Dear readers, I haven’t been entirely straight with you. Three years ago, on the eve of New Years 2014, I started on a diet and exercise regimen – every month I added another rule, until there were over twenty separate restrictions, each infraction punished by a $100 donation to charity. I did this for eighteen months, during which […]
Category Archives: Personal
When I left TripAdvisor a year and a half ago, I wasn’t expecting to return. I’d had a great time over the preceding six and a half years, learned a lot, made an impact, and climbed the ladder. I’d worked on a dozen different teams across the Core Product department, finished up with a helping […]
Most people think of networking as something to do when they need a favor – they’re looking for a new job, mentor, advice, etc., so, time to start sending out the emails. This is the worst method, of course – people like to be treated like people, not favor dispensers. Good networkers are always trying to keep up with professional […]
Interviews are weird. Of course there are the nuts and bolts – getting there early enough but not too early, dressing nicely but not too nicely, the technical and behavioral questions, and so on – but more interestingly, every so often someone asks you a question that really forces you to reflect seriously on your experience or worldview. […]
It’s that time, and with the enforced downtime that is the children’s end-of-year vacation, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on all the changes of the past 12 months (and, you know, actually start writing again). Settling into our new home, the children getting older, our daughter finally starting to grow some hair (we make […]
I love to cook. I love wandering through a grocery store looking for interesting ingredients, paging through cookbooks, chopping vegetables, measuring, mixing, sautéing, baking. As a programmer / manager, I don’t have that many opportunities to make something physical, but cooking is an intensely pleasurable experience, especially when the results match the intentions. Unsurprisingly, I don’t like […]
My uncle held on to his 56k modem for years. We tried, and tried, to persuade him to switch to broadband, but he was absolutely convinced that 56k was all that he would ever need or want. It wasn’t about the money, or the hassle, or an intentional desire to limit his internet use – he had […]
I love to cook. It has all the visceral satisfactions of creating something real, developing mastery, and (if things go well) being yummy. Although I’m mostly known on my team for my quick breads (seriously, I just follow the recipe), I generally prefer savory to sweet. And so, I thought I’d share a couple of […]
So, I’ve been a bit bad about reporting on my exercise/diet regimen, and since I’m about to descend into the valley of the shadow of a new job at a startup, I figured I should probably post this now, before it’s too late. First off, I’ve pretty much given up on finding a gym nearby. […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been six and a half years. In late 2008 my startup had just collapsed, my wife and I were expecting our first child, we’d just bought a house… Oh yeah, and the world economy was shattering into fist-sized pieces of molten pain. Good thing I’d already burned through my savings […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 