5 min read
March 2026: A Fixed Bedtime, Two Inbox Checks, One Tool to Ship
March plan: turn February's two drifting goals, sleep and email, into fixed rules, keep what held, and ship the side project I've already built.
Reflection
13 articles
7 min read
February 2026 Scorecard: Four Commitments, One Short Month
Grading my four February commitments: 29 posts in 28 days, two no-tech Sundays, one new engagement against two noes, and sleep stuck at 6.5 hours.
5 min read
Do I Miss Being a Principal Engineer? Yes and No
Someone asked if I miss being a principal engineer. What I miss, what I don't, and how to tell good reasons for staying technical from bad ones.
5 min read
Fifty-Five Days In: Being Wrong in Public and Writing on Empty
Fifty-five days of daily posts: calibrating my opinions by being wrong in public, letting go of saved-up ideas, and why the empty-tank days are worth it.
6 min read
Last Known Good: A Debugging Lesson From My Son's LEGO Set
My nine-year-old fixed a stuck LEGO build by going back to the last step that worked. It's the debugging discipline I'd let slip on a Fabric pipeline.
4 min read
Valentine's Day, Phone in the Car: Giving My Wife My Attention
A production alert on date night taught me my wife doesn't need grand gestures. She needs my attention, and my phone was taking it.
5 min read
Writing as Thinking: Forty-One Days and the Delete Step
Forty-one days of daily blogging taught me I write to find ideas, not share them, and that cutting half the draft is where the thinking happens.
5 min read
February 2026: Fewer Threads, Sundays Off, Seven Hours of Sleep
February plan after 31 days of daily writing: keep the habit, take Sundays off tech, narrow to two focus areas, and stop running on five to six hours of sleep.
5 min read
January 2026 Closed Out: What Held, and Three Experiments That Didn't
The final tally on January: 31 posts in 31 days, one working Saturday, three habit experiments that failed, and the short list I'm taking into February.
4 min read
Grading My January Commitments Before the Month Ends
A mid-course report card on four January commitments: weekend boundaries, being present, daily writing and AI focus, plus three small goals for February.
5 min read
New Year, Same Foundation: Why I Don't Do Resolutions
Why I stopped making New Year's resolutions, what I'm building on in 2026, and the four questions I'll use to judge the year as a father and practitioner.
2 min read
Christmas Day Reflection: The Joy of Building Things That Help People
Merry Christmas! Today, as we celebrate with family and friends, I want to share some thoughts on why we do what we do as technologists.
2 min read
Thanksgiving Reflections: A Year of Azure Data and AI Progress
Enterprise features like private endpoints, managed identity, and content filtering make these models production-ready.