The Right Time To Hire?
Trying to figure out the right time to bring on additional help is like trying to time the stock market. If you are trying to grow, hire someone when you can afford it and fire them quickly if it’s not working out. In general you should expect to seriously interview 2-3 people for a position (outside of upper management which is a whole different ball game).
November 24, 2023Limiting the number of emails you get from Django Logger
As someone who still uses email to get 500 errors on their Django project sometimes you’ll wake up to 1000 emails when things go haywire. Seems to happen more often when your sever goes down, late night commits that you didn’t properly vet, etc. This has happened a bit more than I would like over the past couple months and today my sendgrid bill came out to 400$ so I had to make a small change. Below is the code I used to essentially limit how often I could get a traceback email from my django project in a specified interval.
LOGGING = { ‘version’: 1, ‘disable_existing_loggers’: False, ‘handlers’: { ‘console’: { ‘level’: ‘INFO’, ‘class’: ‘logging.StreamHandler’, ‘stream’: stdout, }, ‘mail_admins’: { ‘level’: ‘ERROR’, ‘class’: ‘main.adminemailhandler.RateLimitedAdminEmailHandler’, },
}, ‘loggers’: { ‘django’: { ‘level’: ‘WARNING’, ‘handlers’: [‘console’, ‘mail_admins’], ‘propagate’: False, }, ‘main’: { ‘level’: ‘INFO’, ‘handlers’: [‘console’], }, } }
Admin Email Handler
import time
from django.core.cache import cache
from django.utils.log import AdminEmailHandler
import settings
class RateLimitedAdminEmailHandler(AdminEmailHandler): def emit(self, record): if cache.get(‘error_email_rate_limit’) is None: cache.set(‘error_email_rate_limit’, 0, timeout=360) rate_info = 0 else: rate_info = cache.get(‘error_email_rate_limit’)
if int(rate_info) < int(settings.EMAIL_LIMIT_PER_HOUR):
super().emit(record)
cache.set(‘error_email_rate_limit’, rate_info + 1, timeout=360) else: pass
November 11, 2023One Reason to Not Sell Your Business
It always irks me when people use the phrase, “as long as their money is green.” This is probably some of the worst advice you can get when selling a business. No matter how comprehensive and tight-clad your purchase agreement might seem, do not sell to someone incompetent with money. They will bombard you with questions, flood your inbox with emails, waste your precious time, and in the worst-case scenario, killsue you. Don’t want to follow this advice? Well at least include these in your purchase agreements:
Post-sale support. Clearly define the scope of any support you’ll provide after the sale. Limit the number of days you’re available, as well as the hours per week you’re willing to dedicate to this assistance.
List all assets included in the sale specifically.
List everything ‘as-is’. Make it explicit that you’re selling everything ‘as-is.’ It’s the buyer’s responsibility to conduct their due diligence. You shouldn’t be held accountable for any issues they discover post-sale that they could have identified beforehand.
Outline how you should be compensated if the deal falls through. Whether it’s through a non-refundable deposit or another form of financial assurance.
If the deal doesn’t materialize, stipulate that you expect everything to be returned to its original state, ensuring you’re not left to pick up the pieces if things go south.
How to Stay Pseudonymous on the Internet: Part 1 - Crypto
This is a working guide on how to stay Pseudonymous on the internet. These parts have no chronological order. These instructions will not make you anonymous. I won’t be talking about how obvious it is that using a vpn, crypto, using social media, etc provides signals for tracking you.
Get yourself bitcoin or another cryptocurrency so that you can make payments online.
Back when bitcoin first came onto the scene localbitcoins.com was easily the safest way to purchase bitcoin.
So what are the other options?
There is no difference between running a good business and a bad business
One of the longest lessons it took me to learn is that there is no difference between running a good business and bad business. When you look at a business from a very high level there are 3 universal components:
People give you money, you provide a service. There are 2 costs associated with providing that service. The cost of acquiring a customer and the cost of providing that service. When Profits from service provided > Customer Acquisition + Overhead you are winning….
Are you though?
You could launch a platform for people to journal daily, a tool for downloading YouTube videos, or a system that converts speech into text. Sure, these can yield profits, but they might demand as much of your time, energy, and resources as a business with the potential to rake in 7 or 8 figures.
Where do you want to invest your time?
The distinction between a “good” and a “bad” business isn’t just about financial gain. It’s about the potential for growth, scalability, and personal fulfillment. It’s about pursuing a venture that aligns with your long-term vision and goals. Why settle for short-term profitability when you can invest in a venture that gets you excited to wake up every morning.
September 15, 2023Tutor Arbitrage
The basic idea revolves around using platforms like Chegg, StudyPool, and SchoolSolver to establish yourself as a reputable tutor. By building a positive reputation and earning high ratings, you increase your visibility and demand. As your reputation grows, instead of doing all the tutoring yourself, you hire people from sites like Upwork or Freelancer to complete assignments at a much lower rate. Your role then becomes ensuring quality control and pocketing the difference. Easy way to earn money?
I used this same approach with YouTube views, likes, etc., in the early days of social media.
August 29, 2023