Archive for 2015

Doing Java, JavaScript, CoffeeScript or Ruby? Not using a Jetbrains product? You’re fighting with both hands behind your back.

I treat social networks as a write-only medium. Saves a lot of time.

Have I mentioned how much I love my Bose noise cancelling headphones for working on plane flights? Especially planes that have screaming toddlers. We’re frustrated in such situations. And immensely thankful when the screaming stops. We feel stress, anxiety, annoyance. We have something we cannot control and that has no purpose. It is not the…

99% of all tech support problems with family usually amounts to nothing at all wrong. 99% of all tech support problems with family usually amounts to someone being too lazy to think for themselves. 99% of all tech support problems with family usually revolves around an end-of-the-world event, according to them anyway. 99% of all…

Too old to get in shape? No matter you’re age, you will always be right whether you do or you don’t.

People ask me what I believe in. My answer is always “me. I believe in me.”

I trust my instincts, it is other peoples’ instincts I question.

You will share many adventures in your life with other people. Not all adventures will be great. Not all adventures will be comfortable. Not all adventures will bring you riches. Some days that adventure will be something as simple as making a pizza from scratch at 4AM in the morning. But I know this for…

Life is built on experiences. Business is built on relationships. Projects are built on communication. Careers are built on showing up. Products are shipped when we let go. It has taken me forty years as a professional engineer to realise all that.

Stealth mode is entrepreneur code for “nobody is paying any attention to us.”

You can have my soldering iron and my laptop when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Building a prototype? Build it any which way you can. Building a product? Build it right the first time. So few engineers understand which job they have.

Hearing the word “No” as an entrepreneur means you haven’t done enough A/B testing on what you have to say.

If you cannot meet your goals, at least try and head in a direction.

As a creator, the day I retire will be the day I die.

Oooh! It’s all about the culture! You don’t have a damn culture. You have a ping-pong table and a Keurig. These do not make a culture. And in the case of the Keurig it’s not even a perk.

“Why do you still talk to recruiters if you are not looking for work? Because it is always good to know what tune the Devil is playing.

Whispering pillow talk to my sleeping wife as I get myself dressed for the day. “You are my love. My soul mate. My cariad. My lodestone.” Huh? “My Nebuchadnezzar.” WTH?!? “Ah, so you are not really asleep!”

Three variables to get wealthy for your hard work you need to account for. Variable X is the kind of work you do. Variable Y is how hard you work. Variable Z is who you work for.

Sat by a roaring fireplace in the condo, drinking a hot coffee, swaddled under a duvet.