Edit: I wrote this back in November of 2016. Two days ago, 2016-01-08, my paternal grandfather, John Smietana, also passed. It is hard to keep up.

Last night, I had a dream. I dreamt of a woman so strong that she let love conquer death just to console her grandson. In my dream, she had yet to realize she had passed over to the other side and worried about giving me hugs and comfort.

There’s only question that I’ve been asked more than “What do I do to learn how to program?”*. I’m pretty certain that the programming focused question will surpass the current champion sometime in 2017. In this post, I’ll answer how to learn to program at a high level, follow up with some concrete references for getting started as well as my roadmap for Ruby and Rails.

I’ve had the great fortune to follow excellent leaders both in my professional and private life. As early as high school, I learned a great deal from coaches and team captains in sports. In following people who inspired me, I’ve stolen liberally wherever and whenever I can. I’m going to share the principles others shared with me that I value in the workplace and that I share with my reports.

I’ve been wanting to write a eulogy for my grandfather since the day of his death, August 20th, 2015. For some insight into my writing process, I tend to procrastinate an incredible amount while my conscious mind comes of with bon mots that “I can’t wait to incorporate into the final product.” Ugh.

Today, May 1st, International Workers’ Day, twitter has been alive with chat of #talkpay. An article in ModelViewCulture requests that we share our current salary, title and experience to combat systemic pay inequality. Though I don’t agree with everything in the article, I’m choosing to take part.

Last week I shared my secrets to an amazing code retreat. Since then Big Nerd Ranch held an internal code retreat (thanks Stafford) and although I was only able to participate for a couple of sessions due to client work, I learned a couple of things and got to play with a new language. Can you guess which one?!? Read on to found out.

You may have heard about my adventures with code retreats. I greatly enjoy facilitating and participating and over the years I’ve come up with a base itinerary. You can find the official structure here. This is more of my specific predilections. The day won’t follow this exactly and will vary according to skill level and participants interest but read on to see what I enjoy.

Way back in December, I promised that I would provide a year in review update. Finally, here it is.

Starting last September, I volunteered to teach and to be the robotics lead for the local 4H extension office. Check out the post inside to see some cool videos.

We’re halfway through the winter holidays and I’m not even close to halfway through my holiday vacation todo list. sigh But, there’re good things a brewin’.