Hello, World: I’m Isaac Kunen.
I’m originally from Madison, Wisconsin. I grew up there and then double majored in mathematics and computer science at the UW-Madison (“U-Double-U”). After Madison, I moved to Seattle, got my masters in computer science from the UW-Seattle (“U-Dub”), and decided to stick around.
After school, I was a developer at BEA for a few years before becoming a PM, first at Microsoft, then Tableau, and finally Snowflake. Some projects I’m particularly proud of are SQL Server’s geospatial support, Tableau Prep, and Snowflake’s Snowpark extensibility system.
Since leaving Snowflake and the world of commercial software, I’ve mostly been learning physics at the UW and working on the LEGEND project with the UW team at CENPA.
Outside of work, I play cello with the Lake Union Civic Orchestra. I enjoy travel and photography, some of which you can see at our family blog. And I like to casually tinker with technology; I should really write about that more.
If you really want to get in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn, but no, I’m almost certainly not interested in your job offer.
Here are a few of my other favorite sites around the internet:
- Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is doing its best to make the Internet what it should be; and Signal, which is the best attempt I know of to make secure communication accessible to the non-geek.
- The Seattle, King County, and San Juan County libraries, where I get most of my reading material.
- The Internet Archive, because digital media really needs preservation, too.
- MIT OpenCourseWare, which has a wealth of good, free courses to offer; and the Feynman Lectures on Physics, which aren’t the best foundation for physics, but are often deeply insightful.
- The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust and San Juan Preservation Trust, which are preserving key parts of Washington’s environment; and the Washington Trails Association, for helping us experience it.
- Finally, my favorite web-comics: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and, of course, xkcd.