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What engineers add that the model still can’t replicate LLMs have transformed how technical teams write, analyze and design systems. They deliver speed and reach but they also introduce instability. Anyone who has worked with them sees the pattern. The same prompt can produce different answers. The same reasoning chain can shift when the context window changes. These models are powerful but they…
Most of us think in straight lines. One step, then another. One plus one equals two. But here’s the problem… Life doesn’t always work that way. Why We Underestimate Exponential Growth Our brains aren’t wired to spot exponential patterns. We see slow, steady beginnings and shrug them off. Then it takes off - and suddenly we’re shocked at how fast things changed. Think…
Changing your perspective is one of the hardest cognitive reappraisal techniques. Here are some examples of changing your perspective: See the event from your manager’s perspective. See the event from your children’s eyes. See the event from your parent’s perspective. See the event as someone from another country. See the event as your younger self or your older self. Try to…
Reprioritizing an event means stepping back from something that has triggered your intense emotions. Evaluate its priority. It’s frequently lower priority than you probably thought at first. You can systematically evaluate the priority of an event by looking at its value and effort. How much value does this event or fixing this event have in your life? Is it top, high, medium or low value?…
I’ve found that humor has the highest return on investment of any cognitive reappraisal technique. There are so many forms of humor that this reappraisal strategy is essentially unlimited in its potential. For me, finding humor in the situation is very effective, but your experience may vary. For example, a school kid was giving people the middle finger a few mornings. This made me quite…
Normalizing an event is one of the most powerful cognitive reappraisal techniques. By telling yourself that it’s normal to feel this way, you’re uncertainty is immediately reduced giving you a better sense of control. But there’s another more powerful benefit… Since it’s “normal,” it’s very likely there’s a bunch of other people who have gone…
Once you’ve decided which cognitive reappraisal technique to use , it’s time to act! Using the easy-to-remember mnemonic (“Never Hit or Punch a Pig”), let’s go through each key cognitive reappraisal strategy. Normalize the event . Find Humor in the event . Reprioritize the event . Change your Perspective of the event . See also Cognitive reappraisal techniques
Changing your perspective is a cognitive reappraisal technique. This is the hardest type of reappraisal and allows you to interpret the difficult situation from another’s perspective. Once you can see the situation from another’s perspective, it clarifies your experience and helps to regulate your emotions. Change your perspective of the event . See also Decide which cognitive…
Prioritizing is a cognitive reappraisal technique. By lowering the priority of an event, you can change how you interpret the event. This isn’t about artificially claiming that an event is unimportant. If the event is important to you, then it has a high priority relative to other events. However, reasoning through its priority relative to other events is a great way to put the event into…
Humor is a cognitive reappraisal technique. It allows you to interpret difficult situations with a laugh. Because you’re reintepreting the circumstances as funny, you can more easily step away and reinterpret the situation. Having a chuckle about the situation creates the space for you to regulate your emotions. Find humor in the event . See also Decide which cognitive reappraisal technique…
Normalizing is a cognitive reappraisal technique. It’s essentially a way to tell yourself that it’s normal to feel this way. Because you’ve clarified your experience, you can reduce uncertainty, which in turn gives you a better sense of control. Normalize the event . See also Decide which cognitive reappraisal technique to use
Once you’ve oriented yourself , you must decide which cognitive reappraisal strategy to use. An easy way to remember the key strategies is the mnemonic Never Hit or Punch a Pig . The first letter of each capitalized word maps to a reappraisal strategy. N - Decide if this is Normal . H - Decide if this is Humorous . P - Decide if this is at the right Priority . P - Decide if this is the right…
In order to orient yourself as quickly as possible, the first thing you need to do is to re-regulate your intense emotions, even if it’s only temporary. To re-regulate, one of the simplest things you can do just about anywhere is diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is a slow, smooth and deep inhalation of air to move the diaphragm (the muscular wall beneath your lungs). This is…
The T in the HALT acronym represents tiredness . Tiredness can be physical or emotional. Physical tiredness is most frequently the result of ignoring signs we need a break. You might be pushing yourself too hard by pushing aside your body’s signals to rest. Emotional tiredness is the sense of drowning and being overloaded. For both physical and emotional tiredness, stepping away from the…
The L in HALT acronym represents loneliness . Loneliness can be real or perceived isolation. Real physical isolation from others is beyond the scope of this post. Perceived isolation can frequently happen when we isolate ourselves. It might feel like others can’t understand us. Maybe it’s the fear of rejection, or maybe you’re not sure if you’ll enjoy connecting with…
The A in the HALT acronym represents anger . Anger shouldn’t be suppressed. After all, it’s a healthy emotion. The keys to addressing your anger are: Expressing your anger in a healthy way, so that you’re calm when addressing your anger. Understanding your anger triggers, so that you can address your anger before it starts. While dealing with your anger trigger is probably the…
The H in the HALT acronym represents hunger . This can be physical as in taking care of your nutritional needs. Hunger can also be emotional as in yearning for attention, comfort and companionship. To address your hunger, eat something wholesome, talk to a good friend. You can even do both at the same time by asking your good friend to go out or come over! See also HALT acronym
As you improve your mindfulness of emotions and feelings , you’ll get a sense of what triggers your intense emotions. Next time you feel triggered, use the HALT acronym. The HALT acronym stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired . The HALT acronym is used for recovery in rehab programs for substance abuse. It’s an easy-to-remember technique that invites you to pause and ask yourself…
Increasing your mindfulness of emotions and feelings puts you on the path to regulating them . If you aren’t recognizing that your emotions are intense, there’s little you can do to regulate them. Mindfulness of emotions is a skill and takes practice to improve. Below are some examples of intense emotions manifesting in concrete behaviors: Avoiding someone or something Bullying someone…
Cognitive reappraisal techniques are a cognitive change strategy. They’re used to regulate emotion and represent ways to reinterpret events through your own lens. This is different from suppressing an emotion which involves keeping a lid on the emotion and hiding the emotion from others. Here’s my checklist to remind myself to do this when intense emotions surface: Observe your intense…
Walter Murch’s Letter to His Grandchildren About Earth’s History is an entertaining story of our Earth that touches on birds, dinosaurs, plants, evolution, humans and eventually fossil fuels. Here are my 11 takeaways: Birds inherited super efficient lungs from dinosaurs. But why? The story starts with plants migrating from ocean to land and then needing to deal with gravity. Land…
What’s the need? The key need is to be able to quickly export highlights from articles bookmarked in Instapaper at the command-line. What’s the approach? The approach is to leverage the Instapaper API to quickly extract the highlights from a bookmarked article into a text stream. What are the benefits? Leveraging Instapaper’s programmatic API makes exporting highlights…
In Ronald Purser’s The mindfulness conspiracy (The Guardian) , he writes about a fascinating perspective on the mindfulness genre. Here are my 6 takeaways from the article: Mindfulness says paying closer attention to the present resolves our suffering. Mindfulness has been stripped of the accompanying teachings e.g. attachment to self, compassion. Mindfulness advocates are unwittingly…
The 6 key components of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine are the cap, 5’-UTR, signal peptide, spike protein, 3’-UTR and a poly-A tail. The cap makes the vaccine mRNA look legitimate. The 5’-UTR helps with immune system evasion and translation. The signal peptide says this protein should exit via the endoplasmic reticulum (just like SARS-CoV-2). The spike protein is almost identical to…
In Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine , Bert Hubert breaks down the mechanism and key components of the BioNTech/Pfizer RNA vaccine. Here are the key ideas I took away from this fantastic article: The mRNA vaccine encodes the SARS-CoV-2 spike which generates an immune response. mRNA is fragile and must be stored in deep freeze. The vaccine consists of 6…
BJ Fogg’s video Information -> Action Fallacy opened my eyes to why giving people better information won’t reliably change their behavior. Here are the 4 key takeaways: The fallacy is that giving people better information leads to attitude change which then leads to behavior change. Better information doesn’t reliably lead to attitude change. Attitude change doesn’t…
Readme Driven Development written by Tom Preston-Werner in 2010 is a timeless post about using a README to scope a project and collaborate with others. Here are the 4 key ideas I got from the post: Your README is the most important document in your codebase. So write your README first. A README constrains you to single file which makes it a short, light-weight and not-too-precise introduction to…
Here are the key insights I took from chapter 1 of Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets : Resulting is the tendency to say a decision was good when the result is good. Chess involves very little luck so it’s not a good model of life. Poker is the sum of decision quality and luck. Our lives are the sum of decision quality and luck. A few outcomes is not enough to measure decision quality. A…
Here are my key takeaways from chapter 2 of Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets : Everything is a bet. Skill in life is learning to be better belief calibrator. Our default is to believe what we hear. We generally process information by altering our interpretation to fit our beliefs. Motivated reasoning is when a belief is lodged and remains unchallenged. Fake news is a planted false story that is…
In chapter 5 of How to Take Smart Notes , 2 of my favorite ideas from Sönke Ahrens are: Truth results from the scientific exchange of written ideas. Do everything as if nothing counts other than writing. See also Judging truth Stop collecting, and start producing Elaborate by thinking, writing and connecting
In Judging Truth (Annual Review of Psychology) , the authors make the claim that truth judgments are constructed and reflect inferences drawn from 3 types of information: Base rates Feelings Consistency with information retrieved from memory Each of the three inferences usually increases accuracy. However, specific kinds of errors can result from each class of inference. People tend to accept…
The 5 key insights I got from Brett Beasley’s How Disinformation Hacks Your Brain (Scientific American) are: Illusory truth effect says repeated claims are more believable. We often accept claims as true when they fit with our memories. Search algorithms return results based on keywords not truth. We will soon consume more false media than truth. Become a fact checker or rely on crowdsourced…
Coming up with a partial solution can be a great way to breakdown a complex problem. Sometimes the partial solution becomes part of your final solution. Sometimes a partial solution helps you explore the more complex problem so that you can apply other problem-solving strategies. Sometimes the partial solution is enough. The original problem still exists, but now you can live with it. A partial…
To breakdown a complex problem, you can try solving an extreme example of the problem. The solution for the extreme case will likely be part of your final solution. It will also help to set the bounds of your final solution. So find some aspect of your complex problem that’s bugging you and getting in your way. Solve it. If you want to push this strategy further, exaggerate that aspect of…
Solving a concrete example of your problem helps you to explore the problem and breakdown a complex problem. This strategy will often get you much closer to the more general solution. Try out a few concrete examples to see if there’s a pattern in the solutions. If you see a pattern, that’s perfect! If there’s no clear pattern, that works, too. You’ve learned a ton about the…
When you’re having trouble breaking down a complex problem, coming up with an incorrect solution can help. So start with a solution that you know is incorrect. Now… How would you correct the solution? Correcting the incorrect solution is a new problem, and that’s exactly what you want! See also Breakdown the problem
I’ve been using a variation of the budgeting system described in StackBacks Automated Budget System (Wayback Machine) for many years now. It’s super simple to setup. Here’s a summary of the 3 key points from the PDF: Budgeting should be automated. The 2 types of expenses are planned and unplanned. To setup the system, figure out your expenses, setup your account and then setup…
K: The Overlooked Variable That’s Driving the Pandemic (The Atlantic) is a fascinating approach to addressing a key spreader of the pandemic: super-spreading events. Here are 6 key takeaways from Zeynep Tufekci’s article: The overlooked variable is K, and it measures whether a virus spreads steadily or in bursts. We should be targeting clusters (a.k.a. super-spreading events) to reduce…
I was awarded runner-up at the Long Island Software Awards (LISA) for a Java desktop application. I led the migration to AJAX for Marine Biology JSP web application. I learned how to use Java-based DWR AJAX technology for integration into a JSP application. I built Debian-based Linux web server from scratch on a VPS hosted VM. I was selected from group of approximately 100 to develop Chemistry…
I designed and delivered a C++ feature “AutoSave App-wide Setting” for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. This is used by tens of thousands of customers every day to improve their AutoSave experience. I delivered a C++ feature “Encourage AutoSave Teaching UI” for Excel and Powerpoint. This is helping customers every day discover AutoSave. I eliminated 2 of the top crashes…
I delivered a C# tool to identify and eliminate top failing tests. This tool (and a process I developed) affects every engineer on File I/O by reducing the noise of flaky tests. I delivered JavaScript/KendoUI Validation Dashboard for signing off on monthly releases. This is used by management to assess the risk of a new monthly release. I delivered a backdoor hybrid C++/C# lock API to enable Excel…
I worked at Microsoft as an SDET2 in the Health Solutions Group from Jun-2010 to Feb-2012. I delivered end-to-end testing of Quality Measurement Module (QMM). I reduced execution time of a C# test suite by 30% using a binary caching strategy. I designed and implemented a message generator using C# to achieve 100% edge coverage of a set of CMS state flow diagrams. I delivered a suite of PowerShell…
I worked at Microsoft as an SDET2 in Engineering Excellence from Mar-2012 to Mar-2014. I designed and delivered a C# web service test solution. This allowed the feature crew to gain confidence that the new web service had parity with the old web service. I designed and delivered a C#/SQL Server test solution for verification of a file upload. This allowed the team to gain confidence over a broad…
I’m currently working at Microsoft as a Senior Software Engineer in the Office Division since Apr-2014. Office Win32 development Office C++/C# test automation See also Working at Microsoft
I’ve been working at Microsoft since Jun-2010. Here are the teams I’ve worked on: Office (2014-Present) Engineering Excellence (2012-2014) Health Solutions Group (2010-2012) See also My resume
I worked as a Senior Computer Scientist at White Oak from May-2009 to Jun-2010. I achieved 3X speed increase for automated builds as well as increased reliability. I improved testing of an upload tool by building a PyUnit test automation framework. I reviewed the team’s testing procedures and suggested areas for improvement. See also My resume
I worked as a Senior Programmer Analyst at Mount Sinai Medical Center from Nov-2007 to Apr-2009. I designed and delivered a Tablet PC application using .NET C#, WinForms and NHibernate/MySQL and collaborated across health professionals and IT. I also launched the division’s first intranet clinical website. I was retained as a consultant for over 2 additional years from Apr-2009 to Jul-2011.…
I worked as Lead Programmer Analyst at Stony Brook Medical Center from Feb-2006 to Nov-2007. I delivered a multi-threaded Java application for use in the operating room using Java Swing and RMI. I automated the monitoring of over 20 Oracle 10G databases using Java, Python and PL/SQL. I also developed and implemented a distributed architecture making heavy use of Oracle Streams. See also My resume
I worked at LifeTree Technology from Feb-2001 to Feb-2006. I was a Software Developer and was promoted in 1 year to Project Manager in a start-up environment. I led the .NET migration of a clinical trial web application written originally written in ASP. The migrated app uses ASP.NET, C#, CSS, JavaScript and SQL Server. I also delivered a Windows Service solution for DPAPI connection string…
I graduated with a Masters of Science in Bioinformatics from Johns Hopkins University with a GPA of 3.9. I graduated with a Bachelors and Masters of Science in Computer Science from SUNY at Stony Brook with a GPA of 3.8. See also My resume Better schools won’t fix America