biscarch

A few choice items from the contract, and how I would've read them as a 13 year old.

"1. It is my phone. I bought it. I pay for it. I am loaning it to you. Aren’t I the greatest?"

This phone is not yours. Don't use it for anything important and praise me for allowing you to even look at it.

"2. I will always know the password."

I don't trust you.

"4. Hand the phone to one of your parents promptly at 7:30pm every school night & every weekend night at 9:00pm. It will be shut off for the night and turned on again at 7:30am. If you would not make a call to someone’s land line, wherein their parents may answer first, then do not call or text. Listen to those instincts and respect other families like we would like to be respected."

I don't trust your friends or your opinions.

"5. It does not go to school with you. Have a conversation with the people you text in person. It’s a life skill. *Half days, field trips and after school activities will require special consideration."

Once again, I own you.

"18. You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You & I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together."

You are the only one that can mess up, I am untouchably perfect and this contract is perfect.

---------------------------

This contract makes it seem like the kid is a worthless, non-thinking drone and it glorifies the parents as gods.

#3 taken with #11 creates a situation in which the kid has to decide when to turn the phone off, but at the same time answer every phone call.

#15 states that the kid's peers' music preferences suck.

#1 directly contradicts #6 in regards to who pays for the phone.

This is insane. I hope someone can show me that this is not as I think it is.

Interesting link, I'm trying to diversify my income for the same reasons as above.

What is your thought process for charging 100% up front if you don't mind me asking.

I did ask, and you didn't disappoint. A review worthy of a purchase.

I haven't read anything in this style before (gotta love download speeds). I'll be working my way through this for awhile.

Awesome, thanks.

I'm working my way through taocp so this is a great addition.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I self-taught my way from single variable calc to somewhere around linear algebra/multivariate calc. I'm not sure how to proceed but the manifolds looks interesting.

Any suggestions on what books? I've been looking to go further with mathematics.

Make some time daily to think about interactions that you've had that day. Don't necessarily draw conclusions. If you take up a natural interest in the chain of events of human behavior, you'll start identifying various events and how they correspond to emotions/etc in context.

Also, observe what other people do, decide if you want to act that way, and then try it yourself.

IMO the best you'll get is a distribution of probabilities for what a particular event means, so don't expect hard and fast rules, but sometimes that's enough.

I've also found Python incredibly easy to pick up, but that may be because it's my nth language and not my 1st, 2nd, etc

(1) Slow and fast learners don't necessarily refer to the speed of learning, but rather how much information must be digested and how it must be digested to achieve a level of competence. (2) True (3) Until you have to go through 5 of them to finish the content for a block and that content is stretched across arbitrary breaks. Not to mention "next week's" chapter which you have to now wait for and continue with the same content. (4) Class-specific message boards are a positive, but don't change much about the nature of the internet, which is already availible on sites like StackOverflow, Reddit and IRC. (5) The same kind of timing can be seen in on-campus courses. Coursework needs to not be on a time limit. At all.

(6) Please do take some courses. They are a net gain and should be given a fair shot. Personally I find them frustrating and lacking.

A course should be complete-able in a week or two for a reasonably prepared person.

I agree.

Coursera and it's ilk are just making lecture halls bigger. That's fine for a Universities gradual evolution, but the fact is it's incredibly hard to make videos that allow a wide range of students to progress at their individual rates, and MOOCs don't solve this issue.

I make my living consulting. I took a couple months off to try and build a product with a friend, but it didn't work out for non-product reasons, so I moved to SF and started looking for new contracts a couple weeks ago.

It's in my bones.

I'll attempt to clarify. I started a business because I had experiences through school that made me think hard about why I was doing what I was doing at all times. Things like endless piles of homework were forced upon me by authority figures I didn't respect, even though I had already mastered the material.

I have this unending urge to learn more; All the time. I started programming with self-taught ActionScript. Then JavaScript/html/css. I spend a lot of time attempting to master my mind (Thinking in different ways/languages) and this has led me to Clojure, CL, Haskell and Erlang.

Show me a company that is receptive to using those languages in production and has a distributed nature. A company that allows it's employees to choose projects and throw their weight behind them. With as few managers as humanly possible. Where collaboration is collaboration and not forced.

The closest I've seen to this mindset is probably Basho. Maybe Valve, but I've never talked to anyone at Valve.

I apologize if I'm not clear or not fully explained. The answer to why my life is forcefully thrust in this direction would require a blog post of massive length that I am not ready to write. An interesting note is that consulting is likely a side effect of not being able to find anywhere I wanted to work.

Alternatively, if you like seeing the results page:

Bring alfred up -> type query -> start vimium link mode -> choose a result

It looks like this:

opt-space -> Riak ElasticSearch River -> f -> a

and it allows me to scan the results page, where I often need to hit the 3rd or 4th result.

I highly suggest picking up vimium if you use Chrome.

I just started doing that, but I have a decent amount straight from my phone-camera.

You could probably have Shepard Fairey do that. heh. Of course, you'd have to be ok with Andre staring you in the face all day.

1) 2am. Followed by occasions at Starbucks-type places with a sufficient, but not overwhelming background noise and headphones with music.

2) Awful. I like to sleep when I need to sleep, which is not the same time every night, so why would I get up for work at the same time every day?

3) Written, non-realtime communication when possible. This gives me the opportunity to figure out the answer to more complex problems, and the time to actually fix simpler ones.

4) Hacker as a mindset. There are equally complex business and code challenges.

5) IRC when I remember to sign in. Google Talk whenever my browser is open. It's all latent communication through a real-time source. (ie: if I ask/answer a question, I don't expect an immediate response, but when it gets responded to we can have a short discussion about it) I usually ignore chat when I'm "in the zone" because that's very tunnel-vision-y for me. Sometimes feedback through chat is essential to moving something forward.

6) Away, but only when there's a space I can go if I need to talk to someone. I make a choice to be in "world-mode" or "zone-mode"

or this. http://coderstats.geeksta.net/

this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3613135

I'm trying to figure out whether it was intended as Scrooge-google for the holiday season or screw-google...

This is also what I'm hoping for.

I think Apple said the Mac Pro is getting an upgrade in 2013, so it seems likely.

I've found in the past, for on-premise consulting, that I'm being paid to consult/develop, but being used as a psychiatric sounding board. I don't give advice I'm not qualified for, but being there under the guise of development and just listening seems to be a worthy use of my time (and their money) for some clients.

I can get more work done remote, but there's a greater personal connection locally. It's interesting what a consulting gig can turn into.

Life: Learning how to break psychological barriers so I can pursue my interests culminating in living a happier life. (examples: Public Speaking, Schooling level as a self-value system). By doing this I seem to have created a self-selection process for my potential social circles. (example: some people I've met seem to equate dropping out of college with being an utter failure. They usually never contact me again.)

Also for Life: Learning how to Learn. (Currently putting this to the test: http://christopherbiscardi.github.com/blog//coursera/2012/11...)

Programming: Lisp.

avg U.S. college semester is ~ 14-16 weeks, including testing. We'll call it 16 for some easy math.

16/4 = 4 months * 2 semesters/yr = 8 months.

We are naively assuming that semesters don't include test-weeks or other vacations and that all 16 weeks are education-filled.

Pricing for a college education [1] in-state public college avg ~22k private college avg ~44k

44k/8 months = $5500/mo

22k/8 months = ~$2750/mo

20k/6 months = ~$3333/mo

Pricing seems about right for a low end year of college.

[1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmp...

[edit: formatting]

A pre-requisite for being a CMS is managing content (Content Management System). Bootstrap has no content-managing facilities; It is purely a presentational (CSS, some JS) library with some well thought out defaults.

ie: you could still use Bootstrap to style a WordPress site.

Seconded. I'd love to see a post about your experiences.

Congratulations on taking the leap to freelancing.

I've found consulting to be very rewarding myself and still get that rush from a new engagement or finishing strong on a current engagement.

Frankly I'm just happy to be paid to do what I love doing and it makes me happy to know you've found a similar place.

What price range are the projects? If you don't mind me asking.

This, a thousand times this.

Everyone is incompetent in some way, which is fine. In fact, I'll help someone out repeatedly if they are really interested in learning something but failing for some reason.

Then there's another level where some people seem to enjoy being incompetent. It is particularly infuriating when someone who is self-admittedly incompetent in an area waves their incompetence around like it's something to be proud of. At that point I just walk away.

A little effort goes a long way.

Sent. Much thanks for this. $150 isn't exactly chump change at the moment.

0 questions a video view or 2 Rejected

I also had to deal with losing a co-founder during the application process, so I wonder if my perceived instability was a factor. Trying to figure out why if it was a serious reason (instead of just having too many other qualified candidates), although I understand their personal reasons stance.