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What Is a Wildcard Person?

wildcardpeople.com

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Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#271

Post by bookofjoe »

russellbeattie wrote: post #242
bookofjoe wrote: post #174

>Henry Ford had ordered a dynamo for one of his plants. The dynamo didn’t work, and not even the manufacturers could figure out why. A Ford employee told his boss that von Neumann was “the smartest man in America,” so Ford called von Neumann and asked him to come out and take a look at the dynamo. >Von Neumann came, looked at the schematics, walked around the dynamo, then took out a pencil. He marked a line on the ou…

Wow. I just told this joke to my girlfriend literally this morning since we were talking about billable time (she's a consultant). Only in the version I know it was a plumber in New York who was called to a fancy restaurant to fix a problem with the water which had stopped in the middle of dinner. The plumber takes out a small hammer, taps a random pipe and all the water starts flowing again. $1001 bill. $1 for tappi…

Synchronicity powers the universe

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#272

Post by redheadmiler »

kubanczyk wrote: post #202
bookofjoe wrote: post #174

>Henry Ford had ordered a dynamo for one of his plants. The dynamo didn’t work, and not even the manufacturers could figure out why. A Ford employee told his boss that von Neumann was “the smartest man in America,” so Ford called von Neumann and asked him to come out and take a look at the dynamo. >Von Neumann came, looked at the schematics, walked around the dynamo, then took out a pencil. He marked a line on the ou…

Skimming that page: > Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.

And that 3 year old son went on to become one of the greatest scientists of this generation, Astro Teller, or also known as the director of Google X.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#273

Post by rendall »

rolenthedeep wrote: post #238
uwagar wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it still being american?

Depends who you ask, but the percentage of people who would answer "no" is significantly higher than it was 50 years ago. I don't have any data, but my guess is it's approaching 50%. A lot of Americans are pretty pissed about our military for a variety of reasons.

Maybe I'm confusing is and ought, but I don't think Americans are pissed with the military per se, or if so, the anger is maybe misplaced. Ideally, and mostly true in practice, the US military is a neutral tool of the State. I for one am truly thankful that the US military has a culture of staying out of politics. Historically, states decline into authoritarianism and ruin once the military starts running things.

Unlike, for instance, the 3-letter agencies, who do actively engage in political maneuvering. These organizations, ostensibly comprised of patriots, should really look at history and introspect.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#274

Post by dsq »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #241
ajkjk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he knows the difference, but surely meant the life skill of captaining something rather than the literal many-years-to-acquire technical skill of doing so, because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't. Which two? Designing a building I see I skipped. That seems pretty attainable, he obviously didn't mean 'be a trained architect and building engineer' like you interpreted it. People in charge of organ…

He specifically said ‘conn a ship’. Conning is the specific highly technical act of directing the ship while in motion. Navy types are known to be sticklers for precise use of naval terms, so we have no reason to assume it doesn’t mean exactly what it says. The task you are describing is not design; it’s specification or briefing at best. Heinlein was also an aeronautical engineer. Engineering is are also a professio…

I think his intention was a spaceship/starship. He was a science fiction writer, after all, and most of the Lazarus Long stories take place elsewhere in the Galaxy. A starship can be more or less complicated than a maritime vessel, depending on the onboard computer. Maybe as simple as saying “take me to a nice planet to relax”.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#275

Post by peter_d_sherman »

mjklin wrote: post #246

Growing up it all seems so one-sided Opinions all provided The future pre-decided Detached and subdivided In the mass-production zone Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit more alone

No, his mind is not for rent

To any god or government

Always hopeful, yet discontent

He knows changes aren't permanent

But change is

And what you say about his company

Is what you say about society

Catch the witness, catch the wit

Catch the spirit, catch the spit

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#276

Post by zh3 »

bookofjoe wrote: post #174

>Henry Ford had ordered a dynamo for one of his plants. The dynamo didn’t work, and not even the manufacturers could figure out why. A Ford employee told his boss that von Neumann was “the smartest man in America,” so Ford called von Neumann and asked him to come out and take a look at the dynamo. >Von Neumann came, looked at the schematics, walked around the dynamo, then took out a pencil. He marked a line on the ou…

New story to me, at a guess he understood that the design had created a shorted turn so a cut in the casing would solve it.

The principle of the story is however exactly the same as one I've heard before about Picasso:-

Picasso is quietly having lunch at a cafe when this loud woman says "Hey, aren't you Pablo Picasso?". He replies, quietly, "Yes, Madam, I am".

Her: "Wow! Hey, will you do a little sketch on this napkin for me?".

Picasso demurs, but she's really insistent. She says "It's only take you a moment, and I'll pay whatever you think it's worth".

So Picasso whips off a quick pencil sketch, 10 seconds, hands it to her. "Here you are, Madam. That'll be $10,000 please".

Her: "$10,000?! It only took you a moment!"

Picasso: "Au contraire Madam, that took me my whole life."

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#277

Post by mgkimsal »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #247
mgkimsal wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An issue I’ve found is that often these stories don’t tend to be believed. To the untrained ear, they sound like typical BS everyone throws around. Tiny example: I joined a company and a nightly process was data import. The import was starting to take longer than 25 hours, threatening the “daily” aspect, and on the verge of causing logistical problems because of this. The problem had been looming for months and has t…

I think you just left out the most important bit of the story... What exactly did you do in order to reduce it from 25 hours to 30 minutes?

Quick steps:

* Create new table on disk.

* Create temp table in RAM.

* Start chunked import.

* Import 50k rows in to temp table.

* Dump temp table to new table.

* Clear temp table.

* Import next 50k rows.

* Repeat.

* Drop old table, rename new table on disk to regular name

Each row being imported was updating indices. Just removing indexes, then importing, did speed it up, but not as dramatically. Importing most to RAM table, then chunking to the final table. That was a core key.

I'd indicated early on "let's try temp memory tables". It was dismissed ("we tried that" and also "what's that?"). So I did my own tests, and it was pretty dramatic.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#278

Post by taubek »

lytefm wrote: post #212
taubek wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it sucks to be T-shaped. Imposter syndrome kicks in all of the time :)

Doesn't it get balanced by the occasional „Why do I have to show you how to do your job“? ;)

I've never been in such situation. Usually it is expected from me to do it all :)
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