Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Earn CEO Pay Level from Home

As I was riding the bus to work I saw the sign above. I didn't make the call because I know that it some sort of a scam; I am still curious as how you would do this. Since some CEOs are now earning the princely sum of $1, I thought I would share some of my ideas:

  • Go to several convience stores and look for the little cup that says "Give a Penny, Take a Penny" and take all of the pennies. After 10 or 20 stores, you may earn your CEO's pay

  • Rummage through your couch for change.
  • Rummage through your car for change.
  • Rummage through your friend's and family's couchs and cars.
  • Use your God given talents, for example:
    1. Get your trusty old Marine Band Harmonica, a hat, cardboard and a Sharpie.

    2. With the Sharpie, write "Give me a CEO's Pay Level and I will stop playing" on the cardboard.
    3. Get on a bus, subway or some other place where it diffcult to leave, display the sign, put out the hat and start playing.

    If you play like me, there is a high risk of incarceration; with Correctional Industries pay rates, you can earn your CEO's pay in 5 or 6 hours of work

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Trying to get socially modern

What I'm doing, part 1.5

Besides Stack Overflow, I've been trying to actually write the blog and use twitter.  I'm actually writing to this blog (sort of) and I have created over 15 updates in twitter as jrcs3.  I'm following almost 10 people and have more than 2 people following me. So far I've taken a lot more than I've given.

I developed tunnel vision over the past few years. Get the code out and get on with my life. I work mainly in C# 2.0 in both ASP.NET and WinForms (no WPF yet). I also have a client that needs me to work in Access 97 and a SQL 200 ..... enough all ready

Anyway, with the ecomomy really freaking out, I need to look outside of my formally safe world of oldtime geekdom and look out to the wider world. I can go on about the scary stoff, but I am also intereted in the new opportunities that the ecomonic stress can create.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

StackOverflow

What I'm doing. Part 1

For the past 6 months or so, I have been playing with StackOverflow. I don't know that I've really gotten into it, but I still find it interesting.

Structured Discussion

It's like a discussion board but there are more rules and other forms of structure. Some of it is built into the application but most of it is enforced by the powerful menders of the community (see Badges and Reputation). Duplicate questions can also be closed as duplicate, so the answer is gathered in 1 place (though I would like to see them tighten up the support for this so it is easier to get to the parent question).

The discussion is pretty tightly focused on programming; whenever a non-programming question is asked it will either be voted down or closed by the powerful. It is good thing that the site stays on task, but there are times when "fun" questions are closed and I would have liked to see them live on. But, what is fun for one is noise for someone else; I can find "fun" someplace else.

Voting

Users of the system have to power to vote for or against any question or answer on the system. Questions with a lot of votes are considered "hot" and the questions with a lot of down votes end up in some sort of puritory. The users of the site decide what gains capital on SO. Voting also generated (and destroys) reputation.

Badges and Reputation

This is one of the official ways of controlling our behavior are Badges and Reputation.

For the most part, you get (and loose) repuptation through voting. Your reputation is dispalyed next to your profile. You are given more power as you gain repretation. The early powers are basic things like voting, leaving comments, the later powers are the godlike power of an administrator. As you do things to earn reputation, you are invested in site and are more likely to use your powers good.

You can earn badges by doing certain things that the sight owners want you to do. Your badge info is next to your reputation on your profile. Like the Olympics, you they come in bronze, silver and gold. The bronze metals are for firsts (getting through basic training, solder's first parashoot jump, etc.), moderate metrics of your questions and answers. Silver is for bigger first and bigger metrics. Gold for the big stuff.