Ideally there would be no need for lights.

Tying my shoes is the only knot I know how to tie, I guess I was lucky in that I was taught the 'right' way the first time. After watching the video I ended up tying my shoes wrong trying to reverse what I normally did.

This should be modded up!

Networking while you are in school is probably the most important thing you can do right along side getting an education there. In fact your school should be chosen based on the networking opportunities available for you.

These opportunities come from any angle, even if seemingly unrelated. A student in your class could be starting something up or end up in a role to hire you years down the line.

My first job came from a reference from a long term admin at the school in the science building. I used to work for the school's website and she came in to look for some help creating her home site for a bit of cash. I went over and we just hit it off and got a long really well while working on the site. I thought nothing of it until a few months later, having sent out 100+ resumes with no response for two months, about a week from my "get any job you can, or go home to mom!" calendar date, I got an email from a company asking to see my resume and have me come in for an interview if I would like. Turned out the owner of the company had gone to the same school years ago, was friends with the admin, and asked her for any recommendations she might know of.

Instant career, and here I am in the same field 12 years later, all for a 2 day random side job. That's how it works, that's why it is so important when starting out. NETWORK!!!!!

Truthfully school isn't about learning, it is a game where you try to figure out the system a teacher employs to determine the material on the test, a game to manipulate faculty members into liking you enough to offer extra credit and special exceptions for failings, and ultimately tailoring your school 'resume' well enough facilitate you into whatever job or school you want to move to next.

I made the mistake in assuming academia was about learning and fairness above everything else while I made my way through it. It is a mistake I won't let my children make for very long as they soon enter the great beast of our education system.

I was the same way. I hardly ever took notes, I guess I wasn't a perfect student, but I found that if I took lots of notes in class I would do much worse, I would spend all my energy on writing it down and trying to keep up with what was being said, my attention divided, learning less of everything. Instead I just like to listen and focus, and if I really wanted to remember it, write a summary after.

For stuff I had to work through like math and CS I would write it down. Also when starting a new program or piece of one I like to do the psudo code on a piece of paper as that helps me focus, which might be in this case the information is coming from my head rather than an external source. It also makes arrows and boxes instantly available unlike on the computer. Can't wait till I have a low latency tablet and pen though, would throw out the paper immediately.

The worse was getting punished often for not taking notes, teachers would grade them or assume I wasn't paying attention if not copying information down.

I remember one year in college I decided to try to be more than a B student and did everything 'right'. I sat in front, aggressively tried to answer questions, I took copious notes, did homework immediately rather than procrastinating, pretty much tried to be the model student we are asked to be. That semester I pulled my first D average when I had rode the C through A grades my whole life (based on interest in the subject).

Did I ever mention that I hated school?

Had to drop firefox finally because it failed to render text properly. I tried to follow the random threads of advice to disable this and that and flip this setting here or there, or uninstall xyz microsoft patch (which I couldn't find on my sytem). Either way it was all too much out of my day to try to even have to fix this, you would think rendering text, being the only thing a browser has to do, would be a pretty fucking serious priority to fix, but I guess not, lets move the fucking menu button to the right!

I recall continual sore feet all summer from my walmart job at around 19 years old, I can't imagine what this would do to me now.

The problem people have with tablets is their lack of tactile presence. This will not change, we may get used to it, but it will never feel as nice as a raised button. There is a reason some people still want their cherry switch clicky keyboards still too.

There is also a really great rise in board gaming in the past few years because people do enjoy engaging their brains, but still crave the enjoyment of the tactile feel of having physical pieces move around as well as sitting across the table in other people's presence while they play.

If anything look at the rise of how technology that allows us to be social when we otherwise couldn't be has exploded and taken over. People love other people and love being able to talk to them at all times. If anything in the past we all lived extremely introverted lives and were forced to only interact with those in our neighborhood and surrounding town.

Now, not only do I have access to that, but most of the entire world can be reached, day or night, at any time. I can show pictures, videos, speak to them in voice or indirectly interact with them through games. At all points in times we are now able to be connected, and I don't get why this is such a horrible thing for people?

Staying apart is what leads to confusion and ultimately wars as it is easy to alienate people that are disconnected. It is quite easy to ignore things going on in a foreign country that appears disconnected from your day to day life, but perhaps you know someone from their and game with them regularly or talk to them on a forum you frequent. Suddenly that global problem you would never have heard of in the past is a very real part of your life.

I don't understand this anti technology backlash I keep seeing, especially here.

Some teachers roll over and let it happen and don't care. Others don't tolerate it in their class and solve it, it is a mixed bag.

I recall in 7th grade this guy used to verbally pick on me all the time. We had a class designated for reading, I was the only one reading in the class so it made me a big target. One class the kid decided to flick a rubberband into my back, the first few times I ignored the drive by snapping on my back, but one time he just kept doing it over and over again.

I finally just lost control, stood up, and kicked him right in the hip. I really don't even remember having control at that point. The kid visibly staggered but immediately called to the teacher that I had kicked him. Now before this I had some contempt for the teacher because she let 'everything' happen in that class, but as soon as he called out she said "Good, you deserved it!" Kudos to her for this at least. I could easily have been punished for losing control first.

That was the last time that particular guy harassed me.

Sometimes the old ways are the good ways.

I have an intersection like this I hit everyday. For me it makes sense to cruise up to the light slower so I don't have to stop and the light will be red anyway. But there is also a left turn lane there that you can only make a left on under the green arrow, else too much traffic and you have to wait. If i mosey up and the guy behind me is turning, he gets screwed, and I can even prompt an accident if they decide to cut left past me and straddle the yellow line out of impatience.

Because of that, and because I care about traffic around me flowing as smoothly as possible, I hammer it up to the light as though I am making a left to help any drivers behind me on those few times I'm in the lead at the intersection. Being polite and conscious of other people doesn't always have to stop when you get in your car.

Never heard of these before... though I think I like how new jersey does it best... essentially you just have a bunch of jug handles on the right.

So to make that left turn, i would overshoot the road, and rather than pulling that left through a median, across 2 lanes, and off to the right... you just stay to the right, pass the street you want to make a left on, and immediately enter a jughandle turn on the right. This bends to the right and hits the street you want to be on, with you pointing across the same intersection at the light, in which you just go straight through when the light changes. Very simple and easy to navigate, especially with a lot of traffic.

I grew up in a small western MA town that is full of left turns and uncontrolled intersections and I have a much more relaxing time driving in NJ with a much denser population.

Wow thank you.

I am just like yourself, although only 11 years in now. I intentionally write things to be as clear as possible. I avoid trying to use any 'tricks' that are particular to a language like the plague since I will often times have to swap between languages for different periods of time and it reduces the time it takes me to understand what I've been writing. Not to mention that passing the code out to someone who does not primarily use that language or is just learning, there is less of a chance they will misunderstand that part of the code if they have to use it or modify it.

I like to write things straight and simplistic on purpose, but I also get that same feeling of contempt for not getting 'fancy' with what you I write.

But I guess this is like anything, when some of the great minds explain something amazingly complex in just a few short sentences, is totally clear, and makes the concept seem like that with which a five year old could understand, it is easy to dismiss it. Yet getting to that simple explanation was anything but simple.

Perl can be extremely frightening sometimes. Still useful though!

Not that I have a smart phone yet, but my kids only get their hands on my phone for about 5 to 10 seconds before I realize it since my phone is usually in my pocket or out of their reach while charging. If they do grab it if it falls out of my pocket they typically hand it to me as we've been through the motion of me immediately removing it from their hands and they just skip the step. They know they can use it when I hand it to them when grandma/grandpa is on the phone or someone else to talk to.

Same with the ipad, my 2 year old knows to have myself or my wife 'set up' the ipad for him before he uses it and will bring it over to us if we leave it somewhere in his reach. Sure like anything it took a couple times to establish the routine, but once locked in, they pretty much follow it as normal. The kids slip up and get curious/drop milk etc on things, but typically I just let them use electronics in very specific ways like powering them on or off to remove the 'untouchable' curiosity factor and establish some ground rules about specific things and it works out for the most part.

But every kid is different, some just don't listen, and they all act out at some point or another from what I've seen and talked about with people. Still, most kids know what they can and can't do in the house as long as you establish rules, and 95% of the time they seem to abide by them or cover their tracks well enough that you don't notice ;)

I find prints still useful. If you need to check something in a loop, it is nice to get an instantaneous printing of it all in sequence, it is very easy to see it go sour, and all the sequence of it getting there is sitting on the screen to reference again later rather than having stepped past it and missed it, though I guess you can step back... just easier to print it out sometimes, but maybe that is just old habits die hard on my part.

If it is someone else's tools, I usually go to the IDE debugger since I'm probably not going to know exactly what I have to look at.

As for learning tools, I had the same sort of experience, except they started us with VI in a unix terminal. That was probably a little too hard core of a switch for me, I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to type things in as well as learning what was going on in code. Once I figured out how to use a rich text editor to 'ftp save' up to our computer lab and compile there, life got way, way easier for me.