Not really a script, but a `.ssh/config` to automatically deploy parts of my local cli environment to every server i connect to (if username and ip/hostname matches my rules).
On first connect to a server, this sync all the dotfiles i want to a remote host and on subsequent connects, it updates the dotfiles.
Idk if this is "special", but I haven't seen anyone else do this really and it beats for example ansible playbooks by being dead simple.
(3) As you work for clients, keep a sharp eye for opportunities to build "specialty practices". If you get to work on a project involving Mongodb, spend some extra time and effort to get Mongodb under your belt. If you get a project for a law firm, spend some extra time thinking about how to develop applications that deal with contracts or boilerplates or PDF generation or document management.
(4) Raise your rates.
(5) Start refusing hourly-rate projects. Your new minimum billable increment is a day.
(6) Take end-to-end responsibility for the business objectives of whatever you build. This sounds fuzzy, like, "be able to talk in a board room", but it isn't! It's mechanically simple and you can do it immediately: Stop counting hours and days. Stop pushing back when your client changes scope. Your remedy for clients who abuse your flexibility with regards to scope is "stop working with that client". Some of your best clients will be abusive and you won't have that remedy. Oh well! Note: you are now a consultant.
(7) Hire one person at a reasonable salary. You are now responsible for their payroll and benefits. If you don't book enough work to pay both your take-home and their salary, you don't eat. In return: they don't get an automatic percentage of all the revenue of the company, nor does their salary automatically scale with your bill rate.
(8) You are now "senior" or "principal". Raise your rates.
(9) Generalize out from your specialties: Mongodb -> NoSQL -> highly scalable backends. Document management -> secure contract management.
(10) Raise your rates.
(11) You are now a top-tier consulting group compared to most of the market. Market yourself as such. Also: your rates are too low by probably about 40-60%.
Try to get it through your head: people who can simultaneously (a) crank out code (or arrange to have code cranked out) and (b) take responsibility for the business outcome of the problems that code is supposed to solve --- people who can speak both tech and biz --- are exceptionally rare. They shouldn't be; the language of business is mostly just elementary customer service, of the kind taught to entry level clerks at Nordstrom's. But they are, so if you can do that, raise your rates.
@adamfaliq here are my bulletpoint suggestions:
- find something people are doing in excel over and over, make it a saas (search google keywords for excel templates)
- find something that currently costs people time to do (some form of shopify work?) and automate it or make it a profit center for someone
- pick an existing marketplace (salesforce, shopify, magento, etc) and build something there so you're spending less on marketing and know there is a built in audience used to paying for things
at its core it is a matter of can you save people money? time? or can you make them more money? those are the reasons people pay for things. Also competing on price alone is a fools errand.
feel free to email me for more help, i literally do this for a living (helping students generate and grow their businesses at a university).
My girlfriend had brain surgery a few months ago. Afterwards she was unable to properly swallow for a few weeks.
At first they thought it was from the intubation but since it continued for several days they referred her to a speech therapist which is who handles this sort of thing. Her neurosurgeon gave her actively dangerous advice that both the nurses and speech therapist told her to ignore ("just chew the food more, then everything turns to oatmeal")
It turns out swallowing is really complicated. After neurological damage you get mobility back much more quickly than sensation and since swallowing is very sensation-intensive there was the real possibility that it may never go back to normal. I'm not a doctor so I'm probably getting some details wrong but there's a semi-voluntary component that kicks off the process, then the involuntary actions kick in. The involuntary bit is a delicate ballet of neighbouring semicircles in your throat contracting simultaneously, then one after the other. In her case, some of those semicircles were not firing or were firing at the wrong time, but only on one side. That made food that breaks into particles or is too thin get pushed around instead of down, so it would get stuck in her throat. If you inhale food particles this way, particularly with a weakened immune system, you're at risk for pneumonia so they take it very seriously
The food she could and couldn't have was pretty surprising. She could have shredded chicken, but not ground beef. She couldn't drink regular water, but could have jello (she could handle jello or augur both, though many people with dysphagia can't handle jello because it melts at body temperature and then runs down your throat). She had to have thickened water which I'd never heard of but was in every drug store I checked. She could have soups that were viscous enough, and vegetables that form fibrous strands when you chew them (like celery), as long as they didn't also form tiny leaves (like broccoli). She could have peanuts but not walnuts.
A good friend saw the weird puzzle of which foods she could have as a fun challenge and flew across the country to stay with us for a couple of weeks and experiment. We went through dozens of dishes a day, mostly in small quantity and then scaling it up if she didn't have trouble with it. I've never washed so many dishes in my life
She's fully recovered now but a challenge definitely helps you definitely learn to appreciate the little stuff :)
I'll steal a quote from Pittsburgh Penguins (American professional hockey) head coach Mike Sullivan: "Play the game the right way".
Just do the right thing. Always. If you're not sure what that is, figure it out however you can, and do it. This time. Every time. Always.
Once you start doing that, all the other BS melts away.
A few personal thoughts of what "the right way" means in IT:
- Treat everyone else like you want to be treated. No "talking down".
- Got Business Requirements? Are they any good? That may be your problem.
- Same thing for Technical Specifications.
- Same thing for Test Plans.
- Is everyone working on their most important thing? Why not?
- Will it affect the annual report? Yes? It's an issue. No? It's a detail.
- Keep the process that's needed. It helps.
- Ditch the process that's not needed. It hurts.
- Go with your gut. That's what got you here.
- If it needs changed, change it. If you don't, it'll change itself some other way.
- Correlation != Causation.
- Know the Critical Path.
- Keep your finger on the pulse of everything you can.
- Programmers produce. Everyone else must support them. (Never forget this!)
- If it's not written down, it's not.
- Relax and have fun. Can't? Find another career.
It's not just FB, my Samsung S9 came preloaded with 'undeletable' Microsoft apps too. But this is nothing new, Samsung phones have came preloaded with bloat since forever.
When buying a new phone I always spend some time deleting all Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook and carrier related apps. Yes, you can delete 'undeletable' apps through ADB, without rooting the device.
There is both OR and AND support here. If you specify your function parameter as an ARRAY then it operates as an AND, otherwise each argument is an OR.
For instance, to see posts that are remote and python OR remote and ruby, you can do
query(['remote','python'],['remote','ruby']);
The return of the function shows how many jobs were shown versus in total. For instance, as of this writing, I get the following result when running the above function:
{ shown: 56, total: 827 }
It's worth noting that some people have turned this into various "web apps" ... and a few people have forked it and added more sophisticated queries ... search HN news stories for links.
State/Fed. government: Let's make recreational marijuana legal!
Citizens: Awesome! We all feel relaxed, and those of us dealing with pain feel much better, and we're not dying from over-doses; yay! ...But, uh-oh, a few more car fatalities...what to do?
State/Fed. government: Let's build hypertube all over the state!
Citizens: Unsafe drivers - including drinkers AND smokers - simply take the hypertube home; fatalities have taken a nosedive yay! Second benefit: individual and state costs typically associated with maintaining cars and roads for cars (to support long work commutes) goes down, and overall traffic congestion is diminished; yay! ...But uh-oh, our healthcare costs are still pretty high, since now the likes of Pfizer, Merck, etc. are legally producing marijuana, and not cheaply, what to do?
State/Fed. government: With the infrastructure funds now more narrowly focused on supporting efforts such as hypertube, re-allocate (as appropriate and legal) the remaining, unused funds to help bring down health care costs...Either through government tax breaks (just plain giving this unused money back to citizens) for citizens to pay their healthcare insurance...OR...to buy their own marijuana at retail...OR...use these remaining, unused funds to subsidize programs like ACA.
Citizens: Yay! ...But uh-oh, now that marijuana is legal there are less people being put into jails...and now the jail lobby is whining, what to do?
State/Fed. government: Invite the people who might otherwise be sent to prison (or who have been freed from prison after being unfairly jailed for minor amounts of weed) and have them work as construction workers building the country's hypertube network. A likely side-effect is that the private companies running the jails will surely convert into hypertube construction/management companies, but hey jobs, right!?!
Citizens: Yay! Long-term problems - while not solved yet - are on the mend...but, uh-oh, it appears while sending our satellits to other planets, we disrupted the hybernation of some war-like aliens, and they're bent on attacking us with their advanced technology, strategically planning to strike the most powerful nations on earth first! What to do?
State/Fed. government: ... ... ...
Citizens: Hello? Hello!?! Did you hear our pleas about the pending alien attack? Hello? Is there anyone there in the government offices? where the hellz did they all go???? somebody help us; these guns we have are worthless against these aliens! Heeeeeelllpp!!! ... ... ...
Narrator: Apologies for the levity on serious matters. My whole point is to remember that things don't exist in isolation...and maybe there will always be good and bad side-effects that get triggered from one major legislation change. Nevertheless, the country has lived through Prohibition, and there are expected patterns that likely emerge. So, i say, marijuana should definitely be legalized, though let's have a plan to be ready for any unexpected fallout, should they manifest. Cheers!
Property deeds or rental agreements for real estate, vehicles, any other major physical investments (own a boat? a tractor?)
Latest statements from bank accounts, credit cards, etc (digital copies will suffice - this is more about making sure you have account numbers, etc.)
Checkbooks
Paperwork from any corporate entities you may own or agreements such as stock option plans (digital may suffice here as well)
A digital copy (photos on phone if necessary) of your last year's tax documents
Photos of your last few pay stubs (if they're not already digital)
Any financial vehicles whose ownership depends on physical documents, such as bearer bonds
If you have documents relating to care of relatives (guardianship, power of attorney, DNR), bring those
If you have a will, make sure you have a copy (digital or otherwise).
Any other licensing documentation you might expect to want to refer to without having to ask the issuing body for a replacement (firearms licenses, medical licenses, marriage licenses, etc.)
Any documents relating to medical history or prescriptions
Contact info for everyone you know (this may already be digital, but some people do still keep Rolodexes or little black books)
Keys to any and all the things (shed, office, storage unit, safety deposit box, whatever)
You'll likely want to bring with you any laptops and external hard drives you own. If you're somewhat electronics savvy and have a desktop computer, consider extracting its drive too and taking that with you.
And of course, it's the things with sentimental value that are hardest to replace. You can always buy a new stereo system or replace a pair of jeans you left behind (even if you have to wear the jeans you did take until they fall apart and play music over a $20 pair of computer speakers while you save up to replace that tuner). You can never replace your photographs, your favorite stuffed animal from childhood, your grandmother's jewelry.
(Apologies, maybe i should have posted this as its own blog post...but meh, too late, I've posted it here...)
So...maybe it might be silly of me to ask, but why aren't FedEx and UPS attempting to encroach into (at least some of) Amazon's territory? For example, FedEx and UPS could make plays to compete with the AWS/IaaS offering. Oh, i know they would trail far behind AWS for several years - including trailing after google and microsft for that matter - but recall that amazon built their infrastructure for their benefit, and it was only later began selling it to others. I suppose even if FedEx, UPS don't become leaders in the IaaS industry, at least, if they get enough big customers, that would give them massive economies of scale that benefits their core parcel delivery business. Also, beyond simply delivery, what else can these guys do - either to fight Amazon, or build new business for themselves? Here are my admittedly outlandish steps for FedEx, UPS to compete with amazon and build new businesses...
Step 1: Change from a company that only ships packages to one that ships packages and datagrams. Basically, build up their tech infrastructure like what amazon did to eventually offer aws. This would enable them to reap plenty of cost-savings over time. Then build up enough to sell to other customers for the long-term; just like Amazon did. (Even if their platform is not as developer-friendly as AWS, they could target legacy-type enterprises.)
Step 2: Add services where regular, paper mail is received, scanned in, and delivered electronically to the recipient. Now, this may not be novel, as I know there are already services like this that exist: but this would be implemented on a massive scale...at least until most of humanity's correspondence eventually becomes all digital. I'd like to clarify that I'm of the very paranoid type of person, and would not like this service at all for privacy implications...But i have to acknowledge that there are plenty of people who have no issues with this, and/or in some cases greatly benefit from such a service - one example i can think of: military personnel receiving their regular mail via this service while they are abroad serving.
Step 3: I think UPS already does some of the following to some degree (not sure about FedEx), but add warehousing and other distributor-type support activities. Basically move up the supply chain. This positions FedEx, UPS from "just the delivery company", to a strategic partner who "gets my company's products over to my customers". This turns these guys from simply a delivery company into a "logistics, data, and delivery" partner.
Step 4: Now this one is ambitious...Add wide-scale, high-production 3-d printing of products. Now, admittedly, there are alot of constraints around this, such as but not limited to the products being printed couldn't be so complex. But if all we're talking about is something simple like hair combs, etc., then why couldn't FedEX, UPS become the producers of such products, and deliver them for me. I come up with ideas for products, submit some 3d printer design files into some sort of FedEx or UPS receiving system, and FedEx, UPS both produces them and delivers them. Some might ask, but couldn't i just purchase my own 3d printer and produce my own hair comb, etc.? Yes, but I'm talking here about massive scale of production. As a product company, if i can save tons of money by having my products produced somewhat local to me, which might avoid transit (especially trans-oceanic) costs, and then delivered by the same company, i can imagine it might save plenty of money across much of the supply (and delivery) chain. Again, it may not apply to all product categories, but i can see a future for a company to be an ad hoc manufacturing provider.
(Again, apologies for the length of my post here.)
3) Finally, each of these popular "Getting Started in Security" guides has a slightly different, but useful, opinion on the specifics of the path to take:
On a related note, I hate how that Aurelius quote is always cut off. The full quotation is, "Live every day as if it were your last: without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense." The point isn't that you should go party and have fun and not plan for the future, which the additional "without" clauses clarify. Aurelius meant that you should adopt an emotional state of peace and firm dedication. Because most people really would not party on their last day, if they knew. They would go about their business calmly, taking care of the most important priorities, making amends and sharing time with loved ones, ensuring that their affairs were in order and their conscience clean, and appreciating every detail of every moment as if it were infinitely precious. Nothing would upset them unduly because they would know nothing will affect them anymore soon.
Similarly, you probably wouldn't want to wake up and go to an awful job. If doing your job makes the world a better place, you can justify going because you know you are building a legacy, even with your final moments. If you're passionate about it, you can justify it. If the job allows you to provide for your loved ones, you would go even on your last day.
So Jobs like many others misunderstood the quote out of context but reached the conclusion Aurelius intended anyway. And that conclusion is good advice! If you're just doing the minimum to skate by, not really thriving, you're probably selling yourself short. Unless you have some other reason for working that gives meaning to your life (e.g. kids, funding a passion project/hobby, religion), it's just not worth going to a shitty job just for the paycheck.
I do this rigorously with tremendous success. I can find anything, instantly. Yes, it takes a little work up front. For me, the payback is obvious and extreme.
I have to get round to finishing my site so please excuse its current incompletion, but hey, if you're interested: http://johnnydecimal.com
I use this system at work and I have otherwise very competent Project Managers stare at me like I'm some sort of wizard when I navigate to the right folder, the first time, every time, and find exactly what I'm looking for. Email, our shared drive, SharePoint - I use it everywhere. I would be a mess without it.
On first connect to a server, this sync all the dotfiles i want to a remote host and on subsequent connects, it updates the dotfiles.
Idk if this is "special", but I haven't seen anyone else do this really and it beats for example ansible playbooks by being dead simple.