Recent Articles

What Motivates Me To Write

Gergely Orsoz, author of the blog Pragmatic Engineer, recently wrote a post How I Motivate Myself to Write. He talks about how he was concerned about who would be reading his blog. > When I (re)started my blog, I was wondering who would be reading my articles. In the end, I decided I don't care: I'll just write them for myself, as a reflection of the ideas and observations I have come across. > Approaching writing with this approach, it has been surprisingly therapeutic and a tool that helps me

We Should Get Together (Book Summary)

I've lived in New York City for about three years. During that time, my main priorities were my career and personal development. Everyone else I knew was doing the same. They moved out to New York City in their 20's because of their careers and a desire to learn more about themselves. COVID showed me a different perspective. This summer, I returned back to the city. Almost everyone I knew had moved away. It has helped me understand that meeting people and building friendships is as essential as

Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)

Today, I learned that Apple has a service that allows third party developers to send notifications to applications installed on Apple devices. In order to use this service, developers have to generate production and staging certificates that are uploaded to a marketing service (ie: Iterable). Iterable uploads the certificates to their cloud provider (ie: AWS), so that they can send push notifications through AmazonSNS. These certificates have a 1-year expiration, so they have to be renewed fo

My Next Chapter at Brigit - Tech Lead

In mid-September of this year, I was asked to take on the tech lead role on Brigit's Membership engineering team. This was an incredible milestone for me, as I'd had been working my way towards a leadership role. Now that this opportunity is in front of me, I've slowed down to think about what the expectations are for a tech lead, and how this opportunity is aligned with my goals. What are my aspirations? I graduated college with a bachelors in Biology, with the intent to join the University o

Drive Shack: A Mini Golf Play

Drive Shack first caught my attention when I learned that Wes Edens, a co-founder of Fortress Investment Group and co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks served as the Chairman of the Board. While Drive Shack's historical performance has been tumultuous, the company has recently made a huge pivot from American Golf, its legacy business, where it owns, leases, and manages 56 courses. It is transforming into an entertainment operating company, with Drive Shack - a Top Golf inspired theme and Puttery - a

Alibaba: Investing in the Chinese Amazon

In March, I invested in Alibaba, the Chinese cCommerce company that is often known as the Chinese Amazon. Its business model reflects Amazon to quite a degree, with four business segments: eCommerce, Cloud Computing, Entertainment and Innovation Initiatives. The thesis is quite simple. Alibaba will continue to grow its eCommerce business, generating stable and significant profits for investors, while its cloud computing business will scale and eventually replace eCommerce as the dominant busine

Macerich: My Play on Shopping Malls

Around February, I started looking into Macerich, which is a real estate investment trust (REIT). Its business model is fairly simple. It owns shopping malls across the United States, rents out the space to tenants whom pay rent, and pays 90% of its taxable profits through dividends. At first, I was a bit apprehensive about the stock. The news talks about the retail apocalypse with Amazon putting shopping malls out of business - 1 in 4 malls is set to close in the next 5 years. I also prefer to