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The page does not render correctly; something to do with the logo loading. For reference, here's the brief story told: > It’s too late to collect sand > When
by andrewla 7y ago
The page does not render correctly; something to do with the logo loading. For reference, here's the brief story told:
> It’s too late to collect sand
> When I was 13, my family went to California. We walked along a beach near Mendocino. I’d never seen black sand before. I wanted to bring some home.
> So I got a ziplock bag from my mom, scooped some sand into it, and put it in my backpack.
> When I got back to Birmingham, I put it in a jar and placed it on my bookshelf. “Cool,” I thought.
> But I only had one jar. It wasn’t going to be “Really Cool” until I had a bunch of jars.
> I was missing the jar of sand from the Gulf of Mexico. I was missing the jar of sand from the Caribbean. I was missing the jar of sand from the Eastern Shore in Virginia.
> “I’ve been to so many beaches already! And I never collected sand before now.”
> So I scrapped the whole idea. What was the point in collecting jars of sand when I hadn’t started from the beginning? I’d never recover from missing the jars I could’ve already had.
> What a ridiculous thought.
> I fall for this trap repeatedly.
> “I haven’t been keeping a journal since childhood, I’m missing so much.”
> “I didn’t blog the first half of my trip, so what’s the point in the second half?”
> “I haven’t been keeping track of contacts in a CRM, I’m missing so many people!”
> “I haven’t been running, I’m so far behind.”
- _0vzt 7y agoI'm responsible for hosting the website (I'm not the author of the post). Just wanted to say sorry for the outage. Issue was triggered by an aggressive uptime monitor which was freaking out at some slower-than-usual response times mid-HN-hug. Will tweak the uptime monitor
- secondbreakfast 7y ago(Author here). ^I host my blog on blot.im - it is an amazing service, and fully recommend it. Thanks David!
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Just wanted to say sorry for the outage. Issue was triggered by an aggressive uptime monitor which was freaking out at some slower-than-usual response times mid-HN-hug. What is the theory behind this? If response times are too slow, how is terminating service supposed to help? Who is it supposed to help?
- _0vzt 7y agoThe timeout for the requests issued by the uptime monitor was set a little too low – the uptime monitor mistakenly believed the service was not responding (it was, but slowly)
- jvm___ 7y ago"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly"
- secondbreakfast 7y agoFantastic quote, thanks.
- maltalex 7y agoI like this one: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
- paulbaumgart 7y agoWhenever I hear this saying, even though I know it’s sort of pedantic, I can’t help but wonder: but what about 19 years and 364 days ago?
- yetihehe 7y ago19 years and 364 days ago was about 1.000137 best time (considering 20 years ago was best time 1 and now is best time 2). I know it's not preciser enough, but more pedantic answer requires more precise definition of "now" and "20 years ago".
- christiangenco 7y agoI'm so glad you posted this—I have the same problem with this aphorism. I'm craving a more precise way to express this idea. Maybe "it would have been better to start five minutes ago, but starting now is better than starting in five more minutes."