tjic

42 ms·

361.
by tjic 16y ago
Agreed; this is a great book. I read it years ago, and it still sticks with me (I read probably 100-200 books/year, so I'm saying that it was one of the more memorable out of the last several thousand).
362.
by tjic 16y ago
Earth is just shy of 8 km from the sun in this model. ...which reminds me that we're 8 light minutes out from the sun. So the 1:20 million scale happens to fall pretty close to a 1km:1 light minute scale! units(1) confirms this (and groks
363.
by tjic 16y ago
Agreed; that's a choice bit. It was the first time I realized how sad and constrained the world-views of non-hacker types were. ...and the discussion of pistons and shims also got me interested in metalworking!
364.
by tjic 16y ago
I loved ZAMM, and have read it a few times (in college at age 20, then a decade later at age 30, and then once more in my mid-30s). I tried Lila once in college and found it muddled and self-congratulatory, and gave up on it after just a fe
365.
by tjic 16y ago
You're just kissing up to us 39-year olds so that we'll upvote your comment. Well done. Upvote. ;-)
366.
by tjic 16y ago
The vast majority of people are not founders. So, instead of asking "what stops 99.99% of women from founding [ ... and 99.98% of men ]", I think it might be more productive to ask "what causes 0.015 of people to become founders".
367.
by tjic 16y ago
Ha! If you edit the beatbox text, Google helpfully asks "did you mean ... ?" and suggests the original text.
368.
by tjic 16y ago
I've got a friend who worked for a while, last year, selling yellow page ads to businesses. I was baffled. Does anyone still use the yellow pages? Well, I do. SmartFlix.com has the ground floor of a two story building, and every year, the y
369.
by tjic 16y ago
> The only way I can see them competing on price is by printing books at purchase 1-off printing costs MUCH more than batch runs of printing.
370.
by tjic 16y ago
In 2009 I lost 50 lbs. In 2010 I lost ANOTHER 50 lbs. In 2011 I'm going to lose the final 50. (...yes, obviously, I was pretty overweight to start with!). I payed off my mortgage last year. This year I'd like to pay off my HELOC. I took up
371.
by tjic 16y ago
> > Our product development was almost stalled for months on end. > Then you're doing something wrong. Easier said than done. I reached a point where I finally realized how deep in technical debt my startup was. Actually, that'
372.
by tjic 16y ago
> How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? The government was involved?
373.
Getting things done(tjic.com)
5 points by tjic 16y ago|0 comments
374.
by tjic 16y ago
> Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see: country borders. Except, some country borders are phenomenally obvious from space - those that separate totalitarian / communist countries from free market / demo
375.
by tjic 16y ago
I'll accept that addition to the metaphor!
376.
Your career is a game of Dungeons & Dragons, not Monopoly(tjic.com)
79 points by tjic 16y ago|32 comments
377.
by tjic 16y ago
This has nothing to do with copyright law. I sold the first serial rights for $100. I would have sold all rights for $120 or so. ...but they never asked.
378.
by tjic 16y ago
Some of my written work was once pirated by a coporation. In 1984, when I was 13, I wrote an article on revising the AD&D combat tables, sent it in to Dragon magazine, and it was published the following year. Before it hit print, I was
379.
by tjic 16y ago
So three years before a consumer grade tool existed, a research grade tool existed? Name one area of technology where this was NOT the case!
380.
by tjic 16y ago
The law of large numbers says that larger samplings should be MORE uniform rather than LESS; you've got it exactly backwards.
381.
by tjic 16y ago
The great thing about the Old Currency is that I can spend it to buy things I want: food, clothes, books. Until the New Currency can do that, I think I'll stick with the Old Currency.
382.
by tjic 16y ago
About a year or so ago, I started to not check work email, or server stats, or sales states from home. One of the best decisions I've made in the last decade. Work is work, and home is home. I'm not a driven lunatic, and I will never be a
383.
by tjic 16y ago
> That's stupid. I'm not doing that. No one I know who has escaped poverty has done that. No one. I was born with a net worth of $0. I now own two companies, and a house with no mortgage. I did it by working hard, and by working smart.
384.
by tjic 16y ago
> I'll be perfectly honest with you. Morals aside, I'd be much more inclined to just rob you. In the off chance I go to jail As I sit here typing I've got my Sigpro 2340 and 10 rounds of Federal hollowpoint in a concealed holster under
385.
by tjic 16y ago
> So let me get this straight -- being a responsible adult is working 16 hours per day, living off of oatmeal, having no disposable income? If you want to own a house, or bootstrap yourself into new skills, or otherwise escape poverty,
386.
by tjic 16y ago
> I don't think you can reach sociopaths. Wonderful ad-hominem attack: "I can't make a convincing argument, therefore I'm going to write the other party off as not a true human being". I salute you.
387.
by tjic 16y ago
I attacked this Scalzi post almost five years ago. http://tjic.com/?p=1386 Leftist propaganda on how we comfortable middle class folks have no idea of what money management is, and no idea how hard the poor are oppressed by The Man, with
388.
by tjic 16y ago
Awesome analysis.
389.
by tjic 16y ago
> You can even see it in things like the government’s long-term programs, for example Social Security — who in the hell in their right mind would start a long-term program without an appropriate plan for funding it? A politician trying
390.
by tjic 16y ago
subject line: Why I went without hot water for a year second paragraph: I didn’t really have a clear reason for doing this I'd argue that the blog post pretty well fails to deliver on the promise of the subject line.

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