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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…