The world will be a very different place when my boys are grown up. There might actually be fewer protected public land, fewer animal species, and very different weather. Some of our National Parks, if they even still exist as parks, will be quite different than they are now. We need to take action now, but we also need to start on the next generation of conservationists. To make sure that happens, I’m raising my […]
One day, taking inspiration from Wild and A Walk in the Woods, I’m going to hike the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. When I do it though, I don’t think I’ll be risking it in the winter when temperatures plunge and snow quickly turns to ice. Trail markers get obscured, sections that are technical and challenging in the best conditions become nearly impossible, and snow covers treacherous holes in the ground that can twist an […]
What’s more complex, a large-scale distributed system or a child. For parents, it’s obvious. At least systems tend to behave rationally. However, much like children, large systems are inherently complex. As complexity increases, unforeseen behavior emerges and causes unpredictable results. Sound like a child? Chaos Engineering, a software engineering methodology, aims to understand that complexity through experiments. Chaos Engineering is the practice of utilizing experiments to better understand complex systems by intentionally causing chaos and measuring […]
This is another great example of the awesome people I work with. One of my team members built a homegrown Internet connected controller for his A/C and used the opportunity to learn several new technologies including SparkJava. I love this kind of passion for learning new tech on personal projects. I can’t wait to see how we might use some of this.
I am constantly amazed by the genius of the people I am surrounded by at work. While setting up a demo of SonarQube to show my team’s tech debt, I asked if anyone had experience with using it. I thought someone might have some pointers on setting it up. Instead, I got sent this research paper a team member wrote about a case study measuring debt with SonarQube. So cool!
For our twins’ first Christmas, the pile of presents under the tree surrounded the entire tree and stacked up halfway. That was just the presents for the boys. Gift giving is a holiday tradition for many families but with new children, it can easily feel excessive. For their second Christmas, we decided to minimize presents as much as possible, especially from us, and do our best to teach them charity and gratitude instead. It’s going […]
For many people, 2017 was a pretty rough year. The world seems to have gone crazy with political tensions running high. No one is getting along and people are more divided than ever. Yet, for me, 2017 was a fairly good year. As our first full year with the twins, we had a lot of milestones and fun times over the year. At the beginning of the year, the boys started daycare. We were fortunate […]
What’s In Your Bag is a common series on technology sites and blogs where writers open their bags and their hearts to show their favorite gadgets, tools, and necessities. With that in mind, I’d like to share what I typically carry in my bag on a daily basis or on a trip. I wrote up what I was using in June of 2014, and it’s pretty amazing how much has changed in three and a […]
For women in technology, life can be terrible. The male dominated field has recently come to light for being discriminatory, unfair, and often times completely hostile to females, but these problems have existed practically forever. After Susan Fowler’s piece about the harassment she faced at Uber, the manifesto published by a Google employee, and the sheer number of executives and leaders resigning from tech companies, it’s clear there is a huge problem in the industry, […]
After graduating from bottles to solid food, so many new fears come out around feeding children. Bottles allow easy measurement of the amount of food so it’s fairly easy to know if kids are getting enough. Once the real food starts, measuring the amount is just the tip of the iceberg. From worrying about nutrition to allergies and anxiety about refusing food, it gets so much harder for parents. On the bright side, watching kids […]