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watershawl

68 karma · joined February 14, 2012

https://erichstauffer.com https://x.com/erichstauffer
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watershawl··on In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough
But people naturally want to live near water or other natural features and those areas are usually already developed.

I suppose one could cross-reference all of the places where highway meets water meats geographic feature, but a city does not yet exist - and then propose one.

watershawl··on Show HN: I built a microlearning app to learn personal finance
Slick website. I just downloaded the app. Onboarding works well.
watershawl··on The company I work for is losing all of its humanity, I don't know where to go
Yes, it's about how you think about yourself. Identity matters just as much as experience, sometimes moreso.
watershawl··on Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing
Do you think companies are gonna be like?:

Wait a minute. We didn’t save money by adding AI. We just added an expense.

Now we have to pay for employees AND AI.

watershawl··on What Do Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems Mean?
It hints at something fundamental to how the universe works, in that there is always an adjacent possible.
watershawl··on [dead]
He said he’s submitting to the Annals of Mathematics.
watershawl··on Do U.S. ports need more automation?
Yes, Peter Drucker(0) said that shipping containers were one of the greatest inventions of the last century

0) father of modern management and coiner of term "knowledge worker"

watershawl··on Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'
How can we use our smartphones to "go places and touch things"?
watershawl··on A company is building a giant compressed-air battery in the Australian outback
This is a good solution (storing in rock) to get around the heat and corrosion (from water) that above-ground tanks go through when storing compressed air.
watershawl··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2023)

  Location: Wisconsin
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Shopify+/Liquid, HTML, CSS, eCommerce, Business Analysis, IT
  Résumé/CV: https://erichstauffer.com/resume
  Email: erich@erichstauffer.com
watershawl··on Goodbye?
What are you thankful for? Take a deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. What is going right in your life? Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on the positives. Breathe in. Breathe out. You're alive. You're loved. Smile. Breathe in. Breathe out.
watershawl··on Hard-Core Career Advice For A 13-Year-Old
Right, James Altucher, in his other writings on the subject, he specifically mentions those careers as the only reason to go to college.
watershawl··on A New Theory of Time – Lee Smolin (2013) [video]
So I watched the whole thing and only understand parts of it, but is his main theory that the laws of physics which were previously thought to be unchanging may indeed change over time and that itself is the proof that the universe is temporal?
watershawl··on Ask HN: How would you market this?
Essentially: outreach.

Reach out to relevant bloggers to offer to do a guest blog post and to relevant podcasters to get interviewed. Some podcasters will charge you to be interviewed.

Consider starting your own podcast about working out. It's actually not much harder than recording MP3s, publishing a RSS feed, and applying to iTunes.

watershawl··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2014)
Rob Walling recently posted that he is looking for a Postgres DBA: https://twitter.com/robwalling/status/476799826768969729
watershawl··on Rethinking What We Mean by ‘Mobile Web’
I agree. What John's describing as the web is more like the Internet. The "web" is Tim Berners-Lee's "World Wide Web" (ie. hyperlinked documents rendered in a web browser).
watershawl··on Am I burned out?
I have this right now and feel very similarly. For me it's a case of not knowing why I do what I do, not clearly identifying what it is I actually do for my clients/employers, and what in the world I am capable and willing to change. It's also wintertime, which doesn't help.

Possible cause: I've been listening to a lot of business podcasts lately (at least 2 hours worth a day) and I've found myself comparing myself to other people who are more successful than me. I realize (from listening to podcasts) that this is a bad thing to do and I realize that success is relative, but it's still happening.

I tried chilling out on purpose. In other words, I purposefully started playing. I chose to start playing Minecraft with my kids. I also joined the YMCA and started going swimming there after work. Finally, I have cut down on the number of podcasts I listen to and started listening to music (on CD). I do not listen to the news as it gets me down.

watershawl··on 50 Things I Learned from over 600 Hours of Business Podcasts
Every person's starting point is really the culmination of everything in their past so every starting point is different, but this statement is born from two trends I noticed while listening:

1. "The Baby Effect" - a term coined by John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire, a 7-day a week business podcast that interviews entrepreneurs, which evolved from John Lee noticing that successful launches tended to take 9 months from first action to the point of sustainability. He called it that because it usually coincided with the founder finding out they had a baby coming, but it also worked that way for BeardBrand, for example.

2. Most of the "successful" interviewees on podcasts state they started back in 2009, so 5 years later is now (2014). 5 years seems to be the point at which entrepreneurs have been steady long enough that they start to either a) look for the next thing or b) start sharing with other people what they know. It's also a sign that the 'wave' that they were currently riding (their business model) may have crested and they are in search of the next thing, hoping for a second win(d).

watershawl··on I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much.
I can understand why he didn't put in notice. Who wants to work 2 weeks under a boss that already treats you badly once they know you're leaving? That would be miserable, and for some people, the shame of leaving without notice is less than the pain from facing that manager for another two weeks.
watershawl··on Ted Nelson: It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC
I thought the same thing after seeing their call for t-shirts for pillow covers.
watershawl··on Ted Nelson: It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC
Youtube videos are auto-transcribed by Google for closed-captioning purposes. You can view the closed caption transcript by clicking the "Transcript" icon under the video. It's in between the "Add to" and "Statistics" icon unless specifically removed by the uploader.

I especially like the last line:

13:52in order to sell printers they threw away the universe 13:58thank you

watershawl··on Network Solutions Auto-Enroll: $1,850
Yeah, that's what I don't think people are realizing here. This isn't an issue of Network Solutions culture, but a result of Web.com purchasing them recently. It's Web.com culture.
watershawl··on Trello - A Big Update for the iOS App
I use Trello everyday for work and personal. I recently downloaded the new app to my iPhone 4 running iOS 7 and certain boards crash the app when accessed. The only difference I can see is that the board that crashes uses labels.
watershawl··on How do you manage to have a life?
One thing I've learned about meetups is that to make the lasting friendships there, you can't just show up and leave. You have to close the meetup down and see who's still around, then ask them to go get a beer afterwards. In that way, you'll create a much deeper, longer lasting relationship with someone that could become a friendship.
watershawl··on How do you manage to have a life?
I agree with this wholeheartedly. It's how you build your own personal community made up of all of your stops throughout the day. It can be incredibly rewarding for both you and the people who get to know you.
watershawl··on How do you manage to have a life?
Pick one habit to change such as your drive home. Here are some variations to your drive home:

A) Instead of driving straight home, stop at a park and walk around. B) If you are the first person to leave, be the last person to leave. C) If you always take the same streets home, purposefully take a different path.

Here's another habit you could change: the ride to work:

A) Instead of driving to work, see if there is a way to carpool, walk, or ride a bike to work. B) Wake up one hour earlier than normal and be the first person in a local coffee shop in the morning. C) Instead of listening to the radio or music, find a podcast or sit in silence.

The idea behind making slight changes to your daily habit actions is that they can cause unknown, unintended, changes (like the butterfly effect) that will lead you down a different path than the one you're on now. In addition to small changes in your habit actions, here are some pretty standard things you can do to "have a life" and "make friends."

1) Be thankful for the life you already have. 2) When someone asks you to do something you wouldn't normally do, consider doing it this time. 3) Join a local church. 4) Find a local meetup on meetup.com. 5) Start a new habit and do something consistently to see who else is doing that same thing consistently. Talk to that person. 6) Help someone younger than you or older than you without expecting to get paid. 7) Look for ways to volunteer. 8) Join a coworking facility. 9) Consistently visit a bar or coffee shop at a certain time. 10) Be the friend you want to have - invite other people to lunch with you, tell other people what you are doing and invite them to join you, throw a party at your house or apartment, rent out a gym and play some dodgeball, join a softball or kickball league, play a pick-up basketball game at the local park.

To do the things you're not doing now, you're going to have to do the things you're not doing now. That means taking a different path through life, doing things a little bit differently, going places you normally don't go, doing things you normally don't do - and being consistent about it.

watershawl··on How to be prolific: Guidelines for getting it done from Joss Whedon
I just read this article and agree with the parts about not talking about what you're going to do before you do it and defining next actions. I admire Joss for being that guy and getting stuff done. I need that inspiration right now because I'm too focused on picking something to work on instead of just working.
watershawl··on Wood Egg (my new company)
Derek, I like how you announced it only after actually doing it. This is much different than saying you're going to do it, which sounds obvious, but there is a big difference.
watershawl··on There Was a Time before Mathematica
I really liked this quote, "I was trying to find the elementary components of computation...try to pack the largest capability into the smallest number of primitives." It really captures his life's thesis.

He should be praised not only for his accomplishments, but his commitment and grit. It's not easy to stick with something for so long like he has and continue to improve it over time.

watershawl··on The New York Times Told Me To Take This Down
Sometimes things can't be made until other things are made first. These subtle iterations are the root of why some inventions or discoveries are made at the same time in different areas by different groups. This is called "adjacent possible".

The second step is always easier than the first. It's just that even the first step is always the second step to someone else's first (and second) steps.

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