mlwarren

I don't have it. I'd strongly consider getting it if it covered burnout.

Nearly four. I have the Cherry Blue switch version in my home office and love it. I've been strongly considering getting the same with Cherry Browns for my work office.

Are there any good monitoring tools out there for letting you know if your droplet is having problems? I know DO has a REST api and you can obviously check stuff out via the DO web interface, but I am curious if there are any third party tools too?

I work for a smart metering company and I can confirm that there are a lot of interesting developments in this space. In addition to the meter itself and the functions the meter can do (automatic reporting, disconnects, connects, etc) I think the possibility for incentivized home automation will be a big driver in the internet of things.

Some consumers may be interested in throttling their power when load is high on the grid for environmental or cost saving reasons. When the utility provides a monetary incentive for the customer to throttle their AC or turn off their pool pump during periods of high load a lot more people suddenly get interested.

I agree that it's too bad that there's no official licensure process (at least in the US). Strangely enough, when I asked on HN and reddit there seemed to be a lot of hostility to the idea. [1][2]

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6318923

[2]http://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/1lmnjq/thoughts...

I have a 50Mbps/5Mpbs connection that I upgraded to recently. I do have to download large code bases and upload large .war files, but I've noticed that it's not really my connection speed that's limiting. Often I'm on my work VPN or if I'm doing work on a customer site I'll be on their VPN. Most of the time, at least for me, the VPN severely limits my upload/download speeds.

Since that's the case, I'm considering downgrading my plan. YMMV, but my take home message is do what works for you and make sure that you are able to utilize all of your bandwidth if you go with a more expensive plan.

Also, what would be nice (for me) is if the upload speeds would match the download speeds. I would settle for a 5Mbps/5Mbps connection because more often than not upload speed is my bottleneck.

I think the Big Nerd Ranch book covers (at some level) the broad spectrum of iOS. It may have some "beginner" feel but it wasn't one of those books where it goes over simple language constructs for half of the content. I read it about 6 months ago and I felt it met my needs.

http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_ner...

This article (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-mi...) was popular on HN months back.

Looks like http://www.7-min.com/ has made a timer application for the workout routine.

Could you post the price for the people without massdrop accounts? I'm curious but I don't want to sign up.

I don't agree. I use a full size wired Apple keyboard now and use the PageUp/PageDown buttons. I prefer it that way. Also Home/End scroll to the top and bottom of the entire document vs the beginning and end of a line and I've had to fix that in software settings.

That said, everyone has their preferences. I think someone else in the comments mentioned how it would be nice to have a fully 100% customizable keyboard. I agree with that idea.

I stopped reading after the Page Up comment. Keyboard preferences are obviously subjective and the author of the post feels very strongly in a way that I don't agree with.

I used the wireless Apple keyboard for a while but I missed Home/End/Page Up/Page Down. Also had a lot of trouble swapping it back and forth between my OSX and Windows machines.

At least the CODE keyboard will add more variety. At the end of the day that's what people really need.

I'm in the Gen Y bucket and I refer to people born in the mid to late 1980s until the mid 1990s as Gen Y. I'm not sure if this range is appropriate or the standard.

I've made the distinction between Gen Y and the Millennial as "people who remember a time before computers were so ubiquitous" vs "people who have always lived entrenched in technology".

I'm in the same boat as you. Even if I have free time in the evenings or weekends a lot of my desire to be in front of a computer is gone. I've been slowly chipping away at a side project but I feel like if I wasn't weighted down by my day job I'd be able to get on with things faster.

Here is the PDF version (http://stone.com/dmt/DMT-NeXT-and-the-HumanMachine.pdf).

Ahh, see, I was under the impression that the customer was failing to understand. If they think the rep is wrong then that's a whole other problem. If that's the case then you're right, it does come off as condescending.

I'm not sure of the best way to convince a customer (who is wrong) that is questioning the rep's expertise. Provide more data and explain differently, I guess.

For a customer that just doesn't get it, I don't see why the dishwasher/vacuum cleaner analogy is bad as long as it's delivered nicely.

"There are [environmental] risks, of course"

I think what they're getting at is the environmental risks and not implying that the benefits you described are anything bad.

I used to be on a team which used SameTime. Although I disliked using Lotus Notes for email SameTime was a joy, especially the ability to take and send screenshots from the chat window.

Ex IBMer here. Spent some time there when I was OPs age and my experience was similar. I'm at a mid-size company and it's better but still not perfect! Nothing is, at least all the time, I assume.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts really opened my eyes to the fact that other people feel the way I do and that it's alright to be "introverted". I highly recommend it if you haven't read it and this type of subject matter is enjoyable for you.

(non-affil link) http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/d...

In his first post (http://thomasbacklund.com/2013/03/lean-startup/) he mentions some of the tools he's bringing with him. This includes mobile broadband.

Sorry. What I meant was I don't know anyone who owns a car and is able to charge a $100/hr consulting rate and only drives 700 miles each year. Barring edge cases, I expect the usage pattern for the average person for car driving is >700 miles per year.

~700 miles each year is about 2 miles each day. Presumably if saintx hadn't structured his or her life around maintaining walkability then it would be necessary to travel longer distances each day. This would drive the total cost up. I don't know anyone who owns a car and only drives 700 miles each year.

I found this book by Duckett to be very helpful. It provides a good visual overview of the stuff you're learning. http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-Build-Websites/dp/1118...

OP mentions that earbuds (plugs) are one of the best things he's done to improve sleep. Has anyone out there reviewed a few different brands of earplugs? I've used Hearos Ultimate Softness but I'm reading that there are better plugs out there. It looks like the best consumer grade plugs have a NRR of 33. Anyone have suggestions or insight into this?

You may want to check out the Quora thread on learning iOS (http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-resources-to-learn-iO...). When I was starting to learn iOS I saw this thread and picked up the Big Nerd Ranch book. I read through it and I believe it was very useful.

Read the reviews, YMMV, but after reading the BNR book I felt comfortable reading the Apple docs for the rest of the stuff I needed to learn.

They can reach me via IM, phone, webex, etc. Initiating communication this way (maybe excluding IM) is somewhat more formal than face to face chatting. This gives the initiator more incentive try to work out their own problems first without bugging me (and that's great). If they truly need me for something, I'm happy to oblige. The casual face-to-face "do you have a minute" interruptions are the ones that really kill productivity.

I'd like to respond to some of your other comments:

If I had to endure a culture where this was acceptable:

> Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello???

I wouldn't work there for very long. This mentality of "butts must be in chairs" flies against the notion that software engineers are professionals and should be treated as such. This nagging is a great way to lead to a broken, angry engineer.

That said, I agree with your premise:

> Team productiviy > your individual productivity. It's that simple. Do you think your team members interrupt you just for the fun of it? No, they interrupt you because they need your help to accomplish something.

But there is a fine line between nagging and actual necessary interruptions that is deepened by remote work. Asking a professional why haven't they responded to the email you sent 5 minutes ago, to me, is crossing the line and if everyone on the team has to endure that kind of behavior then individual and team productivity will both suffer. I've experienced being micromanaged and it's terrible and it's definitely not conducive to my productivity. The rest of the team seemed the same way and thus the team productivity suffered as well. Creative thinkers need uninterrupted time to plan, think, and execute.

My main drivers for working remotely are what you just described and eliminating commuting time. I find I'm much more productive and happy without those inconveniences in my life.

One of the major reasons pumped storage isn't used more is because the energy loss associated with pumping and storing the water. I can't find the exact amount right now but from a lecture I watched some time back[1], pumped storage is a few orders of magnitude more expensive than using conventional fossil fuel generated electricity per kWh.

It's just not very cost effective right now.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoAFiL1UdSg

It's certainly not curing cancer or inventing the next generation of transportation. I guess this might be part of the "start small" realization?

It seems like a lot of the college dropouts opting for startups are ultimately limiting themselves from doing the sort of hard problem solving middle-school Brandon wanted to do. I think some level of formal education would be necessary to cure cancer.