Deejahll

I was in exactly your position. Mediocre high school, a few years of a programming job. In my case, I chose a community college followed by a state school followed by a new job.

The choice to go to school is debatable, depends on your money situation. Out of the five years it took me to get my Computer Science bachelor's, I had only about ten really worthwhile classes. The rest just seemed like going through the motions. I think it would have been different if I had picked a different major.

On the other hand, I met my wife and made some of my best friendships at school.

When I think back I consider what I might rather have done instead: build a start-up company, or travel. But both of those would require money that I didn't have, so school (for which I could get loans) was the best choice for me at the time.

If you go:

Community college wasn't the cutting edge of academics, but it was cheap and helped me make the transition. (Read: I had trouble with motivation and getting to class on time, and those mistakes are easier to deal with at a cheap community college.) Get your GPA up and then you'll have your pick of good-quality state schools. High enough and you won't have to pay for them.

I don't regret choosing a state school after that. I'm happy I didn't rack up more student loan debt.

Don't overload yourself with credits. I regret doing so. Take a moderate load and do something interesting with your extra time. (Like your personal programming projects and experiments. Or do research as an undergrad.)

Don't major in computer science. I regret doing so. Major in something "cool," a natural science like Physics or Astronomy, or something you can really sink your brain into like Mathematics or Philosophy, or something that's not easy to pick up as a spare time hobby like electrical engineering. Or any other "real" subject that interests you. Take interesting computer science classes as electives. Minor or double-major in it if you want. You can teach yourself the same amount from a book, and your future employers won't care what your major is in, if you can demonstrate that you know what you're doing. Plus, having some science under your belt can lead to an awesome career of discovery, instead of being a cubicle monkey re-writing back-end software for a greedy bank or telecom company. (Burnout all over again.)

If you're anything like me, and this is my number one regret about school: go to the fucking gym at least three times a week. Doesn't matter if you look great or not: It's free and it's good for your brain. I stopped going to the gym in school citing "lack of time" and slipped into an unmotivated depression that almost ruined my school, my marriage, my basically everything. Do whatever it takes to stay active. I wish I could go back in time with a baseball bat and knock some sense into myself.

After school, if you took out loans to go, you're a slave until you pay them off. If you do the above without failing, you'll get a decent job. I recommend making the minimum payments, live frugally until you build up a savings account. It might be cheaper in the long run to pay the loans off as quickly as possible, but then you don't have the ability to quit a job if you burn out again, and coast or travel the world for a bit.

Also, does Windows support redirection? If this were a one-off task that I were to do on my Linux box, I'd have written only:

    import sys

    template = ... # (same as above)

    for line in sys.stdin:
        print template % {
             ... # (same as above)
        }

Then execute like this:

    python mycode.py < original.txt > output.txt

- readlines() is redundant for filehandle objects, you can omit it.

- Prefer Python's string formatting operator. I even prefer the extended dict-compatible syntax.

- close() is called automatically when the filehandles are garbage-collected; you can usually omit it for tasks like this.

- ranges (like those in brackets) are exclusive, not inclusive. So I suspect you have an off-by-one error there.

Thus:

    in_file = open('c:/WVASA/original.txt', 'r')
    out_file = open('c:/WVASA/output.txt', 'w')

    template = '''
        <tr bgcolor="#006699">
            <td>%(country)s</td>
            <td>%(name)s</td>
            <td>%(street)s</td>
            <td>%(city)s</td>
            <td>%(zipcode)s</td>
            <td><a href="mailto:%(email)s">%(email)s</a></td>
        </tr>'''
    template = template.strip()

    for line in in_file:
        out_file.write(template % {
            'county': line[:12].rstrip(),
            'email': line[12:43].rstrip(),
            'name': line[43:73].rstrip(),
            'street': line[73:99].rstrip(),
            'city': line[99:118].rstrip(),
            'zipcode': line[118:].rstrip(),
        })

How is it different from http://www.librarything.com/ ?

Right now!

Only possible because my wife saved up a bunch of money while I was working. Now we're burning through that, I'm updating my portfolio, blowing the dust and cobwebs off several startup ideas I had shelved for so long. No income yet; I'm going to start aggressively looking for consulting work as soon as the portfolio is up. I've had a couple "fell in my lap" job leads from friends but none are in my area and I can't move right now.

I'm hoping to hit some kind of rhythm where I'm able to stay just afloat with a part-time contract work, and the rest of my time I can spend time 1. with the wife and 2. exploring my experimental software ideas.

My mantra and rationale remains unchanged: even if I fail at this little adventure and go broke and have to panic and reorganize my life, that in itself will be a lot more fulfilling and exciting than the burnt-out, depressed place I was in at my former job.

I've heard that when skydiving, once you reach terminal velocity it's becomes less frightening. So it doesn't feel too bad right now. But I'm entirely aware that the ground is quite hard and only a few thousand feet, er, dollars away.

Best of luck to you!

Cheap barcode scanner + Atmel AVR + strong refrigerator magnet.

The first time you scan your product, it memorizes the date. Every time after, it indicates the product age with leds, sound, or an LCD. You keep it stuck to your fridge, scan groceries going in/being opened, scan anything questionable again before use to check the age.

You'd have to keep a sheet of one-off barcodes for stuff like restaurant leftovers, fruit, etc.

As the userbase grows, you could support downloadable tables of expiration dates for various foods(barcodes) so you wouldn't have to even think about that.

Somebody could probably make "a bundle" by mass-marketing a gadget like this, but that would make me angry. Thinking like a user rather than an entrepreneur here, I'd prefer to see it as a cheap, hackable, perhaps Arduino compatible electronics kit on Sparkfun.com or the like.

Ah, this is very helpful. I was aware that I wanted to do something like #2, but I was not aware that such a partitioning was the norm.

Thanks for the comment. I was wary of that book because I heard it described as a way to become a sort of uncaring-manager-at-a-distance while getting rich quick.

Since there's more to it than that, I'll give it another look.

> Reading through your list of points, it sounds like you're trying to justify not just trying

Correct. "Trying" is risky, I'm just attempting to measure how much more of a risk it is to do it on my terms. Prior to today, my plan seemed guaranteed to fail no matter how strong the idea, and I would be unhappy in that situation.

Thanks to the comments here so far, I feel now like I'm not guaranteed a loss under my low-hours restriction, and the risk of failure is acceptable given my desire to see my idea to fruition, and my expectation for its potential.

Your link was brilliant, motivating and exactly what I wanted to hear. I'm surprised I hadn't found that before.

Thanks much for the reply.