Mike Lyons
Mike Lyons
Web Developer
Current location: Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, Wash.
Hometown: Newport Hills, Bellevue, Wash.
How long have you been with CX? I’ve been with CX just a few weeks shy of 1 year!
What is your typical day like? Morning yoga for flexibility, bacon and avocado toast or yogurt and granola. Then e-mail, news, task-list, planning, stand-up (our daily 15-minute meeting to be sure we’re coordinated and not blocking each other), the first three pomodoros (units of hard focused code-smithing for 1-2 hours), lunch or a walk around Seattle Center, then back to work for the last three pomodoros, daily review, sign-off. Then after work, I’ll usually do an extended yoga session or some strength-training with free weights, have the girlfriend over and cook dinner, read or watch 30 Rock, evening meditation, sleep.
Why does working in the cloud sharing field interest you? When I was young, I relied on the cloud to have whatever my hype du jour was available to me over the Internet. This was before there were high-capacity USB flash drives you could carry around in your pocket. Now that we’re in the age of big data, I’ve transitioned back to the cloud as it’s still not realistic to carry around a terabyte in your pocket all day. (Plus, the Internet is available over my iPhone, so the cloud is just too convenient right now. So now that I can have an impact on how people use the cloud, and share the lessons I learned from painfully adopting the cloud in its infancy, I want to help make the experience a mature and painless one for those in the first stages of discovery.
What do you use CX for? I use CX for a multitude of applications, backing up my photo, music and movie libraries privately. I also use it to collaborate on living documents, like when I help my brother or my girlfriend update their resumes. Most notably, at CX I use CX to build CX. We use our own product to house new versions of the development environment virtual machine, new builds of our server core, and revisions of policy documents, etc. Any data that needs secure back-up, ubiquitous accessibility and aggregated meta-data is an excellent candidate for cloud collaboration with CX.
What’s your favorite part about working at CX? Aside from the awesome people I’ve met at CX, I would say my favorite part thus far has been that there is always something new happening or being developed or released. The latest example is that our desktop app is very sync-centric. I’m not a very sync-happy guy — I haven’t even synced my iPhone to iTunes in almost a year. So, it was the one part of our tool chain that I wasn’t taking full advantage of. Next thing I know, Jacob Schwartz is releasing a beta of CX Zipline, a one-way rapid uploader for CX. Just what I needed! It’s the only reason I’ve got my entire library backed up to CX. New things all the time at CX is my favorite part.
What’s your favorite food? My favorite food changes based on my mood and where I’m at in my natural rhythm. Right now, I’d have to say that *good* sushi would have to be the favorite right now, but last week it was Indian curry, so who knows what’ll be next. As long as I don’t say pizza, right?
What’s your favorite band or musician? My favorite band, I can’t choose. I know, lame, you wanted a real answer. Well, lately I really have been loving 80′s pop. Crowded House, INXS, Rick Astley, Madonna, you name it! Although my favorite song right now is “Green Onions,” by Booker T. & the M.G.’s.
What’s your favorite movie? Favorite movie right now is Drive.
What are three of your favorite websites to visit, and why do you visit each one? I like Hacker News, creasedcomics.com because Brad Neely is hilarious (and everyone should listen to Wizard People, Dear Readers), and Amazon because of the retail therapy.
What’s something people would be surprised to learn about you? People are usually surprised to learn that I was a genius at the Apple store and that I used to be a full-time B-boy.
