My Journey into Computing.
The first computer I ever owned was an HP Pavilion 7850 desktop tower that I picked up at a thrift store for $16 at the start of my Junior year of high school in the Fall of 2003.
Category: thoughts.
Batteries Redux.
Back to Basics.
A short while back, I picked up one of those newfangled folding phones so I could (ostensibly) read more. This purchase obviously went against my “single-purpose devices” and “offline-first technology” rules, but I got caught up in a wave of techno-consumerism that ended up inspiring additional purchases of new wireless...
You Are Not Your Impostor Syndrome.
Give yourself some credit. You’ve come a long way since your first job, and still have a long way to go until your last.
Shameless.
I have a confession to make: I fail a lot.
The Great Outdoors.
Anyone else tired of being shackled to a desk between the hours of 9 and 5 on a beautiful day?
Push Off.
Dear Marketing Teams,
Turn of the Century.
Ask anyone over the age of 30 when “the turn of the century” was, and I would wager that you are nearly as likely to get the year 1900 as you are 2000.
Buy Me a Coffee... or Don't.
I did it. I jumped on a bandwagon.
Batten Down the Hatches.
Whelp, I didn’t have to wait long before that “one last blizzard before spring” prediction actually came through.
Spring Forward.
One day in and I’m already exhausted.
Cylinder 3 Misfire Detected.
Just Not a "Math" Person.
How come, when a child struggles with literacy, nobody ever says I guess you’re just not a “Language Arts” person?
"For," Not "To".
This is happening for you, not to you.
How I Read.
I was at coffee with a close friend on Friday, and the subject of reading came up.
Techmento Mori.
I’ve written before about my love for thrift stores.
The Old Web Is a Slowly Decaying Corpse.
I recently added a link-checker to the deploy process for this website, and of the ~500 or so external links links I’ve added over my 13-ish years of posts, 10% of them were completely dead, a handful more hit unexpected error states (expired certs, timeouts, etc.), and I can’t even...
Stop Trying to Sell Me Shit.
Lately, it has become increasingly obvious to me that having the word “Director” in your job title—or anything that implies “decider” in an org chart, really—is a curse.
Authentically Speaking.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about authenticity.
Adopt-a-Nerd.
For the last 3 years or so, I’ve been volunteering to support the Computer Science curriculum at my neighborhood high school.
Portable Ergonomics.
Earlier this week, I wrote about digitizing and purging the extra shit I’ve accumulated over the years, but the reality is that some things just can’t be easily minimized—not that I’d want them to be… minimalism sounds exhausting.
Work-Life Imbalance.
I’ve always struggled with work-life balance.
Automation for Automation's Sake.
I have a confession to make: I fucking love automation.
Happy Halloween from 1998.
I know that I’ve written about this subject before, but can I just say that I love “obsolete” technology?
Self-Care Happens Offline.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything for myself.
YA'22R (Yet Another 2022 Retrospective).
If you follow a lot of personal blogs, I’m sure you are drowning in year-end roundups, retrospectives, and resolutions; I’m sorry to say, this one isn’t going to be much different. It’s such a clichéd post that, looking back on last year’s retrospective, I said almost exactly the same thing....
Chasing Imperfection.
A few Saturdays ago—the singular calm day I got between the chaos of Thanksgiving and the subsequent eternity two weeks of my entire family getting every seasonal illness under the sun—we went to a local holiday market (its first year back after being shut down by the pandemic). While it’s...
Thanks Be Unto...
I’ve never been good at expressing gratitude. It’s not so much that I’m ungrateful, because I’m incredibly thankful for my life and the people in it, but showing that gratitude hasn’t typically come naturally for me.
The Satisfaction of Fixing the Broken.
I’m not exactly what one would call “handy.”
Merit Badges for Grownups.
I was never a Boy Scout.
You Should Probably Go Donate Blood.
In case you are unaware, the US is currently experience a critical shortage of blood. That means that, at any moment, someone who needs a blood transfusion to survive is at risk of not receiving one. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that person could be...
My Grandfather Still Gets Typewritten Mail.
A short while ago, my grandfather took a spill and wound up in the hospital.
Breathing into Discomfort.
I’m attending KubeCon + CloudNativeCon this week—a technology conference focused on the free software that powers the world—and while there has been more to experience than any one person could possibly take in, there is one category of events that I’ve found to be both necessary and rewarding: Wellness.
Keep Calm and Comic Con.
I’m at Denver Comic Con Fan Expo this weekend. Actually… I’m sitting in my hotel room across the street right now, writing this post (which, despite how lame it might sound, sitting at a hotel desk at seven in the morning is turning out to be one of my favorite...
Balancing Parenthood and Startup Life.
I have two kids and, if I’m being honest, I’m tired all the time.
Embracing Offline-First Technology.
Remember when using The Internet was a chore? You had to wait for hours before the one family computer was free, and when you finally did get on it, everything was so damn slow you had no choice but to exercise a degree of patience no child should be capable...
I Hate My Smartphone.
I’ve written a bit before about how my relationship with technology has changed over the years, but one thing that has become abundantly clear to me is that the ubiquity of smartphones in our world has now made it impossible to live without one.
35 Lessons Learned in 35 Years.
It’s an odd quirk of life that the older you get, the less you feel like you know. A decade ago, you wouldn’t have been able to convince me that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was, but now you’d have a hard time convincing me of the...
2021: The Retrospective.
Welcome to my 2021 retrospective!
From the Kitchen of...
About two years ago, just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down, my grandmother passed away.
What's in a Narrator?
I started listening to Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” audiobook today, and I have to say that Ray Porter is the single-best audiobook narrator in the business. The guy brings so much personality to his work that there is a marked difference between reading a book yourself and listening to...
Take the Scenic Route.
Last year, right near the beginning of the pandemic, my family and I started enjoying going on drives. Nothing was open, so there wasn’t really anywhere to go, but we have the benefit of living in an area with a lot of nature to take in. While we occasionally parked...
Life Is Too Short to Waste Time.
“There is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.” — Marcus Aurelius
What Our Children Deserve.
This is a collection of thoughts that started formulating in my head towards the end of the last year. With everything that has happened recently—global pandemic, political violence, racial injustice, tiger king—I’ve been feeling a fair amount of anxiety over the world we are leaving for our children.
Get a Typewriter. Write a Friend.
A few years ago, I picked up this 1941 Royal Arrow typewriter at the local antique store. Originally, the plan for this beautiful piece of machinery was to use it to decorate my home office, but then 2020 happened. A few months into this godawful year, I picked my typewriter...
Convenience Is Making Me Lazy and Poor.
Spotify. Hulu. Netflix. Amazon Prime. Evernote. Dropbox. Google Apps. iCloud. Stop me when you get the point. There was a time in my life where I did everything the hard way. Not because I was inefficient, or stupid, but because it provided me opportunities to learn a ton about how...