Blog

Links

Table of Contents

Software

• Coding simplicity
• Elegant simplicity in software
• Write for readability
• Curly braces vs. whitespace
• Python, for productivity
• Hotmail: the first cloud-based webapp
• The End of Windows (for me)
• Obamacare broke TurboTax
• X: The under-appreciated Boolean logic state
• Learning by grading
• This post will get 0 likes on Facebook
• How lint made me a fortune
• The lost programming skill of juggling
• Nothing but icing
• My most challenging field failure ever, part one
• My most challenging field failure ever, part two
• What programming is actually like and why programmers seem weird
• Spreadsheets (arch.)
• One spreadsheet alternative: data visualization tools
• Abstracting away pointers
• Data quality matters
• Cleansing user input data
• Look at the data
• Play with the data
• Count the data
• The potency of idempotence
• Storing database records that lack a unique ID
• My first IDE
• To type check or not to type check?
• Why I love the cloud
• Devops scripting in Python
• Devops script comparison: Python and NodeJS
• Some comments about comments
• Five simple steps Visa could take to dramatically improve security
• A more secure credit card
• Print if you can, else use logging if you must
• Choosing my major: CS, CE, or EE
• Software developer education over the years
• The first feature to put into any software product
• Full stack: then vs. now
• Avoiding regex hell
• Python’s OOP: object-oriented paradox
• Time to deprecate the container model for variables
• Speeding up development by using the REPL
• Bad software will always be with us
• Write the bare minimum amount of SQL
• Choosing and creating a database
• The Power of the Graph
• Puzzling and coding
• The trouble with generators
• Ferreting out git branches
• Computer games from Z to A
• The app will take your order now
• Using async to overwhelm downstream servers
• Python and JavaScript: mere scripting languages?
• Python and JavaScript: the joys of duck typing
• Python and JavaScript: dynamic and static typing
• Python and JavaScript: lists and arrays
• Python and JavaScript: dicts and objects
• Python and JavaScript: multi-paradigm languages
• What can possibly go wrong?: Hardware
• What can possibly go wrong?: Software
• Reinventing the wheel: IF statement edition
• Reinventing the wheel: an example of not doing so
• My $0/month, ad-free, tracking-free, censorship-free, screaming fast website
• My $2/month, ad-free, tracking-free, censorship-free, screaming fast website
• Observations from GraphConnect SF 2016
• Observations from Pycon 2018
• Observations from AWS re:Invent 2018
• Observations from Segment Synapse 2019

Published elsewhere:

• How to Build a Modern Martech Stack

Technology

• Why I am a smartwatch skeptic
• Why I am a drone skeptic
• A modest proposal to end the patent troll crisis
• The end of fluorescent lights (I hope)
• New technology is not embraced by all
• Help! The FCC eliminated my broadband Internet connection!
• A case study in FCC price setting
• The dangers of the FCC’s TitleII Internet power grab
• No airplane Wi-Fi for me, thank you
• The cord has been cut
• U.S. tech moves downtown
• Transportation versus communication
• Pandemics, pre- and post-Internet

Management

• The best technical interview question ever
• The best sales interview question ever
• Hire for the first derivative
• Tech company hiring practices over the years
• Don’t forget to check references
• On the importance of sales
• Sell what’s on the truck
• The first rule of marketing
• The toughest market in tech?
• The higher the tech, the lower the margins
• An early lesson in performance under pressure
• Tales of the headquarters effect
• How I helped Gert Boyle see the light
• The trillion dollar beer game
• Stock buybacks are not evil
• Focusing on focus, at the personal level
• Focusing on focus, at the company level
• Public speaking tips
• A decision to outsource manufacturing to China, part one
• A decision to outsource manufacturing to China, part two
• A decision to outsource manufacturing to China, part three
• A decision to outsource manufacturing to China, part four
• 1990s Japanese business culture: after work drinking
• 1990s Japanese business culture: saving face
• 2010s Chinese business culture: dinner

Startups

• My startup story #1: Xciton, Inc.
• My startup story #2: Inmar, Inc.
• My startup story #3: AT&E
• My startup story #4: Oresis: Starting a startup
• My startup story #4: Oresis: Riding the wave upwards
• My startup story #4: Oresis: Crash and burn
• Graduating 1871
• Inside the belly of a unicorn
• The best startup song ever
• The paperless, server-less company
• Starting off in a startup
• That time I was laid off from a startup
• What are VC and VCs good for?
• VCs are in a different class
• The fundamental reason Silicon Valley exists

Recreation

• Winless in Seattle (so far) – my trip to Safeco
• Rocky Mountain High: Coors Field
• Minute Maid Park: where dreams come true
• MLB’s best solution for desert baseball: Chase Field
• My one lucky travel delay: Camelback Ranch
• Sloan Park: a modern, mini Wrigley Field replica
• White Sox or Cubs: my choice was clear
• The view from 527
• The exChicago White Sox?
• Portland is not a major league city
• Esports in the Eighties
• 10,000 mile review: the Specialized Crosstrail bicycle
• 2,500 mile review: Giant carbon fiber road bicycle
• Listening while biking
• Biking to work for fun and profit
• Favorite family ski vacation destination: Steamboat
• Best (non-extreme) Steamboat trails
• Sun Valley: a true classic ski resort
• Impressions of Mammoth Mountain
• The Empire’s Mothership: a journey to Vail
• A Steamboat snob skis Aspen

Other Observations

• Three bubbles, starting with dotcom
• I sold my bonds
• Who would buy a negative yield bond?
• A good five-cent cigar
• Prices can rise when demand falls
• The genius and the black swan
• Finance during the pandemic
• Oregon’s Two Fundamental Flaws
• Chicago: at the center of it all (well, at least the U.S.)
• Why Jeff Bezos should choose Chicago for Amazon’s HQ2, and why he won’t
• Death by property taxes in Illinois
• Selling Illinois at a loss
• Illinois property tax scams
• Real estate "investment" tips
• Early impressions of Arizona
• The perfect water temperature
• House complexity: Arizona vs. Illinois
• College admissions game theory
• All I needed to know about blogging I learned in college
• You get out of college what you put into it
• GPA margin of error
• The decline of teenage car culture
• Entropy wins, in the end
• The upside of downsizing
• The best time to move, with young kids
• The best time to move from the snowbelt to the sunbelt
• Moving (yourself) without moving (your stuff)
• White knuckle flying
• Memories of the moon landing
• Visiting the USA’s space port
• The luckiest event in my life
• The toddler diet
• Living with the virus
• The CARFAX + insurance company conspiracy
• The CARFAX + insurance company conspiracy, part two
• The CARFAX + insurance company conspiracy, part three

Technical Books

• Allen B. Downey: Think Python, First Edition
• Alexis Goldstein, Louis Lazaris, and Estelle Weyl: HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World, 2nd Edition
• Unmesh Gundecha: Learning Selenium Testing Tools with Python
• Jeff Hawkins: On Intelligence
• Kelsey Hightower, Brendan Burns & Joe Beda: Kubernetes Up & Running
• Matthew Makai: Full Stack Python
• Wes McKinney: Python for Data Analysis, Second Edition
• Sam Newman: Building Microservices
• Brian Okken: Python Testing with pytest
• Charles Petzold: Code
• Luciano Ramalho: Fluent Python

Non-technical Books

• Hilton Als, ed.: The Best American Essays 2018
• Roger Angell: The Summer Game
• Isaac Asimov: Foundation
• Eliot Asinof: Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
• Rick Atkinson: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy
• Rick Atkinson: The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)
• Rick Atkinson: The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy)
• Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
• John Barth: The Floating Opera
• John Barth: The End of the Road
• John Barth: The Sot-Weed Factor
• John Barth: Giles Goat-Boy
• John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse
• Saul Bellow: Herzog
• David Brooks, ed.: The Best American Essays 2012
• Geraldine Brooks, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2011
• Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game
• Michael Chabon, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2005
• Edwidge Danticat, ed.: The Best American Essays 2011
• Sean Deveney: The Original Curse
• Junot Díaz, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2016
• Paul Dickson: Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick
• E.L. Doctorow: Homer & Langley: A Novel
• Jennifer Egan, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2014
• Dave Eggers, ed.: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007
• Joseph J. Ellis: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
• Anne Fadiman, ed.: The Best American Essays 2003
• David Hackett Fischer: Washington's Crossing
• Samuel C. Florman: The Existential Pleasures of Engineering
• Jonathan Franzen, ed.: The Best American Essays 2016
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008
• Laura Furman, ed.: The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
• Laura Furman, ed.: The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010
• Laura Furman, ed.: The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011
• Laura Furman, ed.: The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018
• Laura Furman, ed.: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019
• Romain Gary: The Life Before Us ("Madame Rosa")
• Roxane Gay, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2018
• William Gibson: Neuromancer
• William Gibson: The Peripheral
• Adam Gopnik, ed.: The Best American Essays 2008
• Steven Hahn: A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
• Blaine Harden: Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
• Dan Helpingstine: Chicago White Sox: 1959 and Beyond
• Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
• Frank Herbert: Dune
• Peter Hessler: River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
• Peter Hessler: Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
• Peter Hessler: Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
• Peter Hessler: Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West
• Christopher Hitchens, ed.: The Best American Essays 2010
• Daniel Huff: How to Lie with Statistics
• Walter Isaacson: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
• Walter Isaacson: Steve Jobs
• Leslie Jamison, ed.: The Best American Essays 2017
• Stephanie Kelton: The Deficit Myth
• Stephen King, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2007
• Amara Lakhous: Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
• Steven Levy: In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
• Michael Lewis: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
• Michael Lewis: Flash Boys
• Om Malik: Broadbandits
• John D. MacDonald: The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
• Cormac McCarthy: The Road
• Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
• Louis Menand, ed.: The Best American Essays 2004
• Ben Mezrich: The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook
• Laurie Moore, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2004
• Walter Mosley, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2003
• Tom Perrotta, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2012
• Joe Peta: Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball
• Henry Petroski: To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
• Mary Oliver, ed.: The Best American Essays 2009
• Susan Orlean, ed.: The Best American Essays 2005
• David M. Oshinsky: Polio: An American Story
• Ann Patchett, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2006
• Thomas Pynchon: V.
• Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49
• Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation
• Richard Roeper: Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz
• Phil Rogers: Say It's So: The Chicago White Sox's Magical Season
• Philip Roth: The Dying Animal
• Philip Roth: Everyman
• Philip Roth: Exit Ghost
• Philip Roth: Indignation
• Philip Roth: The Humbling
• Mike Royko: One More Time: the Best of Mike Royko
• Salman Rushdie, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2008
• Richard Russo, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2010
• Alice Sebold, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2009
• Lauren Slater, ed.: The Best American Essays 2006
• Rebecca Solnit, ed.: The Best American Essays 2019
• Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash
• Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
• Neal Stephenson: Seveneves
• Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
• Steve Stone: Said in Stone: Your Game, My Way
• Cheryl Strayed, ed.: The Best American Essays 2013
• Elizabeth Strout, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2013
• John Jeremiah Sullivan, ed.: The Best American Essays 2014
• Studs Terkel: Hard Times
• John Updike, ed.: The Best American Short Stories of the Century
• Bill Veeck: Veeck - As in Wreck
• Bill Veeck: The Hustler's Handbook
• David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest
• David Foster Wallace, ed.: The Best American Essays 2007
• Jo Walton: Among Others
• Connie Willis: Blackout
• Connie Willis: All Clear
• Meg Wolitzer, ed.: The Best American Short Stories 2017

Movies

• Blade Runner
• Blade Runner 2049