Writing
Engineering, systems, leadership, and the evidence behind difficult decisions.
A chronological archive of essays and technical notes.
Archive
2026
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07 / 12
Writing
When Disagreement Doesn't Mean Ambiguity
Essay
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02 / 20
Writing
Why Consistency Beats Intensity Every Single Time
Essay
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02 / 18
Writing
Why You're Not Lacking Discipline — You're Lacking Energy Management
Essay
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02 / 17
Writing
Why You’re Not Bad at Learning — You’re Bad at Starting Over
Essay
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02 / 16
Writing
Why The First Step Feels Impossible (But Isn't)
Essay
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02 / 15
Writing
Why Skill Is Just Time + Honesty
Essay
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02 / 14
Writing
Why Most People Never Start (And How to Make Sure You Do)
Essay
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02 / 13
Writing
Why Fear of Looking Stupid Holds People Back More Than Anything
Essay
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02 / 12
Writing
Why Mastery Is Just Doing the Same Thing Differently
Essay
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02 / 11
Writing
Why You Don’t Fail at Hard Things — You Fail at Boring Things
Essay
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02 / 10
Writing
Why Difficulty Is Just Discomfort in Disguise
Essay
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02 / 09
Writing
Why Nothing Is Too Hard — You Just Haven’t Learned It Yet
Essay
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02 / 08
Writing
Why You’re Not Behind — You’re on Your Own Timeline
Essay
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02 / 07
Writing
Why You Don’t Need to Know the Whole Path Before You Start
Essay
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02 / 06
Writing
Unlimited PTO and the Myth of Time Back
Why time off doesn’t work when pressure is unlimited—and how well-intentioned managers end up buffering broken systems.
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02 / 06
Writing
Why Expertise Is Just the Repetition You Didn't See
Essay
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02 / 05
Writing
Why Being Bad at Something Is the Most Important Step
Essay
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02 / 04
Writing
Why Most People Stop Right Before They Get Good
Essay
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02 / 03
Writing
Why You Don’t Need Talent to Become Great
Essay
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02 / 02
Writing
Why Motivation Fails (And What Actually Works Instead)
Essay
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02 / 01
Writing
When AI Fails, It’s Usually a Management Problem
Essay
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01 / 31
Writing
Why Most People Underestimate What 1 Year of Focus Can Do
Essay
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01 / 30
Writing
Why Most People Never Reach Their Potential (And How to Avoid Their Trap)
Essay
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01 / 29
Writing
Why You Can’t See Your Own Progress (And Why That Matters)
Essay
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01 / 28
Writing
Why You’re Closer Than You Think
Essay
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01 / 27
Writing
Why Personalization Is Failing — and What Actually Scales
Most products claiming personalization are just regressing to the mean. Real value doesn’t come from better recommendations — it comes from reducing failure.
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01 / 27
Writing
The Secret Advantage of Starting Late
Essay
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01 / 26
Writing
The Most Dangerous Skill You Can Lose as an Adult
Essay
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01 / 25
Writing
Why Your Future Self Is Smarter Than You Think
Essay
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01 / 24
Writing
Why Adults Learn Faster Than Kids (But Feel Slower)
Essay
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01 / 23
Writing
The Psychology of Being a Beginner Again
Essay
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01 / 22
Writing
Why Expertise Feels Like Magic (But Isn't)
Essay
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01 / 21
Writing
Notice Periods, Risk, and the Leadership Myth We Don’t Want to Examine
Essay
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01 / 21
Writing
Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your First Reaction to Hard Things
Essay
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01 / 20
Writing
The Myth of the Overnight Expert
Essay
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01 / 19
Writing
Why Your Brain Turns Big Problems Into Panic
Essay
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01 / 18
Writing
The Hidden Cost of Thinking You’re “Behind”
Essay
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01 / 17
Writing
How Insecurity Pretends to Be Logic
Essay
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01 / 16
Writing
Why Hard Work Isn’t Enough — You Need Direction
Essay
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01 / 14
Writing
Your First Attempt Will Always Be Bad — That’s the Point
Essay
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01 / 13
Writing
Why Gatekeeping in Tech Is Nonsense
Essay
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01 / 12
Writing
The Truth About Not Having a Computer Science Degree
Essay
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01 / 11
Writing
What Overcoming My Fear of Math Taught Me About Leadership
Essay
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01 / 10
Writing
What I Wish Someone Told Me in Junior High About Learning
Essay
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01 / 10
leadership
Once You Notice the Shift, It’s Hard to Unsee
A quiet moment where trust changes shape — and what happens on both sides of it.
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01 / 09
Writing
How Programming Forced Me to Relearn the Math I Avoided
Essay
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01 / 09
Writing
Leadership Principles: Learning, Ownership, and Responsibility
A set of leadership principles for preventing silent ownership, protecting high performers, and maintaining clarity under pressure.
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01 / 08
Writing
The Day I Realized I Wasn’t Bad at Math — I Was Scared of It
Essay
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01 / 07
Writing
Learning, Ownership, and When to Pick Up the Shovel
Essay
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01 / 06
Writing
The Real Reason Most People Quit Before They Begin
Essay
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01 / 06
Writing
Consistency Is Underrated
Essay
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01 / 05
Writing
The Staircase vs. the Wall: How We Misjudge Difficulty
Essay
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01 / 04
Writing
Skill Isn’t Talent — It’s Time and Repetition
Essay
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01 / 04
Writing
When Validated Frameworks Stop Being True
Why frameworks that perform well in test environments often fail when expanded, and how internal validity quietly gets mistaken for truth.
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01 / 03
Writing
Why Difficulty Is an Illusion
Essay
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01 / 02
Writing
The Moment Math Broke Me — And What It Taught Me About Fear
Essay
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01 / 02
Writing
The Books That Shape How Systems Think
Not the usual 'engineering books' list—these are the works that rewire how you understand systems, incentives, and the hidden logic of the world.
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01 / 01
Writing
Common Knowledge Is Why Employees Leave Before You Expect It
Essay
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01 / 01
Writing
Everyone Starts at Zero: The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Hard Things
Essay
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Archive
2025
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12 / 30
leadership
Hiring, Vendors, and the Cost of Cornering People
Essay
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12 / 28
negotiation
Where the Magic Metaphor Breaks
Essay
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12 / 27
negotiation
Negotiation Is Closer to Magic Than Chess
Essay
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12 / 26
Writing
Outcomes, Not Optics: Why Misalignment Breaks Teams
How organizations drift toward optics over substance—and why it quietly destroys clarity, reliability, and team trust.
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12 / 22
Writing
Defensive Professionalism: The Quiet Cousin of Defensive Medicine
Defensive medicine is widely discussed. The same incentive pattern shows up across professions—quietly narrowing outcomes by optimizing for institutional safety over client optimization.
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12 / 21
Writing
We Measure Time Because It’s Convenient. Not Because It’s Correct.
Essay
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12 / 19
Writing
Clarity Is Expensive. Confusion Is Catastrophic.
Essay
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12 / 18
Writing
You Win Most Problems Before They Start
Essay
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12 / 15
Writing
When “Within Normal Limits” Is the Most Dangerous Result
Essay
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12 / 10
Writing
On Pattern, Practice, and the Books That Built My Mind
Essay
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12 / 10
Writing
You Don’t Need Expertise Today — You Need Documentation Today
Essay
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12 / 10
Writing
Urgency Without Panic: The Discipline of Moving Fast Without Falling Apart
Essay
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12 / 09
Writing
The Meeting That Wasn't a Discussion
Essay
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12 / 08
Writing
The Deadline That Nearly Broke Me
Essay
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12 / 08
Writing
The Leadership Trap of Perfection: What Tom West Taught Me
Essay
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12 / 08
Writing
The Calm Leader: How Perception, Preparation, and Clarity Change Everything
Essay
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12 / 07
Writing
Failure as a Clue: What Postmortems Get Wrong
Why most organizations treat failure as a performance review instead of a diagnostic signal—and how to actually learn from outages.
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12 / 05
Writing
I Didn’t Plan to Become an Expert in Concrete Forensics — But Then a Client’s $100K Project Failed in Front of Me
Essay
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12 / 04
Writing
The Cost of Keeping Something: A Real-World Lesson in Incentives, Technology, and Human Behavior
Essay
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12 / 03
Writing
A Rejection, a Misconception, and What It Actually Means
Essay
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07 / 15
Writing
Bad Assumptions
Essay
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06 / 05
Writing
The $45 Tool That Saved My $35K Bathroom—And What It Taught Me About Building Software
Essay
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05 / 28
Writing
The One Who Showed Up
Essay
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05 / 20
General
The Coffee Queue: How Developers Solve Real Problems
Essay
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05 / 07
General
Observing
Essay
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05 / 07
Writing
The Coffee Queue: How Developers Solve Real Problems
Essay
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04 / 30
Writing
A Lesson in Blind Trust
Essay
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04 / 16
General
Not Afraid of AI
Essay
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04 / 08
General
Great Ideas
Essay
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03 / 25
General
Start Feeling the Vibe
Essay
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03 / 22
Writing
Intuitive, what is it?
Essay
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03 / 22
Writing
Reduce over functions or Data, Data Everywhere
Essay
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03 / 15
General
AI and our Obsession with Authenticity
Essay
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03 / 07
Management
Finding the right person
Essay
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02 / 19
Writing
Why Small Steps Beat Big Goals Every Time
Essay
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01 / 15
Writing
What is AI good for?
Essay
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01 / 15
Writing
Stop Measuring the Gap. Measure the Next Step.
Essay
Read
Archive
2021
-
12 / 24
c-sharp
Looking back at C#
Essay
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12 / 23
Writing
I thought (var) Gozer was a man. It's whatever it wants to be.
Essay
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12 / 23
Writing
Looking back at C#
Essay
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12 / 01
Writing
Dynamic Testing Is Better Than No Testing At All
Essay
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12 / 01
Writing
Language Comparison Euler Problem Two
Essay
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12 / 01
Writing
What is says not how it looks
Essay
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12 / 01
Writing
It's Time For All You SQL Objects to get in Your Proper Execution Order
Essay
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Archive
2017
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12 / 26
Writing
Always Answer the Phone, Respond to the Email, and Go to the Interview
Essay
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11 / 19
Writing
Are you Null?
Essay
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11 / 05
Writing
Functional Languages in the Workplace
Essay
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09 / 29
Writing
Regular Expressions Presentation
Essay
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07 / 10
Writing
A Stroll Around C# 7 Remote Viewing
Essay
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07 / 02
Writing
Practice
Essay
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06 / 23
Writing
A Stroll Around C# 7
Essay
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06 / 05
Writing
Quirks with Pattern Matching in C# 7
Essay
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03 / 02
Writing
Happy Birthday Visual Studio!
Essay
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03 / 01
Writing
Indy.Code()
Essay
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03 / 01
Writing
Indy.Code()
Essay
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Archive
2016
-
09 / 07
Writing
C# 7 Overview
Essay
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09 / 06
Writing
C# 7 Additions - Pattern Matching
Essay
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09 / 02
Writing
C# 7 Additions – Literals
Essay
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09 / 01
Writing
C# 7 Additions – Throw Expressions
Essay
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08 / 31
Writing
C# 7 Additions – ref Variables
Essay
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08 / 30
Writing
C# 7 Additions – Out Variables
Essay
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08 / 29
Writing
C# 7 Additions – Deconstructors
Essay
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08 / 28
Writing
C# 7 Additions – Local Functions
Essay
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08 / 27
Writing
C# 7 Additions - Tuples
Essay
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07 / 06
Writing
It's OK, My eval is Sandboxed (No It's Not)
Essay
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03 / 21
Writing
Project Oxford - Image Text Detection
Essay
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03 / 14
Writing
Minutes and Seconds
Essay
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03 / 07
Writing
Configuring Logic
Essay
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02 / 29
Writing
Pushing Data
Essay
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02 / 22
Writing
Just write it here, I'll handle the rest
Essay
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02 / 09
Writing
Application Performance Monitoring in .NET
Essay
Read
Archive
2015
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10 / 19
Writing
Quick and Dirty Data Auditing
Essay
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04 / 25
Writing
Compile Time Stored Procedures
Essay
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03 / 30
Writing
I thought you were the new method?
Essay
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01 / 12
Writing
It's O.K. It's Just Us Two Rows Joined: Vertical Partitioning Or When a 1x1 Table Relationship Makes Sense
Essay
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01 / 05
Writing
Reclaiming Stored Procedure Code
Essay
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Archive
2014
-
12 / 15
Writing
Did You Forget to Create a Nuget Package Again?
Essay
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12 / 01
Writing
Are you finally going to do something about this?
Essay
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11 / 24
Writing
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.....On Second Thought
Essay
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11 / 09
Writing
Mockups - Now with moving pictures
Essay
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10 / 26
Writing
I'm out of Range? You're out of Range!
Essay
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10 / 26
Writing
I'm out of Range? You're out of Range!
Essay
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08 / 03
Writing
Under The Mattress (or Compiled Code) is Not a Good Place to Hide Passwords
Essay
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07 / 13
Writing
Can I at Least Get Your Name Before We do This?
Essay
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06 / 15
Writing
Environments, You All Look the Same to Me
Essay
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06 / 11
Writing
The Shake and Bake Dashboard
Essay
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05 / 27
Writing
Return From The Void
Essay
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04 / 16
Writing
Adding New Web Applications
Essay
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04 / 13
Writing
Cut the Header Off and the Body will Die (Well not really)
Essay
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04 / 06
Writing
JSIooa nvrtai Sncgtpi -> Sorting In JavaScript
Essay
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04 / 02
Writing
Oh Snap! (Restore)
Essay
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03 / 29
Writing
Language Comparison Euler Problem One
Essay
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03 / 28
Writing
You Get an Update, and You Get an Update, and You Get an Update
Essay
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03 / 23
Writing
Please Spell For Me
Essay
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03 / 20
Writing
Where's The Scope
Essay
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03 / 20
Writing
Where's The Scope
Essay
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03 / 16
Writing
Find a Guid In a Haystack
Essay
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03 / 12
Writing
Non Failing Scripts
Essay
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03 / 12
Writing
Non Failing Scripts
Essay
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03 / 10
Writing
The Book Of F#
Essay
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03 / 10
Writing
The Book Of F#
Essay
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03 / 09
Writing
Brackets
Essay
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01 / 15
Writing
Generating SQL
Essay
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