May has been rainy, dry and all around busy. I have spent a lot of my free time diving into code, learning new things and building small utilities for myself, relearning technology and rekindling my passion for engineering.

I’ve written more about some of the things I’ve been thinking about and facing in management lately, as well as dusted off some older stuff from my notes, like my post on no-code and why its risky to reach for these tools to start your business.

Posts

• April 2025 Review

• Retention Starts With Communication

• Less Meetings, More Meaning: Protecting Focus Time

• Pause and Silence: Learning to Be Present Again

• The No-Code Trade: Speed vs. Control and Privacy

• What I’ve Been Learning This Year

• Syncing Data to Notion with in Laravel 12

• Book Review: Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future

Books

• Meru - A pretty fun little scifi book by SB Divya. Kind of reminded me of Avatar mixed with Star Wars and some other unique plots. Definitely a great palette cleanser for some of the dense stuff I’ve been reading.

• Code Name: Pale Horse - Watched a youtube video about this guy explaining how he took down some neo-nazi group while working undercover for the FBI, so decided to check out his book. Very good stories and storyteller.

• White Hot Light - This book shouldnt be read when you are around food, or thinking about dinner. Graphic scenes and very interesting details about his experience in the ER and the medical field. What a group of stories this is.

• Superagency - Wrote a review on this book, as I say frequently - I am cautious and slow to the uptake on AI - its unskilling people and killing the planet. This book kind of brings me back to reality, technology is going to continue to evolve and if we dont help steer it, it will go on without us. Check out my review here.

Links

• Advice for New Managers - delegate, over communicate, setting ambitious goals, being adaptable to your teams needs. Great read about getting into management.

• A weekly mind meld - This is a pretty neat framework for collecting and distilling information to consolidate for a leadership group. might start to take some of these into my own weekly cadence.

• They’re Not Better Than You - sometimes you just need to pause and not think about others, and think about where you are, where you are going.

• Practical AI techniques for daily engineering work - I am not super bullish on AI replacing all functions in a business, and I often think AI is replacing skill in the engineering world. But Sean goes into a pretty practical way to start using AI that doesnt feel too icky.

• Klarna users are buying now, but not paying later - The industry trend continues for BNPL repayments being skipped as the option becomes more available for things like groceries (doordash). While not at a tipping point, BNPL is definitely an interesting thing to watch as the economy shifts.

• What to Know About Model Context Protocol (MCP) - As I researched MCP this month, I read and watched a lot of crap from engineering “influencers”. But this article is actually a good explainer on the core of agentic AI, the MCP server.

Other

• I was playing GTA5 on my new xbox and when we got our puppy in March, I had just 2 missions to go. After needing to do mandatory updates to both the Xbox firmware and the game, I finally had some time this month to beat the game again. Such a good and fun game and has me pumped for GTA6 next year.

• This month has been really dusting off the technical cobwebs for me, buiding new things in laravel, learning MCP/researching AI, working with data and doing more architectural work. I’m remembering why I got into engineering to begin with.

• And like the last few months, the pup is keeping me busy and teaching him manners and how to walk has been challenging but fun. He’s starting to show his personality and its so fun to see.