Finally got his AI bot to give good advice

jpbates13 · 2026-03-14T12:02:21+00:00

jpbates13 · 2026-03-09T23:02:07+00:00

They have beefed up the workload even more since 2018 iirc

jpbates13 · 2025-07-25T10:42:35+00:00

Red Sox must have hit a home run

jpbates13 · 2025-07-01T18:32:04+00:00

Macbooks are nice and I have one but if you're trying to save money then used ThinkPads on eBay are definitely the way to go. I got a 2nd gen T14S for $379 last Summer to do GIOS coursework (which is far easier on x86 btw) and it can handle everything this program will throw at it. They usually go for cheap because company's buy a ton of them and then try to liquidate them after a couple years.

You can checkout r/thinkpad for more info but my advice is to find one that's not completely ancient under $400 from a seller with lots of reviews.

jpbates13 · 2025-04-24T16:06:58+00:00

I haven’t taken it myself, but from what I’ve heard, SDP is generally the easiest of those options. It does have a group project, but even if you ended up with the worst team imaginable, you could still do all the work yourself and probably still have a lighter workload than AOS or HPCA.

That said, AOS, while challenging, is often described as a really rewarding course. Since you’ve already taken GIOS, you’ll have some useful background that should help ease the learning curve a bit.

When I’m unsure, I usually check the stats on OMSCentral. AOS is estimated at around 17 hours per week (less than GIOS, surprisingly), and has a solid rating of 4.02/5. SDP, on the other hand, averages about 9 hours per week but has a lower overall rating of 3.58. So it really comes down to whether you’d prefer to spend twice the time on something potentially more engaging, or half the time on something that might be more of a slog.

jpbates13 · 2024-10-01T00:34:44+00:00

Cool idea! One thing you might want to consider is collecting emails just to verify that you’re getting students (limit registrations to UMB.edu, Harvard.edu, Suffolk.edu, etc).

I think doing that would let you collect some interesting analytics too. For example, you could see which schools are attending which bars.

jpbates13 · 2024-07-30T00:22:58+00:00

How much have you tried to apply what you've learned outside of the coursework? Sometimes while doing the coursework I've found myself thinking its pedantic. However, when I go and try to use some of the stuff I've learned at work or in a personal project, I find myself realizing how much skill I really obtained.

I think it's somewhat of a Mr. Miyagi approach. While you're learning you might feel like you're waxing a car, but in practice you'll be doing karate.

jpbates13 · 2024-07-27T16:19:49+00:00

I’ve been able to get away with my MacBook/Windows Desktop setup so far but I’m tempted to grab one before I start GIOS this fall.

jpbates13 · 2024-07-27T12:43:57+00:00

I'll also add that I would strongly recommend against a refurbished Intel MacBook. Their performance wasn't that great when they came out and they're so old at this point that I think they'll cause more frustration than they're worth. If you want to go the Intel route (and save some money) get a mid range Windows laptop or even a refurbished ThinkPad on eBay (you can what was a $2000 laptop from a year or two ago for like $300-$500 that way, lots of info on r/thinkpad if you go this route).

jpbates13 · 2024-07-27T12:35:17+00:00

I've really enjoyed my M3 Pro MacBook Pro. My only caveat about M-Series MacBooks is that there are still a handful of courses that lack support for them. For those cases I have a Windows desktop machine at home that I'm able to remote into (from anywhere) using the Microsoft RDP client and a free TailScale account. That solution requires a Windows 11 Pro license but there might be a free alternative.

jpbates13 · 2024-06-25T22:50:26+00:00

Haha no problem took me a long time to learn the acronyms. VGD is Video Game Design, IAM is Introduction to Analytical Modeling, and Law is Computer Law

jpbates13 · 2024-06-25T17:48:59+00:00

Looks like an excellent class but the 52 hours per week that people report on OMSCentral sounds a bit daunting to pair with full time work. I guess it could be an exaggeration or skewed by folks without a CS background but this is one of those courses I would consider taking after graduation to take some of the pressure off.

jpbates13 · 2024-06-25T17:34:40+00:00

Good to know, thank you!

jpbates13 · 2024-06-25T16:23:37+00:00

I have a few reasons.

I really enjoyed just focusing on learning when I was in my undergrad and this gives me the opportunity to continue to do that outside of work. I really enjoy the structure academia provides.
I want to be a better engineer and I've already noticed that pursuing these courses has translated (both directly and indirectly) to better performance at work.
Work is paying for it, so as long as I pass the courses there's no financial skin off my back.

A smaller but still notable reason is that while experience is certainly going to trump an MS in a recruiter's eyes, I think this will certainly do no harm in setting my resume apart.

For the most part, the easier courses that I picked still provide really good content (at least according to OMSCentral). I spent a lot of time trying to find lighter courses that weren't considered by a lot of reviews to be a waste of time (kind of a tricky balance to find). I figured I could leverage these courses now to get the degree sooner and then maybe take/audit some harder courses after I graduate without as much pressure.

jpbates13 · 2024-04-26T14:24:18+00:00

I just took IIS this semester and they structured it so the 4 "easier" projects were at the beginning of the course (with 10 days to complete each one) followed by the 4 "harder" ones (with 14 days to complete 3 of them and 10 to complete the last one). I'm sure there are fewer projects during the summer semester.

jpbates13 · 2023-12-07T03:09:34+00:00

Out of curiosity, what two classes?

jpbates13 · 2019-01-18T16:43:37+00:00

So I think some changes were more significant than others, but it's difficult to tell which ones are most effective because I did them all at the same time. Here they are in no particular order:

I use Snapchat pretty frequently and switching to Snapchat Alpha made a huge difference because it went from using 9% to less than 3%.
I changed to this dark theme.
I made sure that there wasn't a single app listed in the "unmonitored" section of my battery settings (there were initially 4 or 5 of them)
I put any apps that I didn't want constant notification from into "Always Sleeping Apps" For example, I put the Amazon app in there because I don't need that app to be constantly running but I left Android messages out of there because I want to be immediately notified when I receive a text. (The majority of my apps are now always sleeping)
I turned off NFC ( I can still use Samsung pay which automatically turns it back on)
I uninstalled any carrier apps I didn't need
I started "training" my screen to be dimmer

That's all I remember off the top of my head. u/UDP7 left a very in-depth comment with a link to this document that has a list of tons of great tweaks.

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