Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.

Auspice

This is why, midsummer, I do the mirror of people in the great white wastes and turn on my car with the AC early. I'm on the side of my complex that gets full sun all day so it's not uncommon for my car to read 115' when I get in and we're not even full heat yet.

Ghost

@Auspice I was the village idiot Fremen today.

"Hey guys! Let's go ride a worm in WINTER COATS!"

boop

Having two (I think) brilliant product ideas and having no clue how to get any ball rolling on it even after googling and reading some stuff about inventions, prototyping, etc. Clearly not entrepreneur material right here.

Sparks

@deathbird said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Having two (I think) brilliant product ideas and having no clue how to get any ball rolling on it even after googling and reading some stuff about inventions, prototyping, etc. Clearly not entrepreneur material right here.

*puts on "hi, this is literally my day job" hat*

That depends a lot on what the product is, and how much prototyping you need.

Let's say it's an electronic device of some kind. You'll probably want to build an NFF version to start—NFF meaning Non Form Factor, i.e., something that's just bare electronics and enough mechanical pieces to cover any necessary bits of the system. Just enough to prove that your idea is technologically feasible at least in theory.

So you'd get a devkit from one of the SoC (System on Chip) manufacturers; a Nordic nRF52 or whatever. Or if you're planning to go with, say, embedded Linux, it's probably easiest to just go grab a Raspberry Pi 3 to start out with for your main processor, even if you might move to a different SoC for the final product. (Unless you need GPU acceleration for some kind of calculations, in which case, the Nvidia Jetson Nano is a frighteningly capable system.)

Then you'd want a good quality 3D printer to print any mechanical pieces you need, and do it yourself. Alternatively, find your local collective makerspace, get a membership, and go use their equipment; out here in Seattle we have Metrix Create:Space, for instance.

If it's something that's beyond your capabilities, find a techy business partner who can help realize it.

Once you have your NFF proof-of-concept, you can shop it around for funding from investors, or you can hit up crowdfunding sites. (Keeping in mind that a startling percentage of hardware Kickstarters vastly underestimate their needed funding and their timeline, especially when it comes to NPI—New Product Introduction, i.e. the whole manufacturing process.)

Once you have sufficient funding, you can either put together a company with employees to do come up with a form-factor test device as a next step, or you can hire a product development firm to do that for you. Product development firms will likely be pricier on an hourly basis than doing it yourself, but you'll get all the company's accumulated expertise, and it will likely go faster than spinning up your own team. And if you find one that's got a lot of NPI experience, it can save so much pain when it comes to actually going into manufacturing.

(Product development firms being places like Cambridge Consultants. Or Mindtribe, or Punch Through, or Tactile, or whatever. But Cambridge Consultants is the best. #notbiased #myemployer)

Obviously, if it's not an electronic device of some kind, the process will differ.

Derp

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

brb adding more cilantro to my guac so I don't have to share.

You monster.

boop

@Sparks wow that was really nice of you to do that. Thank you!

Sparks

@deathbird said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Sparks wow that was really nice of you to do that. Thank you!

No problem!

Also, even if you do the development of whatever it is in-house, I highly recommend finding a product development firm with NPI experience to help shepherd things into production. Even the best-organized projects from first time folks often run into huge issues once moving into production. (Poor tooling, parts that are bought

I'm willing to try to answer stuff if you've got questions in general; I've seen so many very enthusiastic projects break up on the shoals of underfunding and ill-preparation, or ending up going way over budget dealing with issues once they get to production/manufacturing.

Like I said, literally my day job.

Sparks

I injured my foot at the beginning of May. It is now July. And while I can put weight on it again just fine, it still hurts. Tonight, it hurts badly enough that I cannot sleep.

This is irritating me.

This is also why I'm posting at 3:30am.

Derp

@Sparks said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I injured my foot at the beginning of May. It is now July. And while I can put weight on it again just fine, it still hurts. Tonight, it hurts badly enough that I cannot sleep.

This is irritating me.

This is also why I'm posting at 3:30am.

This is my life. When I was younger, I was very, very active. Runner, martial artist. Anything I could do. Was out running one day and got this sharp pain in my foot. Went to the doc. Doc says tendinitis. Foot still hurt a month later. Doc says tendinitis. Kept hurting, but less, until I finally just got used to the pain.

In my twenties someone finally did an x-ray and turns out, I had damaged my cuboid, and it had gone untreated for so long it deformed.

Fun times!

Auspice

@Derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Sparks said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I injured my foot at the beginning of May. It is now July. And while I can put weight on it again just fine, it still hurts. Tonight, it hurts badly enough that I cannot sleep.

This is irritating me.

This is also why I'm posting at 3:30am.

This is my life. When I was younger, I was very, very active. Runner, martial artist. Anything I could do. Was out running one day and got this sharp pain in my foot. Went to the doc. Doc says tendinitis. Foot still hurt a month later. Doc says tendinitis. Kept hurting, but less, until I finally just got used to the pain.

In my twenties someone finally did an x-ray and turns out, I had damaged my cuboid, and it had gone untreated for so long it deformed.

Fun times!

I am so sorry. misdiagnosed shit sucks. When I was 17, I fell and hurt my shoulder. Dislocation they said. Over the next few years it got so bad I could be driving and have to pull over until a wave of pain passed. I had limited motion, couldn't carry more than 5lb, etc. First doctor I saw said 'I don't give anything for chronic pain and btw it was probably an AC joint separation, not a dislocation' and sent me to physical therapy..... Which I did but they said sorry, PT won't fix this but we'll try.

Next doctor did the same deal. 'Do PT!' PT said after a few weeks no, this isn't gonna help. Doctor went sorry, can't do anything else for ya.

Moved to SC because I couldn't handle work anymore. Saw new doc there. He decided exploratory surgery was the only option because while he couldn't see what was wrong, he acknowledged something was.

Turned out the original injury healed bad and my shoulder socket was full of bone spurs, but due to the way the shoulder is....they couldn't be seen on MRI.

I love that man..if you're in the Greenville SC area and need an ortho surgeon, I will gladly find his name again. He acknowledged something was wrong and was willing to do what was needed to see it fixed.

Auspice

The imposter syndrome for this job is high. They have more acronyms than the military.

Upside is that it seems everyone goes through this 'Oh god I'm lost and I'm drowning and I don't know what I'm going to do' that everyone is super helpful and, knowing I'm new, will pause during meetings to explain what an acronym or company-specific term is.

...speaking of meetings I'll be averaging 4 hours worth a day at first.

silverfox

I need to plan for next year but since I'll be in a new grade and classroom I'm not quite sure exactly what to do solid.

I've a few things I can do, like buy some communal supplies at the sales. (I like them all having at least ONE notebook/folder the same color so I can say x-color and it is universally understood.) That said, I miss the days that Staples and OfficeDepot/Max ignored their limits on their sale items if you showed proof you were a teacher. Instead I spent today traveling to different stores so I could get a full class set plus extra for the kiddos I know I'll get mid-year so that they feel included from day one even if they don't have their supplies.

There is a book I usually reread too, but my students last year were so responsible packing up the classroom stuff on the last day that they totally packed up both of my copies and I can't get into the building till the 28th. Even then, I have been told that the teacher before me left a bunch of stuff in the room, PLUS the custodians dumped all of the stuff from my old room to the new room even if it was marked to stay. So I know I have a tooonnnn of work to get my room into working order and get my replacement's stuff back to her.

Basically, I want to go back to work. Summer is about 4 weeks too long for me.

Tinuviel

@silverfox said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Basically, I want to go back to work. Summer is about 4 weeks too long for me.

I feel this, man.

Ghost

Chef: It's called "Diablo Shrimp". It's spicy.

Me: "PFFFFFT whatevs."

Five minutes later...

Me: "HolyFuckMyLifeWTF..."

Alamias

@Ghost Sounds like my kind of place to eat, where spicy is actually spicy. Except the shrimp would kill me, so there is the downside.

ZombieGenesis

@ghost I was at the grocery store and got some sort of "Caliente" lays layered chips(like Pringles). I was like, "How hot could they be?" I have never had a spicier chip in my life. Granted, I haven't really done spicy food since I was a teenager but still...Jesus Christ.

Ghost

@Alamias @ZombieGenesis It's always surprising when something is WAY spicier than it looks/smells aint it?

Jesus christ. Thank god I have this coffee with cream in it. Proceeding more carefully now because it's tasty as Hell, just surprisingly hot.

Atomic

Damn, I miss spicy food. I moved to a hideously white place, and black pepper is considered spicy here.

Ugh.

Alamias

@Ghost I have the opposite problem where nothing is as spicy as it is made out to be/I want it. I am always asking to have things made extra hot and only once in a great while does it actually give me the amount of heat/spice I am looking for.

My family blames it on the fact my mom used to bast my crib in hot sauce because I would chew the wood on it. I started chewing on it more.

Ghost

@Alamias Hahaha. Ive often wondered if people like you (who can never seem to find spicy enough food) are like this because you've been conducting chemically corrosive warfare on your mouth all this time.