Faith / Tech
Even This Much Power Can Do Nothing
What if you had almost unlimited power, would anything still be impossible?
Ideas & observations
The blog.
Thoughts on technology, faith, and the things I’m learning along the way.
28 essays · Newest first
Life & perspective / Personal / Tech
2025: A year measured in output
A year of building with AI, told through the tools I used and the products I shipped, with fatherhood, health, and faith setting the pace.
Faith / Life & perspective
The God Who Authors an Interesting World
A reflection on simulation as an analogy, the biblical idea of an authored reality, and our relationship with the Author.
Tech
$1K/Month Per Developer: The AI Cost Nobody’s Prepared For
Augmenting developers with AI is going to cost real money. A lot more than companies expect.
Tech
VillageMetrics is live — built for families navigating autism, ADHD, and behavior challenges
VillageMetrics is live: how I built voice journaling and behavior insights to help families like mine make better decisions about their child’s care.
Tech
Stop futzing with Figma: Why AI should be your first UX tool
Bring AI into product design before the wireframes to work through the user’s problem, the flow, and what the interface needs to say.
Tech
I Built This for My Daughter — and for Every Family Navigating Behavior Challenges
Why I’m building VillageMetrics for my daughter and other families trying to understand their children’s behavior and make better care decisions.
Tech
Designing for Affordability: Scalable App Architecture Built to Last
How I designed BestSelfApp to stay affordable at scale, treating cost as an architectural decision from the start.
Tech
If you’re still writing code, you’re doing it wrong
Why I think developers should move beyond AI autocomplete and make AI a central part of how they build software.
Tech
Introducing BestSelfApp: My Take on Hacking Personal Success
Introducing BestSelfApp, the app I built with Ryan Moseley to help people track what matters and make progress toward their goals.
Tech
Rethinking Expertise: AI, Problem Solving, and the End of Task Mastery
How AI is changing the value of expertise, and why learning to solve problems matters more than mastering individual tasks.
Life & perspective / Personal
Excerpts From a Letter to Myself
Excerpts from my New Year’s letters to myself, a personal tradition of reflecting on life and leaving a record for my future self.
Tech
Evolve Or Die: AWS re:Invent 2022
Reflections from AWS re:Invent 2022 on learning, adapting, and continuing to build as technology changes.
Tech
Introducing Riley & Bot: Jobs For Robots And Jobs For Me
I’m excited to announce the release of Jobs for Robots and Jobs for Me, an illustrated children’s book about artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of work.
Life & perspective / Personal
Wisdom from Will
Passages from Will Smith’s memoir that resonated with me, on advice, uncertainty, and learning when to act and when to let go.
Life & perspective
8 Quotes That Shaped My Worldview
Eight quotes that shaped how I think about humility, risk, purpose, and the choices we make.
Lol / Tech
Things That Trigger Me (Well, Tech Related)
A teammate kept a list of “Things that trigger Doug.” Here it is, from poorly named code to wasted time and money.
Life & perspective
Artifact (a poem)
A poem about time, the things we create, and whether caring for another person is the most lasting work we can do.
Tech
10 Rules For Building Better Internet Applications
Ten practical principles for building reliable, scalable, maintainable applications, from cloud architecture to deployment and team practices.
Tech
Super Powers: AWS re:Invent 2016
What I took away from AWS re:Invent 2016: the energy of the community and the cloud capabilities that make ambitious ideas possible.
Tech
DevOps, Because We’re Not In Kansas Anymore
What DevOps actually does: the tools and practices that make cloud applications reliable, scalable, and affordable to run.
Tech
UX So Bad It Just Might Kill Someone: Audible’s New Clips Feature
Audible’s switch from bookmarks to clips shows why user experience design needs to account for where and how people use an app.
Life & perspective / Personal
2015: A year of gratitude journaling
What 115 gratitude journal entries taught me about appreciating the present and seeing more possibilities in the future.
Tech
Why I Went Back To Being a Software Developer
Why I left e-commerce management to build software again, and what that decision taught me about meaningful work and leadership.
Marketing
Store Locator – The Most Underutilized Asset In Online Retail
Your store locator attracts shoppers ready to buy. Here’s how a simple invitation to shop online can turn those visits into more sales.
Marketing
Branded Search – Thine Friend, Thine Enemy
What branded search reveals about customer demand, and why acquiring customers through Google is only part of building a lasting retail business.
Marketing
The Truly Pathetic State of Mobile Commerce
A look at 2012 mobile commerce data and why ticketing and reservations were outpacing traditional retail shopping on phones.
Marketing
Desktop Geolocation – How valuable is ‘sort of’ knowing a users location?
A look at the limits of desktop geolocation and what imprecise location data means for local advertising and retail websites.