5 years ago, I quit tv and starting listening to lots and lots of podcasts. I haven’t stopped. Here’s a roundup of my favorite fiction & non-fiction podcasts in the last year!
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Building a Company Culture of Learning
If you want to develop your employees in a way that gives back to your company, build a company culture of learning. Investing in employees helps to retain and attract them, while the ongoing benefits of refreshing the knowledge pool keep your company current and drive innovation.
Here are some great ways to cultivate a culture of learning in your workplace. The more of these you use, the better.
Read MoreHow Patreon Levels Engineers
This is a reprint of a Medium article I wrote while at Patreon, announcing our revamped leveling guide and its principles. I led the rewrite, and worked with a cross-functional team of engineers to capture our shared values.
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What’s so great about cycling bibs?
If you’re on the fence about buying a cycling bib, this article will help. Cycling bibs are “onesies” that connect upper straps to cycling bottoms (cycling shorts / tights / pants), usually with a built-in chamois.
Should you buy a bib? Depending on your body type, the answer may be 100% yes.
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Parking near Livermore Cycling Routes
Looking for parking near Livermore cycling routes? Here are my favorite parking spots near incredible bike segments for training, climbing, and flats.
Why cycle in Livermore? Livermore, California is a semi-rural area with beautiful scenery, miles of rolling hills with vistas and vineyards, and not too many cars. Read More
Downgrade RDS from m3 classic to t2 small VPC
The AWS console does not directly allow you to downgrade RDS from m3 to t2 sizing.
Here’s how to resize a db.m3.medium RDS classic instance to a db.t2.small VPC instance in a few AWS console steps.
This article assumes the following:
* Your RDS instance is still running on the older “EC2-Classic” platform
* You already have an EC2 VPC set up (your EC2 instances are running in a VPC).
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Fix Invisible File with Mac Terminal Shell Commands
How to Fix an Invisible File on Mac with Terminal shell commands
If you run across an invisible file error such “The file can’t be replaced because it’s invisible”:
The problem is that the “invisibility bit” is set to hidden for the affected file.
Here’s the simple fix using only your Mac Terminal (unix commands).
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Resize m3 to t2 EC2 Instances on AWS
If you run a server on AWS, you may be unpleasantly surprised to discover you don’t have the option to automatically resize between all instance types. I decided to resize m3 to t2 instance types (m3.large => t2.small) when my reserved instance lease expired & my needs had changed from those of running a commercial web business to running a small blog.
Turns out, AWS has made numerous network and architecture changes since my machine image was created in 2014. What should have been a small change turned into quite a bit of work. I’ve summarized the steps below should you encounter the same issue.
EC2 instances built today (called EC2-VPC) do not work interchangeably with older generation (now called EC2-Classic) instances. Here are some key differences I encountered: Read More

The Queen of Stock Photos
Just looking at her, you feel happy, uplifted, somehow better about yourself in that moment.
You don’t immediately register her age (very youthful), her beauty (symmetric), her build (slight), her race (Asian, perhaps mixed). No, she is just the embodiment of happiness, satisfaction, promise. In that instant, her smile makes you feel warm, worthy, safe. Who is she? She’s the girl I call The Queen of Stock Photos. Read More