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Sometimes I feel like we are stealing from our children. 

When I was a teenager, I thought I was in love.  

Many, Many times.  

It was how we learned. 

I was also depressed.  

Deeply, deeply depressed.  

For no real reason.  

But I pushed through it all. 

I don’t even remember now why, or how. 

We have sheltered our children too much.  

That first love is an amazing thing.  

It is a confusing and fleeting thing. 

But it is powerful. 

It teaches us. 

Who we are, and who other people are.  

I can still feel the fire of every love I have had. 

I want my daughters to feel the power of that feeling. 

The elation. 

The pure joy where light seems to shine from our eyes. 

The racing heart rate. 

The inability to think or even breath. 

But then comes the pain. 

It always comes at some point. 

It always will.  

It crushes our soul. 

Feels like a boulder on our chest preventing our heart from beating.  

The world goes dark and we lose faith in ourselves. 

Then one day we wake up. 

And the sun has come back up. 

We have a cup of coffee that tastes good again. 

There is a rabbit twitching it’s tail in the back yard  

Maybe the world did not end.  

Maybe we are still a good person. 

Maybe we are going to be ok. 

To my dear daughters.  

I wish you love. 

And God forgive me. 

I wish you loss.  

It is the only way that you will learn life’s hard lessons. 

That you are strong,  

and you will survive anything.  

Come see your papa when it happens. 

I will hold you tight. 

And say I am sorry. 

Like a warrior charging bare chested into battle, 

We face the world with the strength of knowing that we do not need to hide our weakness. 

I am not afraid.  

My weaknesses have been bared for the world to see.  

They are clearly exposed so that the world will need to attack them head on if they want to exploit them. 

They are not hidden out of my sight, for me to forget, and my enemy to slyly target. 

Bring it world! My soft underbelly is exposed and I am not afraid! 

We all have events that make us who we are, but they don’t have to be life and death experiences. It’s what we take from them that lets us grow.

When my daughter was very young, she came home from school with a picture she had drawn.
She told me that the assignment was to draw their favorite thing to do.
Excited; I asked her what she drew.
She looked at me with the sweetest little eyes and told me that her favorite thing to do was to spend time with Dad.
At this point, my eyes began to sweat just a little.
I asked her if I could see the picture.
As soon as I saw it, my heart was ripped from my chest, and everything I thought I was as a father was crushed in a moment.
The world swooned and I had to sit down.
In the picture was an adorable small red headed girl sitting on the couch, watching TV; while her dad sat next to her on the couch – with his laptop.

There is nothing like truth from a child to slap you awake. I trend towards over working. Far too much to be a good father. I did not know how to separate the different parts of my life, but I made a change that day.

Whenever I drift too far towards my obsession with work for too long. I remember that picture and I sit down and give those that I love my undivided attention in the moment.

When I was in high school cross country I had a nagging stress fracture in my right foot. During a home school race one afternoon we had a ravine just 200 meters into the race. I leapt from one side and landed on the other side with my right foot and felt the bone snap like a dry twig. Pain shot up my leg and my vision flashed white for a moment. The adrenaline that course through a young man’s veins at the beginning of a competition is amazing. As humans, we have evolved to fight, to survive, to continue at all costs and deal with small problems later. My memoentum carying me forward, there was no stopping. By the time my other foot hit the ground, the endorphines had kicked in and begun to numb the pain. I ran on. These were 5k races, and I had most of the race ahead of me. I had been raised to never quit. The pain of quiting the race would have hurt more that thepain in my foot. In time, I settled into a gait that allowed me to run with minor sharp pain. IT was only those downhill, sharp right turns, where I had to pivot on my broken foot that made me grimace in pain. As I felt the bones grinding together in my foot, I know it was a bad idea to keep moving. But I did not know how to stop. I finished the race in a much lower position than my normal race, and one of my teammates made a snide comment so I flipped him off. My coach tore into me for my bad sportsmanship and I looked him in the eye and told him my foot was broken. His face went white, and he sent me to see if the school physical therapists where still there. As I drove home that night, learning how to drive with a broken foot, the pain of knowing that I was out for the season throbbed more than my foot. Pain is easily controlled. How we deal and adapt defines how we deal with the world around us. In an instant, things change, and we move on. Stopping is not an option. The world keeps spinning, and the race continues. We may be slowed down, but with the right attitude we can come back stronger than we started and learn something about ourselves. Once we know that we can continue through anything, we have the confidence to start down paths that feel perilous.  

Inspired by “A Pattern Language” by … and Principles by Ray Dalio 

There are patterns at lead to all Architecture.  

Architecture in nature, and by man.  

When we build homes and cities, there are patterns that we follow to lead to comfortable flow states for people in those environments.  

There are very similar pattern rules that apply in computer Architecture 

Spaces are not defined in the same ways, but flows of electrons are very similar to humans.  

We all need access and freedom. 

Allow open direct communications when possible.  

• Point to point streaming when no one else needs the data, and when it does not need to be stored long term 
• Secure the connection, not the transaction 
• Notify the receiver only when you have sent enough information for them to act 

Focus on your task at hand 

• Fine grain task swapping only when the grains are large 
• Build dedicated task blocks whenever you can.  
  • This is more often than you will first think 
  • But not all the time 
  • Make them small and efficient, but worth sending data to 
   

Know your neighbors 

• If you are not often communicating with a neighbor, you should not physically be close to them 
• Plan for the flow of information through the system 

Speak the same language 

• Define a programming model and stick with it 
• Discipline here will save your SW team and yourself time later  

Avoid Technical Debt 

• Putting off decisions or short sighted Architecture leads to Technical Debt where things will cost more later than they will cost now. 

Don’t be afraid to move forward 

• Mistakes are natural and we will learn from them all  
• If you are unsure, and the cost function of being wrong will delay the program more than the resource cost of dual path, then build both paths. Do the analysis.  
• Have a decision process, stick to it, document it, then move on. 
• Do not re-open old decisions unless there is new information, new opinions and new people do not count. 
• You don’t have to wait for a decision to move forward, if there is not enough information yet, then identify the work that needs to be done and track it. 

Know your stakeholders 

• They may be different for each part of the Architecture 
• Involve them in the process 
• Get their signoff at each stage review 

Chaos and uncertainty is our world. Embrace it and thrive in it, or find a more suitable role. 

• Not everyone is happy in this world, and that is ok, we need all people contributing where they fit. 
• An Architect adds energy to the system to reduce Entropy, she does not fight the way of things. 

Invent solutions based on other disciplines.  

• One day, the Matryoshka doll will be your inspiration, another it will be the tides.  
• Architects are learning all the time to expand their breadth 

Engage the other disciplines 

• Architects are the hub of the wheel, and must reach out and engage all disciplines 
• Architects Talk, and talk a lot, to everyone.  
• Communicate through spoken and written word.  

Never first accept the old way 

• Make a conscious choice every time, for everything.  
• It may be quick and informed, but never complacent.  
• Every new problem needs to be addressed in it’s own way. 

Plan the town 

• A town needs variety, but it needs agreed upon rules 
• Each IP must have constraints, but be given freedom to perform it’s job. 
• Compromises will be made, it is the higher level Architect’s job to understand and make constraints that guide these compromises.  
• Do not leave this to the designer, they have too much on their plate already. 

Architects build constraints that bring shape to the world, Designers work within constraints to build beautiful final results.  

My favorite Christmas ornament.  

Its shine is from old candy wrappers, glued to notebook paper. It’s hook is a bent paperclip.  

It was 1995; our first year together as husband and wife.  

I was working three jobs and going to school full time. We were broke, but we had a roof overhead, food on our table, and young love in our hearts. 

While I was at work one evening, Laura set about to make our ridiculously small apartment feel festive.  

We had a little two foot tall hand me down imitation Christmas tree, but no money for ornaments.  

I clearly remember coming home late at night and finding her finishing up making the last ornament. I can still clearly see the smile on her face and the light in her eyes. The tree was beautiful; with home made ornaments, and a colorful paper chain. 

For 22 years I have hung this ornament, and then carefully stored it in January.  

This piece of candy wrappers mean more to me than any other Christmas item we own. 

Life has changes a lot in that time, but this always helps me remember where we came from. 

Tonight, in the still air of a peaceful room, while Laura and the girls were singing Christmas carols, it twisted back and forth one time, winking at me. My soul smiled. 

Have we forgotten how to love each other? 

Have we forgotten how to feel? 

Maybe technology is not the problem, maybe technology is the solution. 

Maybe the industrial revolution was the problem. 

Maybe the religious crusades were the problem. 

Maybe Agriculture was the problem. 

Humans adapted and learned how to thrive in its environment. 

Humans have always fought to stay alive and to thrive.  

Perhaps some of us actually learned how to live. 

What if technology frees us? 

Enables us to connect to each other at a level we have rarely found.  

Enables us to take the time to connect to something deeper.  

Something that we have sensed all along, but never figured out how to touch. 

The older I get, the more I understand.  

The older we all get, the more we learn as a people. 

When we stop learning, we die inside.  

What if we never have to die, can we continue to learn forever? 

I do not fear technology.  

I look forward to using technology to improve lives.  

I do not fear AI.  

I will not live in fear.  

If I can have hope that people are good after all that they do. 

Why would I assume that machines are any less so? 

There are plenty of people worried about the evils of General AI. 

If there are actions to be taken to avoid it, then those actions are going to be taken. 

I chose to take actions to develop the positive and not fight the negative. 

As it develops, it will help us be better. 

When it surpasses us, we will work together.  

Richard Branson … You are the Host of the party, be the first to jump in the pool  

I will often kick off a meeting by vision casting, and then I later wonder if I did the right thing.  

Did I just plant a seed in peoples mind instead of nurturing the seed they already have? 

Did I set an expectation that this is the path we are following and I am not interested in other views? 

Did I create an environment where people are comfortable sharing opposing ideas? 

I tend to be the one in the room that is the most comfortable with change and ambiguity. 

I tend to push harder than anyone else.  

After pontificating, I like to step down and work through the room to get people’s feedback. 

I am human, I love it when they agree and confirm. It makes me feel good.  

It also makes me proud when they disagree.  

I am proud of them for clearly articulating their disagreement and concerns. 

I am proud of the team for coming together and collaborating instead of mailing it in.  

I am also proud that I have created an environment where people feel safe to disagree. 

Sometimes I am wrong. 

I am comfortable with that. 

I am happy about that.  

That is how I learn 

That is how I find out that our team has checks and balances that work 

So you want to be an engineer?  

Why? 

Do you want to build things? 

Do you want to change the world/ 

It is an amazing feeling 

Inventing, creating, building, launching, seeing how it is used. 

Using the powers of the universe 

Tapping into math and physics and chemistry to manipulate the fabric of the physical world into a product that serves people or nature 

Do you want to feel like a god? 

Do you want to turn an idea in to a physical object 

You can will an item into being, simply by dreaming it up, designing it, and building it 

This is an amazing amount of power. 

We harness the elements and we understand how they interact with each other.  

We study and manipulate the electromagnetic forces around us. 

We get to ask questions, and get the freedom to test out our ideas. 

We build tools to make ourselves more effective 

We have infinite strength as we scale beyond human capability with technology. 

Do you believe that anything is possible? You just haven’t figured out how to do it yet? 

It does take a certain kind of person. 

We are wrong a lot. 

We screw up a lot. 

We look crazy a lot. 

We keep driving. 

The vision in our mind consumes us. 

It takes stubbornness 

It takes creativity 

It takes a little bit of dysfunction 

I never listen to naysayers. Except to drive me further and harder. 

Go ahead, tell me something can’t be done. 

It makes me smile. 

Let me show you how it can be done. 

If I can make an impact, I will. 

And then.  

Sometimes we are wrong. 

Eventually. 

After you have pushed miles beyond where everyone else told you to quit.  

Sometimes, Eventually, we do have to abandon a path.  

Most of the time it is because we just don’t have one ingredient that you need. 

You have tapped every person on the planet and discovered that we are 5,10, or 100 years away from the key enabling technology that you needed. 

This is where we choose to either redirect and invest in that technology. 

Or wait. 

A lot of Engineering is also patience.  

Acceptance. 

And moving on to the next big thing.  

When you pull your head up. 

After months or years of driving towards that one goal. 

You will look around.  

And see 100 other things that need to get built or fixed. 

And you will move on. 

This is the life of an Engineer.  

The world needs you. 

Don’t let them down by giving up. 

What you get out of your labor is up to you. 

Do you want glory or riches? 

Do you want freedom or fame? 

You get to choose the rewards.  

The engineering is the same. 

Do the work. 

Build the world.  

Then sell it, promote it, give it away, or hide it. 

Just do the work.