Categorizing non-blocking work for long term stability and velocity

2026-04-30 16:16

#blog #work

In order to effectively prioritize work, we need to know if it's a blocker or a non-blocker, but we can't stop there. We need to further understand if our non-blockers have a long term or architectural impact on our blocking work. We also need to understand whether those impacts should or shouldn't be addressed today. This post is a look at categorizing non-blockers along strategic, organizational, and architectural dimensions in order to make better decisions today that will help us tomorrow. Deprioritization is a decision, not a wish, so let's choose wisely.

A quick write-up of another feature

2025-12-08 11:02

#tech #blog #ramblings

Today I walk through adding incoming and outgoing links to my site. It wasn't particularly challenging, so this should be a quick one, but I think it really adds something nice to the site.

A quick write-up of a fun little feature

2025-11-07 20:54

#tech #blog #ramblings

Today I walk through adding a random note selector to my site. I’ll talk about why I did it and what the implementation looks like, but most importantly share something that brought me a bit of programming joy.

How I use TODO style comments in programming

2025-07-22 11:11

#blog #work #link

A recent article from Sophie Alpert about TODO comments resonated with me so I’m writing down some of my thoughts on them as well.

Plutonian Pebbles

2024-12-11 00:00

#tech #blog #project

Today we're visiting the ancient civilization on Pluto from 2019 day 20 and find some interesting physics-defying stones.

Hoof It

2024-12-10 00:00

#blog #project

Today we're back at the Lava Production Facility from 2023 day 15 helping reindeer find the best hiking routes around their floating island.

Disk Fragmenter

2024-12-09 00:00

#project #blog

Today we're back under the sea with our amphipod friends from 2021 day 23 and need to help one of them defragment their hard drive.

Resonant Collinearity

2024-12-08 00:00

#blog #project

Today we're visiting the roof of a top-secret Easter Bunny installation and need to put a stop to their plot to get people to buy Easter Bunny brand Imitation Mediocre Chocolate as a Christmas gift.

Bridge Repair

2024-12-07 00:00

#blog #project

Today we're visiting the rope bridge from 2022 day 9 and need to help the elves repair it by sorting out there test calculations.

Guard Gallivant

2024-12-06 00:00

#blog #project

Today we visit the suit manufacturing plant from 2018 day 5 and need to avoid creating time paradoxes by hiding from the guard.

Print Queue

2024-12-05 00:00

#blog #project

Today we found the printer from 2017 day 1 and need to help sort it out.

Ceres Search

2024-12-04 00:00

#project #blog

Today were visiting the Ceres monitoring station from 2019 day 10 and helping the station chief solve her word searches.

Mull It Over

2024-12-03 00:00

#blog #project

Today we're visiting the toboggan rental shop from 2020 day 2 and need to help the elves with corrupted data in their computers.

Red-Nosed Report

2024-12-02 00:00

#blog #project

We've made it to our first location in our search for the chief elf historian, the reindeer reactor from 2015 day 19. The reindeer need some help finding out which series of readings from their reactor are safe.

Historian Hysteria

2024-12-01 00:00

#project #blog

This year finds us helping elf historians track down their chief historian who has gone missing and needs to be back for the sleigh launch on Christmas. Today we're comparing lists of numbers for historians.

A season of code

2024-11-30 23:59

#tech #structure #blog #project

We're back for another year or saving Christmas through the power of programming.

Thoughts from an encounter with burnout

2024-03-11 11:23

#blog #work #ramblings

A while ago I realized I was burnt out and had to get some thoughts out. This post was written over a long period of time as a longitudinal record and reflection on burnout.

2022-08-27 00:00

#blog #microblog #structure

This page serves as a simple index of all my microblog posts. This list should be roughly equivalent to searching for the #microblog tag.

If you're looking for my longer #blog posts see 201610270000 Tech — Work — Ramblings.

• 202605291959 But it happened
• 202602232010 Speedrunning good docs, architecture, and tech
• 202602222043 Read Locks and Cache Line Ping Pong
• 202602211224 Two great articles
• 202602132031 No, LLMs are not the new compiler
• 202510261326 Tokio tasks vs kernel thread switching
• 202509290850 Do I need to finish that
• 202507211443 Good riddance Chrome
• 202506112001 You can’t spell Gell-Mann amnesia without LLM
• 202504202032 The joys of photography
• 202504191056 Writing consistently
• 202501030111 To emacs or not to emacs
• 202412311812 Ice cream resolution
• 202412191631 Bluesky
• 202412181227 Bartosz Ciechanowski and the promise of the web
• 202411192241 Two cool tools
• 202410220101 The Final Edition of Embedded Muse
• 202410201110 Engineering Multi-classing
• 202409141244 A Cool Use of Rust Iterators
• 202408250920 1BRC in rust in depth
• 202408220939 Go is not worth it

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Making a Game Out of Learning

2022-08-01 00:00

#tech #blog

In the process of learning Rust, I'm following a great tutorial for building a roguelike game.

Or The "How" Matters

2022-06-17 12:06

#thread #blog #work

I want to talk more about performance — the act of executing, building, delivering, how our team works together and with other teams, and how these stack up against our potential.

A Quick Lesson in Ownership

2022-05-15 00:00

#blog #tech

I'm learning rust

Time for a Better Watch

2022-05-01 00:00

#blog #tech

There are a lot of good first- and third-party watch faces out there for the Fitbit Sense, but none of them are exactly what I want.

A Method for Building Maintainable Systems

2021-09-01 00:00

#blog #tech #work

Today we look at an efficient, sustainable engineering loop — prototype, expand, consolidate.

An Experiment in Adding More

2021-08-01 00:00

#tech #blog

I've always wanted to see what was possible on the web when we use all the space we're given. Today we look at my take on how to add more for those who have the extra real estate.

A Way To Be More Open

2021-07-15 00:00

#blog #ramblings #work

Finished things don't spring up out of the ground in their final state — people have to work hard on them. This is my way of pulling back the curtain on how I work.

A Question of Scope

2021-07-01 00:00

#blog #tech #work

Bringing all my projects under one roof.

A Difference Between Desire and Reality

2021-06-01 00:00

#work #blog

Rewrites are tricky to get right. Despite how often we're drawn to them, they're almost never the right solution.

A Bit of Perspective

2021-05-01 00:00

#blog #ramblings #tech #work

Most engineers aren't using all the new shiny tools. Most are quietly coming to work every day, writing code in tried and true ways, and getting things done.

A Joking Rant About Keeping Code Neat

2020-09-01 00:00

#4 #1 #blog #tech #3 #2

Why we need a system for code organization and what that system should look like.

A Slew of Short Book Reviews

2020-07-01 00:00

#work #blog #ramblings

My professional reads from last year, rated and reviewed.

A Crash Course on the Whole

2020-06-15 00:00

#blog #work #ramblings

Today we're looking at 'die Gestalt', the result of early 20th century studies in psychology that described how humans perceive the world, and how it can help us make outstanding user interfaces.

A New Coat of Paint

2020-06-01 00:00

#tech #blog

You may have noticed that the blog got a new look and feel recently. The changes weren't purely cosmetic though. Let's take a look at how I migrated from a Bootstrap and PHP based blog to React, Next.js, and Styled Components.

A More Formal Report on a Conference

2020-04-01 00:00

#tech #blog #work

A review of the sessions I attended, what I learned, and how I liked the overall experience of CodeMash 2020.

An Informal Report on a Conference

2020-01-08 00:00

#blog #work #tech

Live blogging from CodeMash 2020

A Similarity Among Widely Different Tech

2019-11-15 00:00

#tech #blog

A brief intro to control theory and declarative programming

A Different Take on a Contentious Practice

2018-10-01 00:00

#blog #work

How to get value from development estimates and why I've learned to love them.

A Simple Way to Make Your Life Easier

2018-09-01 00:00

#tech #blog

I finally got around to adding continuous integration pipelines to my personal projects.

A New Way to Build

2018-08-01 00:00

#blog #tech

First Salesforce revolutionized IT with SaaS, then other service platforms extended those ideas for the full stack. Cloud Native Development is here to stay.

A Look at Microservices

2018-07-01 00:00

#tech #work #blog

Making the move from one monolithic service to many microservices can be a complicated process. Here are some reasons why we decided to make the move anyway.

A Review of Building My First React App

2018-06-01 00:00

#tech #work #blog

We're moving our corporate site in house and I thought it would be the perfect time to try out a new javascript framework.

A Great Way to Teach and Learn

2018-05-15 00:00

#blog #tech

Lightning talks are a great way to share knowledge in your organization. Here's how to get started and get everyone to love them.

A Look at Who We Are

2018-05-01 00:00

#ramblings #blog

A rambling, philosophical look at how we exist as distinctly separate individuals in different situations.

An Effort to Put My Best Foot Forward

2016-12-01 00:00

#blog #ramblings

Growing up at the start of social media has its downsides. Today I talk about cleaning up my online presence.

An Exercise in Futility?

2016-10-28 00:00

#blog #ramblings

Maybe it's the infinite hubris of a millennial or maybe its just that I doubt anyone will actually read this, but I found a few reasons to convince myself to do it anyway.

2016-10-27 00:00

#tech #ramblings #microblog #structure #work #blog

This page serves as a simple index of all my blog posts. This list should be roughly equivalent to searching for the #blog tag.

If you're looking for my shorter #microblog posts, see 202208270000 Microblog.

• 202604301616 Figure out if non-blockers are still important
• 202512081102 Adding incoming and outgoing links to my site
• 202511072054 Adding a random note link to my site
• 202507221111 Two types of TODO comments
• 202411302359 Advent of Code 2024
• 202403111123 Burnout
• 202208010000 Making a Rust Roguelike
• 202206171206 Delivery Performance vs Value Delivery
• 202205150000 Learning Rust
• 202205010000 Making a Fitbit Sense Watch Face
• 202109090947 Idea gardening
• 202109010000 Prototype Expand Consolidate
• 202108010000 Designing for Big Screens
• 202107150000 Working in Public
• 202107010000 Unifying My Domain
• 202106010000 Rewrites Are (Almost) Never the Answer
• 202105010000 The Silent Majority of Engineering
• 202009010000 The Only Correct Way to Organize Code
• 202007010000 2019 Work Reads
• 202006150000 Gestalt Principles of Design
• 202006010000 Revamping My Blog
• 202004010000 CodeMash 2020 - Review

Continue reading