zenpaul

9 ms·

1.
by zenpaul 5y ago
Family game night on Jitsi video conference. Went from seeing my parents and siblings in person once a year to seeing them virtually every week. I'm much more involved in their joys and struggles. It's a healthy dose of laughter a
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by zenpaul 6y ago
In September Planet Money podcast covered how the plastic industry sold the public on plastic recycling when they know it was not realistic. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land
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by zenpaul 6y ago
Yes, This American Life did a great story on this. "We’ve fought two wars since 9/11. We got help from tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans—some were targeted or killed because they helped us. We owe these people. We’ve passed
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by zenpaul 6y ago
Two important takeaways here. "In fact, in the fine print, the CDC’s flu numbers also include pneumonia deaths." "If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second ful
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by zenpaul 6y ago
Planet Money did a good podcast on this topic recently. I learned that it's hard to follow CDC guidelines when you're sleeping 20 in a garage and there's only enough water to shower every few days. https://www.npr.
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by zenpaul 6y ago
I can relate! I started my SourDough starter SanDy a week and a half ago and have made a couple of great loaves since then. I'm on my way to the store tonight for more flour.
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Just listened to the Darknet Diaries Courthouse podcast about the pentest gone wrong that was referenced in the article. Highly recommended. https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/59/
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by zenpaul 7y ago
The overriding thing is to "take care of each other". If they want more updates, send more updates. If they want less updates, send less updates. How do you know what they prefer? Ask them. Communicating about communicating is und
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by zenpaul 7y ago
"If you write about your passion, you will never lose enthusiasm because you are creating a little corner of the internet that’s yours, you made it, you made it beautiful, and now it’s also available for everyone else, but even if no o
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by zenpaul 7y ago
jiggawatt has a good example. The thing is that managing inevitable scope changes is an art and a science. Some changes get accepted as part of the project, others are scoped as fixed price updates and others are very hard to scope so may b
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Yes, the consulting agencies or headhunters do just that. They do the day to day work of talking to hiring managers. Then they take their cut either when they place someone full-time or take a cut out of the hourly consulting rate. It varie
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Good point. From this thread it is clear that people have made a go of it with project billing in some domains. I develop enterprise business systems that are generally too large and complex to reliably estimate or manage to a fixed budget.
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Good luck making $2M as a solo consultant. In order to take on projects that big and maintain your customer pipeline you almost certainly have to build a team which is what I call creating an agency.
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Billing hourly or daily is about the same. Weekly gets complicated. It is all about reducing risk, locking in cashflow and getting compensated for your time and energy.
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Yes, absolutely. Also, once you get good rates, you ask for a higher rate from the next customer. If it is higher than their highest rate they tend to tell you what their highest rate is which gives you a great place to negotiate from. Like
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by zenpaul 7y ago
I've been there and done that for better and worse. It sounds like the author wants to create their own agency which is a different game than being a solo consultant. If you really want to be a solo consultant... Lessons from 20+ years
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by zenpaul 7y ago
It's another indication of the danger of the incompetency of the current administration as outlined in Michael Lewis' excellent book "The Fifth Risk". The Fifth Risk being "Project management", or lack thereof.
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by zenpaul 7y ago
"Systems like Six Sigma appeal to managers because they are rooted in the pursuit of predictability, and all managers crave predictability" And what innovator wants to work in a place like that? I left years ago because that cultu
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GE and Whatever Happened to Six Sigma?(qz.com)
3 points by zenpaul 7y ago|2 comments
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by zenpaul 7y ago
Being a homeowner, hearing an "irritating mould problem" didn't make me think "resilient fungi could lead to new kinds of materials for use in space". It made me think that there are some serious health risks for th
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by zenpaul 7y ago
What I always say is "speak what you know" in a confrontational situation. It is an authentic way of communicating that opens up conversations. For example, I can say that "I feel frustrated when you show up to the meeting 10
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by zenpaul 8y ago
The randomize button in the lower right corner is the best way to see the possibilities.
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by zenpaul 8y ago
And in other news, "2017 saw largest total population in US history". How about "2017 saw highest increase in death due to alcohol, drugs and suicide in US history"?
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by zenpaul 8y ago
This comment from accpi jumped out... Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it.
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A Kind of Hippocratic Oath for Tech(medium.com)
1 points by zenpaul 8y ago|0 comments
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by zenpaul 8y ago
Or train the network with unknown or not-a-number data or pseudo data. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5359699?oq=5%2C359%2C699
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by zenpaul 8y ago
Radiolab just did a similar podcast "Tweak the Vote" about new voting variations. It digs into some real examples in Ireland, San Francisco and Maine. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/tweak-vote
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by zenpaul 8y ago
My personal policy is NO email on the phone and no Slack/group-chat alerts on the phone either. Anyone who matters has my number and can call or text me at any time. That puts the interrupt driven work of filtering out the 99% of non-e
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by zenpaul 8y ago
Ha, ha, ha, I just got laid off Monday along with most of the rest of the team with no notice. The market seems to be fairly hot here in Fairfield county CT so I'm jumping right back in and expect to pick up another job/contract i
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A Phone Setup That Will Make You More Mindful(betterhumans.coach.me)
2 points by zenpaul 8y ago|0 comments

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