Poems Uncategorized Kindness Created 23 September 2017 / Updated 1 September 2025 by adamf Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How […] Read more »
Uncategorized Change Backtick to Escape Key for MacBook Pro with Touchbar Created 18 September 2017 / Updated 19 June 2018 by adamf My work computer is a new MacBook Pro. It’s great except one thing – it has a Touchbar, and that means there’s no physical Escape key. I’m a vim user and so have been feeling pain about that, since the Escape key is essential to using vim. Then I discovered Karabiner Elements. It allows you […] Read more »
Uncategorized The First White President Created 10 September 2017 / Updated 10 September 2017 by adamf Great article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in October’s Atlantic Monthly: The First White President. Brilliant and intelligent. It begins: It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to […] Read more »
Transformation Grief Created 8 September 2017 / Updated 1 September 2025 by adamf I made a grief resources page. Read more »
Uncategorized Wild Geese Created 4 September 2017 / Updated 24 September 2017 by adamf You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. […] Read more »
Transformation Grief Resources Created 3 September 2017 / Updated 27 August 2026 by adamf Here are some resources that helped me in working with grief. I wanted to find a page like this when I started out on that journey. I hope it will be helpful to someone. Grief 101 – Some Common Facts and Characteristics of Grief – really good article that has a lot of information about […] Read more »
Poems Uncategorized Last Night As I Was Sleeping Created 3 September 2017 / Updated 1 September 2025 by adamf Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive […] Read more »
Uncategorized The Guest House Created 3 September 2017 / Updated 8 September 2017 by adamf This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may […] Read more »
Uncategorized The Importance of Psychological Safety on Teams Created 27 August 2017 / Updated 27 August 2017 by adamf Great article today on the importance of psychological safety on teams: Engineering a Culture of Psychological Safety, via Martin Fowler: Teams without psychological safety underperform. Here are the danger signs and routes to improve. From the article: When discussing failures, people need to feel safe to share all relevant information, with the understanding that they […] Read more »
Uncategorized Optimism as a Learned Skill Created 26 August 2017 / Updated 8 October 2017 by adamf I was talking with a colleague about optimism lately – he commented that he tends to see the worst case scenarios for each new situation. I said I thought optimism is a learned skill. We were working on a piece of software together and got stuck – we could not see a way to make […] Read more »