gaustin

I was visiting Chicago a while back and rode the North Central from Vernon Hills into the city a few times. One day we stopped, waiting for the tracks to clear, in an industrial area I got to drool over a bunch of BIG decommissioned power hammers. (I believe it was the east side of the train for those who are curious.)

I have a friend who is working on a book of what is basically smith porn. Beautiful photos of big power hammers and presses in action and some stories of the men that have used them. These have been gathered on his "vacations" and at work over 40 years or so.

I used to be the bug fixer guy. There was nothing worse to me than a blank file. There's something simple and focused and comfortable about fixing bugs for a lot of people. It does take creative, critical thinking to fix bugs it's different than creating something from square one.

With a bunch of practice I got to the point where I'm more or less equally comfortable in either role. I learned to apply principles and defined a process that works for me. I watched other people create. I had two really good mentors that showed a lot of patience coaching me through those moments of profound uncertainty that come with creating new things.

Very different skills but both are learnable.

> Have we become a society of emasculated pansies that fears little pocket knives?

Some people are afraid of just about everything.

I make knives. (Some people immediately jump to the conclusion that I must be a nutty survivalist, when the reality is that I just like making things with my hands.) I almost always carry one, whether it's a small folding knife or fixed blade knife.

When I made the first knife, people at work were curious. They asked to see it in a meeting. My boss was very uncomfortable about it and asked me not to make it known I carry a knife to avoid problems with skittish folks.

This is in Montana, where a large number of people own at least one gun and it's incredibly easy to get a concealed weapon permit.

> Or take LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is great. Usually. If > you're using it exactly as they intended. When we wanted to > make some of our models automatically supply some query > parameters, though...well, let's just say there was a lot > of T4 templating involved to get around sealed classes, and > leave it there.

I solved what sounds to be a similar problem using reflection and the Linq ExpressionBuilder class(and related classes). It actually turned out really clean and powerful.

I think it's even harder to manage the expectations of an already experienced developer coming into this program.

I did something similar with another company and ran into the issue that they were expecting to pay significantly less than I was expecting (realistically or not). In hindsight, it is obvious the program was designed for new programmers or recent grads.

It might not have been such an issue if we had talked about potential salary ranges up front. It was a big shock to learn of their expectations when the offer came across the table.

It's a $200 alternative to a $7,000 device. Seems like a bargain to me.

It's also quicker, easier and more effective than navigating most companies' support tools. I don't want to spend half an hour or more registering, confirming and entering a bug report that will most likely be ignored.*

* A company taking reports seriously in a visible way is a rare occurrence in my experience.

Actually, there are custom gun makers. There is somewhat less room for "handmade" when it comes to firearms, but they still get pretty creative where possible.

I don't know any makers personally, but I do belong to the same blacksmithing club as a guy who deals in authentically custom guns and knives: http://www.hallowellco.com/

I'm not a collector, but I love to go look at the pictures.

It's not that handmade is always, better. It's that handmade is often better when it comes to specific uses. It's similar to the choice you make when you write code when you could have taken something off the shelf to use. Sometimes you need the edge that built to purpose gives.

This is definitely the case for high performance knives. The choice of steel and the geometry of the edge, bevels and belly can be easily customized to fit the specific purpose of the knife. The first couple of knives I have made don't look that great, but since I nailed the heat treat and grind they are the best cutting implements I've ever owned.

From TFA: 'a [GroupOn] spokesperson said it was "difficult to give an accurate figure" for how many businesses are repeat users of the site.'

Really? I would have thought it would be pretty easy to run a query on their accounts and find out a nearly exact number.

Being authentic.

This is probably not something I should talk too much about on a venue filled with potential employers or coworkers. But I think self-awareness is important, so I'll say a few things.

You're right on with the confidence (and persistence?) issues. That's one reason for doing the SC thing. It's helping me build up some confidence. I've been programming for quite a number of years. My day jobs for the last several years have destroyed the confidence I used to have. I'm getting it back, and quickly. And that makes me very, very happy.

OSS is something I want to be a core part of my job, because I use and appreciate it so much. I've tried getting involved with several projects before. Invariably my confidence falters enough that I give up before I really get going.

I'll go over to the two jobs threads from the other day and apply to some places. There were at least 3 or 4 that I would LOVE to work at.

This is an avenue I'm investigating.

Just trying to find the right place to go. Right now I'm doing a software craftsman apprenticeship to increase the quality of place I can get a job. When that's done (it's a 20-30 hour commitment on top of a full-time+ job) in January, I'm going to get involved in some OSS projects.

The move is probably at least 6-12 months out.

The biggest difference to my mind, the one that bugs me most, is the opportunity cost. Sure, I have no commute, low mortgage for a big house, no sales tax and easy access to some of the most beautiful unspoiled wilderness in the entire world. The downside is that there are virtually no jobs/startups here that I find interesting.

You either adjust your expectations when you live here, or you go somewhere else.

I am somewhat worried that when I do decide to leave that my wages will be pegged artificially low because of the cost of living difference. But I figure I can always convert my salary to the local equivalent when asked what my current salary is.

> If you're making $50k you're being screwed.

I'm being screwed then. I have a CS degree and a business Masters degree. I'm a "senior" developer and make $55k.

The primary employer in my area is the Montana State government. Programmer pay here tops out at about $60k/year. Low-end programmer salaries are about $35-$40k. In the private sector you'd be lucky to get $70k/year.

My wife and I are thinking about moving, but you can't really beat the quality of life here. Remote work is an option, but I don't really have the network/stomach to freelance and remote permanent positions are pretty scarce.

Same here. At 29 I've finally internalized the reality that nothing valuable comes easily. Dreams and goals don't accomplish themselves.

Right now, I'm working my ass off to do a software craftsmanship apprenticeship. It has taken time to develop the maturity to be content to focus on what I need to do today and not worry about when, where, and how the hard work will pay off.

What are the problems that you see with Gitorious?

I just set it up at work and it went very smoothly. I'd like to torpedo it before we actually start using it, if it's going to be a problem.

Get a pair of Kahtoola microspikes and you won't have to worry much about falling on ice or snow. I run all winter in Montana with these. They handle streets or mountain trails without a problem.

http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php

And I just read it on a smartphone in my back yard in extremely rural Montana.

The room for "physical" innovation is shrinking. But the importance of physicality is diminishing, especially location. Modern innovation seems more subtle and widespread today, than it was when we threw most of our energy at a few big goals.

Perhaps you can't transport your body around the world quite as quickly and easily as you could in the past. You can be there virtually in seconds and at almost no cost.

I'm not sure it's good for us as a species to have the ability to disconnect from the physical world so much. But that's where we are and it seems the disconnect is only going to get more pronounced.

I would be ecstatic to have an idea that's both reasonably achievable and that has reasonable chance of making some money.

Yeah. Not shooting for the stars. I'm just looking for a base hit to build some confidence.

I have no ideas that I'm comfortable and interested in investing time and energy into. It's that simple.

<<That said, a small ops team (three people) can manage thousands of machines without much difficulty, and you can probably share two of those with the dev team as Dev-Ops guys, with one grizzled old sysadmin to handle the nastier problems.>>

I worked for a company that contracted with a guy whose entire business was based on this model. He was the hardcore sysadmin and would juggle tons of servers and administrative config for you. He trained the devs to handle all of the mundane ops stuff, with him as backup.

Really great system. It was really empowering for us devs, too.

How much of this doom and gloom is it reasonable to worry about? How much of it is marketing for the kinds of books this guy writes, which seem of the same theme?

It actually says "$100 million in all time sales." Which means that they had sold $100 million worth of software since the time the company was founded. Still impressive, but very different than $100 million in revenue per year.

How does that compare to the other languages in the Bantu family? Long ago I studied Ichibemba, and think it had something like 18 noun classes, too.

IIRC, Finnish has something like 28 noun cases. That is intimidating.

Same here. But somehow the numbers always get recalculated when they pass through my supervisor's hands.

Same here. Nobody believes me when I tell them I can feel others' presence in a visceral way.

I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.

It's funny on multiple levels. Physically abusing testicles and the Ruby on Rails reference being the two obvious ones.

If you change the name as you suggest, then it's significantly less funny. Funny is an important component of fun.

I wonder if it can cut high carbon steels. It looks like it uses a Dremel-style tool. I guess it might work on annealed steel if you can slow the movements way, way down and maybe applied some cutting fluid.

Can you share on what? Even in general.