quakers oatmeal bars are my favorite food i love the crunch mmmmmm
What the HECK is up my dudez.
I’m on a flight to SF right now. I’m getting lit right now w/ some ginger ale + Doritos + some Lil Peep.
I paid extra for the emergency exit seat like I normally do. Why do I do this? Because I don’t trust anyone except myself to properly open the hatch in the event of an emergency where everyone is in a state of extreme panic.
Isn’t that weird? I don’t trust my fellow humans to open a simple emergency hatch in the event of an emergency. I think that’s REALLY weird. I trust my fellow humans with WAY more. I trust them to arrive at my door in under 10 min when I call 911. I trust them to maintain standards that keep the Internet open and accessible by all. I trust them to come up with billion-dollar government budgets that decide my quality of life. But I don’t trust them to open an emergency exit door?
It’s also statistically ridiculous. The probability that something terrible happens on a plane is TINY and the probability that the person at the emergency exit is unable to open the simple lever-based hatch for whatever reason (perhaps their hands aren’t strong enough or their just extremely panicked) is even smaller.
Simply put, I am being absurd. A statistician would slap me on the face with the back of her hand.
So if I know this why do I still pay over $100 extra for an emergency exit seat? lmaoooooo. Idk actually. LOL. Brb I need to re-take the statistics course on Khan Academy again to convince me that math is always right and I’m an idiot.
Teaching
I’ve been spending time teaching kids how to code. I got to volunteer at a local elementary school for STEM night and we made a program that could hit the SpaceX API and grab the current speed of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster currently in orbit. Yes, that API actually exists LMAOOO.
This was not an easy program to make for kids most of whom never had written a single line of code in their lives. Remember, these are also elementary school kids. But in 15 min, 90% of them understood what an API request was, wrote the code (with my assistance), and got it working. I was amazed. By the end, they were all smiling and freaking out when the number “45356 MPH” popped up in their terminals which was how fast the Tesla was going.
I really can’t explain how amazed they were. One kid was like “DID WE JUST TALK TO THE SPACE CAR?”. And I was like “hell yah dawg”, and his parents gave me a nasty look because I cursed in front of their precious child and called him “dawg”, and the kid was like “MAMA I TALKED TO SPACE”.
LOL.
It was fun :).
Why did I make them write such a tough program?
Well. Kids want to be challenged. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t want to be treated like kids. They want to have fun. They want to be creative. They are just like us.
I fucking HATE these stupid ass companies that make these dumb games to kids teach programming.
One of these games was a game where you had to call functions like left(), right(), and down() to help a frog jump on the proper lily pads to make sure it makes it across the river without falling in the water.
Omg!! So cute!! So fun!!! Wow!!!
What the hell…
I want to meet the CEOs of the companies who make these shitty “educational programs” and punch them in the face and force them to give schools a refund for the ridiculous prices they charge and then I want them to say sorry to the kids for destroying their first impressions of computer programming.
First of all, frogs are fucking amphibians why does it have to jump on a damn lily pad to make it across when it can just swim?
Second of all, why would a kid want to do this? THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT AN IMAGINARY FROG. Humans are creators. We want to make stuff. We want to create things that are cool and learn.
For example.
I’ve been tutoring this kid 1-1 once a week. He is extremely smart for an 11-year-old. But, he also gets bored fast as most kids do. So, I make sure that we always make programs HE thinks are cool. HE makes the assignments himself. HE tells me what to do.
For example, I wanted to teach him about “if” statements. So, I started the session by saying, “Hey, so we are going to make a program that is going to secure something. What is something you want to secure”. He said, “My brain”.
Ahaha, kids.
What’d we do next? We made a program that used if statements that could “secure his brain” by checking a username and password. You can check it out here. It was fun for him. Fun for me. More importantly, the kid felt like he created something. I was just a guide.
Networking
I don’t apply to jobs. My advice to everyone is to NEVER apply for a job. I prefer making friends, building cool stuff, posting about it online, and joining new ventures like that. I also network. Networking === sliding into people’s DMs.
I’ve been networking a lot lately. Particularly, w/ people who work at self-driving car companies. Its hard to get hired as a self-driving car engineer at a top tier startup @ 23 with no Masters or Ph.D. You can’t just apply. You’ll instantly get rejected. What do I do instead? I DM the CEO. I DM the CTO. I DM an engineer at the company. I get in a call. I talk to them about me. I talk to them about them + the company. I tell them how I’m passionate as fuck and how I built neural nets that drove cars 1.5 years ago.
Your resume doesn’t mean much and will never properly convey who you are.
My goal usually is to 1) make a new friend and 2) learn more from the other person. That’s it. Usually if I do this I can get a face to face meeting with the person, tell them more about me, and become better friends.
That’s how I network.
One of my best friends, Samin, I met by just DM’ng him saying I thought his company was cool when it launched on HackerNews! 6 months later we were roommates in SF and we presently talk nearly everyday.
It all starts with a DM.
San Francisco
Why am I going to SF? Well. It’s because I’m still figuring out wtf I want to do and feel like I have a higher chance of figuring it out there instead of Pembroke Pines. While Pines is a beautiful place it isn’t exactly the most inspiring place. In the Bay Area, you have the ability to talk to some of the smartest people alive today to help you out and give you advice.
That’s an unfair advantage that should be utilized and the Bay Area is full of these unfair advantages.
HMU if you wanna grab some chocolate milk at a 7/11 in SF next week.
pce.
- Farza