Depending on your fitness goals, there might be shortcuts available to you. If you want to train for powerlifting, you can sometimes shorten your training sessions by lowering weights and reducing rest times; you'll still get a good workout in that will push you towards your goals, even…
When you have to store and retrieve data from a database, do you choose to execute SQL statements yourself or do you use an object-relational mapper (ORM) to abstract away those calls completely? My answer to that question has been "SQL, obviously" my entire career; ORMs have historically…
The winter holidays are a great time to reevaluate life. The short days pull me indoors and the prolonged break from work gets me thinking about things I don't normally have energy or clarity to consider. This year I've found myself looking back at a year…
Let's start this post off with something important: I am not a professional in anything I'm about to talk about. I have rather strong opinions on what a successful and fulfilling life looks like, and you are welcome to disagree. This post represents my approach to…
A few weeks ago, I ran a half marathon. The goal was pretty simple: keep myself honest with my fitness leading into next year's San Francisco marathon. As a result, there were no ambitions for finishing time or even a personal mandate to run the entire distance. I…
I've been somewhat athletically-inclined my whole life and have reasonably strong opinions on food. To maximize physical performance, you need to eat a decent amount of protein and many carbohydrates. For my personal desires, I need lots of savory food, and I tend to not react well to…
The reality is that my propensity to hurt myself does not come from my ability to do things, but rather that my ability to do things comes from my extreme competitiveness, and at the age of 30, my body can't keep up with that competitive spirit.…
I recently completed my first marathon. In some ways, it went better than I could have hoped for. In others, it was a disaster, destined to fail from the very start. You can read my thoughts from before the race here for some history. Results I finished the 2023 San…