Currently 60F and slightly less wet than yesterday.
Kids and guests let me sleep until 9am. Which was good. Had a bit of trouble dropping of last night, which rarely happens so it was nice to get the extra time.
Got my first print off my salvage/surplus 3D printer last night. I only spent the time because it is in my office, and as part of my cleanup, stuff has to WORK to sit in here. My wife and guests both asked what I’ll use it for, and I don’t have a good answer. I wanted one for a long time, but couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to spend the money. When the cost went to [very freaking little for a pro machine] I couldn’t say no. OF COURSE I had a discussion about 3D printed guns, and Cody Wilson. My guest knew he’d been arrested, but not the circumstances. She also had a typical (media consumer) idea about printing guns. I did my best to remove the errors.
Breakfast and more later….
n
(If you go out, go heavy and keep your awareness UP.)
Friday of Color, as some jokingly call it.
I’m going out to run errands, and I have no interest in the crowds of people clogging up my stores…
My 7yo asked us if we “celebrate Black Friday.” She thinks it’s a holiday. Remember that holidays are “Holy Days”, and wonder if the god being worshiped is Mammon. Does it matter to the god WHY he’s worshiped or if the worshipers even know? Was the true nature of the universe revealed to Sir Terry Pratchett, and gods grow in power when they have more worshipers?? If so, I’d guess we’re F’d.
“As one twitter user observed…
Black Friday is the greatest day of the year for insomniacs that want to go out and start fights
— Parson Brown (@StarkTTT) November 23, 2018”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-23/shootings-stampedes-and-fights-black-friday-chaos-erupts-around-world
n
My Friday of Color shopping is complete.
The 1 TB WD SSD I bought for $157 a month ago is $135 today.
I planned to buy a pair of 250 GB SSDs for another machine but at $53.95 each when the 500 GB drives are $69.99 today? That were $85 last month? The extra $32 seems a no-brainer to me.
Plus a couple of “Dual SSD Mounting Brackets” and sales tax at 6.25%. All from Amazon.
NewEgg prices are the the same or within a few cents but Amazon makes it easy to find the brackets. “Combo Deal” for the win.
everyone must be in a food coma today….
n
I’m headed out, I’ll drive past the stores and see what the parking lots look like.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6420833/Buyer-finds-safe-containing-7-5M-inside-storage-unit-bought-TVs-Dan-Dotson-just-500.html
What sort of person or persons keep 7$MUSD in a safe in a storage unit?? and could asking that question and getting an answer explain why the finder accepted part, and returned the rest, when they could have legally kept it all?? after all, you can’t spend it if you are dead.
n
added- interesting thought experiment. what would you do?
I might claim to have found $3MUSD, split the overage with the owner, and made a show of giving back $1M… certainly I’d have skimmed SOME off the top before declaring it….
I would have kept my mouth shut and given nothing back. Claimed there was no money in the safe and moved on. I would have told the attorney to pound sand.
However, I suspect that the courts would have gotten involved and I would have been told I needed to give the money back. The courts would have to prove I had the money and would have looked at all my bank accounts. Then the taxing authority would have gotten involved and I would probably be charged with tax evasion and theft.
I would have needed to higher my own lawyer and defend myself. It would have cost me several tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps hundreds of thousands. A liberal judge would feel sorry for the couple and would legislate from the bench rather than following the law. I would have been left with nothing from the safe and substantial legal bills and probably still owed money to the taxing authority.
Bought a 3TB disk drive from Micro Center, HGST drive, 5 year warranty. Opened the package when I got home and found the drive had been manufactured in 2013. I had gotten suspicious when I found the documentation did not mention W10. Went to HGST website and checked on the warranty. The warranty expired in June 2019.
Nope, nope, nope. Took the drive back. Picked up a Seagate 3TB drive and found the three year warranty expires on December 2020, about 13 months short of the advertised 3 year warranty. I kept that drive but contacted Seagate and they will start the warranty effective today and give me the full three years.
Also picked up the three pack of Arlo cameras with controller for $299.99 at Costco. I don’t need the controller, just a couple of additional cameras. The Costco price on a two pack of cameras was $259.99. So for $40 more I got a third camera.
Dilbert: “Dilbert Teaches The Dumb People”
https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-23
Not true but funny.
Arlo and Janis: “Beetle Bailey”
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2018/11/23
Heh.
Re Dilbert: too true. I am reminded of the saying: consider how dumb the average person is. Then remember: half are even dumber than that.
Granted, there are different abilities. I am terrible with people, for example. But coding is unforgiving: pure symbolic intelligence required.
On which topic: younger son decided to take a year off from his CS program, because he’s bored and tired of school. Wanted to get a job for a year, to do something “real”. Although he has no experience, he is a damned good programmer – just no idea (yet) of real-world programming.
Here we are, months later. The news reports on the shortage of IT people, and he hasn’t landed even an interview. It’s really bizarre…
“Linus Torvalds: After big Linux performance hit, Spectre v2 patch needs curbs”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-after-big-linux-performance-hit-spectre-v2-patch-needs-curbs/
“Patch is causing as much as a 50 percent drop in performance in some Linux workloads.”
Well, that sucks. Reminds one of the good intentions rule, “The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions”.
There are managers that might hire him, but at major companies his resume can’t get past HR to the managers.
“U.S. impacts of climate change are intensifying, federal report says”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/11/23/climate-change-intensifying-economy-impacted-federal-report-finds/2093291002/
We are all going to die !
I am surprised that Trump let this report out but he must have his reasons. The report conclusions are faulty and highly exaggerated of course.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
Re Dilbert: too true. I am reminded of the saying: consider how dumb the average person is. Then remember: half are even dumber than that.
Granted, there are different abilities. I am terrible with people, for example. But coding is unforgiving: pure symbolic intelligence required.
It not just intelligence. Software engineering is the ability to see the finished product in your mind. And it is the ability to concentrate enough to make your way to that vision. Not easy and I am finding the concentration requirement to be harder by the day as I age.
On which topic: younger son decided to take a year off from his CS program, because he’s bored and tired of school. Wanted to get a job for a year, to do something “real”. Although he has no experience, he is a damned good programmer – just no idea (yet) of real-world programming.
What portion of the world is he in ?
“Obama Judge Blocks Trump Asylum Order”
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/11/20/obama-judge-blocks-trump-asylum-order/
“RUSH: Well, we predicted it. It was easy to predict. It wasn’t any big deal, and it’s actually come to pass. It took a little longer than I thought it would take to come to pass, but it’s come to pass. An Obama judge in San Francisco — 580-some-odd miles from the border to Mexico in Southern California — has told the president that you cannot issue these new rules on asylum. You can’t do it. Even though the White House put together an executive order that was based on the same ruling from the Supreme Court previously which permitted the Trump travel ban.”
I wish that I was surprised.
Even at medium-sized companies — any company big enough to have an HR department bigger than two people or a Recruiting department of any size. The one time I was a manager I had to constantly fight with HR/Recruiting to give me all of the resumes. The recruiters are not in any way qualified to filter the resumes for tech positions other than by the brain-dead criteria of “does he have a CS degree” and “does he claim X years of experience in these buzzwords”. Managers of tech people are seldom much better. And even the above criteria are easily faked — the typical recruiter won’t spot the sham degree from the sham “Rochester Technology Institute” (faking Rochester Institute of Technology, a good school) or even bother to call a real school to confirm graduation. (Ask me how I know!)
Brad, you and your son probably know this, but just in case: Have him put some work out there on GitHub or GitLab, for prospective employers to examine. Even better than a few small projects of his own would be commits to open source projects, something where other developers have deemed it good enough to incorporate. This doesn’t have to be code. Decent documentation, even clarifying edits of existing documentation, demonstrates a highly valuable ability. Writing a test suite for existing code is also good — anyone can slap together a few lines of code in isolation, but showing the ability and willingness to make the code production-ready in an environment is worth much more.
Caveats for the above: the plural of anecdote is not data. Showing skill at documentation or testing can get you pigeonholed as a tech documentation writer or QA guy.
@Lynn: we’re in Switzerland, so not just around the corner… And, however good he is at raw programming, his lack of real-world project experience is a problem.
It’s the old problem: if every position requires experience, how do you get started?
@Lynn: we’re in Switzerland, so not just around the corner… And, however good he is at raw programming, his lack of real-world project experience is a problem.
It’s the old problem: if every position requires experience, but how do you get started?
Have him go to every company that develops software in the area and beg them for an minimum wage internship position. It will be tough.
Software engineering is the ability to see the finished product in your mind.
It’s like painting or drawing. I don’t know how to do that. I mean, I know how in theory but it doesn’t grok for me.
I can draw a car for you. It’s going to look a lot like the cars I drew in 2nd grade. Never mind plywood is out of style for car design.
Reading the owner’s manual for my Mom’s Singer sewing machine? And buying a tube of Singer grease and giving the machine a lube job? When I just turned nine? I got that kind of stuff down. Mom was impressed even tho she almost sewed her finger. Yeah, I got yelled at some. Scared her.
Building my barn? From scratch? Almost by myself? No problem.
Finishing out the EDC with wiring, plumbing, flooring, and sheetrock? Easy.
Putting a couple of 2×4 feet skylights on the roof in the old house in Austin? Where the openings in the ceiling were 2×8 feet? Fun stuff.
Adjusting the valves on a ’78 Plymouth Slant Six? Smooth enough idle to stand nickles on edge on the air cleaner? My friends that are still alive still are amazed.
I can do that kind of stuff. I can see the wanted results in my mind and make it happen.
But doing something that should be simple? Like xcopy? I get all switched up and lost. Batch files confuse me, too. But I can build a PC from parts, install and tweak Windows, and that is easy.
I blame my motorcycle wreck. Just the one wreck… that cracked my helmet. I could tell I was goofy for almost four years.
On which topic: younger son decided to take a year off from his CS program, because he’s bored and tired of school. Wanted to get a job for a year, to do something “real”.
He could join the army. Linus spent a year in the Finnish army schlepping coils of telephone cable through the northern forest primeval.
As to programming as one’s primary career: Much better IMNSHO to learn a useful skill to which programming is a useful adjunct, like @lynn and @CowboySlim, as opposed to being a code monkey subject to the whims and caprices of clueless sadistic self-serving middle managers and marketroids.
I can’t believe the uselessness of this:
“The actress, 43, is a co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence In Conflict initiative, which hosted the event at the BFI on Friday evening. And the festival aims to use the power of cinema to help prevent discrimination faced by survivors of sexual violence in conflict. ”
but it does allow for a bunch of dinners, flights, site visits, and foundation money flowing….
n
lol! Reminds of Team America: World Police.
Reminds of Team America: World Police.
TMI !
Here we are, months later. The news reports on the shortage of IT people, and he hasn’t landed even an interview. It’s really bizarre…
Absent a significant work experience, he needs to show he can finish something even though doing so may involve enduring a lot of nonsense.
CS programs are a lot of nonsense, but the “real” world often has more.
Absent a significant work experience, he needs to show he can finish something even though doing so may involve enduring a lot of nonsense.
Here is some of the freeware that I have put up over the years:
https://www.winsim.com/steam/steam.html
and
https://www.winsim.com/diskid32/diskid32.html
Gets about 200 to 500 visits a day.
@Greg: I agree 100%. IMHO he’s blowing a year for nothing. But it’s his life and his decision, and I expect he’ll see the light and finish his degree next year.