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pbj

760 karma · joined March 9, 2011

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pbj··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2014)
Location: South Carolina, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes (depending on city)

Technologies: HTML, CSS, jQuery, Selenium, SharePoint

Resume: My background is mostly in technical/customer support, but I've done a some front end work and software testing on the side. I'm primarily looking for a mid-senior level support/implementation/account management/customer success role but I'm also interested in QA. Email me for my full resume.

Email: See profile

pbj··on Ask HN: Open-source knowledge base or wiki software?
Have you looked at TiddlyWiki? You could throw it on dropbox or a usb drive. http://tiddlywiki.com/
pbj··on Where Working-Age Americans Are Moving
Check out http://upack.com and http://moveline.com
pbj··on Starting an Airline
There was a fascinating article on HN a few months ago (don't have the link handy at the moment) about how most major airlines make less than 25 cents profit on each ticket sold. It's pretty mind blowing when you consider the entire industry operates on such margins.
pbj··on This coupon code is a slap in the face
I second this. There have been plenty of studies that show consumers love the idea of savings, even if they're just an illusion. People would rather pay $20 for a $25 item knowing they saved $5 rather than just paying $20 with no savings.
pbj··on Study: Reddit used by 6% of adult Internet users
Not sure if any of these would be of interest, but I enjoy most of them and they're usually animated duck gif free:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/ - Intelligent and thought-provoking commentaries on life and culture.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ - A place for visual representations of data

http://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn - Cool maps. Also tons of other neat similar photo subreddits in this format.

http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit - Insightful articles

http://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub - Insightful comments on other subs

http://www.reddit.com/r/subredditoftheday - Features one random subreddit of the day

http://www.reddit.com/r/trueaskreddit - A slightly less dumb version of Askreddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia - Interesting wiki articles

http://www.reddit.com/r/IfYouLikeBlank - Find new music based on current things you like

http://www.reddit.com/r/tedtalks+ted - Listen to people talk about topics

http://www.reddit.com/r/tldr - Daily digest of interesting posts from reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos - Videos of people making cool things

http://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing - Help redditors identify unknown objects

http://www.reddit.com/r/internetIsBeautiful - Find interesting websites

pbj··on Instacart (YC S12) is now not just easier, but cheaper
Don't underestimate just how much of a value prop that something like this can bring to the table even if you do live in a city. I think of something like this as an ultimate convenience. Imagine you've had a long day at work, you've got family responsibilities or other plans afterwards, you're tired, you're hungry, etc. The last thing you probably want to do is spend even more time of your already busy schedule shopping for groceries.

Even with grocery stores nearby, you still have to go fight crowds of people, take all the time to find everything on your list, wait in line, wait to get checked out, then get your stuff and walk back to your place. A single trip can be exhausting, and even more so if you're introverted and/or hate dealing with crowds of people. Narrow aisles, the elderly, and annoying loud/crying kids can make for an infuriating trip if you're just trying to get your stuff and go asap.

Or... you could use something like this and have all of this taken care of for you.

pbj··on Ask HN: Any advice for someone getting out of prison after 18 years?
"and have been telling him that his only chance of financial independence is through writing code"

There are tons of trade skills that he could learn quickly at a local community college. Plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, hvac repair, etc.. can make seriously good money and his felony would likely not be as big of a factor either. Especially if he went into business himself.

pbj··on Happy 20th Birthday, IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad
x1 carbon owner checking in. screen is bright and matte so no glare issues. that said i certainly would not use it for serious photo editing or graphic work. however the keyboard plus trackpad are outstanding, plus you have the mouse nub if you hate trackpads. overall it's a very worthy alternative to a mba.
pbj··on Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
This is the best suggestion, but unfortunately may not be possible for them to recover everything depending on how they paid/their credit card company. Most banks only allow you to do a chargeback for charges within the last 1-2 months on debit purchases and 6 months on credit card purchases.
pbj··on Why Twitter’s Co-Founders Are Betting Big On A Vegan Meat Startup
>Vegans who are vegans for health reasons - dumb dumb dumb

Actually if you have an even basic understanding of biology and how factory farming works in the United States you'd know that this isn't totally true. A large majority of meat sold in supermarkets, fast food and chain restaurants in the US use meat that is non organic and absolutely full of antibiotics. In addition, between bovine growth hormone, mad cow disease, pink slime, the link between cardiovascular health and red meat, etc, are you actually going to make the argument that eating a vegan diet has no health benefits?

>Additionally, many vegans will go heavy on soy and wheat based foods.

Funny, as a vegetarian I (and all others I know) eat a very balanced diet that doesn't include an excessive of anything. But since you're happy to throw around generalizations, many carnivores will go heavy on fried chicken and big macs. There are many health issues surrounding obesity, heart disease, and diabetes linked to these.

pbj··on Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...
I'd love to get into doing this on the side, but 99% of QA jobs I've seen require solid knowledge of programming. Is this not the case?
pbj··on Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...
Most community colleges with any sort of health programs (which are most) offer medical transcription programs. They're usually only a semester or two long and typically are very affordable. That said you may be able to find faster private/for profit certification programs.
pbj··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2012)
SEEKING WORK - Remote (EST, United States)

Looking for a (primarily) non developer part time position, however I do know html/css. I've had some experience with writing, marketing, and customer/technical support.

pbj··on Mega Millions Lottery
Statistically you have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning, dating a supermodel, dying in a plane crash, and even being sentenced to death row AND then being pardoned than you do of winning the Mega Million.

Lotteries are a regressive (although optional) tax that tend to attract disproportionately high numbers of people who shouldn't be wasting their money on them. I'm not talking about buying one ticket, but plenty of people drop huge portions of their paychecks on them. Furthermore many lottery winners tend to go bankrupt extremely quickly due to no concept of how to manage their spending.

That said it's a double edged sword, since many states are able to use their lottery revenues to offer scholarships or other funding to help make up for greatly reduced budgets. I'm surprised that more states haven't gone straight up Nevada and legalized everything when you consider just how many are suffering.

pbj··on Low pay low stress jobs/lifestyle
You might want to check out Mike Rowe's Ted talk, he touches on some of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc

I'm in the process of changing careers now. I tried doing the IT thing for several years and ended up hating it. There was a lot of poor work/life balance, stress with meeting deadlines, poor job security (I'm not a developer), etc. This was with several different companies so I don't think it was just poor luck. My passion is working with computers & technology but I realized one day that it just wasn't worth it for me to be so stressed out.

So I spent some time researching careers and I'm now going back community college for something health related. The job security is outstanding, the stress is fairly low, and I actually get to directly help improve the lives of others every day. The pay isn't anything crazy but it's definitely enough to live comfortably on if you just want a modest lifestyle.

pbj··on Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas
I saw a neat Kickstarter a while back that seems like it was trying to tackle redesigning email from the ground up. Looks like they hit their goal too!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1380180715/mail-pilot-em...

pbj··on Edgecase Non-Profit Grant
Really interesting. I'm in the process of starting a 501(c)(3) myself and I'd love to know if there are more companies out there that do things like this.
pbj··on Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money on the web?
Also worth noting that time tracking has multiple angles. It can also be used in the context of employee time cards for human resources. A while back I was working with a nonprofit trying to find a legitimate timecard web app or downloadable software and found that most were horrible. Most looked like they hadn't been updated since 1997 and had horrific design/clunky UI.

Most of them were also pretty expensive and charged per user, when this org had less than 15 employees and couldn't afford to pay $100/month just to track timecards.

It seems like there could still be a definite way for someone to get into this and build something really sleek and new, especially when you consider how many ways you could improve on it, like offering nice looking reports to the HR department, exporting of the time data to a variety of HR software, etc.

pbj··on Youtube hit 4 billion views per day
While annoying, you have to put things into perspective. You don't have to pay for youtube, and you can watch 30+ minute videos with usually only one or two 15 second ads. Compare that to TV where you're stuck with 5+ minutes of ads for the same 30 minute content. Alternatively, watch Vimeo or something instead, which (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't show video ads and focuses on higher quality artistic content anyway.
pbj··on Tell HN: Need a domain for your side project? I've got some.
clickable: http://ampshout.com
pbj··on Reddit releases new updated mobile version
clickable: http://i.reddit.com
pbj··on Seeking Angels: Fitocracy Hits 16K. Users with 6K More on Wait List [Invites]
My wife loves your app. She's been using it for a while now. Good luck with your endeavor.
pbj··on Show HN: Namethrive has brandable domains for startups
Yeah, absolutely. I'm hoping to have a signup for that added to the site within the coming week or so.
pbj··on Show HN: Namethrive has brandable domains for startups
Yeah, we own em all. I've thought about the auction route but I'm exclusively a frontend kind of guy and nobody else is very technical, so I'm not sure how I'd be able to implement it. We just ended up going with Shopify since we thought it offered the easiest plug and play solution for us. Plus we're entered in their massive build a business contest. I definitely agree that some of the names could fetch a higher value if they were auction based, but honestly we're just happy to help other entrepreneurs by offering an alternative to CellPhones4U.ly type domains.
pbj··on Show HN: Namethrive has brandable domains for startups
Clicky -> http://namethrive.com
pbj··on Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
I was reading a study a while back about how an absurdly high percentage of total jobs could be done via telecommute but aren't. It's crazy to think about how many millions upon millions of dollars in fuel costs and reduced emissions could be saved by having more telecommuters. Not only that, but companies could save so much money by having reduced or no office space/electricity/etc. Plus they'd get the added benefit of increased worker satisfaction in most cases.
pbj··on Ask HN: Any Talented Writers Here?
Not even close to this one :)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-lunati...

I love the idea for your concept though!

pbj··on FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names
This is actually increasingly common, and in some states the burden of proof is on you to prove that anything confiscated was not purchased with money obtained illegally. In addition, many states allow 100% of the profit from what is confiscated to go directly to police departments. One department where I used to live has both a police Hummer and a Tank. You can read about a state by state study at:

http://www.ij.org/images/pdf_folder/other_pubs/assetforfeitu... [Note: PDF]

pbj··on Ask HN: Where do you get your stock photography?
One thing I've noticed is that if you find a particular image you like but they want too many credits for it - you can google the photographers username and chances are they also have accounts on other istock clones. I did this a while back for a series of images I wanted and ended up saving a good bit because I found the exact same set on an alternative site that were much cheaper.
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