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I've wanted to share this story for a while and now is as good a place as any. I found Hacker News from you via the Motley Fool. You wrote a long post on the

by T-hawk 12y ago

I've wanted to share this story for a while and now is as good a place as any. I found Hacker News from you via the Motley Fool. You wrote a long post on the Fool and mentioned it was copied from another internet forum. I picked a particular unusual-looking phrase in it, searched, and found it which turned out to be on HN. I stalked through your HN comment history and then I was hooked. HN clued me in on how technologically backwards my then-employer was, and led to Stack Overflow Careers from which I found my current job, so yes you've substantially affected the direction of my life.

patio11 12y ago
Hah, awesome. That was me explaining subprime mortgage products by reference to insurance on disease-prone cow herds, right? I run into fellow Fools fairly infrequently (and don't spend much time there anymore) but always fun when two parts of my life intersect like that.
- T-hawk 12y ago
  Yup, that's the one. "Sickly cows" was the key phrase and you're still on the first page of Google results for it. Link (wow, a 6 digit HN item number): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=472985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=472985 I didn't want to give specifics for preserving your Fool anonymity if you still wanted it, but guess you have a public enough internet persona nowadays that that ship has sailed. Thanks again for helping direct me into a better level of software experience and knowledge, as inadvertent and roundabout as it was. I started stalking you on HN in hopes of more Japanese slice-of-life stories that you shared on the Fool, and wound up discovering a much greater world of software instead.
  - patio11 12y ago
    I keep a fig leaf of pseudonymity there, but it's a ridiculously thin fig leaf for anyone who knows me from HN. A few folks have figured it out over the years, but I appreciate your discretion, as back in my nobody-knew-who-I-was days I talked about some fairly personal stuff there.

by T-hawk 12y ago

patio11 12y ago

Hah, awesome. That was me explaining subprime mortgage products by reference to insurance on disease-prone cow herds, right? I run into fellow Fools fairly infrequently (and don't spend much time there anymore) but always fun when two parts of my life intersect like that.

T-hawk 12y ago
Yup, that's the one. "Sickly cows" was the key phrase and you're still on the first page of Google results for it. Link (wow, a 6 digit HN item number): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=472985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=472985 I didn't want to give specifics for preserving your Fool anonymity if you still wanted it, but guess you have a public enough internet persona nowadays that that ship has sailed. Thanks again for helping direct me into a better level of software experience and knowledge, as inadvertent and roundabout as it was. I started stalking you on HN in hopes of more Japanese slice-of-life stories that you shared on the Fool, and wound up discovering a much greater world of software instead.
- patio11 12y ago
  I keep a fig leaf of pseudonymity there, but it's a ridiculously thin fig leaf for anyone who knows me from HN. A few folks have figured it out over the years, but I appreciate your discretion, as back in my nobody-knew-who-I-was days I talked about some fairly personal stuff there.