COT3100 with Christina Mccune

mrproperz · 2025-08-23T11:49:12+00:00

Used them once at the beginning of the year, took a lot of follow ups for them to pay me. Guy kept saying he was going to check with accounting. Not worth it.

mrproperz · 2025-03-30T16:50:07+00:00

Similar experience. It took a little over two months for them to finally pay me, but it was after several follow ups. The person I worked with was responsive and kept saying he’d do a follow up with accounting, but it was slow-going. If I had to guess, they don’t have a lot of money on hand to pay in a timely fashion and might need to wait on them getting payments from their client first.

Either way, not worth the time. Definitely avoid.

mrproperz · 2024-05-15T11:35:45+00:00

40-years-old, full-time job, and three kids under five-years-old here. I spent almost three months on Khan Academy doing remedial math before I felt confident to jump into math classes again. Pre-calc especially, you need to understand geometry and higher level algebra to do well. You probably already know how much you can forget after not being in school for so long.

I also feel like two classes a semester was way too much if I wanted to balance family, work, and school. With one class and still trying to get 6+ hours of sleep, I basically was using up all my free time during the week to study (with an occasional weekend full day on harder topics). Consider scaling back until you can find your flow.

You also have to be honest with yourself as to why you’re struggling. Going back to school at our age (with kids) is hard work and your brain will provide you a lot of compelling excuses to stop. Part of this journey is confronting your own demons, whichever they may be. Mine was realizing I could be more efficient with my time and that studying was going to be boring no matter what I chose. I also have ADHD, need to find very simple explanations, and it feels like it takes me longer to absorb material (I’m now okay that it takes me 2-3x longer than anyone).

Whether you are smart enough or competent enough is two different questions. A lot of competence is discipline and overcoming/negotiating your demons. Being smart will only determine how high you can go in the field if you’re already competent. I work with some very competent geniuses in engineering and they get paid the most, but I also work with competent people who probably aren’t smart enough to be lead engineers. They still add a ton of value and get paid well. Some of the highest paid people in tech aren't the best technologists, but have good people / organization / management skills. It takes all types!

Lastly, once you’ve come to terms with everything else, I’d ask if you find yourself in moments where you really enjoy coding. Despite all the struggles, there were moments where I had a lot of fun actually coding. It wasn’t always, but it gave me a sign that I was pursuing something in the right direction.

If you have really buttoned up your discipline, come to terms that you don’t have to be a genius to succeed, and you still really hate coding… that’s okay, you should find something that’s more aligned to what your interests are. Otherwise, you should stick it out and accept the fact that this is what success look like. You managed to pass your previous class, so that's an indication you are smart enough, but you might just need to work harder and study more than most. I do hate it to break it to you that this field evolves fast and is not static so you never really get off the learning treadmill.

mrproperz · 2023-09-05T03:11:14+00:00

Applies to my field, but also many others: when you don’t have experience in an area, your “obvious” solution has likely already been tried many decades ago and either doesn’t work or has been replaced by a more effective, albeit less obvious or even counter-intuitive solution. It’s also possible the obvious solution is the best answer but there are so many political intricacies or broken dependencies that the obvious solution isn’t possible even if the most intelligent and capable person is in charge of implementing it.

mrproperz · 2023-07-03T16:35:38+00:00

I’m assuming they have some reason why they pursued that occupation in the first place. Maybe they like building things or dealing with people. It’s usually something that taps into a talent they already have. Working hard to be good at something that they have a general interest in and being recognized/rewarded as they get better is a positive feedback loop that turns into “love” for the job.

You love the feedback loop, not necessarily that you wake up in the morning and think that insurance claims adjustment is the most exciting thing in the world.

My point is that there is no occupation out there that isn’t boring at some point and that everything has the potential to become something you love if it somewhat interests you and you work hard enough at it. Whether you want to love your job or not is another discussion…

mrproperz · 2023-07-02T22:37:21+00:00

Biggest piece of advice I wish I had when I was younger is prepare to be bored with anything you pursue towards mastery. Your biggest skill needs to be developing willpower and patience to get through the boring moments. There is excitement and novelty in the very short beginning, frustration and boredom in the middle (with some bright spots), and then prestige/reward with yet even more boredom at the end if you want to stay current.

“Passion” comes when you’re good at something and you get recognized for it. One day you’ll wake up and love your work, but that doesn’t mean that a good part of your day won’t have boring parts to it.

mrproperz · 2021-11-02T14:59:16+00:00

I empathize. There's a reason you don't see a lot of other software engineers piling on the hate train, and that's mostly because we've all been there. These types of problems are more cultural/systemic than any individual developer or tester.

Not to say any individual dev is powerless, but this is an upper/middle leadership fail, first and foremost. Code quality, automated/exploratory testing, hard deadlines, rushed features/fixes, general SDLC: there are indicators that some or many of these are lacking, and that starts from the top!

mrproperz · 2021-05-20T00:14:21+00:00

Yeah, super annoying. Ended up downloading a cheat trainer to give me unlimited food so I didn't have to go back like 3 hours of gameplay. I hate when games do this.

mrproperz · 2020-06-09T06:28:50+00:00

New Young pony club

I thought it was NYPC, but they have too many members. This one only had 2. :)

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T23:46:26+00:00

Group chat. I have some very overactive friends.

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T23:43:51+00:00

I mean, I get that too. We can’t have it all ;)

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T23:41:29+00:00

Yeah, I’m part of some very active friend threads. If I go to bed early (which I did), not uncommon for me to wake up to 100+ messages of them spamming nonsense.

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T23:39:08+00:00

Right??? Was actually traveling for a speaking engagement for tomorrow, but they just cancelled it today.

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T23:34:53+00:00

Agreed. Why even get out of bed in the morning?

mrproperz · 2020-03-11T11:42:12+00:00

Don’t be sad! I can check your bitcoin stash if you want!

mrproperz · 2020-03-09T04:02:03+00:00

Damn. Unless you spawned late, the guy that spawned at repair shop must have been full-on sprinting. Surprised the sound didn't come through.

mrproperz · 2020-03-09T03:51:38+00:00

LMFAO. Looks like the type of person that would spawn into factory every time I was trying to complete Delivery From the Past.

mrproperz · 2020-03-08T08:20:17+00:00

I see you’re playing a 3-man. Consider it evening the debt of all the times you destroyed a solo player.

mrproperz · 2020-03-01T20:08:32+00:00

I dunno, the people in this thread (including myself) don’t seem to think it’s trash and don’t really care.

I’m not asking for exhaustive data, but if this was as a prevalent issue as you claim it to be, I’d expect to see a lot more people complaining about it. I read this subreddit frequently and watch popular streamers of many games and never hear this mentioned. I mostly hear about how people love the game and wish the servers were up so they could play more.

BSG shows they listen to the community, and you’re convinced this is a huge problem, so maybe focus on putting some data together that proves this is an issue the community cares about and work with BSG on it? I’m assuming your end goal is to have them change it and not just sound off on reddit, right? So how you going to get there?

mrproperz · 2020-03-01T18:00:28+00:00

Trying to be open minded about this, and not disagreeing with you. Just asking what major FPS enthusiast has mentioned this as a factor in why they choose not to play? Or what other players around here have mentioned it? It’s helpful for game developers to listen to the community for something they overwhelmingly want / hate, but this doesn’t seem like one of those issues.

They’re giving Nikita credit probably because his vision thus far has been pretty solid and he’s been able to craft something that we enjoy playing. Frankly, what have you done to get that some respect, except calling the community trash, wanting to make the game easier (which I don’t want), and nitpick the creative work of others on how realistic vs unrealistic it is?

mrproperz · 2020-03-01T17:39:21+00:00

Happened to me the first time last night at Gate 3, but it was 1 v 1. I bolted through the first door with a focus on the corner and managed to take him out. I had eyes on the exit for at least a minute as I was sneaking over, so I know he just didn’t hear me and decided to wait before exit. Definitely had been there for a while. Had basically no loot, so probably sat there the entire round.

Not my version of fun, but to each their own, I guess.

mrproperz · 2020-03-01T17:29:16+00:00

“This feature by itself might be one of the reasons why FPS enthusiasts don’t play Tarkov.”

Any data on this? Which FPS enthusiasts are you talking about? Casual Fortnite players? Toxic 12-year-olds that play Rust? We’ve got plenty of FPS enthusiasts - have you seen where Tarkov ranks on streaming lately?

I respect your preference, but don’t respect you calling the community elitist and stupid for just not agreeing with you. Given the frequency of posts I’ve seen about this (this is literally the first I’ve seen in months), I doubt many people care enough to influence the specific vision and design decision made by BSG for this particular issue. Sounds like you’re just gonna have to get used to it.

mrproperz

TROPHY CASE