Hey, what’s up?

I had to ghost for a while to brush up on algorithms, data structures, and system design for an interview at one of the few tech giants that I would actually want to work for. It was interesting diving back into material I learned in the classroom years ago after several years out in the field not thinking about these things too much.

The interviews came at somewhat inopportune times amidst weddings, trips, friends visiting for a couple weeks, and lots going on at work, but it was a very valuable experience. I’ll probably come back to this more in future post(s) in terms of practical advice for interview prep. In retrospect, I would have waited to respond until after the summer (they’d probably still be hiring), or at least not until going through a “throwaway” interview first.

Summer is still doing its thing, and work is still a bit crazy, so I won’t be posting twice a week as before, but here and there as time allows.

What’s next?

I’ll probably write about some of the things I’ve been playing with lately…

I’ve been a little obsessed with the Unix password manager pass. It is compatible with Linux, MacOS, and there are versions available for Windows, Android, iOS, and others. I had been wanting to migrate away from a cloud-based password management solution in favor of a relatively lightweight and secure implementation that doesn’t result in my passwords being stored on someone else’s server(s), and I happened to stumble across this beauty while browsing hacker news.

Pass is essentially a lightweight wrapper over other open source tools like PGP wherein your password store is managed as a directory of encrypted files, optionally managed with version control via git. This simple model allows you to leverage standard Linux tools in manipulating these files, and flexibility in how you want to store your data.

Stay tuned!