Rands In Repose

As an engineer, if you want to piss off someone who is asking you whether you can or can't build a thing, just say, "Given enough time, I can build anything".
They’ll believe you're dodging the que...

The lesson of the Holy Shit is that when you stumble upon a truly revolutionary idea, you have the ability to recognize it. There are lots of people who, when they first saw a web page, thought, "I...

They played bridge every Wednesday at Netscape. In the middle of the cafeteria. Like clockwork.
The players were a collection of ex-SGI guys and they worked for a variety of different groups at the...

I can turn a phrase.
High school journalism is where I discovered this. Mrs. Wickett kept bringing stories to me in my junior year, "Needs a clever headline." I'd read the story and throw out a ter...

Right now, there's a CEO standing in front of his 85-person start-up at an all-hands meeting and he's saying, "In the next 90 days, we need to do the impossible".
The particular version of impossib...

There's a gaping hole in The Taste of the Day. Yes, it's a handy task management system, but it's incomplete. It describes a process for constant scrubbing of a task list, as well as a handy place ...

Think of this. You have a job where, whenever you need to, you can find the absolute truth. When someone asks you, "Phil, why is this happening?" you are 100% confident that you can figure out the ...

It all started with a tweet:
"Making a list of superstitions / foolish consistencies / lightweight OCD behaviors e.g. I always put my RIGHT shoe on first. You?"
This right shoe behavior started dur...

At my favorite local coffee shop, Lorraine gives me shit when I purchase coffee in a paper cup, "You... are not saving the world."
She's right. I'm not, and it's actually worse. Each time I reach f...

I sidestepped the evaluation notebook issue in The Gel Dilemma, but this omission has bugged me because I've cared about what I've written on for a lot longer than I’ve cared what I've written with...