2022/08/28
Seasonal change has a way of making me feel reflective, and the transition from Summer to Autumn usually does it more than the others. This year it’s only amplified as I approach my forth decade.
While I didn’t grow up on a farm, we were surrounded by fields. Whether it was the appearance of hay bales, the smell of peanuts being turned over to dry or the blizzards of cotton coming into bloom, there were visceral reminders. And in the South, that also meant football. And while I have what I would currently describe as a “complicated” relationship with the wider sport, I can’t deny that countless Friday nights and Saturdays have been filled with it.
2021/12/08
These days I don’t get much time to write code. In a lot of ways Outlook and Zoom have become my most used Integrated development Environments, and my emacs sessions are much more likely to involve markdown for a slidedeck than code for a module. But, like I’ve talked about here before I still look at both my practical coding skills and theoretical computational science knowledge as indespencable. And I expect the same the managers and directors on my engineering teams.
2021/11/25
Today I am thankful for the process, and the markers along the way.
The last few months I have been working towards getting healthier. I realize that it is not something that is never going to end, but it is nice to celebrate doing the things that I’ve never done before. Today that thing was being part of an organized 5k, the ubiqitious Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot, and the 40 degree weather that came along with it.
2021/10/06
Previously I talked about using command line tools for efficiency in Command Line Leadership. Since then I’ve changed my flow a bit. LaTex is a fantastic system, and Beamer is great but the templates didn’t have the right look. They were a bit too “academic” in feel. I’ve moved to using RevealJS instead. The included css has a bit more modern feel and is easier to customize than getting into a Beamer template.
2021/09/15
Originally posted to LeadDev, duplicated here for archival purposes because Cool URIs don’t change.
It is unlikely that any other activity will have nearly the same amount of leverage as bringing a junior engineer up to speed so that they can successfully contribute. This is often more easily said than done. While team leads should be accountable for ensuring that this happens, many inexperienced leads often feel that this remit falls solely on them.
