Silence and text
I wrote a few months back about the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, and this week was its sister event: the aptly titled Huge Book Sale thrown by the Friends...
300mg
I got back into Seattle both mid-day and mid-week, which almost seems unfair. My ideal time to arrive back from the airport is around 8pm: enough time to...
Notes from Ballston
(I'm in DC for the first part of the week to catch Heat/Wizards with the entire family on Tuesday. Now that I'm at the point in my life where cross-country...
What you need to get by
Here's a genre of tweet I think about a lot: Emily Kager @EmilyKager My sister (freshman in college) texted me for Big-O proof help for her Algorithms class...
Ten pieces of flash fiction
It snowed today. It was for a couple minutes, max: I looked at the window and it was a regular Seattle window, overcast, a couple folks in Patagonias walking...
4th and Wall
I'm writing this from the first coffeeshop I ever worked at in Seattle, the Uptown Espresso on 4th and Wall. It has, mercifully, not changed at all. The...
COE
One of my favorite things about the time I spent at Amazon was its COE process. COE stands for correction of errors: its a document your team fills out...
Terribly mystical
The past few days have been bright and pulsing and spent in the soothing Palo Alto sun: I got a healthy sunburn on my shoulders for deigning to wear a tank...
Dust and time
A couple things about clothes moths: It is impossible for me to not type clothes moths as clothes mothes. The frictional contrast of thes and ths is...
Concrete
Most startup-y advice doesn't apply to Buttondown, mostly because, well, Buttondown isn't a startup. It's roughly the shape of one, sure, and it's matured to...
Nightsongs
This email was going to be about the band Stars. It was going to be about how I discovered Stars and then downloaded a bunch of their songs on Limewire (some...
The year of moss
First: I published my annual end of year post, with nine hours to spare! (I still haven't rebuilt my blog since getting my hard drive wiped a couple months...
Towards yuletide
There's been a lot of dialogue this week about how to spend your holidays. There are some terrible takes: Whatever you’re hustling for, take note: most...
Moving days
I moved apartments this weekend. Here are some thoughts on moving: I am the kind of person whose identity is very much wrapped up in his living space, which...
Where you want to be forever
I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of jazz ever composed. Listening to it is like watching snow through a window. The room is warm, something is...
In praise of a backlog
I have not written about Buttondown in a while, because of two reasons: I have been very busy! The maelstrom of a year's end is at times all-consuming, and...
A cure for what ails you
I flew back from Richmond on Friday. There are many things I dislike about flying, but they are all redeemed by flying giving me the ability to read without...
Electronic paper cuts
Last week I talked about the primordial joy of building technology. Today, I'm thinking about the opposite: the mountains of quiet frustrations that come...
The joy of programming
Your growth as an engineer is mostly defined by your climbing of the ladder of abstraction. Everyone's road is different, but the landmarks are pretty...
The shorter line
I mentioned last week that I was in Santa Ana for work. On my way back to Seattle, something on right on the edge of remarkability happened. I was flying...