Cycling
September 13, 2026

Cycling across France – from Lille to Marseille

As a fan of the Tour de France, I had always hoped I’d get to see a stage in person one day. Going on vacation in the middle of July, which, for Yelp at least, is the start of H2, the kickoff of annual planning, and the end of a promotion cycle, was never really a great idea, though. Somewhat unintentionally, my career break ended up being timed perfectly to do this in 2026. But, now that I found myself with a lot of free time, why travel 12 hours just to go see a single stage? Why not do some biking as well? Oh, and see several stages?… Continue reading →Cycling across France – from Lille to Marseille

Mgmt
September 12, 2026

Name it

During my time at Yelp, I had a lot of 1:1’s. They were often the highlight of my day or week. At its core, management to me is about people, and it’s hard to know how you can support them if you’re not listening to them.

One of my go-to techniques in those 1:1’s was to name whatever we were talking about. If it’s a bunch of questions about what they’ll be working on next, is that because they’re concerned about a promotion? Thinking about leaving? Bored by their current project and don’t want another one like it? If it’s a 20-question quiz on how compensation works, is that because they feel they’re underpaid? The topic could be positive or… Continue reading →Name it

Tech
September 7, 2026

Reviving a WordPress theme

I originally created the WordPress theme for this site back in 2010 when WordPress was on version 3.0 (and Kesha’s “Tik Tok” was Billboard’s top single of the year). Then I pretty much ignored it for 16 years. Thankfully, DreamHost was keeping my WordPress installation up to date so this site didn’t become a pawn in the dark web. And, much to my surprise, my theme still worked fine 4 major versions later. It wasn’t great… but it worked.

As part of reviving this site, I figured I should give the theme a refresh. Over those 16 years, WordPress had introduced block themes while still supporting classic themes . Meanwhile, the community had merged the two concepts into a Frankenstein-like… Continue reading →Reviving a WordPress theme