Looking Back at My First Marathon

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…

Reflections on Marathon Prep

In a few days I'll be running the San Francisco marathon. It will be my first marathon and my first organized race ever. I don't expect to be able to predict how things will go on race day, but I already feel incredible relief knowing that…

Help Your Database Help Itself

The database is often the only stateful portion of a service. As such, software engineers rely on it for everything that asks "what did I say about this last time?" or "can you hold this for the next time I'm here?" Modern relational databases…

Remember One Moment

When I watch that 9th inning, I don't hear the TV announcers. I hear my grandmother paying for a long distance call to talk to her grandson. I hear a woman get excited for something not because she cares, but because someone she loves cares. And now that I'm grown and shes gone, I also cry.…

Handling Loss

I spent a large part of the winter preparing to visit my ailing grandparents overseas. They've aged rather rapidly since the pandemic started, and it's been a struggle watching their mental and physical states deteriorate over video calls. For most of the pandemic, I thought I…

The Dangers of Tutorial Code

Sometimes the worst times make us reflect in productive ways. This holiday season as I coughed up a lung and sweat through 2 shirts a night, I stared angrily at the ceiling through several nights with thousands of thoughts a minute rolling through my head. Most related to my current…

Making the Kinesis Advantage 2 Zilent

I've written previously on my love for the Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard. Its form factor is by far my favorite physical layout for a keyboard, but I struggled with the noise it created, particularly locked in my small apartment during quarantine. As a result, I played around with…

Balancing Ambition and Realism

My one big goal for this year was to run a marathon. I spent months training and worked my way up to 15 extremely hilly miles every week, with a clear peaking and tapering plan leading into the event. 3 weeks from marathon day, I started to feel sick. 2…