I wouldn't say there's anything resembling a "war" out here (I'm in Denver). But I will say that my employer hasn't been able to find ANY quality devs locally.
While the job scene here is tiny, there's still a lot of demand. Our last 2 hires have been from out of state.
Thanks for the ideas! There are so many forums/discussion boards out there, I thought a forum or a review area would be a bit redundant but it is certainly worth another look.
I definitely plan to get all the calculators out there so that people can do one-off calculations or maybe even include them as widgets/etc on other sites.
The current next step is to create an html5 friendly version of the site (probably in jquery mobile) so that it's more easily accessible via phone, this was the major spark that got me working on the site in the first place, so it's definitely my next move. Perhaps native apps after that, or not if the mobile version feels native enough.
Thanks pbj! I highly recommend it as a hobby for anyone that appreciates a decent beer ;) Papazian's book "The Joy of Home Brewing" can usually be found for under 15 bucks and it really has everything you need to know to brew in a quick and easy read.
I actually have the BJCP style info for meads and ciders loaded, but I've never done either so I still need to do some research to make sure the site calculates everything correctly. But it's definitely on the list of things to do... which reminds me, I need to post that list up on the blog.
I also plan to enable entering custom info for all of the ingredient types, I just wanted to start as simple as possible- but it will be something that gets added eventually!
I use emacs in a terminal window for probably 75% of my editing, and textmate for the other 25- I have Aquamacs but couldn't get into the flow with it for some reason. I keep all the default keys for ctrl/etc, and it does help a bit that they newest macs have changed the enter key that used to be to the right of spacebar to alt.
While it's not really emacs, I generally do most of my development in Eclipse- but I change the keybindings to Emacs mode (window\preferences\general\keys). Makes eclipse almost nice to use.
I tried setting IntelliJ IDEA to Emacs key bindings, but I had to switch back to the default bindings. With the Emacs-like key bindings my fingers automatically expected a lot of things to work that IDEA plainly did not support (like kill ring).
My preference when I am not using Emacs is to make a clean break so my finger macros don't run wild, often unintentionally pressing key bindings that do other things than I expect.
I'm generally opposed to the bailout in its current (and previous) form- but if you look at the facts, this MIGHT actually end up saving the company some money...
Sure, they get a new jet out of it and that leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouth- and sure, it might not be "right" or "fair" in everyone's minds - but it's simple math.
Buy one jet for 50mil, sell 2 older jets for 27mil - make a small profit of 4 million and only carry the maintenance/fuel/crew costs of one jet instead of two.
Personally, I think they could probably do without ANY corporate jets, or probably COULD just sell one old jet and keep the other...
But assuming the jets are of roughly equal performance and capacity, can't they just sell one jet for $27M and keep the other?
Not to mention, how much is a cross-country flight in first class these days? $1500? How many execs can you fly for the cost of that airplane? (the answer: over 33,000)
That's already not including hangar, maintenance, pilot/stewardess/ground labor, nor fuel...
My guess is they can fly all their top-dog execs in first class for a clean decade for the price of that plane. I would really like to see them justify this.
I would so the real number of flights would be closer to infinity because the cost of maintaining and flying a private jet across the country is more than the cost of the first class tickets. Also the interest / depreciation on that 50 million works out to ~3 million a year which is 2,000 / 12 people = 166 first class flights by it's self. Double that if you only average 6 people.
Yeah... I imagine it would cost more than $18,000 to fly a plane-load of people across the country. Not to mention the fact that you need to keep pilots and other crew on-staff even when the plane is on the ground... the costs just don't add.
Makes you wonder why they bother. Last I checked first class was still plenty pampered.
Just wanted to say that I think the argument for "needing" corporate jets was that the time spent traveling on commercial airlines was detrimental to the company. Supposedly those private jets are used to get the executives from one place to another in a quick way so they could do more business or keep doing business and not be interrupted.
Like everyone else though, I'd like to see some scientific proof of that.
I suspect that if that were really the case, you'd hear about it from corporate jet sellers ("We compared our clients to their Fortune 500 peers, and found that companies with jets outperform the rest of the market by 2% a year!")
As it turns out, this is actually one of the selling points used by the manufacturers: "If time is money, then the time saved jetting from continent to continent is money in the bank." --- http://www.gulfstream.com/products/g650/
They're not generally selling to engineers so AFAIK they don't try to make the argument rigorous and quantitative, but there it is.
I want to echo this as well, because I feel exactly the same - and because I left a comment on Matt's site saying i thought planbook could be MUCH more profitable, but I didn't go into elaborating on HOW it could be. gcheong nailed it.
And just who exactly is he calling WE? I've worked like crazy to pay off my credit cards/loans and keep them paid off. I bought a house I could afford (<1/3 of income) with a large down payment (> 20%). I've saved on my own as well as in my partially matched 401k. I have a 6 month emergency fund. Sure, this all means that I don't have a car and take public transportation- and my computer/stereo/tv/etc aren't brand new. But have those TINY sacrifices been worth it? Absolutely!
I am not we.
So explain to me why I should bail them out? Whey you've got things you can't afford, or you're a bank leveraged at 30 or 50 to 1, you are risking it all! When you lose it all, it's not exactly a shock to those of us that have been extra conservative with our money.
We as in US citizens. George Soros has done a great job of living within his means and obviously so have you, but WE as in at least 43% of Americans haven't. Also, YOU (i.e. WE) keep electing these freaks in Congress and in the White House. Why do we have a 10 trillion dollar debt? Why do we think we can keep borrowing year after year?
"I am not we" was just my playful way of saying: overgeneralizing gets this article nowhere.
The idea that 57% of us should (or even CAN) bail out the rest of "us" is distasteful, not to mention unfair. Those of you that buy things you can't afford should lose the things. You aren't entitled to a house, you BUY it. You aren't entitled to a wage, you EARN it.
However, I completely agree with you about the deficit, "we" can't keep it up. I am personally exercising my abilities through votes/calls/etc.
Do you guys realize that you are both falling into the same fallacious talk as as the author of the blog post. "Bailing out the rest of us" whether you are for it or against it is such a naive statement. You guys are both overlooking not only the highly complicated ways in which this entire situation is affecting all of us... how the bank failures can and is directly leading to layoffs of people that have never in their lives overextended themselves financially, but also the fact that there is absolutely no straightforward path to bailing out anybody in this situation. Even if someone wanted to, nobody could bail out "the rest of us" so your bickering is moot. The only thing we can do is watch as this tidal wave washes over us all and play it safe until it passes. None of us are out of reach of this event.
While the job scene here is tiny, there's still a lot of demand. Our last 2 hires have been from out of state.
Also, you get to live in the mountains...