Shiny Bowie

My kids love the Moana sound­track and who can blame them? Lin-Manuel Miran­da is amaz­ing. So back in Feb­ru­ary I intro­duced them to the Hamil­ton sound­track. Turns out, there are a lot of kids who love Hamil­ton (despite the not-at-all-age-appro­pri­ate mate­r­i­al in many of the songs). So, giv­en that music link­ing suc­cess (I’m get­ting burned out… Con­tin­ue read­ing Shiny Bowie

What I Told Our Kids

I’ve been inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics for most of my life and Angela is much the same. So we of course dis­cuss pol­i­tics quite a bit around the house. I do my best to fol­low my par­ents’ lead and 1) not get over­ly emo­tion­al­ly or upset about pol­i­tics and 2) not present my opin­ion as the… Con­tin­ue read­ing What I Told Our Kids

Harvard Women’s Soccer Team

Sign me up for this team: I can offer you my for­give­ness, which is—and for­ev­er will be—the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.

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Software Engineering

This past week of Feb­ru­ary was Nation­al Engi­neers Week, and it’s always an excel­lent time to learn about dif­fer­ent engi­neers today as well as those whose shoul­ders we stand on. I haven’t prac­ticed engi­neer­ing as a pro­fes­sion­al in over eight years, but I still work with engi­neers and struc­tur­al engi­neer­ing every day at Bent­ley Sys­tems.… Con­tin­ue read­ing Soft­ware Engineering

Octavia Butler’s Oankali

Amy Deng’s Oankali for an art exer­cise “Imag­in­ing the Oankali.” A Google image search for Oankali and Ooloi does’t turn up much oth­er than a lot of rough fan art, but I liked this draw­ing a lot; as much because of its ana­lyt­i­cal approach as the rep­re­sen­ta­tion itself. For the sec­ond year now, I’ve read… Con­tin­ue read­ing Octavia Butler’s Oankali

The Real Glass Menagerie

Angela and I were able to go see a local pro­duc­tion of Ten­nessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” Sat­ur­day night. The cast and pro­duc­tion were excel­lent and the audi­ence, our­selves includ­ed, were moved by Lau­ra’s pan­ic attack as Jim arrives and with Tom’s final address of the audi­ence.: Per­haps I am walk­ing along a street at… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Real Glass Menagerie

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When Bruce Schneier weighs in on the secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions of gov­ern­ment actions, we should all pay attention:

We can­not build a back­door that only works for a par­tic­u­lar type of gov­ern­ment, or only in the pres­ence of a par­tic­u­lar court order.

This is the per­son that coined the phrase “secu­ri­ty the­ater” and he isn’t in the habit of mak­ing up unlike­ly sto­ries to scare us. He is, how­ev­er, very good at under­stand­ing real risks to secu­ri­ty for peo­ple, busi­ness­es, and countries.

Mediterranean Vacation

I post­ed some high­light pho­tos from our once-in-a-life­­time fam­i­ly trip to the Mediter­ranean. We took a cruise from Barcelona to sev­er­al stops in Italy and one in France before return­ing to Spain to spend a cou­ple of extra days around Barcelona. It was exhaust­ing and won­der­ful. Click below to see the entire set at Flickr.

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PAC Insanity

School boards and par­ent orga­ni­za­tions should be real­ly bor­ing stuff, but it’s been pret­ty heat­ed in Williamson Coun­ty, TN in the past year. A local par­ent orga­ni­za­tion called Williamson Strong was fined $5,000 dol­lars recent­ly when it was decid­ed that they were oper­at­ing as an unreg­is­tered Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tee (PAC). They are appeal­ing the deci­sion… Con­tin­ue read­ing PAC Insan­i­ty

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Bike Riding

It seems like a small thing, but of all the things I’m most proud of this year, it’s get­ting both kids rid­ing bikes (with­out train­ing wheels, etc.). For Father’s Day this year, we went on an hour-long ride on one of the green­ways in Brent­wood, TN.

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