Lane Sawyer🌹

At some point in the last fifty years the great American pastime pivoted from baseball to television. Ever since Philo Farnsworth invented the television (and gave my home state of Idaho at least one claim to fame outside of potatoes), the TV industry has exploded. Up to 97 percent of U.S. households have a television, and they are all put to use! On average, U.S. adults watch 5 hours of TV every day. That’s 35 hours a week! 🤯 Think of what we could be doing with that time. Developing a hobby, ...

During my first year as a developer I screwed up a lot. Unintended changes made their way into my files seemingly at random. My commits broke existing unit tests. Sometimes I missed entire requirements because I didn’t read the story thoroughly. In short, I wasn’t deliberate with my work because I did not have a definable, repeatable process. My lack of process cost my team time and money when they helped me fix things that I should have done correctly in the first place. What my well-intenti...

It happens every morning. You have the best intentions of waking up with your alarm, but forty minutes later you’re still slipping in and out of consciousness. The snooze button is mankind’s worst invention. But there is a simple way to always wake up when you planned: Get out of bed! You can’t fall asleep if you’re on your feet. So instead of reaching for your phone or for a book each morning, roll out of bed and shamble out of your bedroom. Do anything but stay in bed. Make breakfast, brew ...

Every team needs a written working agreement. Without one, there’s bound be chaos, bloodshed, and death. Or at least it might feel that way. Team working agreements are the first step to good team building. Without a concrete list of rules for team interactions, invisible habits will start to creep into the team’s workflow. Habits that aren’t always good. If you’re part of a team that doesn’t have a working agreement, read on. You’ll learn why it’s important, what it involves, and how to crea...

To be effective, development teams should—at a minimum—have the following processes in place: Team Ground Rules or Working Agreement Definition of Done Code Reviews One on Ones Static Code Analysis Style Guide Automated Tests Branching Strategy Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment What's your team missing? Over the next few weeks I’ll be fleshing out the why and how for each item in the list, so check back for updates! ...

Parking lots are surprisingly dangerous. One in five accidents happen there, mostly due to people relaxing their attention due to the low speeds. Blind corners and cars backing out just add to the chaos. The easiest way to stay safe (outside of simply paying closer attention and staying off your phone) is to back into your parking spot! I know, I know. You’re always running late and don’t have time, plus you’re absolutely awful at lining it up right and don’t want to embarrass yourself in fron...

Finding time to exercise can be tough. Every day seems to fill itself with work, work, and more work. By the time you get home, the comfort of the couch is overbearing and your best-laid plans to exercise vanish. But even on crazy days like that, you can find easy ways to get your heart pumping. One of my favorites ways to sneak exercise into my daily routine is to follow one simple rule: Always take the stairs. If you follow that rule, you’re bound to get some exercise at some point during ...

The rise of Trump and “America First” has shown us that tribalism still reigns supreme. All of recorded history is nothing more than our tribal interactions and the frictions that belonging to a different group can cause. Wars are fought for land, religion, business, and politics: all of which are an attempt to expand a tribe’s power. One of these days, tribalism will destroy us all. How close were we to a nuclear wasteland during the Cold War? How soon until the fail-safe systems fail and a s...

During 2016, in an effort to help boost my confidence and self-image, I changed one of the few passwords I actually know (use a password manager, people!) into an uplifting phrase: You@re@mazing! — or rather, something completely different but with the same general sentiment. Every day I had to type “you are amazing” over and over again. It made me happy each time, and it reminded me that I am worth something. I’ve kept this up, even as I’ve changed passwords regularly. Each time I type them,...

Can you believe it’s been almost a year since I last talked about poop? Last June, I encouraged everyone to poop better by using an improved squatting posture, and I had always meant to follow it up with another article to make your time in the restroom even more satisfactory. That’s right: it’s time to talk bidets. The first time I saw a bidet I was terrified. I was a young Mormon missionary living in Ecuador, and the thought of shooting cold water anywhere near my butt was far too homoeroti...

It’s okay to be lazy. Well… not all the time. Obviously. At some point you’ll just get bored. But when you need a break, take a goddamn break. By the way, this article is more for me than it is for you, dear reader. Dealing with anxiety and perfectionism can be a pain in the ass sometimes, and this weekend I was really feeling it. Today I felt like I haven’t been doing enough with my life, despite the fact that I’m currently doing a lot: Polishing up on Spanish Learning Portuguese Contribu...

Write unit tests Ask others to review your code Review other people’s code Listen to programming podcasts Volunteer for work that makes you uncomfortable Learn something new every day Exercise regularly Get enough sleep Read a book on design patterns, code refactoring, or user experience (and take notes!) Have weekly one-on-ones with your boss Talk to your co-workers about things other than work Contribute to open source Practice mindfulness Use a personal task management system Write regularly...

For the last three months I’ve been traveling every other week to Denver for work. These trips last five days — Sunday to Thursday — and my team has asked me how I can last that long with a single bag. This article makes an assumption that you have some sort of backpack or messenger bag that can double as your luggage and your daily carry to the office. If you don’t have one of those, single-bag trips become a bit awkward — your coworkers might laugh when you’re wheeling your bag around the off...

The concept of retrospectives has seemingly permeated every nook and cranny of the IT industry. It’s a central concept to Agile, and is a phenomenal way to regularly provide a forum for the team to express concerns, recognize achievements, and ultimately improve the software product they are building. A cool tool I ran into a few months ago is “Fun Retro”, an online, real-time, collaborative retrospective board that makes sprint retros a breeze. Most retros I had been in previously involved st...

Nights like this suck. It’s late and my mind is racing with thoughts. Hell, I spent five minutes debating in my head whether I should report that time three months ago when the moving truck lady called me a liar. I told her some specs her company gave me — we called twice to verify the measurements. She said I was lying, and then dropped our stuff in an illegal spot on the street. I’ll probably end up sending that company a(nother) tweet complaining, because why not? I’ve got nothing better to ...

Man, oh man, do I wish I had looked at React.js a few years ago. I started a side project using it over my holiday break, and yesterday I got a React Native Android app up and running. Now I’m hooked. At first I was wary of JSX, but I’ve come to embrace it due to its ease of use and modularity. I suppose I never looked at React because I thought I already had my favorite front-end framework: Angular.js. But with the new Angular 2 using TypeScript, it almost feels like an entirely new framework...

The following article was what I wrote immediately after the election of Donald J. Trump as the next President of the United States. I wanted to sit on it until after the inauguration to see if I thought differently after the stark reality of a Trump presidency finally settled in my mind. Now that I’ve had a few days to digest the results of the election… I’m still outraged. How did the United States of America elect the misogynistic, racist, lying, cheating, anti-intellectual, never-held-p...

I recently took three weeks off work to move from Dallas, TX to Seattle, WA. Much of that was spent driving and visiting friends and family, but I also managed to squeeze in about 15 hours of programming. That’s right! I did what I do every day for a living during my precious time off. Over the break I started to create a website where I can track my 52 Things for the year. Right now I have an early alpha version that works well enough to actually use, as long as you don’t need to edit anythin...

The future is bright, if not a little blurry What a crazy year. If you would’ve told me that 2016 would contain the election of a reality TV star, countless celebrity deaths from music and movies I grew up watching, and the Dallas Cowboys being the number one seed in the NFC, I’d ask you what alternate reality you came from. At the same time, even with all the doom and gloom coming from partisan politics and a general feeling of unrest, 2016 was still the best year on record in many regards. ...

May your 2017 road be as breathtaking as this one Each new year I create a list of 52 things I would like to accomplish. I’ve been doing it since 2014, and it’s helped me do a lot more things than I would have otherwise. But before I dive into my goals for 2017, I need to take a minute to reflect on what I did in 2016. Last year I only completed 14 of the 52 things I set out to do — an abysmal result. It gets slightly better when you look at the 13 other things that I made progress on, but th...

One of the most important (and simple) actions you can take to advance your career is scheduling weekly 30 minute meetings with your manager. I’ve been having one-on-ones with my managers over the last two years and it’s made a remarkable difference in my ability to grow and take on new responsibilities at work. I’ve learned more about managing my career during these short meetings than from all the books and podcasts I’ve listened to on the subject. And when busy projects cause one-on-ones to ...

These rants from Baby Boomers about how entitled Millennials are, or how we need to grow up, or how we must work harder are getting annoying. I’ve seen them pop up occasionally over the last year or two, and frankly I’m sick of it. Baby Boomers complain that we Millennials are spoiled because we all got participation trophies. But wait, who gave us those trophies? THE PARENTS. Boomers can hardly be upset when they crafted the environments that produced the current Millennial generation. Do you...

How have I never managed to make it out to Denver before? I’m kicking myself because I had never stopped in what is now one of my favorite cities! I flew to Denver last week for a business trip and immediately fell in love. Why? I was able to take a train from the airport to the center of the city in just 30 minutes. The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the station was a bike-share program. The second thing were bike racks and bike lanes that were actually being used! Denver is walkabl...

I’ll admit it. Blizzard knows exactly how to get you hooked on their video games. I had never played a single Blizzard game until about a year ago when I gave Heroes of the Storm a try. It’s a much easier version of Dota 2 and League of Legends, which meant I could play with my wife and we wouldn’t get completely floored by the other team. After that I dabbled with Hearthstone, then purchased Starcraft II. And it was a lot of fun! But then came Overwatch. It’s like TF2, but tweaked to be ab...

We live in a world of a million passwords. There’s no getting around it if you have any sort of online presence. And yet, many do nothing to keep track of all those passwords floating around in their brain (or on sticky notes next to their monitor). Even worse, some people use the exact same password for everything. That’s a scary situation. If your Facebook password is the same as your email password and the same as your bank password, a breach in any one of those services opens you up to unto...

I love Ally and have been banking with them for over five years, so when they announced a credit card with 2 percent cash back on gas and groceries, 1 percent on everything else, and an extra 10 percent on any cash back you deposit into your Ally bank account, I immediately jumped on it. However, the experience has been far less than ideal. First off, the card is in a completely different account on a completely different website. I love Ally because all of my checking and savings accounts are...

Personal finance is a huge passion of mine and I’m often offering unsolicited advice to friends, family, and anyone else I can rope into the conversation. I’m surprised that I haven’t written about it yet on Medium though, so it’s time to correct that silly oversight! Americans don’t do a very good job at saving. In fact, the average American saves just shy of 5 percent of their income! That’s a paltry sum and is nowhere close to what is needed for a comfortable retirement. Common financial wi...

Over the last few weeks I’ve been focusing on building my self-esteem. It’s something I’ve lost over the last few years, primarily due to one nasty little habit: I’m extremely self-deprecating. Two years ago I made the transition from school to the workforce. It was rough. The business world is a completely alien world compared to the world of education, where I spent 18 years absolutely excelling. The educational world is my home turf. It’s where I shine brightest, with the best bang for my ...

Last week at work we landed on the random topic of “would you rather be blind or deaf” and out of everyone in the group, I was the only one to choose blindness. After glancing about on the Internet, my highly scientific perusal of the front page of Google lead me to believe that most people would choose deafness over blindness. It makes sense. So much of our world is focused on being able to see. In fact, we rely on our sight so much that we probably miss out on developing our other senses sim...

Overwatch is the greatest game to ever come out from any company in the history of ever. It’s full of watching and overing, and when you’re lucky, you can over and watch at the same time! The graphics are fanciful and great, like a puffy bunny smothering your face with love. The characters are cool and buff and all the things you would expect out of a superhero team that was disbanded due to people not liking superhero teams keeping the world safe (or something like that, I haven’t read the lo...