Happy 18th Anniversary, Serenity

It may seem silly to celebrate the anniversary of my first Mac purchase, which I named Serenity (after the Firefly-class vessel from the TV show by the same name). But it is not silly, because without that machine which I unboxed 18 years ago today, I would not be who I am.

Without Serenity I would not:

• Have made a video game in the-then-Mac-only Unity Game Engine with my best friend (the demo was downloaded over 1 million times), which
• Taught me to code in the Apple ecosystem (foreshadowing), which allowed me to
• Use that game to impress professors when visiting a specific private University and feel confident that Computer Science was the ideal degree track for me, which
• Pushed me to attend University to get a Computer Science degree, where I
  • Met my wife at that Univerity,
  • Met lifelong friends (some whom I message with on a daily basis), and which
  • Happened to be the first school in the USA to give out iPhones to all incoming Freshmen, which allowed me to
• Port the Mac game to iOS to kickstart my iOS development career, which
• Funded a full semester of private University using my iOS development skills, allowing me to take out fewer loans ^[1], and
• Met the USAA recruiters who convinced me to take a "boring" banking job in an exciting nascent iOS development ecosystem before many banks had iPhone apps, where I
• Built a virtual assistant before AI was a cool buzzword, which
• Caused me to outgrow the available opporunities at USAA that challenged me, which led me to leave, and
• Work at Big Nerd Ranch (RIP^[2]), famous for their mobile developer consulting skills and educational books that taught many famous developers how to code, where I
  • Learned how to work remotely full time just before the pandemic hit
  • Made lasting friendships with brilliant people
  • Tore apart and re-architected apps for companies like Peloton, Apple, and (ironically), a white-label banking software provider.
  • Learned SwiftUI and other important cutting-edge iOS skills I wasn't getting to practice at USAA
  • Gain leadership experience (both as a tech lead, and as a manager) which,
• Prompted me to look for Principal Engineering roles, where I
• Joined a team at Stryker and helped build one of the first Apple Vision Pro apps for the medical industry^[3].

Cheers to you, 2006 MacBook Pro with the 2GB ram upgrade. I would not be where I am without you.