Posts by Patrick Filler
A Good Enough Engineer
Back to all blog posts
-
· Patrick Filler · TIL
TIL: Listen for JavaScript events only once!
A common thing I find myself doing in Javascript is adding some event driven behavior that I only want to happen once. Let’s say I have a big button that starts the process of lowering a certain spy into a pool of certain doom — I don’t want a second button press to awkwardly start him back at the top again!
-
Having Trouble Getting Started? Pair Up!
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force.
– Sir Isaac NewtonI often find that just getting started is the hardest part of doing something. This is especially true when the project is large or results take a long time to see.
A few years ago, I started talking about getting in shape but wasn’t really sure how to take that seriously. Occasional pickup basketball games with friends and leisurely bike rides with my wife were fun, but I was otherwise leading a mostly sedentary lifestyle. Doing any kind of exercise with consistency seemed impossibly tedious, so I didn’t!
Then, a minor disaster struck as I suffered a light tear in my calf muscle during a random Saturday morning basketball game.
-
Cool Songs Don’t Die
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing 22 years ago and ran for 5 seasons and was a pretty big hit and launched the careers of two bonafide movie stars and featured a cast of very well known supporting actors. So yeah, I finally got around to checking that out lol.
Turns out it was a very good pilot with more artfully executed twists and turns in 69 minutes than most thriller movies pull off in 2.5+ hours. Aside from the clothes and hair and technology, the show felt surprisingly modern — with the kind of editing and writing and acting that we've come to expect from big, prestige TV shows. I will watch more of it and I hope that quality holds up beyond episode 1!
Anywho, I’m writing about Alias because I wanted to share a little web search rabbit hole I went down after watching the episode.
-
PEOs are Good Enough (for us)
Hi, I’m Patrick. Good Enough brought me on as a part-time Operations Manager who basically does all the things that Shawn and Barry don’t want to do! My first task was to set up payroll for Good Enough’s three employees, something we thought would maybe be worth talking about!
If you intend to build a serious business, you’ll probably end up hiring some people. Once you’ve gotten over the exhilarating high of finding a perfect candidate, you’ll quickly realize that hiring someone has obligated you to legal and tax compliance whack-a-mole. There’s federal, state, and sometimes local (hello NYC!) rules that need to be followed just to keep someone on the payroll (and if your new hire is remote and resides out of state, don’t forget all the rules for that state). You’ll also get the ultimate American experience of providing healthcare for people who don’t really want you involved in their healthcare experience but who often have no better option.
All of this tedious bureaucracy might really sap the enthusiasm you had for your new custom dog stroller business. Don’t you wish you could just make someone else do all the bureaucratic stuff so you can focus on the latest in dog stroller trends? Maybe you can…