I am a family man and software builder living near Seattle, WA. You can learn more about me at About Me. If you're looking for a highly technical team leader, check out Hire a Fractional CTO.

2026 Won't Be the Year of AI Slop. It'll Be the Year We Wake Up to AI Security. Some people are saying 2026 is going to be the year of AI slop. I think they're looking at the wrong problem. 2026 is the year we're going to become keenly aware of the security and privacy challenges that LLMs and agentic to... 3/16/2026 code & professional & software-engineering & ai & security

Curating AI Coding Agents: Why 80% AI-Written Code Still Needs a Human in the Driver's Seat 2/4/2026 code & professional & software-engineering & ai & security I agree with Andrej Karpathy's point that over the last three to five months we've gone from AI coding agents writing maybe 20% of our code to something more like 80%. That shift is real and it's dramatic. But here's what I k... The 2025 Government Shutdown: How and Why It Happened 10/5/2025 politics Why did the September 29, 2025 "Government Shutdown" happen? Was it necessary? What is the real backstory? How to Regain SSH Access to Your AWS EC2 Instance When Locked Out 9/24/2025 code & professional & software-engineering & operations Ever locked yourself out of your own EC2 instance? I did exactly this week while "improving" my SSH configuration. The good news is I was able to get back in with a EC2 trick. I'll show you a proven method to regain access: E... AI Learns to Listen: TypeScript Client for OpenAI's Realtime API 1/31/2025 code & professional & software-engineering & ai Developers can use the OpenAI Realtime API to build features that enable users to have back-and-forth voice conversations with an AI large language model. I'm working on a new startup with a friend, and our use case significa... Bridging the Gap: Communicating Between the "Browser" (Renderer) and the Main Process in an Electron App 12/31/2024 code & professional & software-engineering I've been working with Electron to create installed desktop applications with JavaScript/TypeScript and I found myself writing up notes about how to have the Browser code communicate with the "main" process. I decided to shar... Congratulations Micah 12/7/2024 I share this letter with you for the whole world to see so that you know how proud I am of you. At twelve years old, you have accomplished something few others will. While few will earn a black belt, fewer still will dedicate... Writing Shell Scripts with TypeScript instead of Bash 2/21/2024 code & professional & software-engineering bash/shell scripts are a common part of every developer's life. There is no doubt in my mind that anything can be done in bash, but I am often surprised how just how surprised that I am at the behavior or limitations of the l... Surprising Side Effects of Server Side Rendering in Next.js for SEO & Performance 1/23/2024 code & software-engineering & professional It is popular to talk about how Server Side Rendering (SSR) in Next.js is good for SEO (Search-Engine Optimization). While SSR can be a net positive for SEO it is not strictly necessary and it hurts if you're not careful. I'l... When Empowering Employees to Take Risks, Isn't Empowering (and Why That Needs to Change) 12/27/2023 people-management & leadership & professional As a leader, you believe in empowering your team to take risks. But are you also empowering them to manage risk?