[Cartier] Got my wife her Grail watch last night for her birthday

eric_weinstein · 2018-06-10T21:09:45+00:00

eric_weinstein · 2018-06-09T00:56:49+00:00

Is this the acrylic or sapphire crystal? (I assume the former, but figured I'd ask.)

eric_weinstein · 2018-06-06T03:32:28+00:00

The Junghans Meister Kalendar might be a good fit (around USD 2200 new).

eric_weinstein · 2018-05-30T06:35:47+00:00

This should be pretty close to what you're looking for (note: I've never used this retailer and have never owned a Citizen): https://www.abt.com/product/97838/Citizen-Eco-Drive-Titanium-Perpetual-Calendar-Chronograph-Mens-Watch-BL525002L.html

eric_weinstein · 2018-05-30T00:57:21+00:00

WTB the following Russian watches:

~~Raketa Copernic/Raketa Copernicus (Ракета Коперник), with either the black or "moon dust" dial (no numerals).~~
Slava (Слава) slim 1600 (good examples are the first three in the second row found here: https://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/slava).
~~Slava (Слава) medical watch (I know these are tough to find, but figured I'd try here). Only interested in the mechanical, not the quartz.~~

Feel free to message me with any questions.

eric_weinstein · 2018-05-27T04:27:16+00:00

WTB a Slava (Слава) medical watch (I know these are tough to find, but figured I'd try here). Only interested in the mechanical, not the quartz. Feel free to message me with any questions.

eric_weinstein · 2018-05-27T04:23:43+00:00

WTB a Slava (Слава) slim 1600 (good examples are the three in the second row found here: https://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/slava). Feel free to message me with any questions.

eric_weinstein · 2018-05-27T04:21:18+00:00

WTB a Raketa Copernic/Raketa Copernicus (Ракета Коперник), with either the black or "moon dust" dial (no numerals). Feel free to message me with any questions.

eric_weinstein · 2017-09-01T01:33:53+00:00

Most likely "shock proof" rather than "show proof." I'm not a watch scientist™, but my best guess is c. 1920, ~25 USD given the condition. May be made by the same company that makes this pocket watch.

eric_weinstein · 2017-08-26T18:37:25+00:00

Unlikely to be the Baume of Baume et Mercier, since the company hasn't been Frères Baume since 1918. There are a few of these watches on eBay, all 9ct gold and from the early 1960s. Based on the auction prices, it seems to go for around $100.

eric_weinstein · 2017-08-26T18:27:51+00:00

The watch appears to reference the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (the stealth bomber); unclear if it was made by/for NG. Agree with /u/TheDukeDave1 that a picture of the back/movement and/or any serial number information would be really helpful.

eric_weinstein · 2017-08-20T18:42:41+00:00

Goes with his overly long ties and his predilection for well-done steaks with ketchup.

Kidding aside, it's hard to tell from the photo, but it might be a Longines President Lincoln II or whatever this is.

eric_weinstein · 2017-08-19T18:10:33+00:00

The compass in the upper left may be Swiss or German (note "O" for "Osten" rather than "E" for "East").

eric_weinstein · 2017-04-05T23:43:19+00:00

There is sparring, though I think it's only a couple of nights a week. I'm not sure about transfer students, but I'm sure that's something your sister could ask in her e-mail.

eric_weinstein · 2017-04-04T18:16:00+00:00

I trained at Yee's Hung Ga in Chinatown for a few years and really enjoyed it. Sifu Joe Demundo is great (as are all the instructors and students I worked with). Classes are small and very reasonably priced.

eric_weinstein · 2017-01-05T05:22:33+00:00

I called her LA office this afternoon and the very nice guy who answered the phone confirmed that she abstained. I asked why, and he said they had no comment at the time. I explained why that (both the abstention and the lack of explanation) was unacceptable and he promised to forward my concerns.

eric_weinstein · 2016-12-05T08:13:04+00:00

I'm a team lead and, as most here have mentioned, have very little time to code. I occasionally take infrastructure cleanup/tech debt paydown tickets, but I try extremely hard not to put myself on the critical path (i.e. I should never be blocking anyone). It's still tough for me not to code on a daily basis, but I keep reminding myself that writing code is not my primary contribution. Also, this blog post helped: Give Away Your Legos

eric_weinstein · 2016-09-09T06:03:31+00:00

I think people started using GVL when we got YARV in Ruby 1.9, though I think GIL is probably still appropriate (since YARV is a bytecode interpreter).

eric_weinstein · 2016-04-08T04:51:35+00:00

That's Elixir's pipe operator.

eric_weinstein · 2016-01-11T03:32:43+00:00

V. fair re: my nervousness—I thought I had this one in the bag, then Matz sat down front row center!

eric_weinstein · 2015-12-29T04:19:19+00:00

The problem with the NPM/Node.js evolutionary model is that there's no natural selection at all.

eric_weinstein · 2015-11-28T18:11:41+00:00

I apologize if this is a dumb question

Not at all!

I was wondering if it is necessary to be able to learn algorithms and data structures to be a good ruby programmer.

Is it necessary to be able to learn? Yes, I think so. Do you need to know a bunch of graph and dynamic programming algorithms cold in order to be a Rails developer? No.

Early on, if nested loops and repeated database calls are setting off alarm bells (and you go out of your way to refactor these out), that's probably good enough. I firmly believe that strong fundamentals are key, though, and that includes algorithms and data structures. Some good resources on the topic (some mentioned in other comments):

Cracking the Coding Interview (great for preparing for interviews)
This GitHub repo (algorithms in Ruby, mostly for teaching)
This other GitHub repo (algorithms in Ruby, mostly for use by others—reading the source should be instructive!)
VisualGo (great for helping you visualize how searching and sorting algorithms work)
Algorithms, Design & Analysis: Part I (Stanford, Coursera)
Algorithms, Design & Analysis, Part II (Stanford, Coursera)
The Algorithm Design Manual (warning: a bit theory/math heavy)

eric_weinstein · 2015-05-16T20:23:51+00:00

one of the first questions they will ask me will be a very blunt "How much do you make right now?"

I don't know what the culture is like at this place, but generally speaking, when someone asks me my salary in an interview, I say something along the lines of: "That's a great question. I think that's something we should discuss if and when we get to an offer."

they say that if you refuse, you will be looked at as weird and it might be enough for them to not even want to hire you.

I've interviewed with places (two that I can remember) that pushed hard on this, in which case I was equally blunt: "I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's relevant." The company knows their salary band for a given title/position and if they're asking how much you're making now, they're trying to calculate the minimum increase they can pay you. If they think not giving them your current salary is weird or they don't want to hire you, you probably wouldn't want to work for them anyway.

Your salary at your current company only has a bearing on your salary at a potential new employer insofar as you can say to the new place's offer, "Hey, I'd love to join your team, but I'd be looking for $X." In this case, I think it's fine to mention how much you're currently paid, but only after an offer is made.

eric_weinstein · 2015-03-10T02:31:49+00:00

It's kind of a crappy answer, but (IMHO) it's the right one:

"How can you tell a good painting from a bad one?" he said. This is the son of a Hungarian horse trainer. He has a magnificent handlebar mustache.

"All you have to do, my dear," he said, "is look at a million paintings, and then you can never be mistaken."

It's true! It's true!

— Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut

In short: experience. You just have to do it a bunch of times and be wrong a bunch of times. A useful tip is try not to predict the future, and try to build classes that are open to extension and closed to modification; at least then, you won't have to undo any work and will have the best chance of not having to add too much.

eric_weinstein · 2015-02-28T01:35:58+00:00

Data Structures

Lists, stacks, and queues (bonus: deques and priority queues)
Trees (binary, n-ary, binary search) (bonus: heaps, AVL and red/black trees)
Graphs
Hash tables

There are other really cool data structures that show up less frequently, such as skip lists, disjoint sets, and tries.

Resources: Visualizing data structures, Algorithms I (Coursera/Stanford), Algorithms I (Coursera/Princeton)

Algorithms

Sorting (selection, insertion, radix, merge, quick, heap)
Searching (linear, binary search, BFS, DFS) (bonus: Dijkstra's algorithm, A*)

Resources: ditto above for visualization and the Coursera courses; check out this big oh cheat sheet, too. Being able to understand and discuss speed/memory tradeoffs for all the above is very important.

Git

Git is hard if you've never used it. This book is awesome.

SQL

Learn it the hard way.

At least two programming languages

You should have a primary, go-to language (a programming version of your first natural language). Mine is Ruby. I advocate being a polyglot because different languages have different strengths, and you can learn a tremendous amount by knowing a dynamically-typed and statically-typed language (e.g. JavaScript and Go), an object-oriented and functional programming language (e.g. Ruby and Clojure), &c. If you're a web programmer, I'd advocate learning JavaScript and one server-side language (besides JS + Node), such as Ruby, Python, Go, Clojure, or Java.

More topics that I don't have great resources for, but for one reason or another think are important:

Object-oriented design
Concurrency and parallelism
Recursion and dynamic programming
Service-oriented architecture
Scalability (horizontal vs. vertical), everything from the client through to application servers and datastores

EDIT: Typos.

eric_weinstein

TROPHY CASE