zacharyc

This week was a tough one. Lots of driving, sailing challenges, and personal challenges. There are also a bunch of new projects coming online that we need to talk about. I also had a falling out with a mentor of mine, which really hurt. Several times in my past, I’ve approached people with a belief that is counter to theirs, and they shut me down instead of letting us talk through it. This was particularly painful for me, and I debated whether it was appropriate to share, but honesty is important, so I’m sharing. I’m in pain over the loss of this relationship. ...

More About Revi I’m working on a project called Revi with my Newport Technology Group. This project is really exciting for me because it starts to set up some of the bigger things I have my eyes on within Technology. Building on last week. Moonshots are crazy audacious by design. Some of the longer-term goals for Revi and NPT-TG are more like Mars Shots than moon shots. We need to start with the simple. ...

I recently saw Project Hail Mary for the first time and am now listening to the audiobook. This has gotten me thinking a lot about the work we do. In this book, they are doing work to save the planet. What would be called a “moonshot” or an audacious goal that is incredibly hard. In the case of the book, it is saving humanity on Earth. In my main career, I’m a software engineer. I write code. In my 20+ years of programming professionally, almost nothing that I’ve written is still in use. Maybe some code in Bloomberg’s ADSK, or Factset’s client, might still be around, but nothing significant. All the shots I’ve really taken aren’t around. They were great projects, but fell short of having the impact: ...

Coffee I don’t have notes on shops, but I did buy a couple of bags of Knicks in Five from Enjoy because I went to Villanova, have lived close to Manhattan and generally love Enjoy as a roaster. It was a relatively cheap way for me to support the team without going to the parade. It is just a reboxing of the newest Five Points and is actually quite amazing. In addition, my local shop, Simple Merchant has had an interesting rotating coffee from People Possession and I have to be honest, I was not a fan. I’m really glad the SMC has a bunch of different things for me to try. The coffee is the Yellow which really tastes like lemon cleaning products. Some say if you like IPAs, you might like this coffee. I did not. ...

While working on the boat in West Palm Beach, Florida, I have had to take many Uber trips to get where I’m going, both for work and for personal adventures. Having done some work in the ride-share industry at Flywheel, I’m fascinated by the process. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot is the science of how they pick the numbers to display at the end of the ride as suggested tip amounts. Here is a mock tip screen: ...