Davis Cole

Work-life balance

Sat, 16 May 2026 14:30:03 -0400

If you’ve read any of this blog you’ll know where I stand on this. I think it’s impossible to live a fulfulling life without some form of work.

I’ve certainly taken this to the extreme, where I could experience a lot more life with doing very little work, but we create prisons for ourselves to cope with reality.

Knowing that I’d rather troubleshoot Azure DevOps Pipelines CI failures at 2am instead of going out and drinking makes it obvious who I am.

God

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 17:13:57 -0500

Anything related to politics and religion is a landmine, but I think I can handle this gracefully.

I was raised Christian, going to church regularly until middle school when the family got too busy. I attended Sunday school as a child and played trumpet in the choir for a couple years.

I took courses in Western and Eastern philosophy in college, which has informed some of my perspective.

I’ve recently been influenced by ideas of Gnosticism, in part due to Prof. Jiang on YouTube.

It's not a bubble

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:30:56 -0500

I don’t think we’re in an AI bubble. People always point to the dot-com bubble as an example. Though I wasn’t conscious at this point of my life, my understanding is that speculation was wild for trivial things (pets.com etc.).

While there is wild speculation on the order of hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, there is something useful here. Unfortunately, this utility is best leveraged by large companies looking to generate more slop (code, media, etc.)

Cryptocurrency

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:17:20 -0500

I don’t think this one should be as divisive as it seems.

The concept of money and currency is a social construct. History shows we’ve used livestock, shells, barley, and other instruments before moving to more familiar silver/gold coinage and paper money.

I don’t see digital cryptocurrencies as any different.

I think about my balances in my bank and retirement accounts. None of it feels real until you actually withdraw or spend something.

Homelab

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 19:22:29 -0400

Given that fluid simulation is typically resource intensive, I always had dreams of building my own cluster/supercomputer. After being exposed to more IT-related work in my role with Ansys, I found an excuse to spend too much money on computer hardware.

Hardware

Expand for more info

windows

My primary desktop workstation for productivity and gaming, dual boots Debian 12 and Windows 10

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800X3D 8c/16t
Mobo: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4
Memory: 4x 16 GB DDR4-3200
GPU: AMD XFX 7900XTX 24 GB
Boot drive: 2 TB NVMe SSD
Case: Lian Li O11 Air Mini ATX chassis

pve

Rack-mounted dual-socket system spec’d as much as my wallet allows, runs Proxmox VE

10% Happier

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:55:02 -0400

Impression

I listened to this on audiobook, and Dan’s reading was honestly compelling. His journalism degree and news anchor voice are on full display, complete with fun and obscure vocabulary choices.

I remember putting it on for my drive from Worcester back home and just soaking it in. I was locked in basically the full 2.5 hrs.

I come away more curious about meditation and the benefits focused practice can bring.

How to Take Smart Notes

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:16:48 -0400

I came across this book when first learning about zettlekasten, personal knowledge management, and Obsidian.

… the professor is not there for the student and the student not for the professor. Both are only there for the truth. And truth is always a public matter.

Inspired by Getting Things Done, another popular book about productivity in knowledge work.

It basically gives a quick biography of Niklas Luhmann, a 20th century German sociologist that developed the zettlekasten method. Ahrens gives his thoughts on how to instill “smart notes” as a habit, and how to apply them to the reader’s field of work.

The Personal MBA

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:15:35 -0400

This is basically an index of mental models that covers business:

marketing and sales
finance and accounting
product development

It’s intended to be something that you leave on your desk, pick up, and just browse for what you’re interested in. I read two or three sections of this before giving up, but I enjoyed Kaufman’s writing style and ability to describe his mental models.

Skunk Works

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 18:12:27 -0400

Perhaps my favorite book. I listened to this three or four times on my dad’s Audible account before picking up a paperback.

This book had everything a curious undergraduate engoineering student could ask for; cool planes, geopolitcal intrigue, toxic masculinity, the whole nine yards.

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Projects division
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson + Ben Rich
U-2 spy plane
SR-71 Blackbird
F-117 Nighthawk
The CIA, Air Force, and Navy
The Golden Age of engineering

Loonshots

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 18:06:22 -0400

I believe I bought this book at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon while on a post-graduation west coast road trip with my guys.

At this point in my life, I didn’t have much sense for running a business. I was familiar with managing college group projects, which has some loose connection to working in the real world. I suppose would be the first “Personal MBA”-type book I’ve read.

I was unusually hooked by this book as well. I had a particular intererst in how to maintain the balance between fast-paced R&D shops and hulking corporate dinosaurs. This topic has been covered at length in Skunk Works.

The Martian

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 17:14:56 -0400

Man, I feel bad for not wanting to finish this book in one go. As an engineer you want to appreciate and support this kind of media, but man it can be quite dry.

Pure plot progression can work, but the journal entries feel nearly identical once you get a year into his journey or so.

Maybe I need to watch the movie to inspire me. Love me some Matt Damon.

Flash Boys

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 17:09:42 -0400

High frequnecy trading’s effect on traders, stock exchanges.

Building a straight fiber line from Chicago to New Jersey

Brad Katsuyama

Goldman Sachs

Investor’s Exchange (IEX)

Summer

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 13:14:17 -0400

This summer marks the first time I really feel on my own.

I start my graduate program at WPI in the fall, however I secured an apartment lease in Worcester that started June 1st. Truly living on my own has reminded me of the minutia that most people must consider.

Remembering to lock my doors and bring my keys; learning city trash policies; starting the Massachussetts residency process; taking it easy after hurting my back; it’s a level of individual responsibility that I haven’t taken on since my semester in Iceland. Even then, I was fresh out of undergrad, feeling like a college kid, and still living on my parents’ dime.

Resume

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:03:18 -0400

Updated with technical skills and projects sections for 2024 and onward

WPI Graduate Admission

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 08:56:42 -0500

This morning I was warmly greeted by an email confirming my fully-funded admission to WPI’s graduate mechanical engineering program.

This opportunity first presented itself to me in late October while browsing CFD Online’s job board. I was a frequent lurker of the forums during my internship at DEKA R&D, when I was most in the weeds with OpenFOAM. Several years later I only find myself checking it periodically, but it was just my luck that a funded CFD research position had opened up on the east coast.

How to Deploy a Blog

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:17:46 -0500

This post outlines how to deploy a Hugo blog using GitHub and CloudFlare Pages. This is because I prefer managing my domains on CloudFlare, and they make it really easy to set up a free worker to run a static website.

Configure Hugo locally

Install Hugo

Hugo is “The world’s fastest framework for building websites”. It’s a simple static site generator, which is perfect for a personal blog or portfolio, something I think most professionals would benefit from having.

Post Austin Blues

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 19:39:08 -0500

Man, am I bad at making these updates. Ideally I would have written or typed something up immediately after 6 days in Austin, but that’s how bad my discipline can be.

I suppose I’ll just go order of events:

Day before the flight Matt and I register for a Founders Running Club 5k at 8:00 am on Luma
We proceed to get 2 hours of sleep in Austin and debate not going
Spirits were raised the moment we arrive
5k is run and the club chops it up at Afuga
We proceed to set up TopGolf, hiking, climbing, and pickleball with new friends within an hour, all the while discusssing startups, real estate, the market, technology, healthcare, sheeeeesh
Just about everyone we met and every activity we did was very fun, had hardly any unhappy moments

I have been neglecting myself these past 2 years. I have been shielding myself from living in the real world.

Epoch

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:13:04 -0600

Today bowrango was able to explain his project to a relative layman, which I consider to be a milestone achievement.

I wish the Northeast had 24/7 cafes; there isn’t a chill place to discuss ideas with low judgement.

I intend to explain my idea to Moiz in the coming days.

Austin Trip

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:35:58 -0500

Riding the Boston Express as I type this. I don’t intend for this to be intelligible necessarily, just trying to word-vomit what’s on my mind.

It’s about time I decided to do something for leisure. I imagined myself as someone who’d have the self-awareness to attend to my personal needs beyond professional development.

While I’m there, I would like to reconsider my relationship to the northeast US. When I stop and think, I feel tied to this area. The world started feeling crazy due to covid, and I sought out stability. I wouldn’t say my time at DEKA and in Manchester wasn’t a problem, but starting at Ansys was the beginning of the end for me. Despite not being a great fit at DEKA, I felt like part of a team with shared responsibility and buy-in from test technicians to project managers. This was not the case at Ansys.

Things I Found Interesting 1

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 10:40:28 -0500

As implied by the terminating digit on this post, I would like to make this a thing, posting things that I remember as interesting and have the energy to post here.

Lifestyle / Vibes

Joe Scott

One of the topics I routinely talk about with the people close to me is society’s lack of agency or drive to learn new things to better their careers and lives.

I am someone who likes to work on these sort of things, actively improving my existing skills or learning new ones. I make attempts to invite other people into my world of learning new things, but this is rarely something people want to get into.

2024 12 23

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:07:40 -0500

I’ve had a really tough past couple of days. Thankfully things have gotten better today with the gym and some gentle tinkering.

Easy LaTeX Documents in VSCode

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 17:11:30 -0500

Watch here if you prefer video:

Something I realized too late in life is that Microsoft Word sucks. It does the bare minimum of being dead simple and accessible, but when writing longer papers with many equations, figures, and references, I found Word clunky.

I had used $\LaTeX$ for my resume starting my sophomore year, but since I relied heavily on templates, I never used it for anything else.

Loss

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 22:26:01 -0500

Today, my first pet of 15 years, a border collie named Lucky, was put down.

It is the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and my heart hurts.

Lucky had been getting old for some time now, but he experienced a rapid decline starting around fall last year. He started losing weight, and his hind legs began to lose strength. Because of this he’d stand around all day, since laying down and getting up was so difficult.

dragOverSphere-PyFoam

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 18:37:50 -0400

I initially started this project to become familiar with the PyFoam Python library, which provides some quality-of-life utilities for OpenFOAM.

Later, I presented this project to the Ansys Fluent testing team during my interview.

View GitHub Pages deployment here

Me on the Internet

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:29:20 -0400

Lebanon vs. Manchester West 2016/10/16

Fun little sweeper keeper header

Lebanon vs. Goffstown 2016/10/13

Only real save I have on YouTube

What Makes Me Tick

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:29:20 -0400

I will attempt to describe my modus operandi, my driving philosophy, my reason to keep going.

I have always considered myself a do-er, someone who likes doing things. I like to evaluate myself and my progress by seeing what I am able to do now, as compared to the past. This can have different time scales; yesterday, last week, last month, last year, last decade.

I’ve had some talks with my brother about this in relation to work and our careers, and how I really put my nose to the grindstone professionally and personally. He has said to me verbatim, “You seem to value doing things more than me”.

Mastering Money

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 12:36:46 -0400

My experience in dealing with money

Quality Content

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 11:12:53 -0400

A curated compilation of quality media content

2024 07 05

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 13:38:51 -0400

This update is being used to test a video shortcode:

Thanks to this link

Content Creation Is Hard

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 12:35:16 -0400

I’ve always had issues with publishing personal content online. I don’t know if the oversharing campaign that was run during the advent of social media is just too ingrained into my mind, or if I just have anxiety about it.

Laptop Guide Q3 2024 (and other things)

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:46:00 -0400

Earlier today, my brother was asking me for a laptop recommendation. This is a relatively normal interaction, however upon recommending the 2021 14" MacBook Pro again, for perhaps the sixth time since its release, it made me reflect upon the laptop landscape.

To qualify my statements below, please read My Computer History.

My Computer History

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 14:54:23 -0400

A colored, tangent-filled history of my history with computers

Banner 18

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 17:34:01 -0400

Finally, the Boston Celtics are NBA champions once again. Please allow me a couple moments, both as a Boston sports fan from birth and an avid Celtics fan since 2017-2018, as well as an enjoyer of team basketball.

Acadia 2020

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A wonderful trip to Acadia in the dog days of 2020.

Shoutout Narrows Too.

During this trip, we got stuck in a heavy thunderstorm, and our Jeep’s rear-view mirror started leaking water.

This also was the only time True American was executed properly.

We also got stuck listening to Channel Orange for the entire 4-day stay.

Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

davis@daviscole.com

Mt. Garfield Overnight Hike

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This was my first overnight hike. I was wholly unprepared for this and spent $600 at REI the day before.

Mt. Stinson hike

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In pursuit of elusive Stinny babes