I am near middle age
And I never felt so alone
But I think I feel safe
In my home

(from Vague)

I've been thinking about safety lately, specifically the lack of it. There it sits, right towards the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as a "basic need". Based on Maslow's theory, we aren't...

Some programmers like to hate on the backlog. It's just an endless list of tasks that we'll never get to, they say. It's demoralizing, they say.

Some of these same programmers love Getting Things Done, though. The GTD process includes the "capture" of stuff (thoughts, todos, etc) into an inbox. It...

(This one is really just for the streak.)

I currently use Notion to manage large chunks of my life. I use their table object with multiple views which apply different filters and sorting. My methodology is an unholy mashup of kanban and Getting Things Done. Each item has a "status"--Backlog, Up...

I have year-end posts to write, and personal reflections to write, and future planning to write, and I don't want to do any of it. In fact, almost nothing on my to-do list looks interesting right now. I don't like New Year's Eve. It's supposed to be a big moment...

I just glanced at the calendar and was chuffed to see it is D&D night. So I better write right now. After this, it's kids' bedtime and then straight to the game, which will take until midnight.

Last week we entered a strange cave just off the sea. We were attacked...

I was invited to do what was basically a table read of a new acquaintance's short screenplays. There were four in total and it took about 90 minutes. The table in this case was, of course, a Zoom videoconference. It still felt really intimate. I think the ability to sit...

Originally posted here.

I've been producing in-person summer coding camps for kids aged 6-16, using Minecraft, since 2014. My business partner has long been running camps at private schools here in Dallas, and upon hearing from me about the way Minecraft gameplay correlates to the basic skills required for software engineering,...

Despite this year being the unanimously voted Worst Year Ever, I personally have a lot to be grateful for. I'm normally the Eeyore type, willing to see the downside of any windfall, imagine an axe always ready to fall on my neck, attribute to luck every miracle. But in the...

Originally posted here.

In early 2020, the company where I worked for the last seven years sold. I was one of the very first employees. I watched the company grow from four of us to 70. I hired at least 20 engineers and almost as many contractors. I brought on board...