Ask HN: I'm Busted, Out of Work. How to Visit a Friend Who Needs Me?

Some unsolicited advice: I think you should change your webpage. You have all the skills of someone who could be charging a good deal to do mobile/client side development, but I can see how some might interpret your personal page as a red flag.

I personally don't have any problems with what you've put on your page, but when someone is looking to hire a short to medium term consultant, they don't want to see a page that screams "I am a unique, creative, thoughtful individual".

Maybe move everything you have to an anonymous page and put up something simple like "here is my skill set, here are some examples of apps I've created, contact me for rates".

I really don't mean to come off as offensive or disparaging of your site. I'm just thinking of the very risk averse business folks I know who are also desperate for iOS developers or whatnot. They have a very clear picture of boring developers that will work hard for them. I'm confident if you compartmentalize a little bit more in your public persona, you could be making gobs of money and still have plenty of creative expression in other outlets.

How about driving a car that needs to be relocated for someone or some company from west to east, for free? It will take some time, but it looks like you have that.

that would be a great idea, but I've had some seizures. I have some reason to believe that I won't have them anymore but before I drive I want a neurologist to tell me it's safe.

Oddly I can have a seizure while driving a car without anyone noticing. Several years passed before I was diagnosed. The first seizure that I know about, it was as if the entire universe sprung into being instantaneously, with me at the wheel of my car, in a driving snowstorm on a twisty mountain road, and no clue as to how I got there.

Don't mean to seem like a jerk but I have the following things to ask and say :

1) Why would you go to a Google interview knowing that working for them would be a conflict of interest ? That seems very odd and questionable to me.

2) You're in debt and out of work (or so it appears). Perhaps dropping everything, selling your stuff and/or borrowing money to visit them may not be in your or their best interest right now. Consider that.

3) You seem to have a history of issues (googled your name). You may need to consider that your decision making abilities may be impaired - especially if you're upset about something. Have a discussion with your friends and family before you take any serious steps.

All the best and I hope it works out for your friend.

Something needing to be prefaced with, "I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but...", will likely be more constructive with the benefit of robust editing. There's no idea in your comment that requires taking the risk of sounding like a jerk, and the strained circumstances in the original post make a deliberate decision to run the risk of sounding like a jerk unconscionable.

No worries. I've been an active kuro5hin member for 13 years.

You Have Absolutely No Idea.

I am concerned about the general effect of such comments on HN's quality while realizing that they are habits that people develop elsewhere on the internet...that's where mine honed.

If you google my name, you're also going to find some completely different guy who looks somewhat like me, did time in Walla Walla commencing in 2005, then perished in a shootout with the Tacoma police a couple years ago.

I terminated the interview process after I decided it would be a conflict of interest. I didn't go to mountain view, I had several phone interviews. I was expecting to go to mountain view when I withdrew.

I would give my life for that of another, even a complete stranger. In general I make decisions like this without any consideration for my own best interest; to the extent that I do consider it, it's over things like my sentimental attachment to my Xeon box.

There are times that my decision making abilities are indeed impaired, but I don't think I'm symptomatic in that way presently. I've been sleeping too much lately - "hypersomnia" - which is commonly a symptom of depression, however I am not otherwise depressed.

My family is not useful for these kinds of discussions, I might as well have such a discussion with my cat. Friends though are commonly helpful.

> I would give my life for that of another, even a complete stranger. In general I make decisions like this without any consideration for my own best interest

I would suggest your current circumstances should cause you to reconsider that approach.

Does your friend actually need you to visit them? Or is there help and support that you can provide from a distance?

For example, you could put together a package of information for their city and the type of problem they're having, and have that delivered to them. Then you can ask them if they are okay calling the agencies you identified or if they want you to call on their behalf, or if they have someone else that they want to onow but that they haven't told yet.

Also, please don't forget to protect yourself. You can't help your friend as much if you are ill.

It has been helpful to her so far, that I've been emailing her every day for months.

I've known her for many years but only recently have we become close.

She presents a false front, in that she appears to be a great deal stronger than she really is. Like a picture of a stone wall, rather than real stone.

Over the last couple weeks I've been asking her for some advice about my work. While she's been, strictly speaking, helpful, she's also been quite harshly critical. I got a mail from her a few days ago expressing her furious anger at not being able to get medical care, to which I replied - loosely speaking - "Call 9-1-1".

I didn't hear from her for several days, I prayed that she was in the hospital yet feared that she was dead. Finally she emailed me this evening, she is in the hospital.

She is completely convinced that she has not a friend in the world. That's not even remotely true but she is convinced of it. So while strictly speaking there _is_ a great deal I could do from here, there is a lot more to do were I there in person.

I've been up all night, I need to get some sleep so don't be concerned if I don't post for a while.

Thank you all for your thoughts, as well as the many upvotes to this submission.

My friend emailed me just now, she's doing better than she was. I apologize I don't want to say much more than that. I think she'd be OK were she her normal self but just now she is quite fragile.

Sorry to hear about your situation.

I am not in a position to hire you but I wonder if you would undertake software development work where transport could be part of payment?

If so, this might work well for an east coast shop in need of experienced temporary help with interesting work.

Good luck.

yes. That's just what I was hoping to achieve.

It's not quite that I am unwilling to accept gifts nor loans but that I very strongly believe in self-reliance. Were someone to give me the money, or lend me the money, that's money they could not give or lend to someone who needs it more than I do.

In a moment I'll send my resume to what I think your gmail addr is. Mine is mdcrawford@gmail.com

My SO is http://stackoverflow.com/users/2368132/michael-crawford if you'd like to look over my history there.

I'm not on the east coast nor in a position to hire anyone, but shoot me an email and we can chat. If there's anything you need, just let me know.

Ah, my apologies, I misread your post. I do see now that you were referring to a shop other than your own.

I've been puzzling over what I could reasonably say about my friend, but it is complicated by the fact that they are well-known. Not famous like a rock star, but well-known within their field of work.

I use "they" rather than "he" or "she" so as to avoid identifying their gender, not for their privacy but because while not well-known there are some people who know they are a close friend.

EDIT: Sorry, I meant to avoid writing "she" and "her" but screwed up.

I might sell my workstation; I'm not dead certain as I am quite attached to it however it's a lot easier to replace a box than a close friend. It's not really _current_ technology however it is quite powerful and the case looks really cool. I'm not sure what to sell it for however I will figure that out by tomorrow afternoon:

   2.5 GHz Core Quad Xeon e5420
   16 GB FB-DIMM memory
   1000 watt power supply
   16-lane PCIe 1 GB ATI video (don't recall the model #)
   SuperMicro Motherboard (forgot #)
   Really Sexy CoolerMaster case - 10 5 1/4" drive bays!
   generic floppy drive
   supermicro dual-layer Blu-ray burner

The video card has two DVI sockets.

The motherboard has six internal SATA sockets, I've brought two of them out to eSATA. Also two gigabit ethernet.

Serial, parallel, legacy mouse and keyboard connectors, 4 external USB, I think there's six internal. Sound on the motherboard, I think it's Intel HD Audio.

The motherboard has two Xeon sockets but only one is installed. It can take a maximum of 64 GB of FB-DIMM, with 4-way interleaving.

FB-DIMM is largely out of style as it uses more power but it really is better than DDR* for multithreaded code; the buffer enables different CPU cores to read and write the same address ranges at the same time. While you can do that with DDR in a strictly logical sense, the memory controller arbitrates the bus so in reality that doesn't actually happen, thereby slowing down multithreaded code.

Optionally, four Antec hard drive coolers.

I'd rather keep the four drives and my hardware raid controller, as the controller was given to me by a former employer (I worked on the OS X driver for that same card).

I have a drive I don't really need, that while not brand new is in mint condition. I can install any OS you like; I have a fully-licensed Windows 7 OEM installer, with the sticker and everything, or I could install any Linux or *BSD distro you like.