An Epic about Fail(ure. Happy? You know who you are...)
For instance, this blog post has potential to be more than a Mindless Link Propagation(MLP) blogger-me-too. Has. But I predict by the end(onrushing faster than I, and I alone, would like...), it will be just that.
Which is both sad and correct, since I know a lot about fail. Okay, I like to use fail as a noun. Look, folks, this is English, I believe some of you have confused it with French(damn Norman invasion). To complain about "nouning fail" is to complain about the language that inspired this quote, which I quote, because I can't find the reference for one of my favored shock phrases "pseudo intellectual masturbation":The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. [ and that would be James Nicoll ftw, bi-a-tch]
Back to fail. So, I know a lot about fail. I didn't get one, but two degrees from the same school, because I was too stupid to quit. And in doing so, I managed to alienate faculty in two departments instead of just one. I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with that one(look, this is why I go into a blind rage when people say "college leads to a job", but having said that, I'm also not one of the batshit crazies who think Obama telling kids to stay in school is form of socialist brainwashing(which, you would think the batshit crazies, many of whom have years of experience with Fox News brainwashing, would know the difference, but whatever...)).
I admit, my outlook is somewhat... twisted.
Other things I have failed at:
Interviewing with Google
Applying for and getting Rejected by Y Combinator, in their first round no less. As an aside, I did manage to insult some others you may not have heard of, reddit and brain guppy in this rant and kiko in this other rant(which was later auctioned off on eBay, but one of the founders(the guy who commented...) went on to do justin.tv).
Premier Horse Show Management System
Matt's Useful ToolsMetaPIM - this one is especially awesome. I have used it continuously for 4 years. Not one penny earned with it though. Oh well.
A recent epic fail. Police were involved(this one isn't even over yet...)
Let's see, one reason I consider myself to have had a lot of failures is by asking myself, "who could I use for a legitimate reference/letter of reference", and I look back on a long string of burned(in true arsonist style usually...) bridges.
Oh wait... I promised MLP linkbait. Actually, I promised a long ramble petering out into barely making points, with some links.
Anyway, so a spate of postings about failure popped up on the blogs I read today, and so I thought I most of them were reasonably good and interesting. One of them is even a Y Combinator company who is writing their own database. Of course, that's an awesome idea(don't worry, I doubt they will see this post and comment on it, my Google troll-power ranking has fallen since I killed my personal homepage and turned off LJ's indexing of this blog). Actually, RethinkDB is interesting, my only criticism is that if you're building off of MySQL, you obviously didn't rethink long enough. Anyway, they are doing exactly what people have basically told me not to do.
Actually, here's a nice rant-within-rant. I have written my own software 3d engine(with Israel's help), my own web browser, 2-3 varieties of database like things, currently a physics engine, and several language-like interpreter/compilers over the years, my own hardware description language to build a microprocessor on an FPGA. Jesus told a bunch of people that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Jesus was right. Unfortunately, I am an arrogant asshole. These things are probably failures. The flip side of all this though, is that I have watched small numbers of people do these very same things and be praised. What you people have taught me over the years is to not listen. In fact, its a very hard lesson I've had to learn: How to listen to people, and take what is said to heart, while at the same time not listening to a single word. Because for nearly every admonishment I have been given on the years I can find plenty of examples whose chief difference is "not me". The evidence has been weighed.
People are full of shit.
Which is almost anti-climatic. Who doesn't know that? Well, everyone. Because that means I am full of shit. And if you're reading this, you're full of shit. Unless you're a dolphin. And when you tell me what to do(especially when it comes to writing software, I have been doing that since I was 8 years old, have you?) and that what you must mean is that "Everyone is full of shit. Except me, who you should listen to." I want you to ask yourself, which one of us is the arrogant SOB. Me, the person building something, or you, the person telling me I can't do what your own two eyes should tell you that I am, in fact, doing.
As to whether what I am doing is worthless or not. I will go ahead and tell you. Of course its worthless. Especially on a large timescale. A person I used to know, had a quote on his wall one time, I wish I had a copy of it, but I don't, Google has been useless, but I'm going to post something which sounds pretty close: Make death your constant companion, keep it close to you. By always keeping this in your mind, you will live a brighter, more meaningful life. Everything you do, do it like it was the last thing you will ever do in your life. When you eat your dinner tonight, enjoy it like it is the last food you will ever eat. When you wash your car, wash it as though it will be your final act in life, and it will be given over to a deserving relative. Extract every drop of meaning and enjoyment you can, from everything you do, and make this the way you live your entire life. Someday, death will take you home, and the life you lived will have been that of a warrior's.[ from this webpage ]
Eh, maybe this quote from Gladiator is better:
Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
So, let's see, I was going to link to some stuff:
Fred Wilson: Failure. Fred is an investor in Twitter, I think. Hacker News is talking about that post.
Ted Dziuba posted a "reply": 30 Helens Agree: You Can't Win Without Failing. Ted is crass with more style than me. Also, he has cool, often crudely funny, non sequitur pictures on his post.
John Boyd: Fred Wilson Talks About the Benefits of Failure. He is also a VC.
Now, one of the RethinkDB guys posted this, which isn't about Fred Wilson's post:
The Y Combinator Experience. Of course, since this is Y Combinator, there was, of course, a Hacker News thread.
I liked those links. They probably didn't warrant this response. Its definitely overly affected, I think. If I was seeking to entertain, that begs the question of if a tree falls on a mime, does anyone care? Reaffirm my commitment to failure? Tell my past self something I wouldn't have listened to. Try to listen for advice from my future self that I believe he will believe I wouldn't listen to anyway? Eh, I guess you either read them or you don't.
Usefully, the RethinkDB guy used a Lao Tzu quote:
Those who know, don't speak. Those who speak, don't know. -Lao Tzu
One time, I got on a Greyhound bus for 40 days, to go out into the wilderness. I used to be jealous and enamored with the free spirits who you envision behind all the cool "travel literature"(Marco Polo, Richard Burton, Jack Kerouac, Gulliver, Odysseus, countless dirty hippies, mystics, and poor people). I used to wonder what separated me from them. The difference, of course, is whether you get on the bus or not.
Which is both sad and correct, since I know a lot about fail. Okay, I like to use fail as a noun. Look, folks, this is English, I believe some of you have confused it with French(damn Norman invasion). To complain about "nouning fail" is to complain about the language that inspired this quote, which I quote, because I can't find the reference for one of my favored shock phrases "pseudo intellectual masturbation":The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. [ and that would be James Nicoll ftw, bi-a-tch]
Back to fail. So, I know a lot about fail. I didn't get one, but two degrees from the same school, because I was too stupid to quit. And in doing so, I managed to alienate faculty in two departments instead of just one. I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with that one(look, this is why I go into a blind rage when people say "college leads to a job", but having said that, I'm also not one of the batshit crazies who think Obama telling kids to stay in school is form of socialist brainwashing(which, you would think the batshit crazies, many of whom have years of experience with Fox News brainwashing, would know the difference, but whatever...)).
I admit, my outlook is somewhat... twisted.
Other things I have failed at:
Interviewing with Google
Applying for and getting Rejected by Y Combinator, in their first round no less. As an aside, I did manage to insult some others you may not have heard of, reddit and brain guppy in this rant and kiko in this other rant(which was later auctioned off on eBay, but one of the founders(the guy who commented...) went on to do justin.tv).
Premier Horse Show Management System
Matt's Useful ToolsMetaPIM - this one is especially awesome. I have used it continuously for 4 years. Not one penny earned with it though. Oh well.
A recent epic fail. Police were involved(this one isn't even over yet...)
Let's see, one reason I consider myself to have had a lot of failures is by asking myself, "who could I use for a legitimate reference/letter of reference", and I look back on a long string of burned(in true arsonist style usually...) bridges.
Oh wait... I promised MLP linkbait. Actually, I promised a long ramble petering out into barely making points, with some links.
Anyway, so a spate of postings about failure popped up on the blogs I read today, and so I thought I most of them were reasonably good and interesting. One of them is even a Y Combinator company who is writing their own database. Of course, that's an awesome idea(don't worry, I doubt they will see this post and comment on it, my Google troll-power ranking has fallen since I killed my personal homepage and turned off LJ's indexing of this blog). Actually, RethinkDB is interesting, my only criticism is that if you're building off of MySQL, you obviously didn't rethink long enough. Anyway, they are doing exactly what people have basically told me not to do.
Actually, here's a nice rant-within-rant. I have written my own software 3d engine(with Israel's help), my own web browser, 2-3 varieties of database like things, currently a physics engine, and several language-like interpreter/compilers over the years, my own hardware description language to build a microprocessor on an FPGA. Jesus told a bunch of people that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Jesus was right. Unfortunately, I am an arrogant asshole. These things are probably failures. The flip side of all this though, is that I have watched small numbers of people do these very same things and be praised. What you people have taught me over the years is to not listen. In fact, its a very hard lesson I've had to learn: How to listen to people, and take what is said to heart, while at the same time not listening to a single word. Because for nearly every admonishment I have been given on the years I can find plenty of examples whose chief difference is "not me". The evidence has been weighed.
People are full of shit.
Which is almost anti-climatic. Who doesn't know that? Well, everyone. Because that means I am full of shit. And if you're reading this, you're full of shit. Unless you're a dolphin. And when you tell me what to do(especially when it comes to writing software, I have been doing that since I was 8 years old, have you?) and that what you must mean is that "Everyone is full of shit. Except me, who you should listen to." I want you to ask yourself, which one of us is the arrogant SOB. Me, the person building something, or you, the person telling me I can't do what your own two eyes should tell you that I am, in fact, doing.
As to whether what I am doing is worthless or not. I will go ahead and tell you. Of course its worthless. Especially on a large timescale. A person I used to know, had a quote on his wall one time, I wish I had a copy of it, but I don't, Google has been useless, but I'm going to post something which sounds pretty close: Make death your constant companion, keep it close to you. By always keeping this in your mind, you will live a brighter, more meaningful life. Everything you do, do it like it was the last thing you will ever do in your life. When you eat your dinner tonight, enjoy it like it is the last food you will ever eat. When you wash your car, wash it as though it will be your final act in life, and it will be given over to a deserving relative. Extract every drop of meaning and enjoyment you can, from everything you do, and make this the way you live your entire life. Someday, death will take you home, and the life you lived will have been that of a warrior's.[ from this webpage ]
Eh, maybe this quote from Gladiator is better:
Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
So, let's see, I was going to link to some stuff:
Fred Wilson: Failure. Fred is an investor in Twitter, I think. Hacker News is talking about that post.
Ted Dziuba posted a "reply": 30 Helens Agree: You Can't Win Without Failing. Ted is crass with more style than me. Also, he has cool, often crudely funny, non sequitur pictures on his post.
John Boyd: Fred Wilson Talks About the Benefits of Failure. He is also a VC.
Now, one of the RethinkDB guys posted this, which isn't about Fred Wilson's post:
The Y Combinator Experience. Of course, since this is Y Combinator, there was, of course, a Hacker News thread.
I liked those links. They probably didn't warrant this response. Its definitely overly affected, I think. If I was seeking to entertain, that begs the question of if a tree falls on a mime, does anyone care? Reaffirm my commitment to failure? Tell my past self something I wouldn't have listened to. Try to listen for advice from my future self that I believe he will believe I wouldn't listen to anyway? Eh, I guess you either read them or you don't.
Usefully, the RethinkDB guy used a Lao Tzu quote:
Those who know, don't speak. Those who speak, don't know. -Lao Tzu
One time, I got on a Greyhound bus for 40 days, to go out into the wilderness. I used to be jealous and enamored with the free spirits who you envision behind all the cool "travel literature"(Marco Polo, Richard Burton, Jack Kerouac, Gulliver, Odysseus, countless dirty hippies, mystics, and poor people). I used to wonder what separated me from them. The difference, of course, is whether you get on the bus or not.