In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
I played the piano, but not beyond some basic lessons. About the only art I like is writing, and I've been practicing it all my life. Someday, maybe I'll get it right.
In reply to Practice...but not typing:
I'm glad I had typing class, even if the only reason I got a C (instead of a D or lower) was that the teacher liked me...I just could NOT stop myself from looking at the keys. Just having the discipline of knowing where your fingers are supposed to be helped me later on in life. (My typing speed got to be pretty insane in college, when I was writing almost continuously.) The productivity boost is nice, if not necessary. C is startling fast on the keyboard for a hunt-and-peck guy.
(Do kids perhaps get typing as part of their regular curriculum in the earlier grades? My typing class was in 7th grade (1987) as a half-semester of typing and a half-semester of "computers." TRS-80 FTW! ;) Aha, in Lee's Summit, MO, keyboarding is part of the curriculum for 3rd - 6th grades.)
The first part of using the web for problem-solving is knowing how to phrase the question. (thinking to use "keyboarding" instead of "typing" in a search; describing a problem adequately in an Ask Metafilter/email list question.) Then evaluating the quality of the information: is that site commercial? Public? Reputable or crank? Does that individual responding to me have a good track record? And then being tenacious enough to follow the trail(s) until you get the actual answer(s).
(And I think the better analogy may be that good typing technique leads to more effective typing, which means more brain-space for the problem solving, as good hammer-swinging technique leads to more effective hammering, which allows more space to think about the other parts of carpentry. I say that as someone with not that great of a hammer technique, who's spent some time trying to hammer things around the house. Honestly, I wish my technique were better, and practice would probably help.)
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
Sometimes I miss the viola...I played from 3rd grade until sophomore year of college; I'd mostly stopped, and then my viola was stolen. Now it's been longer that I haven't been playing than that I played. Not that I was every any good, really, but sometimes it was fun, and it was a good social space for me. (Even when I was active, I wasn't that good about practicing, though.)
I find that with writing, the more I practice it, the more I want to write. The pleasure of it emerges from the writing. But it is, like so many things for me, the agony of taking that first step.
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
When I think of cloud, I tend to think of Amazon web services, not Analytics. As far as I know, there's no easy way to port from any of the Amazon web services to another service.
I'll have to check out Analytics, then. See if work with it can send something that I actually get paid for my way.
In reply to Practice...but not typing:
But we also need to develop our own problem solving skills. The two, looking things up and figuring things out on our own, are not mutually exclusive.
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
Simply not true on a couple of counts. I'll use Google Analytics as an example:
1. You can export your data from Analytics, currently only through reports, but a data export API is in the works.
2. Analytics has a tracking API hosted on Google code. There are open source variants.
3. You can switch from Analytics by installing javascript from another service.
There are jobs for people expert in this service and AdWords. I know people in this area, and the skills are in demand.
That said, I see your point about avoiding vendor lock-in. I just tend to view it as a question of degree and also one of how you value the different components in the trade-offs.
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
I'm so very much against centralized services, and that's what today's "clouds" are. They're services that would be difficult to move, and are dependent on one vendor.
Yes, they enable startups, but each has a proprietary API, which means that it's difficult, if not possible, for a startup to move to a different service. Not without a lot of coding.
More than that, I've worked on so many different applications using whatever is the "hot" tech or infrastructure of the moment. You spend a lot of time perfecting the skill, only to have it obsolete as interest in the tech fades. I'd rather spend my time on stuff that has survived the test of time.
To be honest, I'm not sure there are many jobs for cloud computing folks.
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
Let me throw in a pitch for the cloud. Two ways of thinking about it: 1) software as a service; 2) infrastructure as a service. Personally, #1 is the winner for me. I just think of #2 as a harder and often more expensive way of provisioning infrastructure, not always, but it really only works in niches.
When I think about software as a service, I think less code for me to write and a service I don't have to maintain. It can also mean easier collaboration with others who are tuned into service architectures. Of course, there are drawbacks, but I could do nothing I'm doing today without software as a service.
In reply to Practice...but not typing:
Shelley, why reinvent the wheel? I'm for googling and twittering as part of the problem solving process. However, to push the envelope a little, I'd make the solutions garnered through such a process compete on an objective playing field. For instance, writing code that achieved a task while satisfying certain constraints. That will get their creative juices flowing.
We live in a world of super available information. That fact has to be part of the process.
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
I came to coding via a logic class, which probably explains my own interest.
But yes, there is something satisfying knowing we can create something useful, all on our own without having to get permission, or spend a lot of money.
As a 13 year old, it probably was one thing you could control in your life.
In reply to Tripping into New Year:
Karl, I wonder how many other people have been hurt looking at their own reflections in windows and the like.
Understandable, though I agree, a funny story.
In reply to Tripping into New Year:
Happy New Year back, Virginia!
In reply to Tweaking Makes Perfect:
I'm enjoying a dive back into serious coding these days too. There's something to be said for working in an environment where there are rules that I can understand and most of the rules make sense. I wonder if that's one of the reasons I was attracted to programming in the first place, back when I was the 13-year-old child of newly divorced parents in 1980.
In reply to Tripping into New Year:
Ouch! Happy you're okay. Crazy what happens at random sometimes. Here's a funny story...
When I was a teenager, and far more vain then I am these days, I was walking down 2nd Street on my way to South. I turn my head to the right, looking at my reflection in a bar window, checking out my hair (at that time very, very long).
Wham!
I run into a support beam. Give myself a black eye and fall on my ass.
I, umm.. of course deserved that fall. Quite different than tripping on a crack in the ground.
But my dignity was most definitely bruised :)
In reply to Threads:
Pretty much agree with Michael that linkedin is an equivalent resume + cover letter + references.
The thing I don't like is that you are pretty much encouraged here to surface your references from the get go - otherwise - there is little point - so no more saying 'references available upon request'.
Otherwise, it isn't much work and because it is honest about what it is for - networking - I don't mind it that much. I avoid the social functions as well.
In reply to Bad Laws:
How does one define "average sensibility" to any one act? What would be an average sensibility in Missouri, would differ, most likely from the average sensibility in California. Come to that the average sensibility of a person in Springfield, Mo would likely differ dramatically from the average sensibility of someone in St. Louis.
Parts of the law are very explicit: threats of violence, crude language that can be interpreted as a physical threat. My concerns are about the pieces I bolded, specifically the "average sensibility" phrase. Not to mention the emotional distress. Good lord, I wouldn't even know how to begin to determine what does or does not amount to as "emotional distress" for a person of "average sensibility" for a "given age".
Then there's the concept of repeated unwanted contact. Technically, if I have someone who comments in my posts repeatedly, and I tell them to stop but they continue, I could file a complaint with the police based on this law. Seriously, I could, based on, knowingly makes repeated unwanted communication to another person.
The issue is that the law was originally created to cover a person either telephoning or visiting another in person. They just slapped in the electronic communication aspect because of the Megan Meier suicide. Yet electronic communication is vastly and significantly different than direct communication via phone or in-person access.
Someone showing up outside a person's house is very intimidating. Repeated acts of this nature are harassment. But commenting in another person's posts? Would you be intimidated by someone commenting in your post from, say, Spain?
Repeatedly calling someone on the phone is also intimidating, not the least of which, again there's an implication of physical intimacy based on the act. But is it the same as text messaging another person? Or other form of "electronic communication", such as posting a message on someone's Facebook wall?
Here's two scenarios:
A stepson calls his stepfather on the phone 17 times.
A stepson texts his stepfather 17 times.
Are the two exactly equivalent. In my opinion, they are not because kids nowadays don't think anything of texting another person dozens a times a day.
And not just kids, either. I was just out at Twitter. Kevin Marks, who is not a kid, just posted about a dozen or so Twitter messages in the space of an hour or two. We don't think anything of it. But, if he were to make the same number of calls in the same time period, well, most of us would think he has communication problems.
As for the anonymous aspect of the law-calling someone up on the phone and saying obscenities into the receiver is very intimidating. And frightening. But almost every political weblogger gets a variation of this in their weblogs daily. Sometimes hourly.
Heck, not just political webloggers--we techs can get a little nasty with each other at times.
The problem with this law is that it puts a massive amount of power into the hands of the prosecutor. We're in effect saying, we know the law is crap, but no reasonable prosecutor would go after, say, an anonymous commenter who swears a lot. But then, as we saw with the Lori Drew trial, we can't depend on prosecutors being reasonable. Especially when there are societal pressures involved.
In addition, there is a massive difference between phone call or in-person access, and electronic communication. Most of the former is probably based on the proximity of the two people to each other. Most of the latter form of communication...think about two neighbors in Missouri, and a court case happening in California.
Boggles. But real.
In reply to Bad Laws:
I can't believe I'm commenting on this (or that I at least partly agree with Seth), but to me, the key language in the harassment def you posted (565.090) is:
* average sensibility
* reasonable apprehension
This--in theory--protects you from the person you (rightfully) fear who out of EXTREME, UNREASONABLE sensitivity/sensibilities, claims that being called an idiot caused them to believe "reasonable apprehension of offensive physical contact or harm"
I always thought the tests for quite a number of laws are based on nothing more objective than what is considered reasonable and average, and that allows it to change and evolve over time. Of course what is considered average and reasonable is culturally dependent, so that's an issue. But again, laws that include language based on "reasonable" and "average" may be vague, but not completely subjective. They protect us from the outliers... in this case, the person who takes offense and sees harm where the average, reasonable person would not. The problems arise when you hit the areas where it's not clear what is "reasonable" and "average". But you are painting extremes.
To suggest that the only way to be protected is to talk only "kittens, rainbows, and unicorns" is ridiculous. There may be folks reading your blog who find talk of "kittens, rainbows, and unicorns" pretty damn offensive... to the point of threatening their way of life (not kidding). So unless you take the words "average" and "reasonable" seriously, the only way to stay out of harm's way is to say nothing at all. It sounds like you are suggesting that indeed this is the only way to be legally safe, and this is where I agree with Seth--there's nothing really new here.
I AM NOT suggesting this law is good, valid, useful, etc. (personally, I don't think it is) I'm simply highlighting the significance of the words "average and reasonable". In totally unrelated legal scenarios I've been involved in with both the horse and health industry, these terms have meant absolutely EVERYTHING.
In reply to Bad Laws:
You forgot unicorns.
In reply to Bad Laws:
Seth, it's difficult to have a back and forth with you in comments when you preface your comments with "sigh", and then proceed to insert variations of "I give up"-primarily based on the fact that you think you're right, I'm wrong, and why can't I see the wisdom of your ways?
I may not agree with you, but I don't necessarily think I'm right and you're wrong. However, I'm not going to concede that you're right and I'm wrong just because you say so.
We don't agree. Life goes on. What can be interesting for others-or not-is the back and forth that arises from two people expressing their views on why they agree, or don't.
If you consider the back and forth a waste of time, then yes, you probably should give up.
In reply to Bad Laws:
One more time ... this law is not particularly vaguer than existing laws, which get used every day, which you never hear about since it wasn't connected to a cause-celebre.
I started to dig up examples i.e. "intentional infliction of emotional distress", then I decided it wouldn't change anything.
I've got to stop doing this. I give up.
In reply to Bad Laws:
Kittens, Butterflies, Rainbows
Shiny Happy People
Oh My
In reply to Bad Laws:
And the point I'm trying to make Seth is that when laws are this vague, and they are abominably vague, it is only the judgment of the prosecutor, or perhaps the vindictiveness of society that keeps them from being applied in the loosest possible way.
You may say, "Oh, this would never happen", but as I said, we've seen Lori Drew put on trial for violations of MySpace rules and a reasonable person would never expect criminal charges based on violations of TOS.
Following on the Drew conviction, every child under 18 should not be allowed to use Google, as to do so is a violation of Google's TOS, and therefore with this new precedent, a violation of criminal (not civil) law. The response is, "Oh, that's a strawman. No prosecutor would go after a kid for using Google." But if a prosecutor wanted to go after a kid for _some_ reason, this then becomes a nice weapon that easily comes to hand. That's what makes a bad law: one that can be applied with the broadest strokes, against the largest number of people.
I would have thought that applications of law like this wouldn't occur, because the state or federal Supreme Courts would prevent such abuse, but I've seen SCOTUS allow the application of arbitration agreements in fraudulent contracts-I don't assume we can trust the courts to do the right thing. Not anymore. Not when there are so many agendas in play, and seemingly little respect for the law.