Punctuated Equilibrium: Punctuated Equilibrium is part of Evolutionary Theory. It is the observation that most of the time life stays relatively the same. The system is at Equilibrium, and then suddenly pressure shifts and the entire system is Punctuated with change. My life at university ended with me earning a…

SBIR = Small Business Innovation and Research — A program funded by the SBA (Small Business Administration) If you have a better way for a small business that doesn’t qualify for some of the more attractive disadvantaged categories to enter the shark tank of defense contracting, I am all ears. …

Peer reviews are common in professions of all sorts, and are a great tool for minimizing the effects of human error. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. I’ve been around Sol enough times to know that peer code reviews are just as much an art as they…

The Co-Worker I Like a {Choco}Lot Portia here: I’ve written before about an amazing colleague I have, and I’m repeating the exercise, interviewing another of my fantastic co-workers and friends, Alain Wyss, about his past experience, what it is that makes him so unflappable, and where he gets all the…

It’s been three weeks. Three of the most eye opening weeks of my life. “Why?” you may ask? Well let’s take a step back to before I got hired at SMT. Having been in the structured world of finance for the better half of a decade, I was surprised to…

I have numerous very successful colleagues working in the tech industry who struggle with spelling. And not just a little; reading a text message from them is like decrypting an ancient language. I hear horror stories about them in front of clients getting reamed on spelling and grammar, yet they…

When you’re a teacher, your name gets called a lot of times over the course of one day. In fact, I read once that teachers have somewhere between 300–500 social interactions per day, so one day I took one of those hand counters to work with me and clicked it…

As the resident wearer of a lot of hats, one such hat I wear is “Java Software Developer.” Some of the Java projects were ones that started from scratch. In that role, I helped build and design software architecture the app was built around. I got familiar with the patterns…

What do you want to be when you grow up? We’re asked this question in elementary school, then again in middle school, high school, college, and even graduate school. Usually the answer is something we were told we should be: doctor, lawyer, astronaut — maybe some teachers are even creative…