In the late 1800s, the Brooklyn Bridge was built with no power tools, no heavy machinery, and only a basic, evolving understanding of how to make steel. It’s not these facts, but the stories surrounding the facts that inspire me when I take a good, long stare at a suspension bridge. But first… Stunning. In… more
In writing an article, I know I’m done when I delete. The process leading to done is chaotic; it’s days, weeks, or months of aggregating writing where I collect and organize paragraphs and sentences. Over time, content creation becomes content shaping as I organize the thoughts into a pleasing coherence. And then, in a moment,… more
In starting a significant project, an engineer knows the first three big design decisions you make are vastly more important than the second three. The nature of these decisions varies from project to project. They may be choices about look and feel, rules about architecture, or trade offs regarding feature set. Whatever these decisions are,… more
I live in the mountains and in the mountains you need a chainsaw. Strangely, the time of year it’s the least fun to be outside is when I use the chainsaw the most. This is a result of holiday vacation, trees conveniently falling during winter storms, and short windows of time the county of Santa… more
Early on in the movie Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe constructs one of my favorite getting-to-know-you and let’s-fall-in-love scenes. The lead, William Miller, and the love interest, Penny Lane, stare at each other while lying to each other about their ages: Penny: “How old are you?” William: “18.” Penny: “Me, too. How old are we really?”… more
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume is certainly not the first book I read, but when the question of the first book comes up, it’s the first answer because in my fuzzy thirty-something brain, Tales was the first book I was proud of reading. I picked it out, I lay on the… more
Cloud computing is yet another name for services that have existed for a really long time. Here’s the 2008 IEEE Internet Computing quote regarding Cloud Computing: “Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks,… more
As an engineer, if you want to piss off someone who is asking you whether you can or can’t build a thing, just say, “Given enough time, I can build anything”. They’ll believe you’re dodging the question, and they’ll think you’re arrogant. As a means of negotiating a schedule or a feature, this answer is… more
The lesson of the Holy Shit is that when you stumble upon a truly revolutionary idea, you have the ability to recognize it. There are lots of people who, when they first saw a web page, thought, “I can order pizza on the phone with a live person. Why would I do it on the… more
They played bridge every Wednesday at Netscape. In the middle of the cafeteria. Like clockwork. The players were a collection of ex-SGI guys and they worked for a variety of different groups at the company, but as I learned a few months later, this core group of men quietly defined the engineering culture of the… more