No one plans to have twins, but for parents lucky enough to be blessed with them, the extra work can be both a challenge and hugely rewarding. Taking care of two babies is quite often double the work, but it can be doubly fun. Parents expecting twins just need to know and be prepared for some extra difficulty, a bit less sleep, and knowing which battles are worth the fight. With a good plan though, […]
Enough was finally enough. After several months with the Facebook app removed from my phone, it was time to actually deactivate my account. Though I knew it would be harder to stay in touch with family, I could no longer justify keeping an account after what can only be described as a horrific year for Facebook and its users. Right before the New Year, I clicked the big scary button, ending 12 years of Facebook […]
Raising twins is alternatively double the pain and double the joy. When things are fun, they get really fun. In the early days especially, the lack of sleep and crankiness somehow multiplies beyond twice the difficulty. So now that my twins are over two and a half, they’ve become a bit more fun. The best part is, they haven’t really figured out lying yet, or even stretching the truth. So every conversation is hilariously straightforward. […]
Virginia doesn’t get its due for the role it played in American history and for how great that history is to explore with a family, even with little ones. Virginia’s historic triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown encompass the first permanent settlement in America, the seat of Colonial power, and the final decisive battle of the American Revolution. All within about half an hour of each other, the three towns and main attractions make for […]
It’s no secret that the engineering industry is hyper-competitive. Finding and attracting the best talent is difficult, but a critical part of any manager’s overall success. Yet, I see far too many managers sit back and rely entirely on their recruiting team to build the hiring pipeline for them. To build the best team possible, hiring managers need to play an active role in building the recruiting pipeline, not just sit in the interview. An […]
Serverless applications are quickly growing in popularity, taking over huge portions of new app development for tiny startups and massive enterprise organizations as well. If the buzz and excitement over new announcements and education on best practices for serverless at AWS reInvent this year is any indication, they will only grow in popularity as time progresses. With no management of servers to worry about, the infrastructure management that cloud providers take care of with serverless […]
Traveling around the world with twin toddlers sure can be challenging to say the least. Everything requires planning far ahead and plans change constantly when something distracts them or they need a break or nap. For all the difficulty though, adapting to traveling with them has actually taught me a ton about traveling and making the most of a trip. From slowing things down to being more friendly, it’s amazing how much two two-year-olds can […]
Seattle, the Emerald City, is best known for being gritty. Grunge bands, coffee shops, and legalized drugs aren’t most parents’ ideal picture of a trip, but there’s actually plenty family friendly fun to be had around town. The city’s connection to the water, aviation, and history actually mean that there are numerous activities for kids to enjoy. Every tourist in Seattle has to visit the Pike Place Market. Home to the original Starbucks and the […]
Everyone thinks their system is reliable until suddenly it isn’t. With a service oriented or microservice based architecture, it can be easy to overlook a single point of failure that can cause a massive cascading failure, quickie harming users and losing their trust. Ensuring that a single failure is handled gracefully is of paramount importance in a large scale distributed system, but that’s much easier said than done. I’ve worked for multiple companies building large […]
A few years ago, it felt amazing that I had figured out to get an unlocked cell phone and pick up a SIM card in Germany to have service and data there. Picking up a card from a vending machine in the center of Heidelberg, I was able to get data on my phone while traveling the country after only an hour or so of figuring out the setup instructions and settings on my phone. […]