Bogey Web Design
type: channel
description: A Zebulon, NC based web designer / developer with typical nerd / geek roots
date: 2026-01-02T19:28:29Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Order Is Important
items: Resilience takes many forms
items: Good Leadership
items: Why you should hire me
items: What I’d tell my younger developer self
items: I Worry
items: Rethinking Work
items: “My one wild and precious life”
items: Maybe a lazy developer is exactly what you want
items: Being a good colleague
items: LinkedIn Skills Match
items: Impostor Syndrome
items: Remembering Loafy
items: The problems I’m excited to solve
items: Hiring a Senior Developer
items: The World Needs
items: Be not afraid
items: On Guilt
items: I love living in the future
items: Life happens
items: Why I’ve Recently Lost Interest In Reddit
items: New Theme: Bwd 3
items: If you’re following 1000 people you’re really following noone
items: WordPress themes in the Theme directory
items: Dealing With A Large, Opinionated And Active User Community

Order Is Important
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2026-01-02T19:28:29Z
subject: career
subject: hiring
subject: kindness
description: As someone that has built software for a long time it’s intrinsically understood by me that order matters. How you take in and verify data or the succession of steps you show a user to facilitate an action or transaction getting it correct matters. Which is why despite the market we currently reside in, where … Continue reading Order Is Important →
encoded: As someone that has built software for a long time it’s intrinsically understood by me that order matters. How you take in and verify data or the succession of steps you show a user to facilitate an action or transaction getting it correct matters. Which is why despite the market we currently reside in, where hirers have far more power than seekers, it still surprises me when one doesn’t consider the order of steps in the process. Especially for a job hiring coders. This morning I applied for a job. It had some minor red flags that stood out on the description, but overall it seemed legitimate including being – supposedly – from a domain that would require a fair amount of investment to obtain. However after applying the next steps were: Required to watch a 5 minute video describing the process, in order to trigger the next step. Required to take two assessments – one a generic comprehension test and one apparently a technical test. All before even talking to a human being and being able to ask questions to even see if this job is right for me and worth investing time from my one wild and precious life to do all that work. Just to “earn” the right to talk to an actual human. This was further compounded by a sales pitch that consisted of the introductory email outlining all this telling me it’s because I’d “earned” the right to move forward by being “assessed in the top 10% of applicants”. All within less than 3 minutes of applying. Which seems impressive, if not impossible. I guess my point is that while the power dynamic shifts with the market this is a two dimensional conversation – you’re selling me why I should lease my time to you and I’m selling you why you should lease my time over someone else’s. So doing it in this order with a pitch and approach that seems right out of “this is just something to prey on desperate job seekers to give free labor to train our LLM” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have, at least currently, the privilege of not wondering how I…

Resilience takes many forms
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-11-10T03:23:17Z
subject: life
subject: resilience
description: I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately, mainly for obvious reasons. At my last company we were told it was an important trait. I tend to agree with the overall sentiment but I also think that it takes forms you may not expect. I see it in reminding yourself that a layoff is not … Continue reading Resilience takes many forms →
encoded: I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately, mainly for obvious reasons. At my last company we were told it was an important trait. I tend to agree with the overall sentiment but I also think that it takes forms you may not expect. I see it in reminding yourself that a layoff is not a failure on your part, but on upper leadership – even as you struggle to land your next opportunity. In not listening to the impostor syndrome living in your head, but believing past colleagues when they say, or write recommendations, that you were valuable – both in your work and as a person. In believing in yourself and risking hope, despite a wave of rejection that pushes you towards despair. In helping others – with encouragement or kindness or recommendations to remind them how awesome they are – even when you grapple with how to help yourself. We have minimal control over the challenges we will face in Life, despite our best efforts. The only real control we have is how we respond to those challenges. There is a really great Instagram I was introduced to. Basically it constantly reminds you that a bad day does not equal a bad life, that life is hard and sometimes you need to rest and recharge, and you are not broken even if you feel like it sometimes. It reminds me that resilience and success are imperfect and not a straight line. And that often our own worst critic is ourselves. As I get older I feel like I’m less sure of what I know, paradoxically. One thing that has served me well for a while though is to put the energy into the world that you wish you received. Not in the sense that it will be circular and necessarily make its way back to you – it often doesn’t. Simply because society is an interconnected organism and if we truly want the experiment to succeed we’re always going to need more kindness, empathy, grace, and humor. Finally I think resilience is about community, as it builds your support network. That could include family – immediate or extended, a church or f…

Good Leadership
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-11-04T19:03:20Z
subject: career
subject: code review
subject: leadership
description: Good leaders praise publicly and discipline privately. A few jobs ago I was on an email with my team, my direct manager, and a design vendor we were using. We were exchanging ideas and critiques. My manager asked me to basically make a bunch of design changes – something I could do, but not nearly … Continue reading Good Leadership →
encoded: Good leaders praise publicly and discipline privately. A few jobs ago I was on an email with my team, my direct manager, and a design vendor we were using. We were exchanging ideas and critiques. My manager asked me to basically make a bunch of design changes – something I could do, but not nearly as efficiently or quickly as the vendor, especially since it was in a design tool I had just started learning. Noting this was a non-ideal solution, I recommended we allow the vendor to instead as it would save a lot of time. The next morning my manager got on a call with me and expressed displeasure that I would bring that up in front of the vendor. I’m not sure if they felt it sacrificed leveraging power or what the reason was. I listened, took accountability, apologized, and said I’d take care of it the way he originally asked. Then I went back to work. A few minutes later we went into standup. After our usual initial rapport my manager took the floor and proceeded to very aggressively admonish me in front of our entire team for the same thing we had just talked about privately. It was demeaning for me and uncomfortable for the rest of the team, as they reached out privately to me after to express and console me. I immediately started to reach out to my network and left the company within a few weeks. No matter how experienced you are, you are going to make mistakes. It’s important to take accountability and learn as an individual. But as a leader it’s even more important how you address those mistakes. I have left more lucrative jobs due to poor leadership and stayed at less lucrative ones because of good leadership. As a developer you are also likely giving code review. As a senior developer often to junior colleagues. This also applies here. Make it a conversation, not a directive. You don’t have to make their code perfect (as subjective as that even is) but simply try and steer them towards incremental improvement and growth – understanding that code review is seen …

Why you should hire me
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-08-04T13:10:14Z
subject: career
description: It’s never been in my nature to speak highly of myself. I’ve always been more comfortable with the “underpromise, overdeliver” philosophy. But I keep getting feedback from colleagues I respect and that I know to be sharp that I need to be more confident. Or at least project it. So, briefly, I will put on … Continue reading Why you should hire me →
encoded: It’s never been in my nature to speak highly of myself. I’ve always been more comfortable with the “underpromise, overdeliver” philosophy. But I keep getting feedback from colleagues I respect and that I know to be sharp that I need to be more confident. Or at least project it. So, briefly, I will put on my sales hat for myself and state why I think you should hire me as a UX / frontend developer. Or more specifically to build scalable, reusable design system / front end components with a focus on responsive design, WCAG accessibility, and CSS. Components that focus on being simple, easy to understand, and have low CSS specificity ideally. I’m good at detecting “smells” and asking probing questions to encourage discussion and further thought Code smells, design smells, specifications smells – something that seems off or begs the questions “why are we doing this specifically” or “what problem are we really trying to solve”? As a colleague recently, kindly, pointed out I tend to use years of experience solving problems to ask probing questions. “How does this adapt when it’s on a smaller screen”, “what happens when we get an error on this part of the form”, “what fields are actually required and necessary here and what can we make optional to streamline progress”, “if this is so important, why is it behind additional steps”, “why are we using this pattern and not this other pattern”? People tend to be afraid of friction and too much friction – or friction just for friction’s sake – isn’t healthy or good. But the right amount of friction, especially at the beginning can save a lot of time down the road. It can make sure we’re building solutions to real problems, not just a bunch of features. I can think of over a dozen – maybe several dozen – times where asking a few questions made people pause, rethink, and refine, saving the team a lot of time and churn. Experience isn’t everything, but it helps. I’ve worked on various size teams over my career I’ve built freelance b…

What I’d tell my younger developer self
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-06-04T09:03:57Z
subject: career
subject: programming
subject: leadership
description: I was speaking to a former colleague recently and in talking about my struggle to find opportunities as a coder he asked me if I’d ever thought about becoming a people manager and that he’d always thought I might be good at it. It’s something others have told me as well in recent years but … Continue reading What I’d tell my younger developer self →
encoded: I was speaking to a former colleague recently and in talking about my struggle to find opportunities as a coder he asked me if I’d ever thought about becoming a people manager and that he’d always thought I might be good at it. It’s something others have told me as well in recent years but not something I believe suits my strengths or skill sets. But it did get me thinking about if I ever did become a manager, specifically a manager of engineers / programmers / developers, what I’d want to have been told and taught to me at the various stages of my career. Entry level / junior developer Don’t be afraid to ask questions because you feel like it might make you look unskilled or like you don’t know something. There’s a lot you’re not expected to know right now and a lot of mistakes you’re unfortunately going to have to experience to learn from rather than being handed that wisdom. And that’s okay. Your role is to figure out what problems excite you or that you’re particularly adept at tackling. To learn and explore and share the new technologies, frameworks, ideas, and tools you find with more experienced developers who might have a bit more Life responsibilities that don’t always allow the freedom to do that. Also frankly they might be a little more cynical and jaded and therefore not as open minded as you are. That’s not to say that everything you find is going to be valuable or used. But if you find even one tool or plugin or whatever that saves your colleagues a lot of time and effort not only will you be helping your team but people will notice and that will help your career. You should also be seeking out mentors. They don’t have to be much more experienced than you. Just someone with similar vibes who you can build rapport with. If you are a white male presenting developer I’d strongly suggest you seek out someone that isn’t the same so that you have exposure to a viewpoint you might otherwise not be granted access to. It will make you a better developer but mor…

I Worry
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-05-31T02:18:03Z
subject: career
subject: life
subject: impostor syndrome
description: I worry a lot lately about my career. Will I get another opportunity to be a developer and, more importantly, will it be a good one with fair pay and benefits? Or will I spend however long I have left living off my savings and random underemployed jobs? I have a lot of challenges in … Continue reading I Worry →
encoded: I worry a lot lately about my career. Will I get another opportunity to be a developer and, more importantly, will it be a good one with fair pay and benefits? Or will I spend however long I have left living off my savings and random underemployed jobs? I have a lot of challenges in standing out from other people going for the jobs I apply to. I’m at an age where people, especially in tech, often don’t want to give you a chance anymore. I’ve always been a bit specialized so while I have JavaScript skills in various libraries and frameworks I’m not very confident in my skills. I have to always double check my syntax or look up what exactly it is to turn the algorithm I know into something that it will run. That lack of confidence shows in phone screenings and interviews unfortunately. Finally I’m very socially awkward which throws people off until they get to know me better. So I worry. That even though I know I have valuable skills, I won’t get a good opportunity. I’d like to say it’s impostor syndrome but the longer I go between jobs the more I worry that maybe the data is validating my doubts. I try to draw from the evidence of my career for confidence. The dozens of heartfelt, kind, and generous recommendations colleagues have given me over the years on LinkedIn. The fact that I’ve worked for a half dozen companies from startups with less than a dozen people to Fortune 100 giants. That code I’ve written has powered sites from freelance brochure sites getting hundreds of visitors a month to ones getting millions. I look at the length and breadth of my career. From working on sites that used tables for layout and had hacks for IE6 to the birth and growth of responsive web design and device agnostic sites to flex and grid and JavaScript frameworks. And everything in between. I know my heart and that I’m still passionate about solving interesting problems and helping users get done what they need in as simple and intuitive ways as possible. That I enjoy making sites …

Rethinking Work
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-05-27T12:19:58Z
subject: career
subject: life
description: Nothing I have to say on this topic is new and, therefore, probably not that interesting. But I have thought, read and listened a lot about it and so it’s been dominating a portion of my brain for a while now. I’ve always struggled with the traditional office environment. Harsh lights that gave me headaches. … Continue reading Rethinking Work →
encoded: Nothing I have to say on this topic is new and, therefore, probably not that interesting. But I have thought, read and listened a lot about it and so it’s been dominating a portion of my brain for a while now. I’ve always struggled with the traditional office environment. Harsh lights that gave me headaches. A hum of noise around distracting me so much I often had to have headphones in listening to music, usually louder than my cubicle mates would appreciate in my younger years. People stopping by my or neighboring desks to ask questions that could have been sent in DMs and looked at during natural pauses in flow. I’ve thought a lot about the concept of flow, that sort of zen like state often spoken of in reverence that developers get into. While it is a thing and often directly correlates to developer productivity level there’s also the cynical part of me that looks at it from the outside. How so often developers are given an air of mystique – going into flow, solving great problems, whiteboards full of cryptic notes and diagrams. Again all of it does have a core of truth in it but I often think how much we play into it for our own benefit. Or how it’s not that different from anyone else just having deep focus on a problem. But I digress. Going back to productivity and the core of what I set out to talk about I think companies and leadership have it wrong right now. As I write this we’re deep into the “return to office” (RTO) movement in that most large companies are pushing to limit if not do away with remote and even hybrid work to a great degree. One of the things I often came back to in meetings when we seemed to be spiraling without arriving at a solution was the simple question of “what are we actually trying to solve?” With RTO it seems to be two things – control and productivity. Control in the workplace has always been a battlefield where the front line moves back and forth between employees and companies. When there’s more need than workers we get more mo…

“My one wild and precious life”
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2025-02-19T02:22:56Z
subject: career
subject: life
description: At the beginning of March I will have been unemployed for 6 months. Which I believe ties the longest stretch I’ve been out of work in my professional career and is one of the few long gaps where I haven’t had a job since I was a teenager. I have been of two minds lately. … Continue reading “My one wild and precious life” →
encoded: At the beginning of March I will have been unemployed for 6 months. Which I believe ties the longest stretch I’ve been out of work in my professional career and is one of the few long gaps where I haven’t had a job since I was a teenager. I have been of two minds lately. Part of me has been critical of myself. I should have been using this time to improve and keep my skills fresh. To learn new frameworks, contribute to open source projects, take on new freelance gigs, or finally crank out that CSS Zen Garden example I’ve always thought about. To set myself apart from all the other developers out there in the same situation. I keep thinking about how when I do finally get an interview – yes, after months and dozens upon dozens of applications I’ve barely got phone screenings, never mind an interview despite having been doing this for a long time – I’m going to be rusty, look unprepared, and fail miserably. That I’m going to lose out on some opportunity. That I’m going to fail and lose everything I’ve been working for in my career. My other mind is thinking of how burnt out I was towards the end of my last job. How difficult it was through and even several years after Covid. How being remote and often forgotten as people went back to a hybrid schedule left me feeling isolated, especially after having moved 700 miles away from most of my family near the end of 2019. How hard it was to find joy and satisfaction in my work some days. So instead I’ve been spending my time reading, playing with my cats (including my new adopted family member Elsie), playing video games, watching movies and tv shows that have sat too long in my watchlists, going to museums, walking, thinking, and writing. Which has caused me to think a lot about that poem The Summer Day by Mary Oliver. About how this decade of my Life has been one about great challenges and resiliency. Of loss and starting to feel old. And how even when I get a job again it will likely be at least 20-25 years before I’m gra…

Maybe a lazy developer is exactly what you want
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-09-30T23:24:08Z
subject: career
subject: programming
subject: hiring
subject: recruiting
description: I was on LinkedIn this morning looking for jobs and a post was recommended in my feed that’s been living rent free in my head all day, to my own detriment. Basically to paraphrase it was something like: Had 3 developers on calls for interviews today. Had canned / AI generated answers to questions. Don’t … Continue reading Maybe a lazy developer is exactly what you want →
encoded: I was on LinkedIn this morning looking for jobs and a post was recommended in my feed that’s been living rent free in my head all day, to my own detriment. Basically to paraphrase it was something like: Had 3 developers on calls for interviews today. Had canned / AI generated answers to questions. Don’t developers know they need to prepare for these and be willing to go the extra mile, especially as a mid level / senior developer? On the one hand, I sort of get it. Recruiting is expensive and hiring the wrong candidate costs a lot of time and money. So I understand the goal. My gripe is with the solution – what I hear is something I’ve always heard “devs must be willing to jump through hoops to prove themselves to me.” But, why? What makes your company so special? Hiring is a two way street. As a candidate I’m interviewing you just as much as you’re interviewing me. Which means the more friction you create, the more candidates you lose out on. My premise is – a lot of those ones you’re driving away might be really good candidates. Some of the best developers I know are “lazy developers”. The ones that see a repetitive problem and write a script that automates it saving hundreds of hours. Or sees us doing basically the same bit of code multiple times in different places and moves it all to a function / component with parameters so they don’t have to change it multiple times the next time the requirements change, it all changes in one place (also they write a test around it to know if any future code breaks the assumptions). The ones that look for simple, reusable solutions that make everyone’s lives better, including stakeholders / customers, rather than trying to show off how much code they wrote or how many PRs they opened that week. What I’m really asking for is a bit of grace for both sides. Because yes it sucks trying to recruit good, talented developers. But it also sucks from the other end. Sending out hundreds of applications to hear back from a tiny percenta…

Being a good colleague
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-09-25T17:16:05Z
subject: career
subject: kindness
subject: mentoring
description: It could just be my impostor syndrome but I’d never claim to be a good developer. I’ve always felt like I was more of a hacker, and not in the cool movie sense. But I’ve gotten enough feedback that I think I feel comfortable claiming to be a good colleague. At the very least it’s … Continue reading Being a good colleague →
encoded: It could just be my impostor syndrome but I’d never claim to be a good developer. I’ve always felt like I was more of a hacker, and not in the cool movie sense. But I’ve gotten enough feedback that I think I feel comfortable claiming to be a good colleague. At the very least it’s something I put a lot of effort into being. I do find it challenging because until someone gets to know me and builds a little rapport, I feel I can be off putting. I’m often blunt, have difficulty with eye contact, speak in monotone, and I’m very introverted. So what do I think makes a good colleague? Be kind. Mr. Rogers is a big hero and inspiration of mine and probably said it best: “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” Everyone is going through something, often something you don’t know about. Try to be empathetic. Give people grace when they have challenges. Be the person you’d want to encounter when you’re struggling the most. Build people up. Compliments are free, sincere ones are invaluable. We all are a bit unsure of ourselves. Try to be observant about what you like most about your colleagues, then tell them about it – preferably in front of others. Remind them that they’re awesome. Build confidence in others, even if you struggle to have it in yourself. Offer solutions, not just problems. Often as a developer I’m presented with a solution to build. Sometimes it’s one I feel is non-ideal. But we have to be mindful that everything is a tradeoff. There is an adage I enjoy that basically says: “good, fast, or cheap – pick two”. So when presented with a solution that you feel is non-ideal or you’re not sure will solve the problem, try to offer an alternative and why you’re suggesting it. Not just “we shouldn’t do that” but “we should consider doing this instead and here’s why”. Sometimes you just have to dig deeper too: “what is the problem we’re really trying to solve here?” Strong opinions, …

LinkedIn Skills Match
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-09-20T14:14:10Z
subject: career
subject: programming
description: So I’ve recently been using LinkedIn to apply to jobs a lot. On the job posts, it has this very useful feature that lists the skills that are important to them then how they match up to yours. So you’ll see something along the lines of “this is a good match for you, you match … Continue reading LinkedIn Skills Match →
encoded: So I’ve recently been using LinkedIn to apply to jobs a lot. On the job posts, it has this very useful feature that lists the skills that are important to them then how they match up to yours. So you’ll see something along the lines of “this is a good match for you, you match 8 out of 10 skills”. The problem is that I’ve noticed a lot of the ones that I’m highly matched for are not positions I’d consider myself very qualified for. Now I know your first thought might be, could that be your impostor syndrome talking? While it’s possible, I don’t think it is as some of the skills it was saying I was proficient in were not ones I would consider myself proficient in to any degree. In fact several were ones I had zero proficiency in. So obviously there was something going on somewhere and it got me curious. If for no other reason than the fact that I like to live by “underpromise, overdeliver” rather than the inverse. My first assumption was – obviously I had been recommended for skills by others that I don’t have or aren’t confident in my ability and hadn’t noticed. So I looked and the handful that had stood out to me recently weren’t there. Digging into the feature at the bottom of job posts, I found LinkedIn offers an article into how it determines the skills you have and how well you match. There I found my answer. It uses two sets of skills. First the ones listed under your skills section. The second is what they call “implicit skills” which they define as: Implicit skills: Skills that are extracted from text within any section of your profile, such as the summary, position description, title, and headline. Implicit skills are extra skills that are not directly editable. Any skills on the matched list that were not added by you are considered “implicit skills.” I’m not certain if it’s bad descriptions by me or inferences from job titles I’ve had – which the way companies make up and assign job titles is a whole topic on its own that I have some opinions on. But eithe…

Impostor Syndrome
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-09-17T11:04:12Z
subject: programming
subject: career
subject: impostor syndrome
description: Let me start this by saying I’m not writing this for me. One of the blessings of my career at this point was being able to advise and mentor colleagues as they progressed through their own career. Using my experience and privilege to be vulnerable – to share the doubts I still had and mistakes … Continue reading Impostor Syndrome →
encoded: Let me start this by saying I’m not writing this for me. One of the blessings of my career at this point was being able to advise and mentor colleagues as they progressed through their own career. Using my experience and privilege to be vulnerable – to share the doubts I still had and mistakes I made so they had space to feel more comfortable about similar feelings they may have been experiencing. It was something I wished I’d had early in my own career. Recently my position was eliminated. So for only the second time in my career I find myself unemployed. As I’ve slowly begun the process of refining my resume, searching and applying for jobs, and the inevitable string of rejections it’s been – understandably – very humbling. It also has validated those thoughts long in the back of my brain that many developers feel. Developer friends and I had joked about how your career is often an oscillation between moments of bliss where you feel you can conquer any problem and moments of despair where you sit head in hands wondering why anyone trusts you to build anything at all. Any job search is humbling and demotivating. It’s a lot like dating where it’s 99% rejection (or perhaps I’m just inadvertently revealing how bad I was at dating). Yet you have to have a short memory. Almost like a quarterback who throws a pick six then has to go out in the next series only thinking ahead, never back if they want to succeed. As someone who is admittedly much more of a specialist I find it especially difficult. Years ago I lamented that it didn’t feel like anyone needed someone with my skills, even though I found myself hired over and over again for exactly those same skills. Reading job descriptions today I find those same feelings rising up. My JavaScript skills have definitely progressed a great deal since when I originally wrote that. But still when I see UX Developer positions asking you to be an expert in React (or Vue or Angular or etc) I feel those doubts rising again. Yes, I’v…

Remembering Loafy
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-08-31T00:00:00Z
subject: family
subject: cats
subject: grief
subject: life
subject: loss
description: It’s probably sad to say that a cat is your best friend. But, for better or worse, Loafy was my best friend. He’d been through a few different family members before I agreed to take him when I bought my first home late in 2009. I didn’t realize the blessing I was about to receive. … Continue reading Remembering Loafy →
encoded: <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="768" height="1024" src="https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880-768x1024.jpg" alt="Loafy" class="wp-image-473" srcset="https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880-225x300.jpg 225w, https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880-1535x2048.jpg 1535w, https://www.bogeywebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/loafy-edited-e1725020410880.jpg 1872w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /> Loafy, June 2021 It’s probably sad to say that a cat is your best friend. But, for better or worse, Loafy was my best friend. He’d been through a few different family members before I agreed to take him when I bought my first home late in 2009. I didn’t realize the blessing I was about to receive. I’ve had a few cats that have had a lot of personality and Loafy was definitely one of them. When he was younger he used to tear up and down the length of my house chirping, for lack of a better word. He would come running from anywhere when he heard me open a can of food or a bag of treats. And like Mugsy he just seemed to know my mood, especially when I was down and would always try to cheer me up. Because he’d gone through several homes I wasn’t always exactly sure when his birthday was. I was pretty sure it was in 2004 but was told June and March at different times. Regardless, last year he celebrated his 19th birthday. During the pandemic I had almost lost him. He started losing a ton of weight and being extremely tired. I found out he had hyperthyroidism and knowing that he hated pills or anything of the sort, and being blessed with resources, I decided to get him radiation treatment. I was terrified. Th…

The problems I’m excited to solve
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-08-30T12:12:43Z
subject: programming
subject: career
subject: design library
subject: sass
description: I’ve recently been told that as someone who has passed 40, I should not talk about my age because that may hurt future chances of employment. I disagree with this for two reasons. One, ageism is one of the many “isms” people face in employment. It’s also one that seems to get less sympathy which … Continue reading The problems I’m excited to solve →
encoded: I’ve recently been told that as someone who has passed 40, I should not talk about my age because that may hurt future chances of employment. I disagree with this for two reasons. One, ageism is one of the many “isms” people face in employment. It’s also one that seems to get less sympathy which is fair – with age usually comes resources, power, etc that cause this to be far, far less of a challenge than sexism or racism. And I am not trying to dispute or change that assumption. But I am someone with a lot of privilege, so I think I have an obligation to use that to talk about it since I can assume more risk. Two, I think aging is a benefit. I am far more kind, empathetic, thoughtful than I was in my 20s and even 30s. I’ve suffered loss and experienced deep grief. I’ve not had my own children but I’ve helped in the raising of my niece and nephew as well as trying to be a good role model and source of advice for my younger cousins, of which I have many. I’ve gained a lot of perspective and patience that I didn’t have early in my career. I think that’s led me to be a better person and colleague, hopefully. All that to say as I’m about to turn 45 in a few months and I reflect back on a programming career that, depending on whether you count personally or professionally is somewhere between 18-25 years, I’ve been thinking about what problems still excite me to solve. What kinds of opportunities or challenges still are processing in the deep recesses of my mind even as I’ve gotten better about shutting off once I step away from my keyboard. Because, like most programmers, even if I’m not actively thinking about some technical problems my mind is often running them on a thread somewhere. At my current job at MassMutual I’ve worked on several teams, often concurrently. I worked on the relaunch team for the anniversary when I started, helping to build a new brand and site. On a “robo advisor” team, offering financial advice to our customers. On the authentication team handl…

Hiring a Senior Developer
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2024-08-29T01:19:10Z
subject: programming
subject: jobs
subject: work
description: A few years ago I took part in a working group for a large company I was working for. In a highly competitive market, especially at the time, identifying senior developers – specifically talented ones – was a big problem. Even more so for a company that while profitable and stable wasn’t exactly the first … Continue reading Hiring a Senior Developer →
encoded: A few years ago I took part in a working group for a large company I was working for. In a highly competitive market, especially at the time, identifying senior developers – specifically talented ones – was a big problem. Even more so for a company that while profitable and stable wasn’t exactly the first one developers thought of. There are many common ways to evaluate a developer. Often coding exercises are employed but those are more often for people just starting out so you can evaluate that they have the basic skills for the position. Puzzles, like the ones Google has used, can help to discern how someone thinks about and approaches a problem – “how many X can you fit in Y” for example. My argument at the time was that if you’re trying to find a senior developer, maybe this wasn’t the right path. While it is possible to have say 8+ years of experience and still not be a very good developer, I didn’t think a coding exercise was going to help us here. Especially if you’re looking for a strong, skilled developer. There was a real risk that if we asked too much of them or bored them, they’d walk away because they had so many options. So how do you balance that trade off – not pushing away desirable candidates but finding out enough to feel confident in your hiring decision? So we started with the question: what are we really looking for when we say a senior developer? For example imagine you have 3 levels – beginning, intermediate, and advanced then how do you define when someone crosses over from one to the next? While years of experience is important, it’s not the best metric. I’ve met developers with 2 years of experience that I trust much more than some with 20 years of experience. So we started to tease out what we really meant and came up with several metrics. Experience. While it’s not the most important, it is important. Mainly in that over time you see different ways to solve problems, more importantly the wrong ways to solve them. You learn from mistakes,…

The World Needs
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2016-08-26T07:42:38Z
subject: life
subject: thoughts
description: The World needs more empathy and less hostility. More love and less hate. More caring and less neglect. More hope, more heart, more good. We have miles to go before we sleep.
encoded: The World needs more empathy and less hostility. More love and less hate. More caring and less neglect. More hope, more heart, more good. We have miles to go before we sleep.

Be not afraid
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2016-08-25T12:31:06Z
subject: life
subject: fear
description: Be not afraid to… …live your life on your own morals. …let others live their life on theirs, so long as they do not harm others. …be alone. …share your heart. …show compassion and empathy. …speak your mind. …let others speak theirs and, more importantly, to listen when they do. …make decisions that scare you … Continue reading Be not afraid →
encoded: Be not afraid to… …live your life on your own morals. …let others live their life on theirs, so long as they do not harm others. …be alone. …share your heart. …show compassion and empathy. …speak your mind. …let others speak theirs and, more importantly, to listen when they do. …make decisions that scare you and force you to grow. …forgive yourself, most especially when you don’t think you can or should. …show your love to those you care about, openly and earnestly. …pick someone up when they are down. …let someone else pick you up. …help when you can, how you can, with no expectation beyond the recipient paying it forward – if they so choose to. …be yourself and, as a result, keep only those around that accept you. …live, love, embrace and share joy, laugh, and burn fiercely in your passion, because we never know when the ride will end but it will always be before we are ready.

On Guilt
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2016-08-12T14:11:20Z
subject: life
description: I haven’t posted in a long time. I’m going to try posting interesting essays / thoughts I find in my “On This Day” on Facebook. We’ll see how well they do and/or how long I bother. With no further ado, on guilt: Guilt is a powerful emotion. It’s a form of self evaluation in which … Continue reading On Guilt →
encoded: I haven’t posted in a long time. I’m going to try posting interesting essays / thoughts I find in my “On This Day” on Facebook. We’ll see how well they do and/or how long I bother. With no further ado, on guilt: Guilt is a powerful emotion. It’s a form of self evaluation in which we introspectively criticize ourselves for past actions. Guilt is interesting in that it’s self applied. While others can influence our movement towards in inherently we must assign it to ourselves for it to have meaning. So what is the meaning of Guilt? It’s a learning tool. When we feel Guilty about something mainly it’s because we feel that a past action was not handled in a way which we are proud of. We feel that we could have done something more or different and changed the course that we’re on now. It’s Potential – we feel Guilt because we surmise that by changing that action we’d be on a better course than we are now or a better person for doing more – even if it didn’t change the eventual outcome. The main problem with Guilt is that although it is a learning mechanism it is also potentially crippling. It’s hard to release Guilt, hard to move past it. That same Guilt which we should learn from can cloud future Decisions and cascade into further Guilt. So how do we handle Guilt? We don’t shy from it – we learn from it. We don’t let drive us – we let it guide us. We forgive ourselves – even if we don’t want to. Even if it’s seemingly impossible. Because in the end though we can learn and though we can made different Decisions in the future we can’t change the Past – it’s inherently immutable. The longer we hold Guilt the more powerful and damaging it becomes. As disheartening as it is we must remember that we are not perfect – for if we were, what a boring would it would be. Our mistakes, follies, misjudgments and failings make this World someplace that’s worth residing it. It’s the payment we must make, Guilt, sometimes for being imperfect. In the end Forgiving ourselves might be our …

I love living in the future
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2012-05-19T14:33:20Z
subject: social networking
subject: technology
description: Sometimes I have to stop and just wonder at the world we live in now. It’s pretty cool living in the future. Right now we have handheld devices that allow us to contact anyone anywhere in the world, give us directions, play games, take photos, share memories, and much more – all in a single … Continue reading I love living in the future →
encoded: Sometimes I have to stop and just wonder at the world we live in now. It’s pretty cool living in the future. Right now we have handheld devices that allow us to contact anyone anywhere in the world, give us directions, play games, take photos, share memories, and much more – all in a single device. We can communicate instantaneously with people we would otherwise never be able to via avenues like Twitter, Facebook, and others. For example, Whitney Hess is someone of note in my industry. I’ve seen her an An Event Apart and started following her on Twitter. Several times something she has said interested me and I responded. Several times she has responded back and even once, retweeted me. I say this not to “toot my own horn” but to use an example that happened to me to prove a point – this is not something that could have happened 30, 20, or maybe even 10 years ago. Not only did we not have these avenues of communication but we didn’t have the mentality of public communication like Twitter or social networking. I am a relative nobody – a simple, average, web designer / UI developer, i.e. nothing of note. But through the power of the Internet and these tools built on it I’m able to communicate with people like Whitney, able to see funny / silly videos Wil Wheaton posts, and able to be exposed to the wonders of Felicia Day – who’s content wouldn’t have had a viable medium even 10 years ago. The growth and acceptance of the Internet has allowed someone of average means to reach out to audiences that would, typically, be closed to them. Content creators can post videos on YouTube that go viral and are seen by millions of viewers. Artists can put their comics on the web bypassing traditional print media and make a living doing the thing they love. A web designer of modest talent can build a couple of modest themes, put them out on the web, and have them downloaded over 9000 times with hundreds of sites using them still years later. One can Skype with a person 3000 miles aw…

Life happens
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2012-05-04T01:08:12Z
subject: family
subject: Helium.com
subject: life
description: I have not blogged in a long time. Mostly this is due to a combination of procrastination and a sense that anything I did wish to say about the industry – HTML5, CSS3, vendor prefixes, progressive enhancement, responsive design, etc – was being said better by someone with far more reason to listen to then … Continue reading Life happens →
encoded: I have not blogged in a long time. Mostly this is due to a combination of procrastination and a sense that anything I did wish to say about the industry – HTML5, CSS3, vendor prefixes, progressive enhancement, responsive design, etc – was being said better by someone with far more reason to listen to then myself. I’ve come to two realizations. One is that even if I reiterate some points that others make – specifically by attributing them – that it’s beneficial as it shows and builds my understanding of the issue as well as – by attribution and, therefore, SEO – strengthens the views expressed by the “giants” of my industry. Second is that sometimes it’s ok to “remove the mask” and show the human side. Reading the blogs of my peers and mentors has shown that they have a willingness to showcase not just industry knowledge. Through this I’ve gained an appreciation for both the person and their skill as well as a better understanding of them as a whole. This second realization is what I wish to touch on today as the last year saw two life defining moments for me. The first was one many here in the US felt. For almost 5 years I was the sole and principal UI developer for Helium. My code still exists everywhere on their site. Last July I lost my position with Helium. For many, especially myself, we are defined by our jobs. First because in having a career it validates us to have a job. It shows that a company trusts our skill enough to validate us by paying us to do something we love. Something we do on our own – often without compensation. Second because it gives us purpose. Having a job is a responsibility – a reason to get up every morning, get in our car, and drive to an office. We have responsibilities to our fellow developers and to our users – something that all (good) developers feel and are motivated by. Fortunately, in my case, this was actually a good thing. At the end of my time with Helium I was spending a good portion of my week working from home and sleepin…

Why I’ve Recently Lost Interest In Reddit
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2010-03-12T06:00:54Z
subject: social networking
subject: rants
subject: reddit
description: I have been a lurker on Reddit for something like 4 years now. I’ve been a user on Reddit for over 2 years now. I’m not the best user they have – I’ve only had 1 (maybe 2) front page stories, most of links get little or no votes, I don’t comment often, I don’t … Continue reading Why I’ve Recently Lost Interest In Reddit →
encoded: I have been a lurker on Reddit for something like 4 years now. I’ve been a user on Reddit for over 2 years now. I’m not the best user they have – I’ve only had 1 (maybe 2) front page stories, most of links get little or no votes, I don’t comment often, I don’t up/down vote often enough, etc. But I try and honor the Reddiquette as best as I can and add value to the site and community. Lately though, I’ve lost interest in being a user of Reddit and gone back to more of a lurker. Why? A recent event that happened to me. While perusing my feeds I came across this. Having been using Reddit as long as I can, I was excited – I knew this was front page material, hands down. I posted the link (stripped and from my reader) into the Reddit search bar to make sure it wasn’t already submitted – nothing. Just to be safe I copied the image URL and tried that – still nothing. Awesome – not only did I have guaranteed front page material (which proved to be right) but I had original material. So I posted it. “But wait”, you say, “that has 0 points, how could that have made it to the front page?” That one didn’t. This one did. Now this is not a story about originality – that’s obviously a different link. And it’s not about reposting content – Reddiquette clearly states “That said, sometimes bad timing, a bad title, or just plain bad luck can cause an interesting story to fail to get noticed. Feel free to post something again if you feel that the earlier posting didn’t get the attention it deserved and you think you can do better.” If the original user had posted the link I used (even though he posted only a day later) I could have written it off as “bad title / wrong reddit” on my part – no harm, no foul. So, what is my problem? This line of Reddiquette “Look for the original source of content, and submit that. Often, a blog will reference another blog, which references another, and on down with everyone adding ads along the way. Dig through those references and submit a link to the c…

New Theme: Bwd 3
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2010-02-18T06:42:03Z
subject: themes
subject: wordpress
subject: portfolio
subject: wordpress themes
description: As you can probably tell by my new site design I have another new WordPress theme. It’s called Bwd 3 and is a basically two things: A minimalist theme with a robust options page that includes allowing you to participate in CSS Naked Day, have an intro message on the home page, have a custom … Continue reading New Theme: Bwd 3 →
encoded: As you can probably tell by my new site design I have another new WordPress theme. It’s called Bwd 3 and is a basically two things: A minimalist theme with a robust options page that includes allowing you to participate in CSS Naked Day, have an intro message on the home page, have a custom home page, and/or have a social networking area in the right sidebar. It additionally includes a footer that will check your first published post date and build a copyright off it ([first post date year]-[current year]). Finally, it includes 4 sidebar widget areas – blog (tags, posts, categories, etc), custom home page, page, and 404. A theme template which comes prepackaged with all of #1 and good (I hope) commenting in the theme as well as a CSS template with comments (mainly via selectors – my challenge to myself was to use the least amount of classes/IDs as possible). There’s more information as well as a download link on the theme page in my portfolio. Enjoy.

If you’re following 1000 people you’re really following noone
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2010-02-05T08:00:15Z
subject: social networking
subject: twitter
subject: web2.0
description: So I’ve been using Twitter a lot more lately and, like most people, I’ve found it interesting but useful and useless at the same time. How is that? Let me explain. So Twitter is interesting for many reasons. Microblogging is a lot easier than blogging – as is evident by my hundreds of tweets and … Continue reading If you’re following 1000 people you’re really following noone →
encoded: So I’ve been using Twitter a lot more lately and, like most people, I’ve found it interesting but useful and useless at the same time. How is that? Let me explain. So Twitter is interesting for many reasons. Microblogging is a lot easier than blogging – as is evident by my hundreds of tweets and zero blog posts the past 6 months or so. It allows you to follow interesting people and interact with them – I’ve actually responded to and gotten responded back by both WP Limits and The Ferrett. It allows you to keep up with and see “behind the curtain” on interesting people – web comics I enjoy like Shortpacked and Questionable Content, awesome geeks like Felicia Day and Shamus Young, or even just keep up with friends or friend’s projects. It even allows you to give feedback to companies and get replied back to. So it’s useful for the above reasons – how can it also be useless? Well, like blogging for every one meaningful @reply or comment you get there are dozen or hundreds of voices lost in the wind. For the common man is there really any use? Also, there is the follower dilemma. One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is for people follow people incessantly. Now, following some people is part of the usefulness of the service. But there has to be a tipping point. At the time of this writing, and after doing a cleanup of the people I follow, I’m following 74 people. I see hundreds of tweets a day – if not thousands. The fact that people are limited to 140 characters helps but even at that I tend to skim a lot. What is the benefit for someone to follow 200 people? 500? 1000? It’s not like Facebook where you can friend someone and then hide them – so that you can interact with them if need be but they’re not part of your “stream.” If you’re following someone on Twitter they’re always in your stream. I suppose lists help but even they only serve to raise the tipping point by an order of magnitude. Is someone following 10,000 people really following anyone at all? They’re…

WordPress themes in the Theme directory
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2009-09-20T22:47:30Z
subject: themes
subject: wordpress
subject: portfolio
subject: wordpress themes
description: Just a quick post. I finally got around to submitting two of my themes in the official Theme directory. They were accepted after some minor corrections. You can find them here. I just happened to check the stats today and between the two I have over 1200 downloads. While not impressive considering some of the … Continue reading WordPress themes in the Theme directory →
encoded: Just a quick post. I finally got around to submitting two of my themes in the official Theme directory. They were accepted after some minor corrections. You can find them here. I just happened to check the stats today and between the two I have over 1200 downloads. While not impressive considering some of the other themes on the site, I’m pretty happy with that. It will be interested to see if it starts to be actually used on sites and gives me some linkbacks. Next: I have to make homepages for the themes. I’d also like to do some updates to them and craft a third. Hopefully all before the end of the year.

Dealing With A Large, Opinionated And Active User Community
type: item
creator: bogeywebdesign
date: 2009-04-14T01:25:29Z
subject: web design
subject: user communities
subject: user community
subject: user engagement
subject: users
description: At my current position we are lucky to have a vibrant, active, large, opinionated, and outspoken community. Perhaps it has to do with having a writing site but most users are logical and literate in their arguments which allows us many insights into the usability of our site, potential flaws / bugs, outstanding issues with … Continue reading Dealing With A Large, Opinionated And Active User Community →
encoded: At my current position we are lucky to have a vibrant, active, large, opinionated, and outspoken community. Perhaps it has to do with having a writing site but most users are logical and literate in their arguments which allows us many insights into the usability of our site, potential flaws / bugs, outstanding issues with new (or even seasoned) features, and, generally, into how a user sees our site. One of the difficulties with being a programmer or anyone that works “behind the scenes” – developing, testing, or specifying features – is that no matter how hard you try or how good you are at your job you have an entrenched opinion about the site that you work on because you have made it. It’s impossible to fully look at it with user’s eyes so no matter how much you think about a particular feature you’re always going to miss something that a user will see. It’s just natural that you assume certain things are logical when in fact the flow, usability, or design of a page might be extremely confusing or present a high hurdle to all, or even a subset of, your users that can render the page from difficult to use to unusable. This is where an active community is a boon. By engaging those users – we use a message board (built on the open source SMF software) and a blog (using WordPress) – you are able to gather information, tips, questions, and insight into the finished product in the wild. Many times it allows us to find where copy or page flow is lacking and provide instruction to users. We have certain community leaders (which we call stewards) that many times will use the information provided by us throughout the boards to instruct other users – propagating the knowledge for us. Other times it allows questions to arise that we may not have thought of and allow us to schedule new features or feature updates to correct deficiencies. Finally, we may have an instance that we did not foresee or couldn’t create in our test environment and only through exposure to users do w…