Working on a migration back to WordPress. Things are going to be **weird**. Sorry for all of the RSS issues this will likely cause!

I mentioned it in my most recent /now update, but we just recently bought a new car! It’s a 2026 Honda Civic Sport Hybrid Sedan in Rallye Red (say that three times fast). This is our first brand new car and to be honest, that does feel a little weird, and maybe a little gross. But we’ve had a go of it for the last few years, but we’re very thankful to be in a place where this was something we are able to afford with minimal financing. Here’s a picture of it!

We’ve put a little over 250 miles on the car so far, averaging around 45 miles per gallon. It definitely doesn’t perform like what you would expect a typical hybrid to do. Because it is driven primarily by an electric motor (and can technically be driven solely by that motor up to 80 miles per hour or so), it has the instant torque and speed pickup similar to traditional EVs. In typical city driving, the combustion engine is just there to act mainly as a generator, keeping the hybrid battery system charged up, alongside the regenerative charging you get from applying the brakes or with the paddle selectors, which don’t change gears (this car doesn’t have “gears” anyway). The paddle selectors actually control how much to apply the regenerative energy capture without having to press on the brake pedal. This is great for maintaining speed when going down hills without using the brakes, or if you don’t have anyone behind you and want to slow down and recapture as much energy as possible. The only concern I have with using the paddles is in traffic – I’m not sure they activate the brake lights like the pedal does, so cars behind me have no idea I’m slowing down more than a typical car would when letting off the accelerator.

Anyway, we still have around 350 miles or so in the break-in period according to the owner’s manual, so we’re not doing anything too aggressive with it. I’ve seen YouTube videos that show this car can go 0-60 miles per hour in roughly 7 seconds though. Not incredibly fast, but also not sluggish either, especially given the typical stigma hybrids usually get for performance.

I think the thing I like the most about the car though is the Android Auto and Apply CarPlay setup. I’ve never had a vehicle with this and it works really well. We didn’t get the model that has wireless versions of those, so we have to plug our phones in for it to work, but I’m fine with that – it at least lets the phone charge at the same time. The system has been very snappy, the screen is a decent size without feeling like a tablet is in your face, and it’s not distracting. There are also physical controls for all of the things that you typically use most, like adjusting AC, mirrors, drive mode settings, and well laid out steering wheel controls. It’s a great mix of having things you don’t need to adjust frequently in a menu versus things that you need to be able to adjust without looking being readily available. I really like it.

What’s the old saying? Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough? Sometimes you gotta know when to deliver the MVP and when you can spare some time on the details.

I’ve been working a lot on a Python library at work. It’s not intended to be released for public consumption, although I may be able to make a version that’s stripped of some of the internal pieces to share. The main idea behind the library is to basically allow my team members to quickly build in what I like to call the “plumbing code” to their own scripts.

What do you mean “plumbing code?”

I’m glad you asked! Basically, when I refer to plumbing code, I generally just mean the parts that are consistent across scripts. For reference, the library is essentially the typical Python Requests library, with some authentication components for our APIs, as well as internal rate limiting, error handling, and logging built-in. A common theme we see in our Archticture Review Boards are:

• A lack of clear error handling
• No logging at all, sometimes not even to the console
• No consideration for the health of our APIs (which are used both internally and by customers :eek:)

The main driver behind writing this library was honestly a selfish one. I am constantly asked how we can make calls to our APIs, what are the best ways to interface with them, how do we parse the data, or submit data, etc etc. My goal was to build a tool that gives my coworkers a straightforward way to get past the building block and instead focus on the parts they care about – the business logic, the meat behind the script that actually does the job they want.

What does refinement have to do here?

I’m still relatively new to Python, even though I’ve been working with it for a number of years now. I’m even newer to Object-Oriented Programming. I’m still coming to grips with that whole paradigm shift but it’s made certain things a lot easier to work with now that it’s starting to click.

I bring up refinement here because I like to take an iterative approach to building scripts. I generally have a defined goal in mind, but I try to build up a Minimum Viable Product first that I can demo. This is important for a few reasons, namely:

• It let’s me see if there is interest quickly
• I can quickly shift gears to alternate approaches without having wasted a ton of time

There’s also something to be said about seeing progress by releasing bite-sized versions of this library for use internally too. The feedback I’ve been receiving so far has been excellent. I’m hoping to be able to release it company-wide in the near future, just have a few more things I’d like to refine on it, mostly around error handling.

What else can refining be part of in development?

I’d also consider the expanded learning opportunities that I’ve had with this sort of tooling to be very beneficial. When I first started this project, I had some ideas about how I would accomplish them but as I got moving further, it became clear that there were other, better ways that I never knew about. I’m still learning more but the idea is fairly simple – I don’t know what I don’t know, and I won’t know until I do know.

That sounds super cheesy, what the heck.

But anyway, I think it makes sense. The only way to really understand a new tool or feature or language, or anything really, is to dive in and give it a try. Who knows what you’ll find out! It’s a constant game of refining your existing knowledge with the newly minted shiny snippets and see what works together and what doesn’t. It’s also given me a chance to look back on other things that I’ve written to see how I can do better. For example, one of the features I really wanted with this library was a way to tell the user “hey, you should really do a git pull here, there’s an update.” Well, I was able to build a very basic feature in that calls a hostname I manage internally that maintains a version status of my scripts. Every time one of the scripts runs, it makes a super lightweight call to this endpoint and compares its own version number in the code with the result from the query and if it doesn’t match, it informs the user of the pending changes.

I’m here for learning about anything. I love digging into how things work – technical manuals are some great treasure troves of information and generally provide you with more insight into the language than any tutorial will, but only if you are willing to put forth the effort.

When I get some spare time, I’ll work on parsing out the internal pieces of the library and see if I can do a deeper dive on it in a post here. I think it would be cool – I know it likely won’t be a super revolutionary thing but if it helps one person, I’d call it a win.

What sort of refinement do you have going on your life? Could be anything, personal, professional, silly. I’d love to hear about it!

While we deal with the whirlwind that is life, the current political climate, ever-increasing world tensions, and just generally trying to stay alive, remember this.

You matter.

Life can be hard. I’m certainly going through some tough time at the moment. It’s ok to recognize it for what it is. It sucks.

I’ve talked about the struggled with imposter syndrome that I deal with. Even being in my field for 15 years, it’s still easy to feel like my peers are all smarter than me. Hell, even starting this blog was daunting. There are so many incredible sites out there, it’s a little hard to dip my toes in. Nothing that I’m going to put here is groundbreaking – I don’t have any public Github projects, I don’t have a ton of development experience.

What I do have, though, is the desire to learn and push forward. Even in dark times, try to make just a little bit of progress. Anything moving forward is a step in the right direction, even if it’s hard.

This post by Manu resonated with me so much. I feel just about everything in that post to my core. I have to keep telling myself that just because I may not be the best at any particular thing, that my opinion and experience still matters.

This blog of mine is a first step in that direction I’m taking. I’m still learning a ton, and I’m sure things will change as I figure out more of what I want this to be. It’s all part of the experience.

Text-based guides are just easier to follow along. Video is great in short bursts. When you’re heads down learning something new though, I find text guides to be far superior.

Wait, you what now?

YouTube is a great site, don’t get me wrong (except for, you know, the Google of it all). There’s endless piles of content available at your fingertips (both good and bad. Ok, mostly bad). Want to learn about a new programming language? Need a refresher on accounting? Want to actually figure out what underwater basket weaving is all about? You got it!

But you know what? How am I supposed to do the thing that I’m learning how to do if I’m focused on finding the right spot in the video? The 30 second “this is the thing, this is how do it, the end” videos are the exception here (not that many of those really exist – thanks SEO).

I find it far easier to read through a service manual, technical documentation, or even just a forum post with community-source discussions around a problem. You can search for keywords directly in your browser, bookmark the page, copy the text down to your own devices, hell, even break out the ol’ printer (you do have ink, right?) and make a hard copy.

It gives us time to chew on it, go at our own pace, and get the content that we need. A 40 minute tutorial on something that takes less than 10 minutes to complete if you know all of the steps just seems like a waste of time if you ask me.

But isn’t video all the rage now?

Yeah, it sure is. SEO, advertising, sponsors. All of those are a dime a dozen now with videos. Much like the small web, good luck finding the niche videos in your searches. Thanks to the popularity of monetizing our hobbies, every video we tend to see now is generally 15 minutes or longer. And since you can’t search through videos, good luck finding the thing you needed quickly. Hopefully the video you just clicked on has chapters bookmarked in the description for you to skip to.

So yeah, to all those tech writers, you’re doing great work and just know that we appreciate you. It’s not easy work (let me tell you how much I love writing documentation). But it’s absolutely essential to being able to easily digest information on our time, not at the advertisers time.

What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to hit me up about it in my email on my Contact page.

I’ve been in tech for over 15 years. Since I started, I’ve been dealing with imposter syndrome. I’ve been working through it with various strategies. This is mostly just a vent.

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

I started working in tech as an intern at 15 years old for my local school district. It was mostly helping them go through e-waste from schools for recycling during the summer. It progressed to helping with new build outs for computer labs and delivering components to on-site technicians as the schools. I did this until graduated high school (but only during the summers, my school time was all tied up thanks to the IB program).

I think started at the University of Central Florida with an Information Technology major. Everyone felt like they knew so much more than me and asked a lot of smart questions. I felt totally out of my element.

Then I was recommended for a teaching assistance position for a programming course. This was unexpected, as I was personally struggling with the course work that I was supposed to be helping others with, but I made it work.

I only this for a year until I got a job at a local web hosting company as a Level 1 helpdesk tech. Mostly just handled calls from customers about issues with their websites. I quickly moved up to Level 2, and then on to the coveted Level 3 role (this one was nice because you got to be in a desk away from the noise of the main helpdesk area to focus on your tickets, as well as not having a phone on your desk).

Moving from a job to a career

I graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2014 (oof it’s been 10 years now since this was written). While I was wrapping up final exams, I interviewed for a bunch of different places, but finally landed the opportunity I have now. The interview process went well, although I was nervous all throughout wondering if I knew enough. Based on some of the previous interviews I had, I was definitely feeling down on myself with how the interviewers were reacting.

Before I could even get to the airport to head back home that night, I had a phone call with the job offer.

I was ecstatic, nervous, and ready to move forward all at the same time. A few weeks later, once graduation was complete, I moved on up to Maryland and started the job.

Boy did I feel out of place again.

Being the newbie

For the longest time, I was the youngest person on the team. I joined the company was I was 24 years old and at the time, they pretty much never hired people right out of college. I had a lot to prove to my coworkers and quickly finished training and got put onto some pretty heavy accounts. Things were going pretty well, I was starting to get used to working with my new coworkers, settling into the account work.

About a year in – and pretty much ever since – I’ve been hit with a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. I’ve been working through it by keeping notes of what I’ve accomplished throughout the year, notes of affirmation from customers and coworkers alike, and keeping track of what tasks I’m working on and what I’ve completed. I still feel like I’m waiting on the shoe to drop all the time though.

I get anxious about important changes. I get anxious about things that won’t make any impact at all. I feel like I have to double- or triple-check my work before handing it off. It’s a big weight that I feel like I carry for no reason. I started working here as a Solutions Architect at the bottom of the ladder – today I’m a Principal Solutions Architect and the second most-tenured person on the team. I’ve received countless rewards and recognition for the work that I’ve put in to make my customers and team successful.

Why do I feel this way?

I’ve always been a people pleaser. I take on way too much work compared to what I can actually complete in a reasonable time. Somehow I make it work. There were a few years where I legitimately considered quitting and finding a new job because of the stress and burnout I was feeling.

I’m still working a lot on saying no to work that I don’t have adequate time to take on. If fire drills pop up on my accounts, I’ll take care of them. Typical day-to-day work though? If I don’t have the time, it’s gotta go elsewhere or get pushed to the end of the line.

I used to just say yes to everything, get overwhelmed, get into a cramming mode, and then suffer the consequences later. Things have gotten better, but it’s taken effort of saying no. Management has also helped a lot in the past 5 or 6 years as there has been a really strong push in improving our work-life balance, which has been great to see.

Where do we go from here?

I’m still working on myself – that’s probably a lifelong journey to be honest. If I start to feel stressed, I set my work messenger status to Do Not Disturb, shut down my email client, and focus on a single project for an hour or so. This helps to keep distractions away and gives me time to get things done that have been sitting.

I also still have to improve my own internalized thinking of myself. I’m wanting to get back into lifting weights again. The handful of years where I was consistently lifting weights four times a week and eating a healthy diet is about where I felt the best about myself. I felt strong, like I could take on anything.

I need to get back to that feeling.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a proper blog post. Well, I don’t even know what a ‘proper’ blog post is at this point.

A long time coming

Is a proper blog post something that is written consistently? Does it need a defined topic? I don’t know, but that’s something for another day.

What matters is actually writing something. I don’t really plan on having a proper schedule for this, and honestly I don’t even know if anyone is going to read this (nor will I know, since I’m not keeping track of any analytics). This is really a place for me to just put my thoughts down. If I have something fun to share, maybe I’ll share it here too. In either case, expect to see a not-so-frequent-but-maybe-frequent stream of updates. No promises on quality of content either.

In the past, I would use this as a place for tracking my workouts and talking about some nutrition items that I’ve been working on. That’s something that I would really liked to get back to. I need to start making my health a priority as I’ve been putting it off for too long. I’m still young, but won’t get any younger so the most I can do now, the better off I’ll be in the future.

Anyway, here’s a picture of a cat for fun.

PHP is a cool language

This is just a sample

I’m working on rebuilding my site using Hugo. It’s going to take me some time to get up to speed. Check back soon for more!

Is this just broken now?

Update: August 31, 2025

No, not broken, just also not on Hugo anymore