I Sold My Company in 2017. It just showed up at my dinner table.

My son is an AEMT at a local fire department, and I just learned, that they use software I built in 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Circa 2011, I had an idea and pitched it to everyone who would listen, securing a $1M investment. I wasn't trying to conquer the world nor…

Stop Playing Telephone With Production.

We put a rover on Mars. I bet your services still need a hardcoded IP to say "hello world". Somewhere right now, a senior engineer is grepping through YAML files to find out why Service A can't talk to Service B. The answer is in an…

API Gateways are the best

I Love a Simple API Gateway Service Are they necessary? No. Are they simple to set up? Yes. Will I defend this hill? Only because I already built a small fortress on it and I'm not hauling those sandbags back down. I don't always use them.…

I Earned the Carnegie Medal For Best Dad.

Presented to me for services performed from 2006-Current. I’m still in service. My wife and the kids know what they will endure, sustain, and embrace when I’m around. Sure, they always ignore the fine print, but it is there. I’m the guy whose hand drifts toward the…

Diamonds

Diamonds not the stone, the doctrine Fortune I can taste like copper on my tongue Out in the open where the wolves run Every empire's just a casket coming undone I crave what pharaohs couldn't bury deep enough The gleam ain't greed, it'…

Thought Leadership Is Bullshit

Thought Leadership is karaoke nobody asked for. I've decided to become a Thought Leader. Step 1: Start every post with "Unpopular opinion:" even though 47,000 people said the exact same thing this week. Step 2: Share my "framework" for success. It's…

ZooTopia 2

Went to Zootopia 2 expecting silly popcorn nonsense. Left emotionally compromised by cartoon mammals. When the credits rolled I wanted to stay and watch it three more times. That's not normal. That's not how kids movies are supposed to work. 10 out of 10 happy snakes…

Nefarious

Nefarious is a rollercoaster. Not because it takes you somewhere. Because you get on thinking you know what ride this is, and then the floor disappears. Two people talking in a room. That's it. The darkness here isn't aesthetic. It's structural. You're…

The Unraveling

What I find interesting about everything you tried to put my family through is how much we saw you unravel by your own hand. We'd been warned. I disregarded it I didn't know them. I didn't know you. You were just my neighbor who…

I Invented Facebook in 1997. Then I shut it down

I've never had a good answer for "why I'm in software engineering." It's like asking why breathing is awesome. In 1994 I found Geocities, Perl and Javascript. These combined, was a dopamine hit of instant creation. I built for fun. Then for…