Another Rodeo

1971 Eco fiberglass camper restoration Trying to put an egg (camper) back together again.

On the 3rd generation 4Runner, the trailer hitch just kind of hangs out the back, awkwardly peeking out from the rear bumper like a toddler peeking out from behind their mother's skirt.

I know I still need to paint and finish the second Monark that's lingering around the workroom, but I haven't done it, and sometimes a new project just jumps out at you.

I've been on the web for a long time.

March 6, 2026# A lot of fixes and updates: We now have a contact page!

Over the years, I've bought at least four of these Origin 8 handlebars.

This was another early leather-crafting project: a leather cover for the Toyota's keyfob.

I've wanted to take up leather crafting for awhile.

My son has a late 90s Jeep Cherokee (XJ) with a pretty rare leather interior option.

When you're leading a team of five or 10 people, feedback is pretty easy.

Bob blew up Slack before the standup even started.

I’ve almost always had a project car.

Everyone knows remote and distributed teams live and die by how well they manage communication and collaboration.

Let’s skip past the philosophical debate — there’s been plenty of that already (including some here).

I was asked today how I built DSCovery, the aggregator I put together awhile back to help people find jobs in civic tech.

Everyone has a backpack, and everyone has stuff in their backpack.

So I recently bought an old bike -- nothing new for me -- but as I was poking around on it, I realized something was unusual: I'd bought a skiptooth bike.

Last time we covered a lot of reasons why that once-fast team has slowed down.

It's a question I've heard a lot over the years, from a lot of frustrated managers and stakeholders.

Let's start this story in the middle of the 20th century, when consumer confidence was high, unions were strong, and American factories were working overtime to satisfy consumer demand and new-found discretionary spending.

Within days of finishing up the Monark/Road King resto-mod another rough and down-on-its-luck old cruiser popped up and I couldn't resist.

The whole thing started on the Midwest Dev Chat Slack, when someone posted a screenshot from their work Slack that read: The fact that we only have "Herculean task" and "Sisyphean task" feels so limiting.

It's been awhile since I've written about one of my bike projects, yet somehow the house keeps filling up with them.

Over the past 10 years or so there's been something of a revolution in Civic Technology, as a whole bunch of firms have popped up promising to do better than traditional government contractors, who have an appalling record when it comes to building anythi…

When leaded gasoline was introduced in the early 1920s, it was a real innovation.

One crisp spring morning in May 1969, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered 41-year-old sat down in front of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications and quietly took on the Nixon administration.

This is one of those projects where I wish I'd kept better notes and photos, because it was pretty fascinating to me....

One of the things I've always loved about blogs were the linkrolls... that candy trail to more and more interesting things scattered around the web.

We’re now just a bit over two years into the AI revolution.

I’ve heard it a thousand times from a thousand engineers: “I don’t want to be a manager.”

Many years ago, armed with little more than a crude word processor and a take-on-the-world attitude, I embarked on a quest to become A Great Journalist.

Lots of people dislike meetings, with good reason: Meetings interrupt.

Back in 2017 Roy Rapoport wrote “The Five Conditions for Improvement”, talking about the conditions necessary for an employee to fix a performance problem.

At one time, deployments were simply uploading files via FTP.

I've used a library called MarkitUp on different projects of mine for more than 15 years.

About every other year or so I'm reminded that the U.S.

In late 2020 or early 2021, for a number of different reasons I decided I wanted to get a better understanding of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Python's Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK).

In May of 2021 I was working at 18F in a term-limited role, so I was actively interviewing.

I've never been overly cursed with good sense, especially when it comes to projects.

Maturity Model Generator# In 2022 or so, it seemed like everywhere I turned there was either a maturity model popping up for something, or someone was calling for a maturity model.

I found myself interested in trying out an e-bike.

Making your own custom handlebar plugs from wine corks is a nice and easy way of recycling an old cork or two while showing some individuality.

For a good chunk of the 80s, touring bikes were a big deal, and most every manufacturer was tripping over themselves trying to one up eveyrone else in the segment.

For awhile now I've been on the hunt for a nice step-through framed bike.

In early 2020, with my restoration of a 1971 fiberglass "egg" camper well underway I started thinking about how it could be fun to bring some modern technology to it.

I've had an urge to take experience a classic British three-speed for awhile now.

The more or least restored trailer, ready for camping. 1971 Eco camper restoration# In 2019 I became convinced that we should have a camper.