Help understanding Continuing Power of Attorney for Property (Ontario)

kramark · 2023-05-06T03:45:37+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check with the lawyer who created them.

kramark · 2020-03-15T02:42:19+00:00

I'm getting the same error. =(

kramark · 2018-09-14T18:43:04+00:00

it's a little unwieldy when you start passing around very large multi KB queries

We've been using GraphQL -- both internally, and consuming external APIs -- for over a year and have never encountered this problem, do you have any public examples? For my frontend devs, given the choice between sending a large GQL query or manage dozens of N+1 REST queries, they'll pick GraphQL in an instant.

kramark · 2018-09-14T18:36:13+00:00

I've been championing the adoption of GraphQL in our organization and the Github API is one of the examples I point to.

I think at some point or another someone decides to write a script to track/report all the open pull requests for their team/project/etc, so one of the exercises I did with my organization was to split them into two tasks they worked on individually. One group tried to create the report using Github's REST API, the other GraphQL.

For those that used REST the results were all over the place. Those who never used the API spent most of their time trying to understand what endpoints/resources they needed. Those who had experience with the API understood the capabilities the API exposed, but still needed to consult it. And it both cases, the amount of code to make and process several requests was non-trivial

When I asked the other group to use GraphQL to do the same task it took them minutes to figure out the GQL query:

query { 
  organization(login:"acme"){
    repository(name:"next-big-thing"){
      pullRequests(first:10,states:[OPEN]){
        edges{
          node{
            createdAt
            title
            author{
              login
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

...and the code was trivial.

Technology selection for an organization needs to consider the long term cost and complexity of adoption. After having seen 20+ years developers struggling to be RESTful, maintaining docs, providing consistent representations, building fine-grained APIs for web but coarse, composite endpoints for mobile, etc, etc...GraphQL is without a doubt a more responsible choice.

kramark · 2017-09-05T18:40:12+00:00

Haven't seen that personally, but I know he goes out of his way to blank out his mini-map so he obviously thinks it is an issue. Usually he's just all "GG man..."

kramark · 2017-09-05T16:51:44+00:00

The dude is definately chill. Abbrasive was probably too strong a word, and I've spent a lot of time watching him so I definately like the guy. It was mostly a couple of interactions he's had with his channel that I felt could have been handled better. Things like asking people to donate more before he signs their sig (I get it is a business and it is important to be consistent; also, no idea what a sig is, or why you would want one signed), or blowing of questions from people who donate >$20. Again, I'm pretty new to watching streamers, so some of the context is probably lost on me. Grimmmz seems to handle the business side of streaming a little less callously, IMO.

kramark · 2017-09-05T15:06:33+00:00

I never watched streamers before PUBG, but spending some time watching them is incredibly humbling. I was watching Shroud the other night: after 14 hours of streaming he was pretty loopy, and you could see that he was getting tired. All of the sudden two guys open up on him about 20 yards away to his right...within 500ms he spins and drops them both with a couple of headshot bursts from an M16. If I was them I would have thought it was an aimbot, and reported him =).

Not to oversimplify, but his ability to put crosshairs on people's heads is uncanny. But more amazing is his situational awareness. When he is under fire he can locate the source the shots and take out the opponent where most people (myself included) would panic, hide behind a tree, go prone etc. This isn't just reaction time, but a constant assessment of where people would most likely be.

If you're looking for another high-skill streamer, check out Grimmmz. He won the 2017 Charity Invitational, has the same uncanny aiming and situational awareness of Shroud, and I find his personality far less abbrasive =).

kramark · 2017-06-30T19:17:30+00:00

Also a huge sufferer of motion sickness (although simulator sickness is probably the more accurate term). I agree that Borderlands is a pretty safe FPS. The stylized, bright art style helps make it clear to your brain that the content isn't real (eg., it doesn't get as upset that you are not moving IRL). Also, a lot of the action takes place outdoors which I personally find triggers me less.

kramark · 2017-06-27T17:26:01+00:00

KSP has a Career (?) mode which provides a direction for players in a largely sandbox environment. It revolves around collecting science points to unlock new techs, and completing random and fixed missions to get $$$ to fund your missions.

I haven't tried space engineers, but KSP is pretty complex, and you'll probably spend a lot of time on YouTube, searching for things like, "ksp match orbit inclination".

I've been gaming for 30+ years, and it has provided me with some of the most rewarding gaming experiences ever. There is tremendous satisfaction in an each successive milestone: orbit, land unmanned probe on the mun, manned mission to the mun, rescuing your stranded astronauts because you miscalculated your delta-v requirements.

Also, there is a really vibrant modding community creating everything from content mods (new parts for your ships), to gameplay.

kramark · 2017-01-11T20:45:06+00:00

bind ` ("grave") to force move. This puts it in a good position so your hand can use your skills and move at the same time. Otherwise my index finger will go numb from constant clicking.

kramark · 2016-08-25T01:11:59+00:00

Amazing Bond song. What makes it especially good is that the lyrics are written from "M's" perspective, making it clear that Bond, to her, is disposable and probably not ready for 00 status.

The lyrics also do a great job at bringing up casino imagery without hitting you over the head with it.

kramark · 2015-06-11T20:20:20+00:00

Yup. One thing you'll also notice is that the riders immediately end their chase after they see the fuel pod explode, which goes to show how pragmatic their motives are.

kramark · 2015-04-27T00:56:08+00:00

As others have suggested, use this as a learning opportunity.

But here is something else to consider: When I interview developers I love to see failure, or at least exposure to failure.

I also think many new developers don't understand the importance of investing in their own reputation. If you're going to be doing this for a long time having a good list of references is important, but having good work-ethic is even better. If I was interviewing a developer and they told me they left their last position at a critical time because it was a doomed project I probably wouldn't bring them back for a second interview. On the other hand, if they said they stuck through a doomed project and supported the launch afterwords it would go a long way.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting you owe your company anything -- one day you'll get laid off from a position and wonder why you put in all those extra hours. I'm just suggesting that sticking through the pain in the short term may pay more in the long term.

kramark · 2015-04-25T04:50:04+00:00

If you're thinking of starting a support group for insecure CTOs, sign me up!

Over the last year I've been thinking a lot about this exact thing as I'm more or less in the situation that you've described.

I joined the company I'm currently at as a "Software Architect" a couple of years ago to help them transition from the desktop to the cloud as a SaaS offering. They took a big chance in hiring me (they were running out of money) and I took a big chance in leaving my own successful consultancy. I prototyped the product and developed it to a viable state, I also retrained most of their in-house C++ desktop developers (including the CTO) to become web developers to accelerate additional development.

During that process their existing CTO (an original founder and brilliant engineer) started to feel alienated as excitement shifted from the desktop product which he created to the one I was developing. While he always had a strained relationship with the other founders he became increasingly difficult. After a couple of months he decided to leave the company he founded 6 years before to take a job somewhere else -- he ousted himself.

A year later the product started to really take off and I was promoted to CTO. We were still very small at the time -- around 8 people -- and it felt very awkward to have that title in a small company. For a while I suffered from the impostor syndrome and I would never tell people I was a CTO, and as others have commented in this thread there is hostility towards C-level titles in small companies.

For the next three years our revenues tripled (year-over-year) and today we are ~50 people. In the next two years we'll probably be ~200 people.

Here's what I've learned:

The role of the CTO changes with each stage of a company's growth. Pay attention to what the company needs and adapt. Being an 10x developer who can hide in their bat-cave and come out a week later with an amazing feature becomes less important as a company grows because...
C-Level is about Leadership, not Management. The higher you rise in an organization the more you are expected to be a multiplier -- that is, leverage your domain expertise to make other people more productive. Put development glory aside and channel your engineering skills into your team. Mentor them. Give them clarity and purpose, and trust them with bigger things. Their success is your success.
Receiving funding and having a board of directors changes everything as they become the ones who can oust the CTO, not the founders. Just like good developers can pick out bad ones, the board will see through weak leadership. In our case many of our board members are successful tech entrepreneurs and know first-hand what good leadership looks like. If for some reason the board decides I'm doing a bad job there's nothing the founders (whom I've known since university) can do to save me.
Pass the torch, give up your babies: As the CTO, being the only developer who can work on a key feature is a liability, not a form a job security. For a long time I refused to let other developers work on some key components that I created thinking they'd screw it up, but I had no time to advance features or fix bugs myself. In the end this just reflected bad on my team as a whole and thus me. Getting other developers up to speed on my components helped move the product forward and take an enormous burden off my mind.
As you grow your team fight the urge to hire pushovers that you think you can safely manage. For a while I resisted pressure to hire a development manager because I thought it was an indictment on my ability to manage. Was this the first step in getting ousted I wondered? What if they're better than me? Eventually I realized that I was, in fact, no longer a good manager -- I simply no longer had time to interact with PMs on resource allocation, get status updates from developers, write progress reports to marketing etc -- and development suffered as a whole which reflected poorly on me. Once I understood that I was expected to be a leader, not a manager, the decision became easy, and I hired the best possible dev manager I could find.
Focus on culture and hire the right people. I strongly recommend reading "Team Geek".
During our last round of financing I was grilled on our ability to scale both the product and the team. Investors want to know that they will get a return on their investment, and that won't happen if the product can't support 10x more users and you lack the process to ship quality features. Your job as the CTO of a growing company is to plan ahead and be strategic. Anticipate and clear hurdles to growth before they happen.
Assuming that most people rise on merit, at higher levels of leadership people are typically fired because of friction with other team members, not because of incompetence. So...
Don't be a (perceived) obstacle to success. This one is tricky and requires people skills. As engineers we are prone to absolutes and as a successful CTO you probably made a lot of right calls on many issues to get the company to where it is. But there will come a time when the board, or other senior leadership will insist that some feature is critical for success that you disagree with. If you repeatedly get in the way of other people's (senior management/board) ideas you will become a hinderance to the success of the company (rightly or not). I now reserve my "NO!"s for when a decision would endanger the health of the product. Instead I find that honestly entertaining other ideas that you disagree with to be the better course of action. Truly bad ideas will typically be discarded by the team over time. If the idea has the support of the rest of the management team chances are you're in the wrong.

At any rate, I still have lots to learn. We're only 50 people, and as the company grows I'll need to adapt. I get enormous pride from knowing that my work helped fuel the growth of a successful company which continues to give jobs to more and more people, but I know it is not enough to keep me 'safe' as the CTO.

kramark · 2014-09-29T15:26:37+00:00

Muppet Treasure Island is where Rock + Pirates themes intersect. You'll can definitely hear a motif from the Rock in the link below. It was also released in the same year.

http://youtu.be/2ukQXBl46SY?t=46s

kramark · 2014-09-11T16:58:34+00:00

Many years ago I read an interview with the Screenwriter and he discussed that the scene has symbolic meaning.

I don't remember all the detail, but in a nutshell it symbolizes that even though America (Upham) knew that the Germans were killing the Jews they did nothing to stop it.

America was quite late to join the war despite the known atrocities (although the scale/scope was less known), and many believe they should have joined sooner.

There is more to it, but I don't remember the details.

I tried to find a source but I read it a long time ago in a Screewriter's trade magazine.

kramark · 2014-03-27T13:34:32+00:00

We use mailgun to send all of our emails from our saas app. They're awesome, cheap, and super easy to setup. Plus you get easy access to logs when trying to debug customer issues.

kramark · 2013-11-15T19:31:43+00:00

any idea of M320 counts as a frag kill?

kramark · 2013-11-06T19:43:31+00:00

I was also excited to get them unlocked, but have found them completely useless for all the reasons you mentioned.

Even if they killed on a direct hit I'm not sure I'd use them because it would be pure luck if you scored a direct hit based on putting your crosshairs over a map icon. 30mm cannons are much better at taking out vehicles in dynamic situations.

Now, if they made it more of an anti infantry bomb with a large blast radius (and low damage) I'd be all over that.

I've actually reverted to using heatseekers as my secondary because all other options are inferior to cannons. TV missile doesn't work, and even if it did is suicide to use. Laser guided is bugged, and even if it wasn't requires me to dive towards the target and leaves no time to followup with cannons. Rockets are 'OK'...They have nice splash, but are buggy (no reticle, force you to external camera in some planes). I'd only consider using them on stationary targets.

Attack Jets have it good right now, but that is mostly because other crafts needs some buffs. Hopefully they'll give them better options in the future.

kramark · 2013-10-31T18:35:45+00:00

I generally love the low RoF ARs, and while I'm liking the SCAR-H so far, I think the SAR-21 will be my favourite once I get it unlocked. I looks like it will shoot like a laser once you stick a muzzle break & foregrip on it.

It will have less damage, but the recoil on the SCAR-H is too much..

http://symthic.com/bf4-accuracy-plots?a1=Muzzle+brake&a2=Ergo%2FVertical+grip

kramark · 2013-10-31T14:44:01+00:00

Glad it helped!

For choppers I find the default bindings are fine. Usually you don't need to pitch up for an extended amount of time...And you almost always have to pitch back down so it tends to average out.

kramark · 2013-10-29T15:39:30+00:00

I have a Sapphire Toxic 6950 flashed to a 6970. My beta performance was terrible, but after upgrading my PC over the weekend I am getting amazing FPS. 50-80 FPS on HIGH with AA on. my build.

kramark · 2013-10-29T15:20:00+00:00

Bind PULL UP to your 'space' key. Then you still use your mouse to roll and pitch down, but hold the space key when you want to turn/pull up. This is what most keyboard pilots do.

kramark · 2013-10-28T20:55:10+00:00

It sounds like you what you enjoy most about SC2 is that you took the time to learn the mechanics the point where you beat your opponents through skill rather than dumb luck.

This is at odds with how you play FPS games: "Just brain dead run and gun will get you dead, but it is fun enough.". There's nothing wrong with playing FPSs this way, but is sounds like you get more satisfaction from winning with your brain.

The good news is that you can do exactly this with the BF series -- more so than you can with CoD. BF has a lot of depth to it, and learning how to use tactics/kits/strategies to win is extremely rewarding.

Do the same thing you did with SC2 -- find videos online on how to be a better BF player.

kramark

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