Ben was asking about grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents, and so on. He asked about my grandparents, most of whom are still alive, and my great grandparents, none of whom are. Then 3 greats, 4, 5...so I had to cut him off and tell him that they're all gone. So he asked about my zero great grandparents, and I said that would be my grandparents. Then my negative one grandparents, so I said that would be my parents. And my negative 2? That would be me (and my sister). And my -3? That would be him and Zoe. And -4? That would be his kids. "But I don't *have* any children!" "Well, someday you might." And -5? His grand kids. -6? His great grandkids. -7? His great great grandkids, but around there I lost track, and just started laughing.
But then he tied it all back together. He realized all his great great grandparents are gone, and asked if he "will be died" when he has great great grandkids. Wow. How do you even respond to that? I said I don't know. I heard my ex in the background tell him he will live a long time, so I said that, too. "A hundred?" I don't know, Ben. I hope so.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Molecular Nanotechnology
I don't know where to start, so forgive me, but I am going to ramble.
MNT is going to happen. It's a matter of time. Not if, but when. For it to be successful and useful, there are going to have to be some very significant advances in several sorts of fields. Some of them are advancing by leaps and bounds already, but there is plenty of room to grow.
Chemistry. Synthetic chemistry cannot currently create the kinds of things needed to make MNT feasible. It may be that it will used to create the first gen of it and then bootstrap from there. Computational chemistry, the quantum side in particular, must also be advanced a great deal. Unless there have been major advancements over the last 8 years that I am unaware of, the level of precision in computing chemical structures is prohibitively computationally expensive - the magnitude of error tends to be on the order of the strength of a chemical bond, which while it is very close in absolute terms, it renders the computation almost useless.
Algorithms in math and computer science. Serious improvements in algorithms could greatly reduce the time required for predicting chemical structures. My own PhD work represented a good advancement in optimization of functions, but that does not decrease the time required to compute the energy of a single structure.
Parallel computation. The use of this is twofold. Parallel computers are really starting to take hold in mainstream systems, and properly using them would greatly enhance the speed of predicting structures. Later on down the road, fault tolerant systems will be needed to handle truly massive parallel architectures - imagine a personal computer with trillions of processors and you're starting to get the picture. Processors would be continuously added and removed from the system, error checking and redundancy would be needed, and so on.
Programming languages. Again, parallelization. There are advancements being made in this arena to handle multiple processors, but I have no idea if they handle dynamic addition and removal of cores, along with fault tolerance. Such a language must be easy to use or people will not be able to adequately deal with the scope of the problems to be dealt with.
Artificial intelligence. In particular, the ability to partition problems and solve subproblems. This goes back to parallelization and programming, among other things.
Encryption and security. The homegrown encryption routines used by corporations in their efforts to enforce DRM are woefully inadequate, and there must be active safety protocols in place from the very beginning. A small imbalance of power, a minor error, or a deliberate attack or sabotage could yield a catastrophe beyond anything seen before. Additionally, there must be a way to enforce end user rights as well, or people will be left with no ability to be self sufficient and/or choose to opt out of this system.
Database technology. I do not know the limitations of current database systems, but I suspect they will be far from adequate for the volume of data coming down the pipeline for projects involving MNT designs. Even breaking down systems into a fractal-like heirarchy, there are still vast numbers of atoms to be accounted for in even the simplest of MNT systems, along with the instruction set coded for the assembly of the system in question.
Intellectual property and economic theory. This ties into encryption and security. Energy, rare elements, structural designs, and items of sentimental value will be the only things of monetary value - in fact, one could argue that that's true today, as well. The most useful elements for MNT are typically going to be the ones most commonly found on the planet - carbon, silicon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen. Trace elements will be useful as limiting reagents. There will almost certainly be certain "open source" designs that will be carefully evaluated as safe for general use.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. All of these things have been thought of before by people involved in MNT, and are just what I can think of off the top of my head. Each and every one of these represents a potential business opportunity with profits to be made along every step of the way, not just after the fruition of MNT.
And I don't know where to start. I just know I am once again really starting to get the itch to walk down this path once more.
MNT is going to happen. It's a matter of time. Not if, but when. For it to be successful and useful, there are going to have to be some very significant advances in several sorts of fields. Some of them are advancing by leaps and bounds already, but there is plenty of room to grow.
Chemistry. Synthetic chemistry cannot currently create the kinds of things needed to make MNT feasible. It may be that it will used to create the first gen of it and then bootstrap from there. Computational chemistry, the quantum side in particular, must also be advanced a great deal. Unless there have been major advancements over the last 8 years that I am unaware of, the level of precision in computing chemical structures is prohibitively computationally expensive - the magnitude of error tends to be on the order of the strength of a chemical bond, which while it is very close in absolute terms, it renders the computation almost useless.
Algorithms in math and computer science. Serious improvements in algorithms could greatly reduce the time required for predicting chemical structures. My own PhD work represented a good advancement in optimization of functions, but that does not decrease the time required to compute the energy of a single structure.
Parallel computation. The use of this is twofold. Parallel computers are really starting to take hold in mainstream systems, and properly using them would greatly enhance the speed of predicting structures. Later on down the road, fault tolerant systems will be needed to handle truly massive parallel architectures - imagine a personal computer with trillions of processors and you're starting to get the picture. Processors would be continuously added and removed from the system, error checking and redundancy would be needed, and so on.
Programming languages. Again, parallelization. There are advancements being made in this arena to handle multiple processors, but I have no idea if they handle dynamic addition and removal of cores, along with fault tolerance. Such a language must be easy to use or people will not be able to adequately deal with the scope of the problems to be dealt with.
Artificial intelligence. In particular, the ability to partition problems and solve subproblems. This goes back to parallelization and programming, among other things.
Encryption and security. The homegrown encryption routines used by corporations in their efforts to enforce DRM are woefully inadequate, and there must be active safety protocols in place from the very beginning. A small imbalance of power, a minor error, or a deliberate attack or sabotage could yield a catastrophe beyond anything seen before. Additionally, there must be a way to enforce end user rights as well, or people will be left with no ability to be self sufficient and/or choose to opt out of this system.
Database technology. I do not know the limitations of current database systems, but I suspect they will be far from adequate for the volume of data coming down the pipeline for projects involving MNT designs. Even breaking down systems into a fractal-like heirarchy, there are still vast numbers of atoms to be accounted for in even the simplest of MNT systems, along with the instruction set coded for the assembly of the system in question.
Intellectual property and economic theory. This ties into encryption and security. Energy, rare elements, structural designs, and items of sentimental value will be the only things of monetary value - in fact, one could argue that that's true today, as well. The most useful elements for MNT are typically going to be the ones most commonly found on the planet - carbon, silicon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen. Trace elements will be useful as limiting reagents. There will almost certainly be certain "open source" designs that will be carefully evaluated as safe for general use.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. All of these things have been thought of before by people involved in MNT, and are just what I can think of off the top of my head. Each and every one of these represents a potential business opportunity with profits to be made along every step of the way, not just after the fruition of MNT.
And I don't know where to start. I just know I am once again really starting to get the itch to walk down this path once more.
Monday, October 08, 2007
I think that in 2 days
I will have been divorced for a year.
I'm not too sure exactly how I feel about that.
I'm not too sure exactly how I feel about that.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Life
Posting for no real reason. Just thinking about how the last year and a half or so has gone. I'm still confused. I'm isolated from pretty much everyone I care about, and kinda numb about that. I'd like to be more motivated, enough so to get something done for a change...but that's how I've been most of my life, I guess.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Life
So it's about 2 AM here, and I'm tired. I have bought plane tickets to go back to Indy in about a week. I'll be working when I can there, spending time with my kids, and hanging out with friends and family. I haven't seen them in over a month, so it will be good. It's also good that August is a 3 check month. It makes it easier. It's not cheap to fly to Indy, less so on such short notice. With proper planning, I can get tickets about a month ahead of time for around $400.
I'm less enchanted with Rails lately. Looking into the guts of it, some things annoy me. The most obvious is not properly escaping table names. If I want to name a class "Line", ActiveRecord pukes out because it wants to find a table named "lines", which should be fine, except that the SQL generated doesn't escape the table name, which means it is garbage SQL. This is a simply retarded mistake to make. So, given that, what else is broken that I haven't noticed yet?
I still like comic books. The Dark Tower just ended, and it was good. There is a new Buffy series that picks up where the TV show left off, and it's already on issue 5, dammit. Maybe I'll try to dig up the back issues while I am in Indy, as the local place doesn't have them all in stock.
I need to start creating again.
I'm less enchanted with Rails lately. Looking into the guts of it, some things annoy me. The most obvious is not properly escaping table names. If I want to name a class "Line", ActiveRecord pukes out because it wants to find a table named "lines", which should be fine, except that the SQL generated doesn't escape the table name, which means it is garbage SQL. This is a simply retarded mistake to make. So, given that, what else is broken that I haven't noticed yet?
I still like comic books. The Dark Tower just ended, and it was good. There is a new Buffy series that picks up where the TV show left off, and it's already on issue 5, dammit. Maybe I'll try to dig up the back issues while I am in Indy, as the local place doesn't have them all in stock.
I need to start creating again.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Walla Walla
Things have changed.
June 21 I got into a truck and drove. For 5 days. I wound up in Walla Walla, WA, the location of my new employer. Lived in a hotel until I got an apartment on July 1.
Wow.
I know almost nobody here outside of work and a few people who works at shops near here, and really have only hung out with my boss socially. I need to find a D&D group here, or create one, especially since my D&D stuff was among the first stuff I unpacked, for some reason. I have several empty bookshelves in my apartment, and lots of stuff in storage.
It's a RoR job, which is cool. The people here are mostly green, but have some good talent. There's potential for some really cool stuff to happen here, so I am excited about that.
The downside is that I miss my kids. I talk to them every night at bedtime, but have not seen them since I left. I'm not financially in a situation yet to begin contemplating flying back to Indy, but I should be soon. We get paid biweekly, and the check I get on the 20th will mostly go to rent, but we get paid 3 times in August, so that's good.
So...that's life right now.
June 21 I got into a truck and drove. For 5 days. I wound up in Walla Walla, WA, the location of my new employer. Lived in a hotel until I got an apartment on July 1.
Wow.
I know almost nobody here outside of work and a few people who works at shops near here, and really have only hung out with my boss socially. I need to find a D&D group here, or create one, especially since my D&D stuff was among the first stuff I unpacked, for some reason. I have several empty bookshelves in my apartment, and lots of stuff in storage.
It's a RoR job, which is cool. The people here are mostly green, but have some good talent. There's potential for some really cool stuff to happen here, so I am excited about that.
The downside is that I miss my kids. I talk to them every night at bedtime, but have not seen them since I left. I'm not financially in a situation yet to begin contemplating flying back to Indy, but I should be soon. We get paid biweekly, and the check I get on the 20th will mostly go to rent, but we get paid 3 times in August, so that's good.
So...that's life right now.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Paralyzed from the neck up
Everything inside the skull, that is.
I seem unable to think, or take action, or do much at all, lately.
I think maybe I'm broken.
I seem unable to think, or take action, or do much at all, lately.
I think maybe I'm broken.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sigh
Out of morbid curiosity, I checked my schedule from about a year ago. Wednesday, May 10, 2006, was when my ex and I had our first therapy session. This means that Monday, May 8, 2006, was the last time I slept in that house.
:/
I don't know what that means, really. Our divorce was final October 2006, but the marriage really ended May 9.
This might explain some of the mood I've been in. Wondering when it's been a year. Now I know. Is it any better, knowing?
I don't know.
:/
I don't know what that means, really. Our divorce was final October 2006, but the marriage really ended May 9.
This might explain some of the mood I've been in. Wondering when it's been a year. Now I know. Is it any better, knowing?
I don't know.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
IQ
I've had my IQ formally tested only once in my life to the best of my knowledge. It was in grade school, and it was one of those tests that's great at the center of the distribution but sucks at the edges. I found out that a perfect score on it would have correlated to a 150 - it just couldn't go higher than that, so at that end, it wasn't accurate at all.
I missed one.
I missed one.
What a year...
Wow. A while since I posted.
So, what happened? Ok, when I moved out, I left my Zoloft and Clarinex at the house by mistake. Picked them up after about a week, but haven't taken them since. Why is that relevant? Well, there were no ill effects of going off the Zoloft, and I was in fact in a better mood. Seems that being depressed was more about not getting what I want in life than about some chemical imbalance. Also, it turned out I wasn't sneezing as much. Remember the sleep study? Yeah, that ties into the Clarinex - turns out I am allergic to cats. It's not sleep apnea that caused the snoring, it was the damn cats. I don't snore any more, and I don't need Clarinex, either.
I worked like crazy for a client, and missed deadlines, and it turns out to have been good that the site didn't go live because as written, the site was almost certainly illegal. So that's months of work down the tubes. Trying to figure out how to recover that, but it might be unsalvageable.
We have a couple other clients that are generating a small amount of revenue, which is a start.
The divorce became final in mid-October, and I got a small settlement check. I own one of the cars now, signed a quitclaim on the house, and didn't touch her 401k, though I could have taken half.
Which brings me to the impending bankruptcy. I've avoided it so far, but it might be inevitable. Things are starting to go into collection, and there's really no way I can think of to generate that much money that fast, and there's only so much kindness of others I can ask for.
I've been dating a little, and it's nice, but unsatisfying. Women younger than I am don't seem interested, and it's hard to find women my age or older that are either not bitter or dying to get married right now. So...not sure what will happen with that. I just want to go out and have fun and not feel like if I don't propose by the third date that it's just a waste of her time.
So, what happened? Ok, when I moved out, I left my Zoloft and Clarinex at the house by mistake. Picked them up after about a week, but haven't taken them since. Why is that relevant? Well, there were no ill effects of going off the Zoloft, and I was in fact in a better mood. Seems that being depressed was more about not getting what I want in life than about some chemical imbalance. Also, it turned out I wasn't sneezing as much. Remember the sleep study? Yeah, that ties into the Clarinex - turns out I am allergic to cats. It's not sleep apnea that caused the snoring, it was the damn cats. I don't snore any more, and I don't need Clarinex, either.
I worked like crazy for a client, and missed deadlines, and it turns out to have been good that the site didn't go live because as written, the site was almost certainly illegal. So that's months of work down the tubes. Trying to figure out how to recover that, but it might be unsalvageable.
We have a couple other clients that are generating a small amount of revenue, which is a start.
The divorce became final in mid-October, and I got a small settlement check. I own one of the cars now, signed a quitclaim on the house, and didn't touch her 401k, though I could have taken half.
Which brings me to the impending bankruptcy. I've avoided it so far, but it might be inevitable. Things are starting to go into collection, and there's really no way I can think of to generate that much money that fast, and there's only so much kindness of others I can ask for.
I've been dating a little, and it's nice, but unsatisfying. Women younger than I am don't seem interested, and it's hard to find women my age or older that are either not bitter or dying to get married right now. So...not sure what will happen with that. I just want to go out and have fun and not feel like if I don't propose by the third date that it's just a waste of her time.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Strangest Year Yet
Ok, so there was my birthday post, and then the hot chick post, and there's been a lot going on since my birthday than just snapping pics of one hot chick.
So.
Ok, most importantly, I'm in the process of getting divorced. Long story made crazy short: I want her to be happy, she wants me to be happy, we both want the kids to be happy, and none of that was happening. So in the interest of preserving sanity, we're splitting up. There's a lot less stress now, the kids are happier, and she and I are talking more than we have been in months. We decided to split and be friends than stay together and hate each other.
Also, I got fired from my old job. That's also ok, as I wasn't very happy there, either. I misunderstood the root cause of that for a while, but the real reason is pretty irrelevant.
So, I've started PanEther. We're doing custom work short term, building web based applications for ourselves long term. I have two part time employees, and we're a couple months away from going live with at least one client site.
And I'm dating. I've gone on a couple lunch dates recently, having a lot of fun. Not a great success rate in asking women out, but it helps to be fearless, or at least act like it.
So, the whole getting divorced thing is why I could guiltlessly post pics of a hot chick in Starbucks, and the whole PanEther thing is why I was in the Starbucks, waiting for a business meeting.
So.
Ok, most importantly, I'm in the process of getting divorced. Long story made crazy short: I want her to be happy, she wants me to be happy, we both want the kids to be happy, and none of that was happening. So in the interest of preserving sanity, we're splitting up. There's a lot less stress now, the kids are happier, and she and I are talking more than we have been in months. We decided to split and be friends than stay together and hate each other.
Also, I got fired from my old job. That's also ok, as I wasn't very happy there, either. I misunderstood the root cause of that for a while, but the real reason is pretty irrelevant.
So, I've started PanEther. We're doing custom work short term, building web based applications for ourselves long term. I have two part time employees, and we're a couple months away from going live with at least one client site.
And I'm dating. I've gone on a couple lunch dates recently, having a lot of fun. Not a great success rate in asking women out, but it helps to be fearless, or at least act like it.
So, the whole getting divorced thing is why I could guiltlessly post pics of a hot chick in Starbucks, and the whole PanEther thing is why I was in the Starbucks, waiting for a business meeting.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
A prime year
Six years ago my age was a prime number, it is again now, and it won't be for another four years after this.
Ok, since a year is not a slice of time that's not strictly true, but you get the idea.
I'd like to talk about work, but I won't.
Saturday we had a joint birthday party. Food, folks, fun.
Zoloft has side effects. The most annoying one is drowsiness. Nausea wears off, and I'm not nearly narcoleptic any more, but I am still drowsy. Of course, there's a good chance that's also due to getting crappy sleep lately.
That reminds me. I have a sleep study tonight. On my frickin' birthday. I have to be at the hospital at 8:30 tonight. How is that fun? Feh.
So maybe you think that I'm not in a good mood right now. You'd be right.
Ok, since a year is not a slice of time that's not strictly true, but you get the idea.
I'd like to talk about work, but I won't.
Saturday we had a joint birthday party. Food, folks, fun.
Zoloft has side effects. The most annoying one is drowsiness. Nausea wears off, and I'm not nearly narcoleptic any more, but I am still drowsy. Of course, there's a good chance that's also due to getting crappy sleep lately.
That reminds me. I have a sleep study tonight. On my frickin' birthday. I have to be at the hospital at 8:30 tonight. How is that fun? Feh.
So maybe you think that I'm not in a good mood right now. You'd be right.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Frustration
I have decided that the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but frustration, because you can be happy and sad at the same time, but not happy and frustrated.
Friday, December 02, 2005
wtf???
I swear to God this is an honest screenshot of part of my "recommended" list at Amazon. Look at item 56, and, more importantly, *why* it was recommended.
Wow.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Chunky bacon
I found a book in the Half Price Bookstore a couple weeks ago on Ruby on Rails. Wow. Having worked on a web project a while back, it's really nice to see someone else having built a useful framework like this. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, but this is the first one I've seen that seems so bloody easy to use. (Yeah, yeah, accuse me of drinking the Cool-Aid if you like.) We were working on a framework in PHP, and actually had some decent functionality built, but we didn't grok templating yet, and the project went South. But this stuff looks like we were going in the right direction, and I like it.
As a result, I've been Googling for useful articles on Ruby and Rails and reading them. (Is this curiosity? I dunno, as I have a specific use in mind for it.) I want to use this for a little project on the side sometime soon. The hard part is finding the time. Hah.
Time.
As always, no rest for the wicked.
As a result, I've been Googling for useful articles on Ruby and Rails and reading them. (Is this curiosity? I dunno, as I have a specific use in mind for it.) I want to use this for a little project on the side sometime soon. The hard part is finding the time. Hah.
Time.
As always, no rest for the wicked.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
I'm not curious
It dawned on me yesterday that I've lost my curiousity. I no longer really care why things work, nor how, except just enough to get them to do what I want. In the code I write, I just get it to work. I don't especially care if it's elegant, just that it does what it's supposed to. Some of the time I don't even care enough about how something works to bother finding out for myself to do it, I'll just gladly pay someone else to take care of it for me.
An implication of this is that I don't think I can think of myself as a scientist. I'm just not interested any more in how or why things do what they do.
It's kind of sad, I suppose, and I suppose maybe I'll try to get that back at some point, but maybe now I can focus on getting what I want in life instead of bumbling about asking irrelevant questions.
An implication of this is that I don't think I can think of myself as a scientist. I'm just not interested any more in how or why things do what they do.
It's kind of sad, I suppose, and I suppose maybe I'll try to get that back at some point, but maybe now I can focus on getting what I want in life instead of bumbling about asking irrelevant questions.
Monday, November 07, 2005
I'm going about this all wrong
I am tired of not having money. I just posted on my other site an essay on finding the easiest way to do something, and I'm not doing that with regards to making money. I'm in the wrong job, it's obvious. I think having a passive revenue stream is very key, multiple streams in fact. Selling your time only once is insane.
I also need to start exercising again. I got sick, and then it got cold outside, and now I need to exercise indoors and I'm not doing it. There's a decent exercise facility here, so I need to just bring a change of clothes, a towel, and some shampoo to clean up after exercising.
I'm also thinking that having a job, as in working for someone else, is also insane. It's nuts for the same reason that service based contracting is nuts - you can only sell your time once with it. It's much better to do one thing and have a lot of people incrementally pay you for it.
Buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities - those are all fine and dandy passive revenue streams, but they also have a really pitiful rate of return when you really think about it. Very few businesses have as their plan, "We'll take our investor's money and put in the bank, and as the interest comes in, we'll pay out dividends." That's just stupid. Investors require a much higher ROI than that, as they can just put money in the bank themselves.
Of course, a higher ROI means greater risk, but that's the business of playing the law of large numbers. If the ROI wasn't high enough, people simply wouldn't start new businesses, or anything like that.
So I need a much, much higer ROI on my time.
I also need to start exercising again. I got sick, and then it got cold outside, and now I need to exercise indoors and I'm not doing it. There's a decent exercise facility here, so I need to just bring a change of clothes, a towel, and some shampoo to clean up after exercising.
I'm also thinking that having a job, as in working for someone else, is also insane. It's nuts for the same reason that service based contracting is nuts - you can only sell your time once with it. It's much better to do one thing and have a lot of people incrementally pay you for it.
Buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities - those are all fine and dandy passive revenue streams, but they also have a really pitiful rate of return when you really think about it. Very few businesses have as their plan, "We'll take our investor's money and put in the bank, and as the interest comes in, we'll pay out dividends." That's just stupid. Investors require a much higher ROI than that, as they can just put money in the bank themselves.
Of course, a higher ROI means greater risk, but that's the business of playing the law of large numbers. If the ROI wasn't high enough, people simply wouldn't start new businesses, or anything like that.
So I need a much, much higer ROI on my time.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Frustration
It seems like my entire life people have not been listening to me. Sure, they hear the sounds that come out of my mouth, but they completely disregard them. It happened to me when I was a kid, it happened growing up, it happens now.
I tell people my understanding of how something works, or how to do something, or what I want, and they ignore what I have to say. They have to hear it from somebody else before they believe it, if it's an explanation. If it's a statement of what I want, I don't get it. What part is unclear? I don't mumble, I don't leave out words, I say exactly what I mean.
Christ, there's a damn good reason some people prefer writing code to talking to people. At least in writing code, you are guaranteed to get exactly what you asked for, and being precise in your statements is what works.
Maybe bluntness isn't what works with people. Maybe people don't want direct answers. Maybe they want their prose wrapped in poetry. Maybe I'm not conveying my message in the right manner. Who knows? It just seems to me that wrapping it in flowery words increases the chance of misinterpretation.
I'm more than willing to help people. If they want my advice, they should take it when it's offered. If not, why ask for it? If I'm not going to get what I want, why bother asking?
I like buying what I want. I hand over money, I get what I want. Period.
This isn't just about me getting what I want, though that's a big part of it. Many times I have tried to help people and gotten blown off. Explanations of why a car got so hot when I was seven, or for a friend to get a business line of credit rather than a loan a few years ago, or ideas for a product very recently. There are other examples, but right there are a few. I want to help.
But don't bother acting like you give a damn if it actually doesn't matter what I say.
I tell people my understanding of how something works, or how to do something, or what I want, and they ignore what I have to say. They have to hear it from somebody else before they believe it, if it's an explanation. If it's a statement of what I want, I don't get it. What part is unclear? I don't mumble, I don't leave out words, I say exactly what I mean.
Christ, there's a damn good reason some people prefer writing code to talking to people. At least in writing code, you are guaranteed to get exactly what you asked for, and being precise in your statements is what works.
Maybe bluntness isn't what works with people. Maybe people don't want direct answers. Maybe they want their prose wrapped in poetry. Maybe I'm not conveying my message in the right manner. Who knows? It just seems to me that wrapping it in flowery words increases the chance of misinterpretation.
I'm more than willing to help people. If they want my advice, they should take it when it's offered. If not, why ask for it? If I'm not going to get what I want, why bother asking?
I like buying what I want. I hand over money, I get what I want. Period.
This isn't just about me getting what I want, though that's a big part of it. Many times I have tried to help people and gotten blown off. Explanations of why a car got so hot when I was seven, or for a friend to get a business line of credit rather than a loan a few years ago, or ideas for a product very recently. There are other examples, but right there are a few. I want to help.
But don't bother acting like you give a damn if it actually doesn't matter what I say.
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