For ages I wanted to be a writer. I wrote in a notebook daily on my lunch break for years. They weren't traditional journal entries though. I'd write essays, short stories and bits and pieces of novels I wanted to complete. I even sent a few things out to get published with no luck. One day I decided to get serious about it. I joined a...

We needed new windows at our house, so I called up a rather large window retailer to come by and give us a quote. Being a business owner, I tend to love these sales interactions. I'm always looking for little nuggets I can add to my own sales process. As a part of the pitch, the salesman pulled a full-size, double hung window out of hi...

I came across the following post on X (formerly Twitter) last week. The original posting is on Hacker News and the sentiment rings true for so many entrepreneurs that are attempting to validate ideas while building their personal brand and garner a social following. Before I continue, it's worth reading the entire post. The author writ...

We have a saying in rock climbing, put up or shut up. It's said to someone that's always talking about how close they are to sending their latest project. Or sometimes it's said when someone is making excuses for failing to send something. "I'm one move away from sending that." or "I would have sent that but my finger was jacked up tha...

I'm not a big fan of the movie Rudy. Every time I bring this up people jump down my throat for insulting one of the greatest underdog stories ever told. A story that promotes hard work and determination against insurmountable odds. For those that don't know, Rudy is a movie about a guy that dreamed of playing football for Notre Dame. R...

Sometimes I like to pull some 90's bull shit on my kids. "No, Daddy's phone doesn't have Beauty and the Beast songs on it, just the Beastie Boys." My kids give me an odd look. They don't understand that the collective knowledge and creations of our entire species was not once in the palm of everyone's hand. It gets me thinking, what's ...

So recently I received some advice from a technical VC to the effect of, "it's better to hear a project is built in an esoteric technology like Elixir than a more popular technology like Ruby on Rails where it is easy for a competitor to replicate the product." This is some rather misguided advice on many levels, the most obvious being...

I ran into a problem this week, and a pretty common one at that while coding. I'd like to say it was an issue of naming but that isn't exactly correct. Naming is hard. Everyone has heard this but even when we come up with great names for our functions sometimes our code still lacks a certain level of clarity. My example this week comes...

So I've tried to maintain a blog a few times. Always failed to really keep up with it. I think this idea is pretty cool because it takes the pressure off a bit. Like shooting a text to a friend or just rambling on for a while. So maybe I'll make some posts about programming, or running and agency, or being a parent with a job and a bus...