After finishing the Madison Marathon I got interested in other endurance sports and decided to pick up cycling. I found a deal on my first road bike - a Serotta Fierte - on Craigslist. This bike allowed me to build up the skill and learn what I wanted in my next bike, which is the topic of this post. A Questionable Trade? 🔗I sold my Serotta and bought a Crux all within 24 hours - with only a $50 price difference between the two!

Planning and Execution 🔗To accomodate an agile-like working cycle, with feedback and iteration, we employee a multi-phase approach. The typical order of phases/deliverables is like this: Agree to initial set of features Provide initial design of MVP Build MVP to initial design spec (accomodating any changes) Build new features one by one with a review period after each feature Ownership Model 🔗It’s important to determine who will be responsible for managing separate services that are required to create and operate a website.

Generative AI Everything 🔗Tools like ChatGPT have gotten a lot of attention lately due to some major technology companies making huge investments. They offer the ability to create content quickly using natural language processing. For example, Bing Chat can write a 100-line Java program that compiles and produces exact results given a prompt that might only be a dozen, plain-English words. I decided to try to create as much content as possible for my latest project using only Generative AI, and I have some thoughts.

Software Engineering at a big U.S. technology company is a dream job for most software engineers and computer science students that I’ve met. Some people have concerns about work-life balance or the competitive interviews, but all agree that the benefits and experience are the peak of software engineering careers. I shared these concerns and this dream, and here I am - 6 years into my career with a year of experience at a big tech company - ready to share the story of how I got here and what it’s like now that I’m here.

If you’re questioning my ability to review a book on deal making, let me share this with you. Giovanna and I have recently went on a bit of an OfferUp spree, selling many of our things for a pretty profit! For example, we sold two swivel chairs we bought from Goodwill at $15 each for a total of $225. So, yeah, I think I know a thing or two about making killer deals.

Wedding planning today often hits newly engaged couples with a harsh reality - it is crazy expensive! According to Zola, the average cost of a wedding in 2023 sits around $20,000 to $40,000. This can even be higher is a high cost of living area. There is a lot I don’t know about personal finance, but I know spending that amount of money on one day just did not sit right with me.

My experience with AI/Machine Learning is mostly as a user and application developer. This eye-tracking project was one of my first personal development ideas that I brought to life. In undergrad, I took an intro to AI course and learned the basics: motivation, history, basic models, and applications. Computer Vision continues to motivate exciting use cases for me, and I’ve found a cool tool for my next project! BlazePose 🔗Google Research published the original BlazePose paper in 2020 demonstrating an accurate body pose tracking model which could run on generally accessible hardware (30 frames/second on a Pixel 2!

The tech industry seems to have captivated many with its seemingly mystical ways of enhancing everyday life to its ability to cause massive destruction in terms of the sociopolitical threads of society to the dangers of cybercrime. I was not immune to this allure of this world. In fact, I was drawn to it. I wanted to understand it. So I followed this curiosity and have joined the ranks of many as a tech career-changer.

Martin Eden is a novel about a working-class young man who stumbles into the world of the bourgeoisie. He discovers philosophy and commits his entire life to attaining knowledge, pursuit of his bourgeois lover, and writing. Set in late-nineteenth century Oakland, the book offers a view of philosophy and society through the trials and tribulations of the namesake character. I am interested in classic American authors, and will often pick up books by them from little free libraries (of course, exchanging a book) or second-hand stores.

26.2 Miles 🔗Not more than a couple of years ago I had been known to say “why would anyone pay to run?”. In addition to my character development through the cliche never say never, I had talked with a close friend who had finished his first marathon and I desperately needed motivation to exercise. Tres completed the Austin marathon in early 2022. We had been hanging out virtually over video game sessions, like we had been since the pandemic began in early 2020.