Tech Life

So

We need to talk about the end of sentences. Specifically, the end of spoken sentences. They’re a problem for me. I’m solidly in my 40s. And to this day when I finish a spoken thought, I often say “so,” and the reason is… you aren’t saying anything, yet. So. I should explain. To begin, self-diagnosed… more

December 17, 2017 6 Comments

Your Christmas Reading List

It’s almost November and that means the holidays are close. One of my favorite aspects of the holiday seasons are extended periods of quiet… like days long. While there will be Destiny 2 and Mario Odyssey during these times, my goal is to fill those long silences with reading. Here are ten books you should… more

October 27, 2017 9 Comments

A Privacy Choice

I departed Safari several years ago for performance and stability issues. Too often, I was finding myself in a situation where Safari was wedged or just plain slow. As the majority of my time is spent staring at a browser, this was unacceptable, so I moved to Chrome. Yeah, the typography rendering wasn’t as good,… more

July 24, 2017 14 Comments

Fidget Bliss

I’m the guy who sits next to you at the meeting whose right leg won’t stop moving. If one leg isn’t tap tap tapping, look to my hands because it is likely my finger tips are exploring the shape of a Zebra Sarasa .5 (Black), or that same pen is wildly spinning around my fingers.… more

July 4, 2017 10 Comments

Rands Response Hierarchy

The arrival of Slack1 changed my communication regimen. On top of Slack being the primary means of communicating at Slack, the Leadership Slack at 3000+ members represents a daily part of how I communicate. There are a great many ways to get in touch with me. With the establishment of Slack as a primary means… more

February 13, 2017 4 Comments

Debugging Westworld

I inherited Eli’s code. He’d left for a start-up, and he’d written the import/export code for our application half done. He’d left in a hurry which meant I got a sixty-minute whiteboard session where he explained where he was at and where he was planning on going with his code. The whiteboard was pleasantly covered… more

December 19, 2016 10 Comments

Five Pages

Whoooooooooo. You looked stressed. I know, right? First, it was a joke. Then it was unimaginable. Then unthinkable. Improbable. Unlikely. Then it happened and now we’re are all wondering, “When will it get worse?” Still not sleeping well? Me either. Are you reading the news? Me either. I’m 165 pages into the history of the… more

November 25, 2016 3 Comments

The Likeability Feedback Loop

For years, the numbers of comments on articles here have decreased. Comment-worthy articles from five years ago would get dozens and sometimes hundreds of comments. Similarly trafficked articles from the past few years get a handful. It is not without pain, but I believe open comments are part of the deal with running a weblog.… more

November 22, 2016 62 Comments

Shaping Your Slack

I’m actively a part of five different Slack teams. The four teams other than Slack HQ1 fall into two distinct profiles: Social: A couple of dozen of humans all hanging in a single channel. There may be other one-off channels created, but the vast majority of the message traffic lands in #general (or equivalent) or… more

September 19, 2016 3 Comments