDI! May your career be as satisfying (but hopefully less interesting) than mine.

My day? Oh, it looks like I'll be sending out Klein bottles (thanks to Hacker News people!). I suspect that I'm the only shipping clerk in Northern California with a degree in planetary physics.

Heh - it's a "project" - myself, between learning to do 3d printing, in order to build parts/widgets to get my diode laser running for etching/engraving/cutting, it is an endless stream of tweaking this or that. OTOH, I am able to repair/replace things that would have been junk. (For example, I have a keyboard slider tray, where during a move, I lost the plastic sliders - those little parts paid for the cost of the 3d printer)

Go next level - implement a QR code label and recognition system, so it can find the correct box automatically. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Also - thank-you for your books, I read "The Cuckoo's Egg" when I was 18 and it was one of the most amazing things I had read to that point. (I also loved "Silicon Snake Oil" - but missed "High-Tech Herectic")

Yeah, but building a robot is fun in the way that moving bottles is not, so the time costs on each are very different!

Classic: https://xkcd.com/1319/ ("Automation").

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