Blog

  • Although I sometimes find getting paged for operational issues enervating, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s well known that software engineers at Amazon (Web Services) own their systems, end to end. This means that we not only develop and maintain our software, but we operate the underlying system, complete ownership. From a software…

  • Last week, I was sitting behind my desk at work, surfing hacker news and and at the top of the website floated an article by the co founder of “Daily Coding Program”, a small tech start up that e-mails daily newsletters with a programming question.  The article shared some of their insights over the past…

  • When I first started playing ukulele, about six months ago, I would occasionally wince when lifting my fingers off of the nylon strings.  Because in the beginning, the flesh of my fingertips were fresh, no callouses. But slowly, over time, after repeatedly striking down on the strings, my fingers gave birth to a new layer…

  • About six months ago, I enrolled myself in a computer organization (i.e. CS1410) course offered by University of Northern Iowa and I’m taking it remotely from Seattle, where I work full time as software engineer at Amazon (Web Services). I’ve completed about two thirds of the course, which consists of sixteen homework assignments and three…

  • On Saturday, just before the sun began to rise, Jess and I began loading our luggage into black Mazda hatchback for our Christmas trip from Seattle to Los Angeles. Normally, when packing, we haphazardly shove our suit cases into the trunk and squeeze bags between the front and back seats. But this year, we decided…

  • I just finished reading my first science fiction book! Up until three years ago, I really only read non-fiction books (e.g. The Power of Habit, Outlier) with the single purpose of expanding my intellectual knowledge.  I read to increase my depth in a subject (e.g. programming) or read to pick learn about an entirely new…

  • Last Saturday, I woke up at 06:00 AM (about 30 minutes later than I normally wake up on weekdays) and slipped into a striped, cotton t-shirt that my sister bought from target for my last birthday and my favorite knee length corduroy shorts, dressing myself in preparation for a 2 mile, dog friendly run in…

  • Over the past month, I’ve been investing more time in learning the ukulele, sitting in the office area in the morning, strumming and picking my soprano ukulele for at least 30 minutes either in the early mornings or just before hitting the sack.  In addition to my daily routine, I’ve not only been taking weekly,…

  • For the past year and a half, I’ve disconnected myself from all my social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.  Those platforms still presumably store my data (e.g. posts, images, chat logs) but I no longer log into the system, neither consuming or contributing any content. This disconnect was motivated by several reasons. First, I had…

  • Although Jess and I legally married six months ago (February) in King County Court, a municipal court in Seattle, we threw our wedding ceremony just three weeks ago.  The Saturday ceremony was held in Malibu at Great Spirits Ranch, a ranch that overlooks the Pacific Ocean and Ojai mountains.  Most importantly, this venue was dog…