There’s a big difference between a master mechanic and the guy at Jiffy-Lube who knows how to change your fluids; assembly language, C, C++, Java, and Lisp programmers; command line and GUI users; kernel programmers and Linux users. I’ve been using various flavors of *nix for the better part of 30 years, but as I […]
It seems like forever ago that I took on my first team at TripAdvisor – I was working with two junior engineers (both of whom had more experience with the codebase than I did), some tools and forum code, just muddling my way through. Almost five years later and I’m responsible for six teams, with […]
It’s spring career fair season. At most schools, the fall career fairs are dominated by graduating seniors and masters students looking for full-time work. During the spring the balance shifts, and the majority of candidates are freshmen and sophomores who just got started in their majors, don’t have prior work experience, and are looking to […]
Back in January, I started in on an exercise schedule with monetary penalties for missed workouts. In February, I added a restriction against late night snacks. I’m happy to report that things have continued to go well, with nary a missed workout or unapproved nosh. I haven’t been able to motivate myself to bank any […]
You wouldn’t think that it would be necessary to write a blog post about this, but I’ve found that when people are looking for ways to demotivate, demoralize, and otherwise just piss off their coworkers, they sometimes need that extra little oomf. You know, a way to kick things to another level, to push it […]
Some people just can’t catch a break. It’s never their fault, but things just seem to go wrong around them. Projects spin out of control, bug counts skyrocket, hardware breaks, people quit. Whenever you look at a specific problem, there’s always a good reason – the scope was increased, the agreed-upon technology turned out to […]
I haven’t worn a watch for, I don’t know, ten years? Fifteen? At some point I’d realized that I was surrounded by multifarious screens (computer, phone, microwave, oven, set-top box, etc.) with time displays that were far more accurate than any watch I’d ever own, and took the watch off for good. Fast forward to […]
So, it’s been one month, and I’m happy to report that progress has been good. 14 workouts, none missed, no money donated. All of the workouts were on our home elliptical machine, gradually building from 20 minutes at level 7 to 45 minutes at level 8. It’s a bit depressing to realize that 45 minutes […]
It turns out, car theft is a bulk business. There’s a whole ecosystem around it – the thief, the chop shop, the fences, the salvage yard – there can be a lot of people involved, which means that the individual profit is smaller than you’d think. And so, professional car thieves have to work in […]
Intern interview season is upon us, and last Friday I had the opportunity to sit on a panel discussing how to maximize the value of an internship. There were a couple of points I thought were interesting, and so I share them here for your reading pleasure. Why we intern In my mind, there are […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 