Blog · 104 posts
Notes on technology, leadership,
and the systems behind both.
March 2026
3 posts
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Mar 16From Chaos to Clarity: My Personal Task SystemI’ve tried a lot of task systems over the years. Most of them failed for the same reason: they required too much care and feeding. Too many categories, too many...
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Mar 09You Can Just Do ThingsI have to keep reminding myself of something simple: you can just do things. No one is stopping you from signing up for that class, trying that new restaurant,...
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Mar 02February 2026 ReviewThe headline: The Winter Olympics were a fun distraction this month.Going into the Winter Olympics, I had a few teams I was especially excited to follow.The Uni...
February 2026
5 posts
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Feb 23When Technology Stops Making Us SmarterTechnology isn’t making us stupid. But the way we’re using it might be.The real problem isn’t innovation itself. It’s the quiet shift from using technology to r...
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Feb 16Book Review: Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AINexus by Yuval Noah Harari is one of those books that sneaks up on you. It starts comfortably, tracing how humans have always organized themselves around inform...
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Feb 09Consistency Is Key to Building TrustI think a lot about trust and how I’m perceived by the people I manage and the peers I work alongside. Not in a self conscious way, but in a practical one. Trus...
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Feb 05Book Review: Engineering Management for the Rest of UsI recently finished Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner and it immediately earned a spot on my short list of books I recommend to enginee...
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Feb 02January 2026 ReviewThe headline: Trying to stay above water.This year really kicked off with a violent occupation of armed forces in Minneapolis being overtaken ramping up and mur...
January 2026
2 posts
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Jan 20Upgrading to Statamic 6I’ve been playing with the Statamic 6 beta, and I even pushed it live on this blog. It’s currently in beta 3, but it already feels far snappier than I expected....
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Jan 182025 Review2026 hit the ground running, so I didnt get to push this post out at the beginning of the year like I wanted to. But here is a little reflection post from m 202...
December 2025
2 posts
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Dec 29Two Sentences a DayI’ve been journaling for a long time. Like most habits worth keeping, my relationship with it has been on and off.For more than twelve years, I’ve been adding e...
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Dec 08November 2025 ReviewSeemed like all the travel that I’ve done this year has crept into November (and December), with holidays, on-sites and a couple brief getaways. It’s also the t...
November 2025
2 posts
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Nov 26The Dopamine of DoneThere’s something about crossing even the smallest thing off your list. Closing a tab. Shipping a tiny change. It gives you a pulse of momentum.With a long holi...
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Nov 04October 2025 ReviewThe entirety of October, the US government has been shut down. Starting in November, the republicans have decided to not fund SNAP, which feeds 42 million peopl...
October 2025
4 posts
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Oct 27Making Feedback LandFollowing up on the last post where I talked about over communicating, I want to share a tool I use when critical feedback is not landing.When I give critical f...
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Oct 22If It’s Worth Communicating, Do It TwiceIf something’s worth communicating, do it twice.Once to inform. Once to confirm.Leaders often share something important once, in a Slack post, in an email, or a...
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Oct 13The Quiet Side of Leadership: Listening, Observing, DecidingLeadership isn’t always loud. It’s not just the team speeches, the bold calls, or the product launches that make an impact. More often, it’s found in the quiet...
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Oct 06Book Review: Product DrivenProduct Driven is a refreshing read for engineering leaders who are looking to shift your team’s perspective on shipping code and thinking about outcomes for th...
September 2025
1 post
August 2025
3 posts
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Aug 20The AI We Were PromisedWhy aren’t we using AI for everything?If you look around, it seems like every product and headline has AI baked in. But has it really changed much in your daily...
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Aug 05July 2025 ReviewLike clockwork, got really busy and didn’t publish a lot in June. but im back now in July.This month’s theme was primarily about organizing projects, collecting...
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Aug 01Book Review: The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ERI read The Emergency with a knot in my stomach.Thomas Fisher writes from inside a South Side ER at the height of the pandemic but what makes this book hit harde...
July 2025
4 posts
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Jul 29The Joy of Building for an Audience of OneThere’s something special about building a tool that only you will use. No roadmap, no backlog, no user feedback loops. Just a problem, an idea, and the curiosi...
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Jul 22Scope Tiny, Ship AnywayI see a lot of engineers, including myself, let an idea run loose and balloon until we don't even want to work on it anymore. We start optimizing for multi...
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Jul 18The Best Journals Are BoringI've always wanted to be someone who journals in physical books, leather bound with nice thick pages. But for some psychological reason, I always felt like...
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Jul 15Popovers Make Me Leave Your StoreI'm so sick with ecommerce sites that interrupt my product research with intrusive full screen popovers. I don't want to sign up for a newsletter for...
June 2025
1 post
May 2025
8 posts
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May 30Book Review: Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI FutureFinished Superagency by Reid Hoffman this week, and it’s one of the more thoughtful takes on AI I’ve read lately. It’s not about the hype or the doom, but inste...
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May 27Syncing Data to Notion with in Laravel 12I’ve got a pretty dialed-in Notion system where I track daily metrics and roll them up by week, month, and year. It’s definitely a nerdy habit, but honestly, I...
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May 23What I’ve Been Learning This YearI’ve always been someone who reads a lot across different topics. I think of it as passive learning. I take in ideas, try to connect them, and build context for...
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May 20The No-Code Trade: Speed vs. Control and PrivacyNo-code tools have opened up a whole new way to build. You can stitch together an MVP in a weekend, test a concept with real users, and move fast without writin...
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May 16Pause and Silence: Learning to Be Present AgainLast week, I wrote about how carving out focus time as a manager helps me lead better. It gives me space to think, see the bigger picture, and be proactive inst...
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May 09Less Meetings, More Meaning: Protecting Focus TimeAs a manager, my calendar doesn’t really belong to me. I’m hopping from 1:1s to planning meetings to reviews to unexpected “got a sec?” pings. It’s a blur of co...
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May 06Retention Starts With CommunicationThere’s a lot of energy spent on growth. Marketing budgets, product launches, funnels, onboarding flows. And don’t get me wrong—getting people in the door matte...
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May 02April 2025 ReviewI started blogging again this month, dusting off the old blog and updating its platform and design to version 7. I'm sharing thoughts about leadership, eng...
April 2025
6 posts
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Apr 25Leadership That Goes Beyond the Mission — A Lesson From MoonshotI recently finished reading Moonshot by Mike Massimino, and one quote in particular has stuck with me: “Admire and care for everyone on your team.” It’s decepti...
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Apr 22Don’t Build Monuments — Build MomentumThis year, our golden retriever puppy has been the ultimate reminder of a lesson I’ve preached for years: take the first step first. Progress matters more than...
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Apr 18Book Review: The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American TownBrian Alexander’s The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town is a sobering, deeply human look into the quiet collapse of rural healthcare i...
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Apr 14Modern Gaming Frustrations: A User's PerspectiveI recently bought an Xbox Series X. I haven’t gamed seriously since the Xbox 360, but with the next Grand Theft Auto dropping this year, I figured I’d get ahead...
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Apr 10Laravel 11+ Cache Strategy ChangesAs I fired up the blog machine again—upgrading Laravel from 9 to 12 and Statamic from 4 to 5—it didn’t take long to hit some pretty big bumps. Turns out, a quic...
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Apr 06Blogging, AgainI think it's time to start blogging again. I have a backlog of things to write about, including book reviews, music and video recommendations, technical co...
June 2023
3 posts
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Jun 21Just ListenI've been in a lot of frustrating meetings during my career, and many of them have one major problem in common: the participants are talking, not listening...
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Jun 14You Don't Have To Be First, Just BestApple introduced the Apple Vision Pro last week to some mixed reviews. But it reminded me of all the other products they’ve introduced over the years that redef...
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Jun 07May 2023 ReviewOver the month, I have been working a lot on this product launch for June. It’s meant a lot of later nights and working through lunch. I have been pretty burned...
May 2023
5 posts
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May 31Predictable, AccountableOver the past few years, people I've worked with have heard me talk at length about my two pillars for building and maintaining high-performing teams. This...
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May 24Quick BreakIts been a very stressful and busy last couple weeks leading up to this product launch. I intended to post about my management framework: Predictability, Accoun...
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May 17Make a Better ProductA common occurrence nowadays is businesses complaining about shrinking customer bases, while simultaneously raising prices for everything. Restaurants, theaters...
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May 10TrustI've been reflecting on partnerships, both personal and professional. As I evaluate my interactions and categorize them as positive or negative, I've...
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May 03April 2023 ReviewApril is usually a fast month, but this one was measured in how many 15 minute meetings I could add to my work calendar. Gearing up for a product launch can be...
April 2023
4 posts
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Apr 26Staying Organized 2In 2020, I wrote about my process for staying organized and my goal of keeping things simple. In that post, I outlined several tools I used and how I used them....
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Apr 21More About AIIts been a really busy week, so I didn’t get to finish my follow up on staying organized. I promise to publish that one soon.I recently wrote about AI and how I...
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Apr 12Journaling 2In 2020 I wrote a post about journaling and how I benefit from the simple act of writing things down at the end of the day. I’ve talked to a lot of people about...
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Apr 05March 2023 ReviewIt seems like this month was only two weeks long. I was on call a lot this month, and that meant staying around the house more, so I got a good amount of readin...
March 2023
5 posts
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Mar 29AI isnt ready to run the business…yetThere is a lot of talk about how AI is going to disrupt many industries, and that's true. However, what I'm seeing is companies wanting to hand over a...
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Mar 22How I Use Notion For OnCall RotationsBeing on call for incidents can be incredibly stressful. You can be paged at any time of day or night, especially because there is a critical system performing...
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Mar 15Team CastlesI work at a large company with many teams, departments, and even sub-properties under the company umbrella. When working on large software projects, it's i...
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Mar 08RechargeIt's been a pretty stressful few months for me, which has forced me to be intentional about the time I spend on things outside of work. When work is draini...
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Mar 01February 2023 ReviewFebruary was a really tough month for a lot of reasons at work and in personal life, too. Despite the challenges, I started to write about my Notion templates I...
February 2023
4 posts
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Feb 22How I Use Notion to Manage PeopleLast week I wrote about how I use Notion to manage my work week and talked a little bit about the way I have my database set up for TODOs and Notes that feed in...
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Feb 15How I Use Notion to Manage My Work WeekI attribute much of my success to my ability to organize my thoughts, tasks, and notes for future reference. My systems have changed over the years as my duties...
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Feb 08GoalsAt the end of 2022, as in previous years, I took some time to reflect on the year that had passed. I wrote down my thoughts on what I wanted to achieve in the c...
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Feb 01January 2023 ReviewI'm back to blogging and posting weekly. I had a great start to 2023, reflecting and setting personal and work goals. Despite a rough economic outlook for...
January 2023
4 posts
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Jan 25How I Keep Track of My BooksI love to read, and I want to keep notes and other data about the things I read. I wanted a privacy-focused, non-Amazon solution like Goodreads, something fast...
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Jan 18Focus More, Notify LessSomething that has been helping me reduce my screen time is limiting the number of notifications that reach my screen. After auditing my notification settings,...
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Jan 11UnsubscribeA journey of taking control of all the emails, notifications and personal data leakage that has happened over the year, I have been trying to unsubscribe from a...
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Jan 04Laravel Performance RefactorIntroductionIn October 2022 wanting to rapidly produce some new reports I felt constrained by the code I had mindlessly wrote over the last couple of years. So...
December 2022
3 posts
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Dec 28Don't Be AmazonWhile I have been cleaning up my emails and unsubscribing from as many things as possible, I noticed a recent uptick in amazon notifications coming to my phone....
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Dec 21Books I Loved in 2022Every year, I set a goal for number of books and topics to read. This year, my goal was 52 books - or one per week - and topics ranged from the usual scifi to s...
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Dec 14Version 6RelaunchIn 2020 I rebuilt my blog and started to post regularly. I wrote about technology I was working on with using Laravel and Tailwind. I wrote tips on how...
May 2021
1 post
April 2021
1 post
February 2021
1 post
December 2020
1 post
November 2020
4 posts
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Nov 25Mobile Experiences Are ShitWhats your favorite app on your phone to use daily? Is it because of the design, or the way yo get the information?I think about this frequently, how the design...
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Nov 18Ongoing FeedbackMany companies will have end of year reviews for all employees. Its a big production, getting self evaluations, peer reviews and manager reviews. Staple them up...
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Nov 11October 2020 UpdatesI can’t believe October is already gone. Its been about 11 months since I saw my family and friends in person.I picked back up my instruments and recording equi...
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Nov 02The Value of Keeping Your Phone OffThis week is election week in the US, and I am not putting out a regular piece of content because I need a break away from technology. I have been doom scrollin...
October 2020
4 posts
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Oct 28Focus on DepthEarly in my career I had trouble focusing on building my skill set in a single area. I wanted to do everything. I wanted to design the best looking, trendiest g...
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Oct 21Hard Things Are Hard, But That's OKPeople, teams, companies, relationships all go though hard times. I always think about a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt."A smooth sea never made a skille...
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Oct 14PrivacyI have been thinking a lot about privacy in technology. Then I watched Social Dilemma and made me think we are in a little more of a hole than I originally thou...
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Oct 07JournalingI don’t hide the fact that I journal. It is an incredibly powerful tool I use everyday that helps me grow, learn and remember things that is going on in the wor...
September 2020
5 posts
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Sep 30September 2020 UpdatesWhat a blur, I can’t believe it’s already October. We are just about a month away from the US presidential elections. If you are able to, please exercise your r...
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Sep 23Managing StressIts been a pretty busy last couple months with ups and downs both at work and in life. It’s easy to feel like the world is crumbling beneath us. The US is on fi...
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Sep 16Somehow I (Remotely) ManageStealing the management book name from Michael Scott, of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, formerly of Michael Scott's Paper Company, I wanted to share my thou...
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Sep 09Team AgreementsIf you have the luxury of starting a new team, or evolving a team overtime, you might want to try collaborating with the team on a working agreement. I call the...
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Sep 02August 2020 UpdatesThis month was wrapping up a big project at work. Tying up loose ends and getting some time off. I took an extra long weekend and got away to a secluded area wh...
August 2020
4 posts
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Aug 26Going Above and BeyondI want to tell you a little story about why I chose Hover as my domain registrar and a lesson I learned about going above and beyond for customers and potential...
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Aug 19Anything You Need From Me?At the end of each 1-1 I ask the same set of questions. No matter where the conversation has taken us, I want to be sure to leave open a couple minutes to ask a...
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Aug 12What Makes You Grumpy?I stole this question from Lara Hogan who took it from someone else. I think it’s such an awesome question to kick off a new relationship as a manager and I hav...
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Aug 05July 2020 UpdatesJuly was a pretty busy month for me, the weeks seemed to fly by in a blur. But as I think back, I don’t really have any big updates that seem worthy if a monthl...
July 2020
5 posts
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Jul 29Getting out for a walk to clear your headDespite the obvious reasons of health and exercise, taking a walk outside also helps clear your head and de-stress. Getting fresh air is actually good for you.A...
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Jul 22Enable Dark Mode in TailwindcssA couple weeks ago, I wrote a tutorial how to install Tailwind on Laravel. This will be the base of where we add dark mode support to our website.Dark Mode?Like...
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Jul 15Staying OrganizedYou’re only as efficient as the process you employ. When things get stressful and deadlines loom, you should be able to rely on your organizational system to he...
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Jul 08Code Reviews: Dont Be a JerkIn 2019 I gave a talk about code reviews to the Chicago PHP group. At the time, a part of my job was to facilitate code reviews for my teams and teach good prac...
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Jul 01June 2020 UpdatesMonthly I am going to give an overall update on things I’ve been doing. Posts, books, links, and more. It’s been quite a month. It’s been a pretty jarring coupl...
June 2020
4 posts
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Jun 24Adding Tailwindcss to Laravel 7Almost any time I spin up a new laravel app, I also install tailwind to enable me to move fast with my views. What is Tailwindcss?Tailwind is a utility-first CS...
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Jun 17Breakdown of Stack Overflow's 2020 Developer Survey ResultsEvery year Stack Overflow conducts a developer survey to get the pulse of their community. The questions range from technologies, salary, school and more. Over...
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Jun 10Look Ma, I'm Blogging AgainI have flirted with blogging for years, and when I first started coding, I would also blog about my learnings. Its something I fell out of practice with and the...
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Jun 07Space X and The American AstronautsAlong with many others, I have watched SpaceX grow up as a company. Launching rockets into the sky, delivering cargo to the International Space Station, landing...
January 2018
1 post
December 2016
1 post
November 2016
1 post
May 2016
1 post
January 2016
1 post