deirdresm

If lawyers only had perfect clients, they wouldn’t have clients.

(Analogously, If software engineers only worked for perfect companies, companies wouldn’t have software engineers.)

Definitely too big. I use the FitBark GPS 2: https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fi...

Which is 47 mm x 30 mm x 15 mm vs the Mictrack's 46mm x 41mm x 16mm - and that 11 extra mm would make it not work on a collar. Fitbark does have Bluetooth.

I've got a really wandery cat whose range is about 1-1.5km in any direction from the house. We try to keep her within 0.5km as much as possible. If we didn't manage her location fairly actively, she'd probably wander farther.

I've been using FitBark for the last 2-1/2 years.

The catch is that my cat's use case (being mostly outdoors, mostly out of Bluetooth range, and mostly draining power) doesn't match the engineering design model of a dog who's with you most of the time and might escape on occasion. They gave me a more power-conserving build, though.

The one anomaly here is one I've noticed with Pokémon Go as well: "rounding" locations to be at the street even when the cat isn't even within BT range of the street. (For privacy reasons in PoGo's case, after multiple lawsuits.) The one time this is particularly annoying is when our fuzzball is hunting lizards in the local schoolyard at night, and the tracker says she's on the street next to the schoolyard, but she's somewhere in the middle of it.

In practice, that means I know where my little darling was 10 minutes ago, rounded to the nearest street, and use a Bluetooth tracking app to narrow it down further. Naturally, a good third of the time, she's within BT range and just Not Interested™ in moving from wherever she happens to be. (We try to keep her fed on a regular schedule to reduce wildlife consumption.)

We're going to try FindMyCat on the other cat (who currently doesn't have a tracker) and see how that goes. He spends more time at home.

I'm reminded of a Berkeley CA bumper sticker:

Visualize Rent

Honestly, out of all the things I've been paid for over the many years of my career, the one that gives the the most pleasure, thinking back, is being paid as an extra for The Blues Brothers.

Watching Cab Calloway do Minnie the Moocher in the 70s? Live? Paid for it? Priceless.

Working for Apple was awesome, as were the other places I've worked, but for sheer enjoyment per dollar, the Palladium in the 70s wins.

In a state that permits users to delete their entire data forever and ever, hallelujah.

golf clap

(One of the 2,000+)

Thanks! I added an index here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11698292/pvax/index.html

Yep, you've got it. Once I realized I had the skill to accomplish a workable version of anything is when I started noticing that there weren't many problems I cared enough about to feel like they were worth my time.

There are things I'm interested in implementing still. I still enjoy working in Ruby, and my Python's gotten rusty, but I actually work mostly in PHP these days (because of WordPress). I keep promising myself to learn Swift, but I lack Swift-type problems to solve that I care about.

The other thing, as one gets older and has a lot more experience: how much of your remaining unknown quantity of time are you willing to spend doing programming vs. some of your other life goals?

It was 18 years before I worked with another female software engineer peer.

I don't think most men in the industry can imagine what that would be like.

This. So much this.

The brick does not love you. The company funding any project is a brick. No matter how much you love the project (or enjoy the people you're working with), it's temporary.

Detachment is the only way to stay sane long term, but then you're not viewed as "passionate."

That's a difficult question. Essentially, some part of any job sucks. Even within a given field, some jobs and/or projects will suck more than others. Some tools and languages suck more for certain applications than for others.

I've always enjoyed—and still enjoy—the technical aspects of programming.

Since this just came in my email….

"Working at $FIRM offers you the opportunity to work in a fast-paced, challenging, startup environment with a team of passionate individuals who love bringing ideas to life. At $FIRM, no role is small and every person plays a part in the development of our game-changing technology."

fast-paced = you won't have time to think to solve the problems better

challenging = no one knows how to behave themselves, least of all the founders

startup environment = so forget reasonable workweeks and having any time on weekends

team of passionate individuals = they don't have lives, either

no role is small = you will be assigned roles that the last person quit over because it was so trivial

That's the kind of thing I'm done with.

Were I gloating, I'd point out that I a) had code in space before I turned 18 (digital tape driver); b) had written (in Pascal) the code to control emissions for four power plants by the time I was 22.

Truth is, I feel like there aren't any more really interesting problems for me to solve. I've accomplished enough of each kind of thing that really engages me that I'm done.

I'd turned down an Apple job in the mid-80s and always regretted it, so once I spent 5+ years on the Safari team, I felt like that was the only checkbox left.

Actually, I deleted my github account while I was a software engineer at Apple. Here, have a photo of my Steve Jobs engraved iPad I got while working on the Safari team:

http://deirdre.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SJ-engraved-iP...

Presence or absence of a github account isn't meaningful. Plenty of really great programmers have never had them, and there's plenty of crap code on github. (And the inverse is also true, of course.)

Thank you.

Like you, I did enjoy it more when I was contracted to do the 1.0 version of something and where I was basically working alone to a spec.

Though I prefer the modern tools.