I 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, engineering, and other topics. Previously, I felt blocked by trying to write content that would be universally useful. Now, I'm focused on sharing ideas that might interest someone—anyone at all.

Working on the design and updating dependencies gave me a fun return to web development. It highlighted how much has changed since 2009, when I used to write CSS and HTML daily. Back then, jQuery was the dominant JavaScript framework (unless you were using Flash animations).

Posts

• Blogging, Again

• Laravel 11+ Cache Strategy Changes

• Modern Gaming Frustrations: A User's Perspective

• Book Review: The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town

• Don’t Build Monuments — Build Momentum

• Leadership That Goes Beyond the Mission — A Lesson From Moonshot

Books

• Do/ Reset - small book about meditation from the people over at dobooks. Great little book to set the stage for the practice and the reason why I’ve been thinking about simplifying and focusing more.

• Fahrenheit-182 - Memoir from one of my favorite musicians and the reason I like to play the bass guitar. His fight with cancer and the band conflicts were really interesting to read about.

• Homelessness Is a Housing Problem - Cities with the most expensive and constrained housing markets (like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) have the highest rates of homelessness—not because they have more people with personal challenges, but because they have fewer places for low-income people to live.

• The Hospital - Wrote a review on this one, really wild to see how a single hospital network in a small area in Ohio is a reflection of the larger healthcare system and how it fails us.

• Mean People Suck - Empathy in the workplace leads to stronger teams, more innovation, and higher performance—while meanness breeds disengagement and mediocrity.

• Moonshot - Leadership lessons from an astronaut. I wrote a quick piece about this too.

Links

• The Hidden Cost of AI Coding - AI tools increase productivity, they may lead to a more passive work experience, reducing the feeling of deep engagement or "flow" that many developers cherish.

• The gap between developers’ ideal and actual workdays - Understanding the ideal vs. actual workweek can help leaders make informed decisions to support developer work and guide future AI tool development.

• Operationalizing developer productivity metrics - Combining qualitative and quantitative data provides a more comprehensive understanding of productivity and improvement opportunities

• Being in the details - Being in the details is not synonymous with micromanagement; it is crucial for accountability and understanding the progress of key projects.

Other

• Completed a Data Engineering course at the University of Chicago—an 8-week program covering SQL, NoSQL, Neo4j, database diagrams, Tableau dashboards, and more. It was rewarding to deepen my knowledge in an area I work with daily.

• Started journaling daily again, building a habit of writing down my thoughts to clear my mind before bed. It's helping me process and understand the challenges I'm working through subconsciously.

• My puppy continues to keep me busy with training and cuddling, while letting me see the world through his curious eyes.