II have exerted every effort to evade the progression to today, yet here I am, confronting the very moment I sought to avoid. There I was alive, yet barely clinging to the fragile thread of life—a broken silhouette against the harsh asphalt. It's been 1 year. On…
I don't like the Beatles. I also don't like U2. I couldn't name a single album or song. Both suck. Admit it so we can move on now. Growing up in the 80s, music rewired me. I still remember dragging my dad's…
Event systems are something powerful. Whether you're in a microservice, a monolith, or an ACL layer, they make scalability and maintainability actually possible. "After a user logs in, I want to send them a survey!" "Just add it to the code after the login happens.…
No place to run, no place to hide, the footsteps echoing are your own, pressed into soil you thought you'd left behind, circling back to the unmarked stone. There is a vivid uncertainty in your actions, each gesture trailing smoke and question marks, your hands betraying what your…
From about 1st grade to maybe 3rd grade, I would ride my bike to school from the Jordell home to Oakview with Jeff Cole. Then again in 7th grade from Pathfinder to Pasteur. Whats wild is, its nearly 2 miles each way when we rode to Oakview, yet Pasteur was…
Anxiety taught me to check the exits before I ever sat down. To hear the tone beneath the words. To feel the shift before the room knew it shifted. It kept me alive. Then it kept me from living. There when I don't need it. Gone when the…
The REM song has nothing to do with religion. It speaks to me anyway. I was raised active LDS but I always felt different. I remember testimony meetings. People crying over their faith, their love for Jesus. I wondered why I never felt that. Sunday school. Family home evenings. We…
Given on December 2, 2014 Please bare with me - I mask my emotions through humor. Since I can remember, every so often my mom would always ask me to share a fond memory of something she did with me. Being one who hates feelings or sharing anything emotional, I…
It's 2011, and over the last four months I've migrated away from Ruby on Rails and back into the PHP MVC framework realm. My last excursion with any PHP MVC framework was based on CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and Symfony, of which I had a combined six years…
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl There is a unique fantasy this movie brings to me. Growing up, going on this ride at Disneyland was the highlight of each and every trip. Seeing this brought to life, simply makes me feel... at peace. There is a…