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Carolinian's Journal

carolinian
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03/14/2008 17:30 #43668

Opportunities
Category: life
When a great opportunity drops into my lap, I sometimes don't take the maximum advantage of it that I could out of consideration for others.

I need to remember that when I do this, it's often because I'm acting like a wuss and I'm concerned about what others might think of me, and also often because I lack the confidence to make full use of such an opportunity.

What I need to remember most of all is that when I don't take full advantage of an opportunity and water it down out of concern for others, the opportunity is utilized in a half-assed way, and the opportunity:

1. Either completely fizzles out with the net effect of the opportunity being nil and me not having another opportunity like it for a very long time.

2. The opportunity blowing up in my face and possibly in the face of the person to whom I was trying to show consideration, because half of an opportunity can be more unstable and explosive than a full one.

3. Both #1 and #2

4. #1, #2, and the people around me being dumbfounded as to why I made such a half-assed decision.

I guess that the best way to deal with my latest experience with this is to turn it into a learning experience. Yeah, it cost me something, but I'll learn to be smarter the next time around.


03/09/2008 20:18 #43596

Longer Answer
Category: programming
To answer (e:jenks)' question, yes I'm downloading the iPhone SDK and I'll be trying to start writing iPhone applications. It would really help if I actually had an iPhone, but with a baby on the way, I've really been trying to justify it.

I'm not a very well-paid programmer, as I make less than a buffalo elementary school teacher, and once the little one comes into the world, I might as well have my employer do a direct deposit to my landlord, daycare, univera, whatever infant daycare provider I manage to find, and the bank that does my car payments; after those get taken out, we're eating and buying baby clothes off of (e:inscrutable)'s paycheck, which is about half of mine. I'm not going to complain, because people in some other area of the world would kill for 1/100 of what I have, but the situation has me scared shitless.

I probably will end up getting an iPhone, because I can justify it with trying to earn extra money for my family by developing and selling iPhone apps by whatever mechanism Apple sets up. I'm also studying Google's Android phone development environment, so I can enter something into their contest, which has some pretty lucrative prizes. There's so much crap I have to cram into my head to make money on the side, but the more I can cram into my head better off things will be for us.

Screenshot of estrip on a simulated Google phone



image
carolinian - 03/10/08 17:30
Update: Apple apparently puts the SDK under NDA, which is geekish for "if you tell anybody about anything, you're dead". As anybody with a pulse can get a free Apple Developer Connection account, this is kinda silly. They won't even let programmers on Apple mailing lists give each other help on how to write stuff for the iPhone.

This means no iPhone app screenshots for (e:strip), at least until June. I can still show Google phone stuff, though.


paul - 03/09/08 20:36
The iphone sdk has an iphone emulator so you can still program without one.

Seeing as the new firmware isn't going to be released until June and apps will not be available until then, I would just use the SDK's emualtor and buy an iphone in June when the new ones come out.

03/07/2008 02:19 #43572

Dodged the bullet
Category: job
Before I got my job in Buffalo, I was severely underemployed in NC and desperately looking for work.

I wanted to work for this one mobile content divider; they seemed cool, and I knew some people in the company who might put in a good word for me. I also really wanted this one social software engineer position at Apple. I got neither job, and ever since I came up here I always replayed in my mind the "what if they hired me" scenarios.

This week, I learned that the mobile company was laying off a lot of its staff and quitting the area I wanted to stay in. I also read the blog by the guy who got the social software engineer position, and he says the position was pretty limiting.

I guess the point of this post is that it's kinda weird to look back and see the smoking craters of decisions I might have made if my life had gone exactly way I wanted it to, and to feel I'm lucky that it didn't.
jenks - 03/07/08 14:31
so this is totally OT, but....
have you downloaded the iphone SDK and written any cool apps yet?

:)
leetee - 03/07/08 09:44
This is a facinating subject to me. We all gripe and complan whe things in our lives go "wrong".

Even simple things like missing a bus or train, not making a light. We are bummed, annoyed, stressed. But, what if we had caught those things and gotten into an accident?

With major events in our lives, we can become so downtrodden about things that happen or did not happen. Not all of us get the chance to look back to see what could have happened. So totally cool that you could.

02/24/2008 02:55 #43442

today
Category: baby, sick
Summary of the day.

(e:inscrutable) and I went to the childbirth class at Children's Hospital. We did the whole breathing thing, the whole pillow thing, and the identify-various-baby-hygiene-ointments-and-potions thing. We ate at the Cafeteria, which wasn't awful but doesn't really deserve a Visco-style food porn pictorial.

Missed Bedouin Soundclash at Mohawk Place because the cold I've been having the last several weeks re-intensified and I had to stay in bed. I hate being sick; it always seems to happen when there's something that I really want to do that I can't do very often, like seeing my favorite band perform in Buffalo.

metalpeter - 02/24/08 12:20
I'm going to play shrink here for a second. Do you think that there is some part of you that deep down not even know to you wants you to not be happy or wants you stay in and not have fun. That subconcious (sorry I can't spell) causes you to get sick near when you want to do something fun. I'm not saying you should think to much about it. I'm just going on the fact that you said when ever there is something you want to do something messes it up. On a side note I was thinking about going to see them and forgot about them (not a favorite or anything but it would have been fun).
paul - 02/24/08 11:36
Roswell's food is not as good as it used to be ;(

02/07/2008 13:42 #43231

I officially hate all Buffalo utilities
Category: corporate nonsense
Apparently, after I explicitly told National Fuel to cut off service to my apartment on Richmond on Nov. 1st, they didn't stop billing me.

In fact, they pretty much kept on billing me until Dec. 14th. So between Nov. 1st and now (my last and hopefully final bill from the old place), I've been paying/owing those idiots $300 for the privilege of heating the old place I no longer live in. And they say they "have no record of a cut-off request".

I am so unbelievably pissed right now.

Why can't any utility company in Buffalo get anything right? And where is the copious amounts of money that we pay them going that they can't fix the most basic website/computer/customer service problems?

metalpeter - 02/07/08 18:52
For future reference I think to have it turned off you have to be there and someone has to show up to get a final reading of what you are at. That is the way it works to get it turned on. I could be wrong about that but I think that is how it works.