Wednesday, April 16, 2025
I’m the proud parent of two kids on the Autism spectrum. I love my kids. I love them as they are. I love the way they think. I love being a part of their lives. And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can go fuck himself. Stay the fuck away from my kids, and stop thinking they’re a fucking problem you brain-worm infested moron needs to fix. It doesn’t matter if they never pay taxes.
Spent the first day of a new year clearing out from under four years or so of email cruft.
Also lined up some todos, set up some email clients and cleared the decks to start building some things this year.
By the end of 2025:
LFG!
Software engineers solve problems for a living.
If you don’t give them interesting problems and leave them bored, they’ll manufacture their own.
Then you end up with Kubernetes, React, things of that nature.
And that’s the best case.
Having to break out my rusty sales deck skills for a presentation next week.
Kinda like the direction things are heading.
gulp Just registered to run the Indy Mini - a half marathon that ends with a loop of The Indianapolis Motor Speedway - next year.
Still weird to think of doing that - running more than 13 miles - when it also feels so doable.
My long runs each week are halfway there already and growing steadily.
I’m so incredibly proud of my son, Benjamin.
He’s worked really hard his freshman year in high school and came away with an unreal number of academic awards (11, I think?) at the end of the school year.
And it’s a huge school! His class is the size of my entire high school.
So proud and amazed.
Happy “Your options expire today” to all who celebrate!
Served as a good reminder this morning of how far I’ve come on self-sustainability in such a short time since being laid off.
Still ramping up my running post-holidays and work drama, but did my first 5k of the year at the Donut Dash and clocked my second-fastest time: 32:45.
Great fun.
So, I made a thing. It’s a fairly useless thing, but I wanted somewhere to link to from the footer of my blog and other future things, so I went and made a thing to link to.
To say I’m not using AI to generate my content.
Sent my first email newsletter (not from here, but buttondown) in a good long while and nobody has unsubscribed yet!
Bits about AI, coffee, and software engineering hiring.
It’s hard to not take rejection personally. And both searching for a job and trying to spin up a consulting business come with a lot of rejection.
Rough couple of days for that.
Nothing a run followed by a Culver’s double won’t fix, though.
Probably.
Fired up a new home for my software engineering management writings and cut it back to the bare essentials for now.
First up: As a manager, it’s your job to communicate context, even the “obvious” stuff.
Experimented with my aeropress recipe, changing the water from 180 to 185.
And was astonished by the difference. In a bad way!
Said recipe:
20 grams coffee - 8.5 on encore grinder 180-deg water (third wave classic) 100 grams water. Stir 100 grams water. Plug, wait 2min Plunge. Fill with hot water
Saturday, February 3, 2024
In a recent life, I used to joke that I was in charge of all the “creepy stuff” at a Marketing Technology startup. I was a product manager in charge of things like identifying anonymous visitors, intent (more on this soon) and advertising targeting. I helped build systems which would take an ip address, triangulate it between different sources of identification and settle on what company or account to attribute it to in a world at the time where most everybody was working from home.
Life is funny sometimes.
Was laid off from a company ~two weeks ago.
Picked up a consulting client and the engagement starts today.
They’re located in the exact same coworking location.
At least I know where the coffee is!
Anyway!
New folder created: shipping_news
Fiddling around with something new since I have a few.
Spending the evening rummaging through my old personal projects to see if there’s anything interesting and salvageable in here.
Some folder names:
Can only vaguely remember what some of those are …
I was laid off today, but before then I had written down as a goal for this year to build at least two non-day-job income streams.
Thinking:
Have time now to make progress on some of these alongside job applications.
A parting message from the dwindling moments of 2023.
Happy New Year, folks! Let’s make it a good one with plenty of cheer.
Day 12 of the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies, featuring my daughter’s favorites: Black and White Rolly Balls.
Another family recipe that I might write up later - but these are dangerously good and might not last for the big man in a few days.
Now, a break before prepping cinnamon rolls on the Eve.
