234 karma · joined February 14, 2017
You can put this to the test by just ceasing all work on your current projects, without telling anyone, and seeing what happens.
I've spoken a lot with the Entomology department at a well-known university to try and learn as much as possible about these spiders. From what I've learned, Brown Recluse spiders actually have a hard time biting people (physically and mentally). They need encouragement - such as a life threatening situation - to even want to bite us. Even then, I've been told that they have physical trouble biting us hard enough to break through much skin and need help in that department as well (i.e. rolling/stepping onto one where the added force assists them in biting deeper).
The experience cost me about a half-tube of hydrocortisone cream but thats really it.
When I say infestation, I mean it literally. It was very unusual to make it to bedtime without killing at least one Brown Recluse. The most we ever killed in one night was 15. We would wake up all hours of the night, turn on our phone flashlights, and scan the room for any lurking on the ceiling or walls. Usually, the midnight scans would bear fruit. To this day I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my phone before remembering that I'm no longer in that situation.
One year and one week after moving into the apartment, I was bitten. One of the poor creatures found its way under my covers and into my shirt while I was sleeping. I rolled over on top of it and it bit me. The burn/itching actually woke me up shortly after and I was able to recover the spider from inside my shirt. I absolutely panicked, rounded up my entire family to drive me to the ER at 3 AM (because surely I was going to go into some kind of shock or other state of impairment) and even called the doctor on the way. Halfway to the ER, the doctor called back. He told me not to panic, and that there was actually nothing they could do about it right this minute. He told me to go home, go to sleep, and watch the bite for any signs of infection/necrosis.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best advice I've ever heard regarding Brown Recluses.
All in all, the bite amounted to little more than a massive mosquito bite. My body did have an allergic reaction (broke out in a rash head to toe) but it was honestly nothing like the horror stories. We moved two months later, but I'll never let myself forget the overreaction I presented and how silly it all was.
I actually started to feel that I was getting to know them. Brown Recluses are exactly that: reclusive. They want nothing to do with us. They are magnificent hunters and terrible climbers (this is how they end up in your bed: they fall). They tend to stick to the edges of the room and are the only spider I've ever seen with a distinct "stalk" instead of a twitchy walk. They're honestly beautiful to watch (as I used to often).
If you do have a Brown Recluse problem, don't panic. It took me over a year to get bitten while living in an actual nest of them and even then it was a freak accident. Buy yourself some of those rectangular glue traps and place them along your walls, behind furniture, and in the back of closets. Brown Recluses can be dangerous to children under the age of 7 and the elderly (which is why we moved promptly) so don't ignore them entirely. Learn to respect them for what they are just like anything else.
1) Like you said, I assumed this meant that they were installing themselves via the law instead of relying on the honor system. I think that's awesome news. 2) I don't trust them to act in the best interest of the masses when it comes to which uses they green light and which uses they shoot down. But that's 100% my opinion which is cynical in nature most of the time.
As long as the EPA uses this power for good, I'm all for it. I am skeptical about their motives though (which is entirely subjective).
> Any Other Building Materials (other than cement): Examples include insulation, plasters, mastics, textured paints (e.g., simulates stucco), and block filler paints (e.g., for coating masonry).
It looks like they're wanting to open a pathway of discussion between potential manufacturers/importers of asbestos and the EPA for new business opportunities which apparently include new construction, the brake pads that go onto your vehicles, and the floor tiles in your home.
This sounds insane to me. I don't want to live in a world where policymakers with no scientific background get to decide how they personally feel about proven carcinogens in my children's lives. They seem to literally be saying that they want to consider asbestos in construction projects as a significant new use despite the fact that using it in construction was previously proven to be unsafe.
The comment date is quickly closing, please let your voice be heard.
[0] https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0159...
EDIT: If I'm confused and have linked something irrelevant, please let me know and I will redact.
$10/month for 3 viewings per month. That's 3 movies for the price of 0.76 movies where I'm from (last time I went tickets were $13). Then, after you hit that cap, extra viewings are $5 less per ticket which has to be less than any one movie ticket for any new feature anywhere in America. Am I missing something? Are they just getting hate because they lacked foresight in the beginning? Is it because they gambled with investor money on a ridiculous business model? I have a genuine curiosity around where the hate is coming from.
I don't like going to movie theaters but if I did I would think this was a great deal.
EDIT: to correct the misinformation that each additional ticket was $5
Coming from a team that did nothing remotely close to a standup, I highly value our current system. It's not perfect, and I have no idea if it fits the Valley's definition of "standup", but it serves its purpose very well and keeps everyone on the same page. I can't tell you how many times a person from my team has reached out in the afternoon about a roadblock I mentioned during standup. Or how many times a team member wanted to help me out on a tough user story simply because I was open about discussing its difficulty.
This is just my opinion.
I relate to your comment; I've read a lot of books, put thousands of hours into hacking on side projects, played an obscene amount of video games. But nothing, nothing, has come close to filling my heart as much as spending time with my children. As far as I'm concerned, my career is a means to an end. The goal is to achieve financial security so that I can spend as much time as possible with my kids.
I'm not saying to go have kids willy-nilly, but this is my perspective.
I noticed that certain options are hardcoded (such as the port number). As someone with very little experience in assembly, how difficult would it be to make this dynamic via environment variables?
As for your question, check here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/List_of_Dwarf_Fortres...
I'm not sure if they've ever truly gone into detail regarding their methods, but they've done high-level overviews here and there that I've seen.
When it comes to "writing a tutorial" for the benefit of your own knowledge, it's been proven to work. This is very good advice when it comes to personal gain. However, for the sake of beginners and content creators that are active in the tutorial community, please consider throwing out these lessons when you're done. It might help someone out there at some point but you have to take into account your initial motive: personal advancement. Lessons that are taught out of passion for teaching and advancing the knowledge of those around you are often the best because they come from a selfless place. Lessons created for the creator's own advancement are often not as helpful. This is something I struggled with when creating my own tutorials. Was I creating it out of love for teaching others, or was there some hidden motive that even I might not be aware of?
This is simply my own opinion, take my comment with a grain of salt. I'd be interested to hear what others think about the prevalence of "beginner" tutorials juxtaposed with an apparent lack of those that would be considered "advanced".
The point of this final exercise was for me to talk through my thought process. It was a debugging problem, and I eventually succeeded, but not without fumbling around for 15 minutes or so. The solution was a stereotypical example of being "right in front of you", but the nature of this exercise threw me off. When I look back, the analogy that makes the most sense to me is the boxing glove wall from the TV show, Wipeout [1]. It's a simple problem of getting from point A to point B with the twist of getting punched in the face, or the stomach, or the leg, at seemingly arbitrary intervals. I can see this as a good simulation for the reality of an engineering job (being faced with unplanned interruptions and having to bounce back from them) but, at the same time, I've never had to verbally talk someone through every keystroke and mouse movement that I make while debugging. I was frustrated with the exercise and with my inability to immediately diagnose the issue. The interviewer was amazing at getting me back into the right mindset after noticing I had fallen off the wagon each time, which showed me just how good of a manager they were. However, the more I realized how terrible I was doing, the worse I performed. I left with the unmistakable feeling of dread having set-up camp in my stomach. Despite arriving at the solution, I knew I had blown that exercise.
In the end, I was turned down. The official reason was that another candidate had accepted an offer for the position, but the hiring manager also told me that my programming skills were perceived as sub-par due to the final exercise. They said I'd be a great fit culturally, and that their team enjoyed the conversations we had, but my Python skills just weren't good enough. Being someone that really identifies with their abilities as a programmer, with Python being my language of choice, this verdict has kept me awake at night. I'll never know if the actual reason was due to the other candidate accepting or due to me being my own worst enemy during the final exercise.
The tech hiring process is one of the only times I've gotten 100% of the problems correct yet still failed. Half of me says that's bad, but another part of me understands in situations that require context like mine above. It's not the manager's job to babysit me when I psych myself out, or when I'm having a bad day. Engineers need to be reliable and stable enough to work efficiently on their own. Had I been alone, I would have found the solution much quicker. But you're almost never alone in a real work environment. Some of these exercises are measuring much more than just algorithmic competency.
I say go for it when it comes to starting your own thing. It's hard, but it's rewarding.
Automation is something that I believe to be a must-have for many areas of business. ETL work, data entry, data collection, testing, etc., can (mostly) be automated as they're all very replicable. This frees your hands to work on the more important aspects of your business/job.