It’s easy to look at the skinny jean-wearing, incomprehensible music-listening, “on fleek” youth of today and say that they’re a lost generation. The narrative is nothing new—it’s what our parents have said of us, and what our parents’ parents said of them. But recently, it was made very clear to me that our youth are… Continue reading Empowering a “Lost” Generation to Lead
Month: July 2015
Making the Extraordinary Commonplace
I owe much of my technology career and many of my technical skills to the magic that occurs at the intersection of curiosity and opportunity. My career as a web performance engineer started with a friend asking me if I could host a WordPress website that her friend owned. He was a busy law student… Continue reading Making the Extraordinary Commonplace
Love as a String
2014: A conversation with my father I walked with my father to the store in the rain. “So…” my dad said. “I heard that you were gay.” “I am,” I said as I moved from underneath his umbrella. “Well, you know you are going to hell, right?” I paused, getting drenched in the rain. “And who… Continue reading Love as a String
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
Delivered July 5, 1852; Corinthian Hall; Rochester, New York Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I… Continue reading What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
Why I Stopped Identifying with the Struggle
On “Real,” from his debut album Food and Liquor, Lupe Fiasco rapped, “struggle…is just another sign that God loves you/cuz on the low, being po’ also teach you how to hustle.” Those lyrics became a mantra, a personal ideal to live by as the struggle had been something I’ve had to deal with my entire… Continue reading Why I Stopped Identifying with the Struggle
Makers
Making things is hard. Making things with technology is even harder. Where do you start? What technologies do you use? Who can you trust? In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed dramatic shifts in the rate of technological innovation, and it only appears to be accelerating. Want to create a personal web page? That’s easy. Need a… Continue reading Makers
A Necessary Start
The part of Florida I’m from is remarkably more like Mobile than Miami. From Grandma’s house, it’s a short drive to the Alabama border, the gateway to the Heart of Dixie. Riding in the backseat as kid, with Mom driving, I was always amused by the fact that, as we crossed that border, at some… Continue reading A Necessary Start