All posts by Mark J

High-growth startups: Uber and CloudKitchens with Charles-Axel Dein

09/28/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: High-growth startups: Uber and CloudKitchens with Charles-Axel Dein

Great conversation on everything from hiring to project/product management to feature flags to continuous improvement and more

Note: Since this is an automatically created post there is no commentary on it other than any minimal notes I may have included. Read it and do your own critical thinking. I may get around to adding some/more of my own thoughts or categorizing it… but maybe not. Should the article be behind a paywall let me know and I will figure out a way to get it to you.

Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter or feed to stay up to date!

Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Productivity

4-Stage System for Learning Anything New

09/25/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: My 4-Stage System for Learning Anything New

Stage 1: Immersion
* Subscribe to newsletters
* Follow (and read/view) thought leaders
* Reallocate time away from other/older interests

Stage 2: Building – Make Something Real
* Set a short deadline (one day to one week maximum)
* Choose a simple, concrete project
* Accept that it will be messy and imperfect
* Focus on completing something, not making it perfect

Stage 3: Structured Learning – Find Your Mentors
* Instead of trying to learn from everyone, pick just 1-3 people max to treat as your mentors.
* Choose teachers based on results, not popularity

Stage 4: Connection – Build Real Relationships
* Learning becomes exponentially more powerful when you’re part of a community of practitioners. And when you become a leader who brings others together, you accelerate not just your own learning but everyone else’s, too.

Secret Ingredient: Cultivating Play in Learning
* The beautiful paradox is that when we stop taking learning so seriously, we often learn more effectively

The Hidden Truth
* Most interests are meant to be explored for a season, not turned into lifelong pursuits
* The real test of any skill isn’t how you feel about it—it’s whether you can produce externally verifiable results in the real world
* Give yourself permission to stop at any stage
* If something doesn’t spark continued interest after Stage 1 or 2, let it go without shame. That’s not failure—that’s efficient filtering

Dynamics 365 (D365)

Visualize data with the new hierarchy control in D365

09/24/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: Visualize data with the new hierarchy control in D365

This looks super cool and nice to see it being added (back) in as native functionality.

AI, LLM, ML, Programming

Measuring the impact of AI on software engineering – with Laura Tacho

07/29/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: Measuring the impact of AI on software engineering – with Laura Tacho

https://pca.st/xtlj21if

Education

College Tours: Then vs Now or Here vs There?

07/15/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

I’ve reached the point in my life where we’re now taking tours of colleges and universities for my own kids, and something struck me as we were walking around UChicago this past weekend… aside from the ridiculously expense cost which is potentially a topic for another post.

It was great seeing the beautiful campus, and hearing about all the great things alumni from the university have done. But what hit me was that on the tours we’ve been on, not once have we actually gone into an academic building. We haven’t seen an actual dorm (at UM we saw a “model”… but how realistic is that). And we haven’t seen or eaten at a cafeteria. Sure the guides have told us all about it, but there’s a huge difference between hearing, seeing, and experiencing.

I get it that you can’t really experience a class, and you’re going to get people who complain if you go into the humanities building vs the physics lab (or some such), but the point is something is usually better than nothing.

Now “back in my day” (yes, I’m old) when I gave tours at Kettering all of that was what set things apart IMO. I loved taking the kids/families into the rec center, through the tunnel to the academic building, and even into my own dorm room. I like to think it’s part of the reason I chose Kettering/GMI over some of the other schools I looked at. That openness and lack of pretentiousness. Real people doing real things.

Who knows… maybe they don’t do that anymore at Kettering (my kids have no interest in following in my footsteps), but it would be a shame if they don’t… and it’s a shame they haven’t done it at the places we’ve toured.Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter or feed to stay up to date!

Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

Life

The Art of Not Sharing

07/07/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: The Art of Not Sharing

“In the pre-digital age, privacy was the default state. Sharing information required effort – writing a letter, making a phone call, or having a face-to-face conversation. Now, privacy requires effort. We have to actively choose not to share, to resist the temptation to post, to keep our thoughts and experiences to ourselves.”

“I think of my journal as my private social media feed, one where I’m the only follower. Like a social media platform, it’s a place for me to share my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Unlike social media, there’s no pressure for me to perform, no need to curate, no risk of oversharing.”

Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter or feed to stay up to date!

Financial, Politics, Real Estate

This is an embarrassment and should be a crime

07/06/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

From today’s Morning Brew (which you should subscribe to BTW)

Federal minimum wage
2015: $7.25 per hour
2025: $7.25 per hour

Average cost of a home in the US
2015: $366,000
2025: $503,800Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter or feed to stay up to date!

Windows Batch

Drip files one at a time for processing with a Windows batch script

07/04/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Ever have a collection of files that you need to send off to something else for processing, but need to process the files one at a time waiting for the completion of each (signaled by a file’s existence because you have no hook to the return code of the originating process) before continuing with the next?

No? Just me? 🤣 Anyway, here’s a script that takes an array of files, copies them to a directory for a different app to process, waits for that process to end (by looking for the file with a done extension added) before continuing on with the next.

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

set IMPORTDIR=X:\App\Process\

rem List your files here (one per line)
set FILES[0]=X:\Data\File1.csv
set FILES[1]=X:\Data\File2.csv
set FILES[2]=X:\Data\File3.csv

rem Set the number of files
set NUMFILES=3

set SLEEP_SECONDS=5

for /L %%I in (0,1,%NUMFILES%-1) do (
    call :WAITLOOP "!FILES[%%I]!"
)

echo All files processed.
exit /b

:WAITLOOP
rem Get the base name (without extension) and directory
set "FULLFILE=%~1"
set "BASEDIR=%~dp1"
set "BASENAME=%~n1"

if "%BASENAME%"=="" (
    rem This is important so we actually terminate
    goto :EOF
)

rem Compose the .done filename
set "DONEFILE=%IMPORTDIR%%BASENAME%.csv.done"

if exist "%DONEFILE%" (
    echo Removing previous done file.
    del "%DONEFILE%"
)

copy "%FULLFILE%" "%IMPORTDIR%%BASENAME%.csv"

:LOOP
if exist "%DONEFILE%" (
    echo File found: %DONEFILE%
    goto :EOF
) else (
    echo Waiting for file: %DONEFILE%
    timeout /t %SLEEP_SECONDS% /nobreak >nul
    goto LOOP
)

Just update the details as needed, but the above is tested and works!

Docker, PHP, Programming, Security, Technology

Handing secrets in PHP Docker Compose site

06/24/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

If you’re using a single instance server (not Docker Swarm) and Docker Compose, but want to keep your secrets out of source control it’s not too bad. First, make sure you’re excluding “.env” in your .gitignore…

.env

Then, add your secrets to a .env file (file name must be exactly .env) in the same folder as your docker-compose.yml…

SEC_1=Something SEC_2=SomethingElse
Then, be sure to expose your secrets in the “environment:” section of your docker-compose…

environment: SEC_1: ${SEC_1} SEC_2: ${SEC_2}
Upload both the .env and docker-compose.yml to the server, and restart docker to pick up the env vars…

docker compose down docker compose up -d
And finally, use the values in your PHP…

getenv('SEC_1')

Oh yeah, and since your .env won’t be in source control I’d still recommend finding a secure place to save it like a password manager.Please remember to subscribe to the newsletter or feed to stay up to date!

Misc

State gun control laws reduce children’s firearm deaths, study shows

06/22/2025 Mark J Leave a comment

Check out this article: State gun control laws reduce children’s firearm deaths, study shows

“If more guns made us safer, the US would be the safest country in the world by far. Instead, we have a homicide rate that’s 25 times that of our peer nations.”