Things I Like

In my last post, I sketched out a new goal setting system I dreamed up loosely based the many, many systems I’ve tried in the past. However, I found I wanted a system which was more mental-health friendly, and—to be honest—a bit more fun! I used it to set my first quarter goals, and now that the quarter is half-way over, I thought I’d share some observations about how it’s going so far. Needless…

A lot of goal setting systems are very binary in their results, and rather unforgiving in their mindset. They don’t allow for things to change mid-stream, uncertainty during the initial goal selection process, or unexpected things causing set-backs. After trying lots of these systems, I started thinking about goal setting more like a party going on an adventure. Big Concepts The Adventure and…

Ever have the problem where a Vue.js computed property refuses to update? Maybe this is the problem...

I spent a few hours today trying to track down why a change password form I created wasn’t working. Ultimately, it turned out to be a surprising behavior from the way Vue.js (v2.6.14) computed properties are refreshed. First, let’s have a quick reminder about how computed properties work. Each computed property runs some code and returns a result as the current value of that property. Vue will…

Gamifying Empathy — How we developed a game to help our willfull son learn empathy and how to not drive us completely crazy.

My son was diagnosed with “high-functioning autism” when he was a toddler. For the purposes of this post, I want to focus on one specific aspect of what that means: a lack of empathy. Mostly though, I want to share a system we have invented to help him with it. First, let me explain a bit about what “lack of empathy” actually means in his case. In simple terms, it doesn’t naturally cross his mind…

The Quest for the Perfect Beatles Playlist

I needed a break from working the other day, so I decided to make a comprehensive Beatles playlist… all of their songs, in the order which best reflects the evolution of their work over time. It’s harder than it sounds.

The easy part is the full-length albums… but there’s still a little complexity there with “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road”. The former was recoded in Jan 1969, but not released…

A friend just posted this article describing a new racial outrage where a White woman called the police on a Black man for birdwatching. The woman seems pretty unhinged while the man seems cool and rational. Except, that's not what actually happened.

A friend just posted this article from NPR which describes a new racial outrage where a White woman called the police on a Black man for birdwatching. There’s even a video the man shot documenting the encounter. And, the woman does, indeed, seem pretty unhinged while the man seems very cool and rational. Except, that’s not actually what happened.

Someone else posted an article from the…

He tells the story as though its a funny anecdote, and everyone’s laughing, but you can still see how earnestly he wants you to hear him and really consider: why is everything white?

Thinking on this and similar subjects has made me make small changes in my own writing. For example, as I was previously thinking a lot about sexism, I started to write about “humans” or “people” instead of “men”…

When AWS says access denied, you may need permission way beyond what the API endpoint you're calling advertises.

I’m currently working on a feature for runbooks.app which allows users to upload images for their runbooks. I’m using the Python boto3 library to make a PutObject API requests. Simply provide the bytes, the target bucket, and object key, and you should be all set. However, to my considerable frustration, I spent most of the morning trying to figure out why I was getting this error:

botocore.…

There are several things I do in my technical interviews which I think make the experience quite a bit better than your average interview.

There are several things I do in my technical interviews which I think make the experience quite a bit better than your average interview.

The first step comes before the actual interview in selecting the technical question. I have a few which I’ve created myself based upon actual problems I faced as a professional developer. They are, of course, somewhat simplified to be able to fit into an…

I'm currently founding a company, and just purchased a new Go board. As I was explaining the principles of the game to my wife I was forcibly struck with the similarities to founding a company.

I’m currently about two months into founding a company, and, on an unrelated note, I just purchased my first really nice Go board (if you’re not familiar, you’ll probably want to read a bit about Go before continuing). It’s a new game to my wife, so I was explaining some of the basic principles to her this evening, and I was forcibly struck with the similarities to founding a company.

Opportunity…

Happy "coming out" day! Here are my reflections on having come out as bisexual nearly a year ago.

Today, October 11th, is National “Coming Out” day in the US. For those who don’t know, I bisexual. I came out publicly last year in this blog post. It’s been almost a year since then, and I thought it would be interesting to reflect back on what’s been like to have been “out” for a year.

Initial reactions

The initial reactions, much to my relief, were universally positive. There were…

My wife and I had some friends over for brunch recently. As it turns out, my wife and I are white, and our friends are black. And, as much as I admire their many accomplishments, I've realized I probably don't appreciate them as much as they deserve.

A few weekends ago, my wife and I had some friends over for brunch. We had an entirely delightful time. We made breakfast together, swapped stories, joked around, and had a completely wonderful morning. As it turns out, my wife and I are white, and our friends are black. And, as much as I enjoy their company and admire their many accomplishments, I’ve realized I probably don’t appreciate them as…

Quora: What was the hardest situation you’ve faced?

I’ve been doing most of my writing on Quora these days, which has meant, of course, that I’ve been writing a lot less here. I’m going to start cross-posting some of the longer and more interesting questions & answers here so that this blog doesn’t completely go idle.

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I was 25 years old. My son was less than two months old, and my wife was no longer working (to stay with him). We had…

Here's my step-by-step recipe to make building complex modpaks for Minecraft.

I’ve been a huge fan of Minecraft for about seven years now. However, the basic game, while fun for a while, does tend to lose its interest after a while. Fortunately, there’s a huge universe of free add-ons, called “mods”, created by the community at large. In fact, there are somany that you couldn’t possibly just add them all to your game. So, the question is, how do you select which ones…

What are our moral obligations to looking after ourselves: especially in a dangerous situation?

I’ve noticed this strange pattern of how people talk to one another about certain kinds of crimes: most especially rape against a female victim. The dialog usually starts with someone (almost always a man), saying something like “she was dressed too provocatively”, or “she shouldn’t have drunk so much”. This is immediately following by someone else (usually a woman) saying something like: “she…

A process is the means by which something gets done. Using that definition, if you get anything done at all, there was some process by which it happened. It could be good, bad, or just trial and error. It's still the way it got done.

As a software engineer, I’ve worked with a lot of different development processes over the years, and I’m a pretty big fan of a number of them. Also, as a Getting Things Done (GTD) fan and advocate, I have a pretty rigorous process I’ve imposed on myself for doing my daily work. However, I constantly hear my colleagues decry “process” as an unnecessary burden, and look to eliminate it whenever…