About Me

I am a curious, open-minded, unapologetically nerdy software engineer and writer.

I started my writing career by writing code for computers at large corporations such as Microsoft and Expedia. At some point I had to grow out of that and start writing for people, so at first I wrote quick little pieces on Facebook.

This caused much chagrin and bemusement among my friends and family, so, to protect them, I retreated to a personal blog.

As every blogger eventually discovers, it's hard to get discovered writing off in a corner somewhere. So when I tired of my nearly non-existent audience, I migrated to Medium, where I finally found some readers. After about 50 posts, some with thousands of reads, I decided I was ready to aim big (maybe too big!) and write a whole book. About "life, the universe and everything," no less.

The book turned out to be a beginning rather than an ending. It led to the Rudder app, more essays, and eventually this site, where I curate what science actually has to say about life's harder questions, about career, health, money, relationships, meaning. Three decades of engineering taught me to only trust things that hold up under real-world testing. It turns out that habit works on life, too.

To read the full story of how the book came about, including the gory details of my midlife crisis and how I engineered my way out of it, you'll need to read the book itself. And for the broader perspective and tools, keep exploring the site.

Welcome aboard. It may be turtles all the way down from here, but every one of them is load-bearing.