Ask HN: What are you trying to accomplish?

I'd like to have enough money that I can provide the sort of life my parents gave me to my kids. Even though I went to college on a near full-ride, my parents were ready to pay out of pocket for tuition if need be. Even though I worked from the time I was 15 on, my parents never required me to - school was my job. Even though I probably could have gotten into a good college with a public school education (and the schools where I lived weren't great by any stretch), my parents homeschooled me and then paid for me to go to the best school in the area when I knew more than they could teach. As I've grown older, I realize what a great advantage that was, and I'd like to give my kids the same. Even if they don't do anything with that chance, I don't ever want anyone to be able to say "yeah, Barton - but you didn't do <blank> for your kids."

That's my paramount goal. I have subordinate goals to that, but they're expendable given the greater good. For instance I'd like to get better at math and eventually get an M.S. in math of some sort to complement my M.S. in CS. That would open the door to what I consider more interesting work, but there's no guarantee it would be higher paying than the sort of work I do now. I'd also like to eventually run my own business doing work in scientific computing or some other highly technical arena, but that entails a degree of risk that makes it more of an endgame plan for me. I'd like to finish the marathon I was training for before I tore my PCL in 2005, but I don't have the time in my life now for the training regimen I was on (75 miles a week). I'd like to be fluent in Latin again like I was 5 years ago, but again - there's too few hours in the day for something that doesn't get me closer to my primary goal. I'd like to get what I assume is a case of mild Asperger's under control so that I can be a better husband to my wife and so I don't have to live in near-constant fear that I'm not being emotionally available enough.

Since I don't know anyone well who has died, I'd like to make peace with death. The wisest person I know is my grandfather, who has a Ph. D in aeronautical engineering from Stanford, taught math there for a while and contributed to the analysis of the Tacoma Narrows disaster (he worked out some aspects of a phenomenon called flutter in his dissertation). He solves the cryptograms in the paper almost by sight and does the New York Times crossword without writing answers down - his solutions are kind of a zero-knowledge proof where you just ask him enough clues until you're satisfied his answers are consistent and correct. I have seen him read the answer to a cryptogram nearly as easily as if it were English. He's 85, and I am perpetually astonished at how sharp his mind is. It's going to be an enormous loss when he eventually passes, and frankly I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the fact that, when he goes, all that knowledge and skill will be gone as well. I need to figure that out.

I've got lots to live up to, and lots to accomplish.

Big scale: Trying to move out to California and work as a software engineer at a start-up or one of the big companies. I am a sophomore in college on the east coast, any advice or suggestions?

Small Scale: Become a better rock climber

Trying to figure out what to accomplish.

So my deal is: I'm a 23yo CS student, hopefully getting my masters degree summer 2012. I've been employed as a (part time) student programmer at a GTS* institute for almost 3 years now. Fantastic place to work for a student, as I'm not just a codemonkey stuck away in the basement: I actually get to talk to clients and users, get an equal say in discussions (technical/architectural as well as non-technical/design), work with anthropologists, the financial-guys etc. and get a fair amount of responsibility (depending on the project). Working part time as probably had a small (negative) effect on my grades, but I wouldn't trade what I've learned at this job for straight A's (and I hope that my future employees feel the same way).

My first "problem" is to figure out what I want to write my thesis on. I'm fairly certain it will be in the HCI field, but that is as close as it gets right now.

A bit more long-term: I feel like I have all the opportunities in world, all roads are open.. I just don't known which one to take. Two things I know though: 1) I don't want to end up as a non-technical project manager, only pushing paper and not writing a single line of code. On the other hand (2) I don't want to only be a programmer---I love developing, but I need other challenges too. I've considered staying at my current company (upgrade the job-title though), but on the other hand I feel like the world must be bigger than that, and that I need to see it. If I can get an idea I'll be burning 112% for, I'd like to do a startup.

It is frustrating to no end, not knowing what I want to accomplish.

*GTS institute: non-profit, government authorized research institute. Clients are private businesses and public (inter)national authorities.

Big: NO idea. 19, soon to be 20, year old college student. I'd like to make some money, but I haven't made up my mind up yet. Maybe apply for YC if I have good people to work with in a few years.

Small: See how far I can take treeowls.com. Learn how to make pretty websites. Win back a major business project a professor has tried to steal from me. Get through freshman year.

Also: making a billion dollars is easier than eating "healthier". At least with the money you have a set numerical value. 110% guarantee: anybody who tries to eat "healthier" will never keep it up for forever.

Small scale: get out of bed earlier. It might sound as a weird goal, but it really does make me feel good when I get out of bed at 6 instead of 7 (I leave for work at 8.) Taking time for breakfast/slow start of the day is amazing.

Big scale: build discipline. I feel like all my problems would be solved if I only had some more discipline.

The end of sales and marketing.

Big Scale: Build an organization that is capable of doing crazy shit (e.g. software company that opens a school) with the time flexibility built in to imagine/execute on crazy shit.

The fundamental requirement for doing this is that you make enough revenue off of certain products/services to allow you to feel comfortable doing crazy shit, and have enough staff that are well paid that no one is scared of losing their job by doing crazy shit.

You also probably have to avoid investors, as they may not like you doing crazy shit. It's possible that they'll be ok with it, but not likely. Of course this makes it harder to build the company up to a point where it's making enough revenue to do crazy shit.

Anyways, I've gotten started on it: http://www.irrationaldesign.com - but it's slow going...