She's one. Buy her some Tinker Toys and finger paints. Read every night to her, until she starts picking up books and reading on her own (it happened for me by about the age of three, simply from reading with my mom every night).
FFS, she won't even construct memories that she'll recall later in life for another couple of years. This is all really kind of absurd.
Most things are dirt cheap to run. People just choose not to do so.
There have been countless services and websites over the last decade that somehow get or require massive infusions of money. Tens of millions of dollars, even. It blows my mind. Why does your website that mostly just regurgitates tech news in blog format each day (and usually only about cell phones and tablets, at that) require twenty million dollars of capital? You need a couple servers at rackspace and a couple people at home in their underwear surfing the web and parroting existing stories and news throughout the day.
When I hear "snapchat is incredibly cheap to run", what I hear is "it is reasonably priced to run, like most other services should be, but without the bloated and inflated needs that others somehow ladle onto their sites/services".
I have a very obese male friend who discussed his situation on the internet and had a flood of hateful messages (and mild real life stalking) to the point that he almost had a nervous breakdown. I couldn't count how many times "just kill yourself" or "I hope you fucking die you fat lazy fuck" appeared in his inbox.
So, really, it's hard to reduce these ingredients to a sex or gender.
Isn't the whole benefit of the internet that you don't know anything about the other people and can thereby consider them on the merits of their words and actions? I'm not pre-judged by being white or male or fat (and therefore inherently "dumb and lazy") or anything else.
Gender discussions seem to arise on here (and almost every other geek/tech/whatever related group) between about one and three times per day. I'm pretty sure we have shared very similar discussions to the topic of this thread at least six other times around here in the last seven days.
If anything, I would find myself more concerned about all the overly sensitive fellow males swarming me for something they perceive to take offense to on behalf of someone or a group entirely unrelated to them than I am potentially upsetting anyone on whose actual behalf the offense is feigned.
5) I don't really care what your gender is (unless it is particularly germane to the topic of discussion) and I don't take it into account with regard to the content of my posts or responses.
People aren't taken aback at the office, when they deal with female engineers. Why should it be any different on the internet?
I understand women often have to deal with these awkward situations online. Granted. But let's remember that these are a minuscule fraction. It's like walking down the streets of New York and applying the reaction of one construction whistler cat-calling someone passing by and painting the other four million men in the city.
Of course, when you're on the receiving end of encounters with the one person in a massive group that always zooms in on you, it likely feels disproportionate.
I'm a pretty introspective person, I recognize that when the context changes, my behaviour changes. I want to be dispassionate and logical, but I am human.
I know many people arn't introspective, they don't think their behaviour changes at all. How many people have you met that have honestly told you: "Well placebo's don't really effect me." "Commercials don't have an effect on me." "I don't see race when I'm interviewing someone." "I treated that person as I would anyone else."
I hear it often, I also hear about study after study debunking such beliefs.
I believe you are right, most of HN would definitely take #5. I'm convinced most of HN would be mistaken. I can't help be racist, I can't help be sexist, I can't help be misguided and mislead. What I can do is recognize that I am effected by such proclivities, and compensate for them.
That is truly the best I can do. I am jealous of the person who can justifiably say they are #5.
I get the maximum vacation time our company allows (after about eight years, you get something like 21 days per year). I currently have the maximum banked amount allowed (two years or 42+ days worth). My vacation accrual has been maxed-out for years, because I do not use it.
In my eighteen years of adult life, I've never taken a vacation day, have only used a sick day one time (I generally work through the illness, but there was one day when I could not get out of bed and was practically unconscious for almost two days), and I've worked almost every holiday (Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, MLK, July 4th - you name it). The only exception was about thirteen years ago, when my dad died and my boss forced me to take a week of bereavement off.
I know a lot of people look forward to using their vacation time and getting away from work. I don't like people who act like working is the worst thing and just sit around staring at the clock waiting for 5:00pm to strike, so they can bail -- but I don't judge or begrudge people who have a strong work ethic and then take advantage of their vacation time. They've earned it.
For myself . . . well, I don't care much for travel and most of the things I do for side projects and self interest can be done at my desk or in my back yard. I enjoy working, often do it off the clock for my own enjoyment, and I can fit in my own projects around the time I work, so I have no particular need to take time off of work to make time for my own stuff.
I suspect I'd feel differently if I had to commute. If I had to travel an hour or more to work every morning and then the same amount back each night, I would be exhausted. I'd probably hate it. Not the work, but the trappings of it. I could see a vacation being desperately needed. Since I've telecommuted almost my entire life, I don't have that particular stress, though. I think that counts for a LOT and I really appreciate it.
On the other hand, there are people like my mother. Someone who has spent most of her life in the food service industry. Has worked at the same company for about twenty years, now, and gets only a week or two of vacation per year . . . UNPAID. As a result, she has never traveled (she won't even come visit me in the home I bought since moving halfway across the country), she doesn't really do anything on vacation, and frankly, doesn't ever take time off if she can help it. She needs the money; can't afford two weeks of "unpaid" vacation.
I don't know if I will change as I get older. We have chosen not to have children and my fiance, though much younger (10yrs) than myself, is very much fine with doing her own thing like me. We have our passions and allow each other to indulge them. She loves traveling (having formerly served in Afghanistan, she has seen more of the world in the last five years than I've seen in my entire life). Anyway, the point is that I have few obligations to be concerned with. That allows me additional freedom to not care about my vacation time, I think. Maybe as I age, I'll want to do other things besides work. Or maybe I'll just need a day every couple weeks to nap and will burn vacation that way. Who knows?
When I was young, I was a dedicated athlete. To the point that I missed weeks of school every year to travel and compete in the championships. I would spend all of my down-time (including between matches) with index cards and graph-paper, designing campaigns.
Unfortunately, the sports meant I never had an opportunity to find anyone to play the campaigns with. To this day - in my thirties - I've only played for a few weeks with other people and that was fifteen years ago.
It's probably the one thing I really regret. That I didn't find people that were also into it and, as an adult, find a way to regularly group together with them. It seems like it would be an incredible blast. Especially since being an adult means having all the money for the fancy custom maps and all the guides and everything.
> It's probably the one thing I really regret. That I didn't find people that were also into it and, as an adult, find a way to regularly group together with them.
Good news (everyone :)), contrary to other regrets, it's probably one of the easiest to fix. Basically, find the geekiest store/discussion board (related to boardgames, wargames, video games, etc) in your area and post an ad there, you'll quickly (though maybe give it a month or two, if you live in a small or inactive town) find other players. Have fun!
You could try attending a gaming convention. Assuming the US, Origins and GenCon are both a lot of fun and relatively inexpensive (outside of travel, hotels for < $200/day, cheap with a group, and the registration is usually ~$70 for the whole thing + $6/game you want to attend (usually 4-6 games)). Also, you might be surprised who among your friends and friends of friends is interested in this stuff. I've had a lot of luck getting to know people who were in local theater groups, and random colleagues.
The hardest part is just coordinating groups as people start having children and getting married. Just aim small, 1 Saturday every month or two, and you can probably get a steady group.
FFS, she won't even construct memories that she'll recall later in life for another couple of years. This is all really kind of absurd.