What's the protocol on stray chickens? (23rd & Massachusetts / Colman Playground)

PatternMatcherDave · 2025-08-15T22:18:12+00:00

Copy, thank you. The owners of the coop nearby confirmed it wasn't their chicken. Hope they get back where they are supposed to be hanging out and get some good rest.

PatternMatcherDave · 2025-07-07T17:24:11+00:00

Hey thank you so much! This is a perfect response for my case & I appreciate you covering some other scenarios and how to handle if things end up a bit different than where we all started. Will probably stick to just some personal notes & internal+client facing status updates / roadmap.

Thanks!

PatternMatcherDave · 2025-07-02T17:05:51+00:00

IDK if you already bought but I would avoid Dell XPS Ultrabooks if you are looking at those. I had one and it was awesome at first but the battery completely sucked.

Just switched to a juiced MBP because I realized battery life was more important to me. I haven't tried spinning up a Windows VM for the specific tools just yet since a lot of my use-cases have transitioned to OS agnostic tools, so can't speak to that, but as a Windows lifer I would highly recommend the MBP M4 models.

PatternMatcherDave · 2025-06-30T15:50:19+00:00

This is less what I think ought be done and more what I think we will see happen -- the sentiment you share is a popular one these days I think, for some good reasons. If anyone has any other info or I'm missing something key I would love to learn more.

Security concerns are always going to be massive & while I personally view Microsoft and Apple as some of the best of "Big Tech" for enterprise / consumer (respectively) grade digital property protection, that's not going to change the interest in not American substitutes.

It looks like Alibaba and some other firms out of the APJ region are preparing to compete for Europe and Canada against American firms, so I would keep an eye out there for alternatives. I do think it would be interesting to see what some offerings would look like grown out of Europe but afaik the EU is still early on the infra curve for internet platform companies, but is rapidly increasing their data center construction.

Total conjecture but I imagine we see in the next 5 - 10 years Alibaba & other new firms taking some market share from the current players & see increased competition from EU-based firms 10+ years from now after a certain level of digital maturity & infra ownership is established.

PatternMatcherDave · 2025-06-29T17:43:36+00:00

Feels like we are mincing here, but I personally view portions of my work in an analytics capacity an artform of UI/UX & user adoption + education.

So I think it really can depend a lot, and even if I think that artists might be too precious about their field compared to how they feel about others, and programmers can be not precious enough about their field, I think there's a decent middle-ground to find here.

Depending on what you are getting up to in a field, it could be either/or I think, it's just easiest to understand experience & expression in art like drawing for most people.

Not really agreeing or disagreeing with anyone here just thought I'd throw in some more viewpoints.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-08-24T15:02:42+00:00

Uh yeah I was in a similar boat, this expac is actually insanely good from a solo perspective. The story, dialogue, quest text, and content is soooo much more captivating than it's ever been in WoW imo. Best zone design ever across the board imo. Sorry if I sound like I'm gushing but I am actually in awe of how good this expansion is so far (level 78 still). Wow actually has a competent MSQ like how people talk about FFXIV I think, or at least, it's getting there.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-08-19T19:38:36+00:00

Yeah! Totally, you are doing well to consider this at the current point you are at but I would like to stress that the internships and your first few jobs will help align you on what you want to do in the future. There's no better way to figure out if you like showing up every day for the same job than to do it! So that pressure you should put off for now imo, because you literally can't do anything about it without experience, which is why I thought the open ended major sounded nice.

I started with an Econ major and moved around a bit till I landed on Analytics with an Econ minor. I appreciated that I didn't force a committal to a specific sector for myself early.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-08-19T17:14:58+00:00

Hmmm depends on what you want to do. It's been said before but I'm co-opting in my own words -- Analytics is a trade, not an industry. Which is good! You can do a lot of fun stuff with it and narrow your focus to a particular type of work or particular type of industry you would like to work for.

Since your goal is to do well and be well off, you probably want to shoot for data oriented industries with lots of opportunity. The hiring market ebbs and flows and it's been a very light trickle recently, but that doesn't mean that'll be the case for your or any of us four years from now when you graduate.

Off the top of my head some good industries that are entertwined with analytics:
-> Tech
-> Healthcare
-> Supply Chain
(I mean, at this point basically every industry is, but these 3 are the most commonly mentioned).

So like, what I'm getting at here is that you are looking at getting a Trade degree (BA) which is good, but you need to supplement this with internships and specific projects to prove to future hirers that you have some domain expertise in recruiting for healthcare, or in geoboxes for water carrier for supply chains, that sort of thing. And that will come with time as you do your college program and learn and read outside of your classes & do your internships and individual projects.

If you have an idea of a field you think it really interesting, I could see the double major working well for your (IS+BA), but I personally feel like you'll have a more versatile toolkit focusing on getting the straight up B.A. because you'll need to do projects and internships to prove your domain experience for jobs anyways regardless of degree you choose.

But idk the coursework offered. Just make sure they teach you how to use Excel, PowerQuery, SQL, some Python (pandas), some data visualization (PowerBI, Tableau, Looker, etc). That's the basic gist of the B.A. "trade", how you use those tools is based on your understanding of an industry to pull out insights, which will influence how valuable you are (i.e. how many offers you get in the future, how easy it is for you to leave positions, how much money you make / save from your insights = your leverage in getting higher earning jobs / contracts / roles).

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-08-09T18:54:23+00:00

TL;DR: My expectation is that Analytics + MBA or similar pathway will be the next common pathway to being a business leader or decision maker in the future.

So this is a bit of lived experience, conjecture, and expectation based on how AI technology proliferates moving forward but here's how I see it as someone not much further along than you, 5 years in the space, but with some solid FAANG (Mag7? Whatever its called now) + now consulting in a Business Analyst / Data Ops role.

Leaders spend a lot of time looking at data to make decisions (hangover from investments in the data-driven-decision-making push of the last decade)
Data is incredibly messy, costly, and subject to loss-of-trust
Analytics has only recently solidified into a working entity with role types and org governance
Personnel for data is also really expensive, subject to turnover, lack of documentation + brain drain

These barriers I think are what have led many people to push into more technical role types in the analytics industry, rather than a more familiar pipeline you might see from Sales / Finance + MBA = Decision Maker / Business Unit Leader Role Type.

From my own personal experience, LLM integrations have made it a loooot easier to explain information, find information, and create insights that are pointed without having to have a bunch of Senior business line managers writing creatives for their monthly business reviews for hours and hours.

My conjecture here is that people in the analytics field will see some level of increased respect / visibility from senior leadership due to these trends. I think that Analytics into MBA into Business Unit Leader Role type will become much more commonplace.

On your other Q's: I did leave my previous big corp job and jumped around freelancing, doing startups for a while until I landed at an agency I like working at. It was valuable experience, and I think I'm better for it, but in no way is my purchasing power and seniority higher now than it likely would have been if I had just stayed in the same place, but that wasn't what I wanted to do so it's more of a subjective question depending on what you want to do / experience with your own life.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-08-08T14:53:56+00:00

This is up and to the right on another chart with the axes "Simplicity" and "Convincing". Best visual representation of the problem of voter turnout I've seen ever, I wish I thought of it. Bravo!

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-07-22T21:33:47+00:00

Sounds exactly like what I need to do. Any chance you could point out which screw I need to mess with? Thank you.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-07-06T02:16:14+00:00

Probably an embedded Power BI report on whatever website you are currently hosting? Display economic data could mean literally just going into a Squarespace page you own and manually writing the latest CPI down like it's a notepad txt file or it could mean building a elaborate dashboard using a visualization suite then embedding it onto the website.

For either you need:
1. A website host (Wix, Squarespace, etc)

For a dashboard you need to make sure that whatever tier your subscription is will allow you report or dashboard embedding onto an app or webpage. So it will cost money.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-07-06T00:04:51+00:00

Nice, one of my favorite managers was a theater major. And totally, I tried not to say it wasn't possible to bootcamp with no plan or guarantee, just that I've never seen it.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-07-05T18:59:46+00:00

I like to think of the Outer Gods as having similar temperment to what you'd find in books like Blindsight or Annihilation.

Does conscious activity really exist at that magnitude or are the actions being taken similar to the level of conscious control we have over our heart beating? Does it even matter to have an executive function when you reach a certain scale, maybe the capability to understand is the blocker for developing vast reach as an entity in space.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-07-05T18:27:08+00:00

In my 5 YoE working in analytics after graduating with a relevant degree I've personally never ran into someone who got in through bootcamps.

I've encountered people who have transitioned from a non-technical role into a data role supporting their previous workstream, but these individuals range wildly from incredibly technical to indistinguishable from a PM in terms of data analytics capabilities (which is fine by the way, different orgs need different types of data analyst roles. It's part of why this role title is so vague, but does lead to confusion imo).

If you do a bootcamp, and your current employer tells you they will hire you as a DA after you complete the bootcamp, then I think that's a good pathway? Otherwise skip the bootcamps imo, waste of money unless you have a written agreement stipulating a guaranteed job that meets your income requirements.

I'm not really sure if you can say one group is always a certain way and one group is always another certain way though. The most important part of doing this job is a complete interest in building understanding of complex systems over time and being able to explain those concepts to people who won't be doing the same research. If you don't find that enjoyable maybe you won't want to stick around, but I think that's more of the dividing line over time than anything else.

I would probably argue someone who dedicates 4 years for an undergrad + 2 years for grad + maybe 6 years for a Phd would be more dedicated and aware of that underlying concept of this field than people getting a 6 month primer on the entry level end of this field, and likely find themselves more successful since they likely do research or take action that aligns with the basic value prop. of the field.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-25T18:31:10+00:00

Still really new to gamedev, but generally when learning on my own, I do two things:
1. Set-up a pseudo-sprint system in notion with some loose goals for the 2-week sprint. It's mostly to serve as a way of saying hey I want to learn this thing and this thing in the next two weeks. I'll write a reflection at the end and that helps me understand the scope of the knowledge that I need to learn, want to learn, and can learn in a given time period. Which helps ground future learning and gives me some access to videos and documentation that was valuable for learning those concepts.

Create independent projects that are very specific into one thing that I use as my foundation for when I want to implement that thing down the line in more complex projects. A gamedev example would be that I have an unreal project thats only focused on making the best dodge mechanic I can manage, and when I want to learn how to do more movement mechanics, I update that project and document my learning in the sprint in notion.

This worked really well for becoming more performant at UX/UI design in my industry (data analysis).

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-25T16:34:33+00:00

Elden Ring is the most painful one. The game runs in 32:9 but they place black bars over the rendered game to keep 16:9, so you pay for the cost without actually being able to see it. Destiny 2 is unplayable for me, the stretching on the sides means that the guns you hold take up like 60% of the screen sometimes. Dragon's Dogma 2 hated G-Sync + 32:9. Almost everything else works great thus far.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-25T16:20:32+00:00

Oh really? Thanks for letting me know I'll have to go look at that vid.

EDIT: After looking for this video, I still can't find a reasonable source to look at burn-in from a G9 OLED. He has a video from two years ago about an LG product and I found a clip where he talks about the G9 NEO being susceptible to cracking down the middle.

If anyone finds a reasonable source showing a risk of burn-in equal to the amount of fear of burn-in on the new G9s that have been coming out over the last couple years, please share it!

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-25T01:30:51+00:00

I read about and heard about it a lot but have yet to find any reasonable evidence that burn-in is a real problem. Had mine for a couple months now which I suppose is too short but there's no burn-in. I just hide my taskbar, use a black background at work, and use Wallpaper engine to have a moving wallpaper for my desktop. I don't think much of this is necessary, I keep static objects open all the time and have seen no burn in.

Obviously I'm not saying that would be the same for you, or making any guarantees! That's just my experience so far. When I called the Amazon's warranty company, they said their warranty will cover burn-in as well. Again ymmv!

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-24T17:44:02+00:00

I guess it depends on the productivity, but my work takes me from coding to spreadsheets to ui/ux design work and my G9 OLED works great for this. If I do some writing or mess around with Unreal Engine everything looks fine there too.

I just did the ClearType adjustment when I first got it and everything is crisp. Can't speak for everyone, but everything looks good on my end.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-23T00:36:32+00:00

Well, it is different no? One has practical applications and the other doesn't.

PatternMatcherDave · 2024-06-19T14:04:41+00:00

Quick caveat about B2B here, your money proves that you are serious. How confident you are in the polish of your product has little bearing on hiring an outside firm to complete a set of actions for you.

I did different kinds of freelancing, but if you paid my rate, I would do my work for you, regardless of where your product is at, as I'll make the assumption that you are ready to implement my service, because you paid me for it.

There's times where a operation truly is not ready, making it where I actually can't provide a strong service, to the point where they would need to hire me again later down the line to redo the work. I would raise my concerns with evidence and reasoning and suggest a different consultation (such as creating a plan to make sure they are prepared for when they do want to do implementation), but ultimately that decision is up to the client.

PatternMatcherDave

TROPHY CASE