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68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

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Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#161

Post by jschwartzi »

ibiza wrote: post #151

> Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade... Strong "no" on this one. Always buy quality tools. These are priced at a premium, but unlike "inexpensive" tools will: • Do the job expected of them w/o creating a new problem • Be enjoyable to use • Last a long time (often, a lifetime)

Seconding this. Most of the issues I've had doing manual work has been a result of using cheap or inadequate tools. I don't often find myself thinking "that expensive set of pliers didn't do as good of a job as the cheap set at the dollar store." Whereas every time I buy a cheap tool to do the job it inevitably breaks or fucks up.

For example, once I was trying to run some stainless steel wire to make a cheap curtain rod across some windows. I had assumed that the stainless steel crimp jackets could be crimped with some physical strength and a set of pliers. It was an absolute disaster and finally I broke down and bought a special set of pliers for crimping the stainless steel jackets. They were about 4x as much money as the pliers I was using but they did the job swiftly and efficiently without damaging anything.

I often also see the most expensive tool doing the job more poorly, so I would revise the rule to "spend as much money on a tool as it takes to get the correct set of features and level of durability to do the job." For example, the $4.00 caulk gun does a better job than the $20.00 caulk gun because the $20.00 caulk gun doesn't come with a built-in cutter or a plug popper. So you're paying 4x as much for a tool that can't complete the entire caulking job. So buy the $4.00 caulk gun because the built-in cutter means you never have to risk cutting the caulk outlet wonky again, and the caulk job will be much easier.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#162

Post by crankylinuxuser »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #101
jonasvp wrote: post #13

> Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it. Absolutely - I've learned this the hard way and it's giving me new appreciation for phone calls. It's amazing how many people do _not_ remember that an email chain of several hundred pages _will_ contain something incriminating or embassaring if forwarded to someone outside the origi…

Sometimes even that isn't enough. You have to read it twice. I was having a text exchange with a manager on the road. Hard to come to a consensus that way. So I wanted to talk when he got back to the shop. I texted "We can talk some more when you get it." One letter. The issues it caused lasted for years.

Damn.

Sure would have been nice if they assumed a automiscorrect rather than a nasty comment.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#164

Post by wpietri »

steveklabnik wrote: post #158
ibiza wrote: post #151

> Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade... Strong "no" on this one. Always buy quality tools. These are priced at a premium, but unlike "inexpensive" tools will: • Do the job expected of them w/o creating a new problem • Be enjoyable to use • Last a long time (often, a lifetime)

You cut out the meat of the advice. The point is that you may not need the tools to last a lifetime; you buy a cheap set first, and then replace the ones you actually use with the quality ones, for the reasons you explain. This prevents you from spending excess money on tools you don't use.

Exactly. Buying pro-grade anything before you have proven need is a giant waste.

A while back I was thinking I wanted a standing desk. My first urge was, "Find the best and buy it!" Instead I prototyped something out of an ironing board and a highly adjustable laptop stand. That's been adequate for months, and it's taught me a lot about what will work for me, and what "best" actually means. Eventually I'll get around to buying something professional. But it won't be the thing novice me thought was the right one. And it could have easily turned out that I didn't need one at all.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#165

Post by TeMPOraL »

vidarh wrote: post #87
saagarjha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there’s one part where it’s kind of awkward to ask to take a nap or have a coworker find you sleeping (“should I wake them up or wait to get my PR reviewed?“) but another part of it is that it’s not really comfortable to sleep at work unless there are ample soft couches or something. At home I can just jump into bed…

At a past job my solution was to go sit in the local park with mirror shades and my hands in a prayer position... It was far from ideal, but on an estate with plenty of security roaming so felt safe and the hand position is an effective trick to prevent people from bothering you (e.g. I use it also if meditating somewhere public). Unless you slump over or snore, I guess.

Yeah, snoring is the killer. I never had a problem with taking a nap in the office, but I tend to snore, so that gets noticed. Fortunately, last office I worked in, almost everyone was taking a nap at some point during the day (often unintentionally), so nobody gave anyone any hard time about it.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#166

Post by jerf »

SloopJon wrote: post #132
CivBase wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not buy a house because I expected it to appreciate in value. I bought a house because the alternative was to pay rent. Rent is a service. A renter does not get anything of inherent, transferable value out of the exchange. A renter is also subject to the whims of his/her landlord and, from my experience, a renter has to move regularly to avoid rent increases and bad landlords. The majority of my mortgage paymen…

> The majority of my mortgage payment goes towards ownership of a product - my house For many (most?) people that's not true. Even ignoring that mortgage payments often include property taxes and/or private mortgage insurance, you can expect to pay more interest than principal for the first fifteen years or more of a thirty-year mortgage.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."

"Don't do that."

The standard recommendations for buying a house, in my opinion, are recommendations for buying a house you can barely afford. I recommend buying houses you can comfortably afford, and put some extra principal payments in towards the beginning if at all possible. (Especially if you're just starting now-ish... I suspect the whole "but you could have put it in the stock market instead and made tons more money" both looks a bit less appealing than it did a year ago, and may take a bit before it's advice that would turn out well again.)

An HN-specific nuance is that I might as well be saying "don't live in the valley"... you want to call that an exception, eh, go ahead, you're an adult. But in general I recommend that.

(Also, you have to check the area you are in. Where I happen to live & in the price zone I'm in, mortgages are quite a bit cheaper than rent. Though that may not be true in another year!)

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#167

Post by woliveirajr »

ibiza wrote: post #151

> Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade... Strong "no" on this one. Always buy quality tools. These are priced at a premium, but unlike "inexpensive" tools will: • Do the job expected of them w/o creating a new problem • Be enjoyable to use • Last a long time (often, a lifetime)

The pleasure of saving some $ will be instantaneous and will not repeat. The regret of something having bad (or barely ok) performance is permanent and will repeat every time you use it.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#168

Post by jschwartzi »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #149
Etheryte wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one piece of advice that sound true and insightful, but in my opinion doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. An example of what I mean is the saying "perfect is the enemy of good", which directly conflicts with the above. Since I'm from the north, outdoor gear is a good example of this — there is no hardshell jacket in the world that ticks every box in my checklist. I've been through the lineup of both known and…

a number of months? I'm 56 and have spent some fraction of my entire life devoted to the hardshell question. For me, my current Berghaus (bought while visiting the UK) ticks every box. Just perfect. But that took 40+ years to get to, not a few months.

I recently discovered by shopping for one with my fiance that being a woman raises the complexity of the problem by several orders of magnitude because women have even more body dimensions for the hardshell to either crush or bag up around.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#169

Post by woliveirajr »

Etheryte wrote: post #141
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #107

Here's one I heard elsewhere, and isn't in the list. If you're searching for something important, search until you find one that satisfies all your requirements. Then, don't stop, keep searching until you find a better one. Then stop. This raises you maybe a whole standard deviation in quality, without taking exponential time. Works for all sorts of things. A new pair of shoes; a favorite dish in a restaurant; a spou…

This is one piece of advice that sound true and insightful, but in my opinion doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. An example of what I mean is the saying "perfect is the enemy of good", which directly conflicts with the above. Since I'm from the north, outdoor gear is a good example of this — there is no hardshell jacket in the world that ticks every box in my checklist. I've been through the lineup of both known and…

Perfect it enemy of the good, but many times I hear someone saying that for some app/software and then, afterwards, complaining that the software isn't perfect.

You have time, money, team to do the "good" but then is charged for the perfect.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#170

Post by jerf »

ashtonkem wrote: post #142
SloopJon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of my mortgage payment goes towards ownership of a product - my house For many (most?) people that's not true. Even ignoring that mortgage payments often include property taxes and/or private mortgage insurance, you can expect to pay more interest than principal for the first fifteen years or more of a thirty-year mortgage.

I think we can put property taxes aside, you’ll have to pay your landlords property taxes if you rent after all. If you can afford the cost of a down payment (more on that later), then buying a home does have some utility in wealth generation. You’re right that most of the initial mortgage payments go towards interest, but even collecting 25% of your monthly payment towards your own net worth is a big deal compared t…

"Here in SoCal purchasing a home with a traditional 20% down would involve locking up $200,000 that could be put into the market productively"

I've been saying this for years, maybe after this year it'll make more sense: It is not sensible to model "the market" as if it makes steady X% (for X somewhere in the 5-8 range) returns every year. It can and has gone decades being flat-ish, or slightly down after inflation, or up but nowhere near X% a year. The timescale where this is a reasonable model is longer than your expected productive working years. "Return X% a year" is basically the best case on a decade time scale, not the average case. There have been time frames in my life when paying principle on my mortgage was a significantly better "investment" than the stock market.

In hindsight it'll be obvious what you should have done, but in hindsight you can turn a few hundred dollars into a few million in just a couple of weeks with perfect past knowledge of the market, so if we're stipulating hindsight you've made way bigger mistakes than merely "buying a house".

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