Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation

• Github Webhooks for Fun and Profit Jun 7, 2022 - 3 min read

  I’m in the middle of a fun little exploration for work that bled over into personal time. Our CI/CD pipeline runs a dependabot-ci every evening. When everything is calm and well in the world our Jenkins server is quiet. When new CVEs are published, Mr. Jenkins becomes chatty, posting failure notifications to our team’s Slack channel. The last thing developmers want to see after hours is CI failure messages in Slack. Read More…

• Dockerized Rails Apr 22, 2022 - 2 min read

  New gig, new technology stack, and a ton (metric, not old money) to learn. I’ve used Docker for containerizing services before, but now I’m learning a slew of new root causes for exceptions when I’m building/compiling/deploying applications. It’s enough to make a brain hurt. When I first started with Cover My Meds I knew that I was going to need extra help to try and catch up to my teammates, who have been developing in Rails and Docker for years. Read More…

• Identity Server 4 Jun 20, 2021 - 4 min read

  Two years ago I created this draft. Today it is relevant to the client work that I am currently doing for another API project. Everything old is new again. My client’s product helps customers manage collateralized loans. Customers asked for more openness in the product. To empower those customers the client wanted to create API endpoints. These endpoints required security. Identity Server was an interesting option to protect access to various web API endpoints. Read More…

• Proud Debugging Moment? Apr 8, 2021 - 2 min read

  I recently started searching for a “forever home” and found a compelling posting by You Need A Budget. They are searching for a Humbly Confident Senior Full Stack Developer. One of the questions required to complete their application is the seed for this post. Briefly (no more than a few sentences) describe a proud “debugging” moment you had, where you found and fixed a bug. Is there such a thing as a proud debugging moment? Read More…

• Github Readme Jan 22, 2021 - 2 min read

  I started this calendar year off without a development contract. Not surprisingly, updating all the profiles for my online presence became a priority and I started by updating my resume. My linkedin profile soon thereafter got a fresh coat of paint as well. This “freshening” must have caused a disturbance in the force. It wasn’t long before the magical tracking cookies of the internet aligned and I started seeing article suggestions for making my github readme more awesome. Read More…

• Fun With Hugo Dec 29, 2020 - 3 min read

  Fun With Hugo It seems every time that the Muse inspires me to hammer out a blog post I spend most of my time caring for and feeding Dependabot or wrestling with ruby gems. In an effort ot reduce that maintenance cycle I took advantage of a PragProg Thanksgiving offer and purchased Brian P. Hogan’s very helpful Build Websites with Hugo. I followed along with Brian’s example site and learned some neat things about the archetypes and creating themes which will be very handy when I get to work on my home-brewed beer site and need templates for the beer styles and recipes. Read More…

• Forbidden Island Team Dynamics Jun 11, 2019 - 2 min read

  While at The Path to Agility 2019, I had the pleasure of attending Team Dynamics on the Forbidden Island, hosted by Paul Boos . This session used a co-operative table-top game, Forbidden Island to explore team dynamics and illustrate Tuckman’s stages of group development- “storming, forming, norming, performing" Here’s the publisher’s description of the game: Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Read More…

• Involvement With Resilience Jan 6, 2019 - 3 min read

  Finding brews to keep everyone happy is no small feat. Care and feeding of the twin kegerators"_blank"} at the Dallas Improving office has been my side job for about six years. Yes, I’ve done extensive market research. I’ve met many people who are passionate about their products, community, and profession. The depth of involvement and connection within the brewing community is amazing. In June, I attended Ken Grossman’s keynote talk, “Lessons I’ve Learned in 50 Years of Brewing”, at Home Brew Con 2018. Read More…

• Brewing For A Cause Jan 5, 2019 - 1 min read

  To make a really long and detailed story short: I brewed the home version of this delicious beer to help out with the fund raising. It will be on tap at the Improving Dallas office starting on January 10th. Here’s the link to a GoFundMe which feeds directly into the fund created by Sierra Nevada. Longer More Detailed Version November 8th a wild fire, later named Camp Fire, broke out in Chico, California. Read More…

• The Act of Transforming Aug 8, 2018 - 2 min read

  What does transformation mean for an organization of people? Organizations treat an agile transformation as a singular event. It is a budgetary line item, a noun, a one-time metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. Expert agilists who have “been there, done that” are sought to guide the transformation. While one gains credibility by having “been there, done that,” what impact does that have on our vision? How does this distort our ability to be empathetic? Read More…

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4