The Fourth of July always makes me reflect on the state of America. Along with Thanksgiving, Independence Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. Partly because we, as Americans, uniquely get to celebrate, but it's also a chance to appreciate what we have and identify ways we can improve as a nation.
Read MoreI was in San Diego last weekend for a soccer tournament. With two teenage sons who both play competitive soccer, I’ve been to dozens of tournaments, from Sacramento to Seattle, Dallas to Denver. After watching literally hundreds of games, I have come to one undeniable conclusion about soccer, and youth sports more generally: parents are assholes.
Read MoreOnce again, we are mourning another mass shooting in America. Once again, the attack was committed with AR-style automatic weapons that were purchased legally. Once again, the murderer was a teenage male with mental health problems. Once again, it was posted on social media.
Read MoreWith my debut novel coming out this summer, I have spent a great deal of time pitching, visiting, and analyzing independent bookstores in the last year. I love indie bookstores. So, in recognition of Independent Bookstore Day today, I encourage you to support your local bookstore.
Read MoreOne of the big reasons it takes an eternally long time to publish a book is the process of reviews. By the time a book is in your hands at the store, it usually has reviews excerpted on the cover and “praise page” within the book.
Read MoreToday, for Earth Day, I found myself reflecting on an increasingly common complaint I hear: the high price of gasoline.
Read MoreUnless you're living under a rock (which, sometimes, I wish I was), you’ve seen or heard about the incident at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, when Will Smith, evidently offended by a joke directed at his wife, strode on-stage and slapped the host, Chris Rock, in the face. Drama ensued.
Read MoreWhen the pandemic started over two years ago, technology companies were some of the earliest businesses to transition to remote work. Now that the pandemic is gradually receding, those same technology companies are also among the slowest to return to the office.
Read MoreOne of the great appeals of moving to Silicon Valley in 1996 to pursue a career in tech, as I did, was the disruptive vision of changing the world for the better. That allure has long been core to Silicon Valley's culture of innovation.
Read MoreThis Valentine’s Day, deep in the beating heart of the dark web, an entirely-all-too plausible encounter between a desperate robo dialer and a lonely automated support agent shows even non-sentient automatons can find true love. What happens when two of the most annoying things on your phone meet?
Read MoreAs I shared by email a couple weeks ago, I’m thrilled to announce that my debut novel, Bit Flip, is now available for pre-order! Although the publication date of August 16, 2022 is still more than six months away, this is an exciting milestone.
Read MoreDuring this time of year when many of us make New Year’s resolutions, I’m pleased to share that I achieved a personal goal of 2021: reading 52 novels in the year.
Read MoreAfter reading a bunch of great books in 2021, I decided to put together my first ever Top 5 Books of the Year. To be considered, the book had to be published in 2021 and read by me, so this list is limited and highly subjective.
Read MoreWith the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and the onslaught of holiday social gatherings, navigating the latest mask mandates, vaccination requirements, and social distancing guidelines can be a challenge—not to mention cultural norms that vary by region, family, and forum, further complicating the already awkward traditions of the holidays.
Read MoreIf, like me, you do the bulk of your annual shopping between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you are currently grappling with one of the challenges of modern commerce: a seemingly infinite number of choices for any purchase you want to make. In nearly every product or service category, selecting from the myriad options can be overwhelming.
Read MoreAmazon’s behemoth AWS hosting service had a massive outage today. While the disruption, no doubt, was not caused by traffic to Amazon’s oft-neglected Goodreads subsidiary, that was how I first noticed something was wrong.
Read MoreOne of the ironies of Thanksgiving is that the modern version of the holiday is more likely to provoke complaints than thanks. As I posted about last week, service at many companies has gone downhill during the pandemic, and Thanksgiving itself is a minefield of triggering customer experiences—from canceled flights to crowded stores.
Read MoreIf you have shopped, ordered, traveled, purchased, scheduled, contacted, reserved, or otherwise interacted, in any way, with a business in the last several years, you have likely received an automated email, probably from several of those businesses, enthusiastically asking, “How did we do?” If your experience has been anything like mine recently, the answer is, “Pretty damn awful.”
Read MoreAt several points in the last 15+ years, I have been convinced (usually incorrectly) that Facebook was about to jump the shark. For anyone under age 50, "jump the shark" is a reference to a TV show called Happy Days meaning the point at which something henceforth goes downhill. For anyone under age 30, that proverbial shark has already sailed.
Read MoreOne of the nice things about managing your own blog is you don’t need to be constrained by editorial guidelines. So, here’s a departure from my usual posts.
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