FN 08 · August 10, 2026

Seven years of GPS apps in Fargo: what shipping mobile the hard way taught me

A retrospective on 2013–2020: building native Android and iOS apps with real-time GPS in North Dakota, standing up AWS before it was the default, and the lessons that still run every project.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip I: First set (2013)

Part one of a thirteen-part professional memoir: walking into a Fargo software shop in 2013, the Drupal 7 era in full swing, and learning that shipping is the only teacher.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip II: GPS in the bones (2013–2015)

Part two: shipping native mobile apps with GPS at their core from Fargo — and what building for devices in the field teaches that browser work never will.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip IV: The person who answers (2017–2018)

Part four: what seven years as a project lead actually trains — estimation as honesty, translation as the real deliverable, and being the name attached when things break.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip V: The polyglot years (2018–2019)

Part five: shipping .NET and PHP side by side to Red River Valley businesses, and how serving a small market's whole economy makes platform tribalism impossible.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip VI: Leaving Fargo (2020)

Part six: seven years at the Fargo shop end in the strangest year there was — what the valley installed for good, and what moving to Minneapolis was actually for.

FN · August 10, 2026

Long Strange Trip X: Back to school (2024)

Part ten: finishing the NDSU computer science degree eleven years into the career it describes — why bother, what the classroom looks like from the far side of production, and what it closed.