About Me

I’m a software / site reliability engineer based out of Santa Barbara, California.

This blog will serve as a centralized place for me to publish articles about my thoughts on engineering, as well as specific “war stories” I’ve accumulated from my time in the industry, along with other unrelated interests of mine.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like feedback on a project you’re working on, or if you just want to discuss one of the articles I’ve published. (Pull requests welcome!)

SARS-CoV-2 and the Pathological vs Physiological Distinction

[WORK IN PROGRESS] See this important disclaimer about my utter lack of credentials: (TODO link) At a Glance The mere presence of a virus or a bacteria is not an indicator of disease Ex: Everyone has C. Acnes on their skin, but only some people develop Acne Vulgaris (“acne”) Along the same lines as the above, we must always distinction between a pathological state and a physiological one Asymptomatic COVID-19 is an oxymoron because it’s not a disease and it’s barely infectious COVID-19 is commonly diagnosed through PCR tests, but we have to apply the pathological vs physiological distinction here! [Read More]

The Case For Ending Lockdown

Introduction [DISCLAIMER: The original author is a layperson without medical/scientific credentials and this post represents a best-effort attempt to synthesize relevant research and unpack the policy implications of the “lockdown” approach as compared with the proposed alternative.] [Note: See the very last section, ”(The End) Help us improve this review”, for how you can contribute. Here’s where you can submit suggestions or identify issues.] The following lays out what we now know about the Coronavirus epidemic, and upon review of the evidence concludes that the unprecedented policy of “lockdown” runs the risk of resulting in far more mortality than the best alternative. [Read More]

Debugging Fundamentals

Why this article might be relevant to you Debugging is one of the most important skills for “real-world” development work. There’s sometimes a misconception that debugging is a skill for the “Ops” folks, but not necessary for your standard software developer. This could not be further from the truth. Furthermore, at least in traditional computer science curriculum, the principles of debugging are not taught. Rather, people tend to develop an intuition for debugging over years of experience troubleshooting and putting out fires. [Read More]