Moments in a Life: A Series
Some of the more interesting things I've experienced.
A Password Autofill Surprise
On psychological safety.
A lot of things turn out the way they do because of how we safe we feel. Let me give one example. Some time ago my wife Karen asked me for help with her computer. Ever since she’d migrated to a new Mac, Chrome’s password autofill feature would no longer...
6 Months in the Closet
I make do with a rather small office.
A famous notion in the business world is the “Curse of the new HQ”. The theory is that companies tend to build out a swanky new office just as their success peaks, at which point a fancy space full of potential becomes an expensive millstone. I saw this happen up...
Explain Like I'm 3
A new germ turns things upside down.
Parents of young kids do a lot of explaining. “Do hippos exist?” Surprisingly, yes! “Does Totoro have a brain?” I don’t know! I don’t think spirits have brains. “What does ‘remiss’ mean?” It’s… when you didn’t do something you were supposed to do. “Do letters exist?” Yes! Well. They don’t...
No More Oppatoo
Kids grow up, one quirk at a time.
When you have a young child, other parents often offer advice. This advice comes in many forms and covers many topics, but one phrase is more common than any other. “Enjoy it while it lasts. It goes by faster than you think.” New parents hear this many times. It can...
Bright Side of the Moon
We see an eclipse.
Most things in our world are continuums: you can have none, a little, a lot, or the whole thing. A few things are binary – it’s either there or it isn’t. A total solar eclipse is one of those binary things. Even when the the moon has covered 99% of...
New Here
A wild baby appears.
On July 11, we welcomed Elizabeth Pike into our family. She weighed only 4.6 lbs, most of which was cheek. She was rather early and very small, so we spent our first week with her in the hospital, where she fuelled up on the world’s tiniest IV. Over that first...
Feeding the Baby
Running a startup turns out to be weird.
Like all respectable businesses, Steamclock started in a basement. Four years ago, we outfitted Nigel’s basement with the old desks we’d imported from our corporate jobs, and some basic office chairs. Our presence was fascinating to Nigel’s kids, and they’d come downstairs to visit whenever they could find an excuse....
Leaving Apple
I leave my dream job.
Today was my last day at Apple. Working there has been the experience of a lifetime. The people, the products, and the coffee are all wonderful. I’m going to miss laughing at rumour sites, hiding prototypes, and not needing to explain where I work. At Steve Jobs’ commencent address at...
The California Guys
I run a project. Poorly.
Some lessons in contracting learned by being a slave programmer. When the tech bubble burst, I was young and inexperienced. The local ISP where I’d been learning PHP laid me off, so I struck out on my own doing freelance web development. They say you have to learn through mistakes...
Worst ISP acquisition ever
The death of dialup turns weird.
I used to work for a medium-sized ISP back in days of the dialup shakedown. They used to (and probably still do) buy up little, dying ISPs that had a dream of making it big, but are getting obliterated by high-speed. This is the story of how they bought out...