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A view inside the United Center. The stadium is packed and the game is about to tip off.

January 15, 2023

Imagine

When the life of a basketball fan transcends sports.

Mike with Ryan, Owen and Emily in festive Christmas attire.

January 1, 2023

2022

A look back at 2022.

A bunch of awesome design systems folks standing in front of a flaming fountain in New Orleans.

December 12, 2022

Design System Advice

5 tips for working on design systems.

Atoms and Molecules from Brad Frost's Atomic Design

November 26, 2022

Reframing Design Systems

Thoughts on removing product decisions from your system.

A sample design system website with a nested navigation.

August 19, 2022

Nested navigation in Eleventy

Building a no-JS navigation menu with the details element.

Baby Owen at two days old, eyes closed, mouth in a subtle grin, holding his mom and dad's fingers

June 8, 2022

Owen

Reflections on being a new dad, again.

An older couple sitting among piles of stuff in a hoarder house

May 26, 2022

Refactoring MikeAparicio.com

Escaping a hoarder house of technical debt.

Sifu

February 21, 2022

Tips for beating Sifu

Lessons learned while earning Sifu's platinum trophy.

Ryan holding hands with Santa Claus, Covid-style

January 1, 2022

2021

A look back at 2021.

You can now wear Crocs in NBA 2k for the low price of five dollars.

December 21, 2021

Games as a Service are Ruining Gaming

I'm exhausted by the daily grind of video game chores.

A selection of movie posters from my Movie a Year challenge list on Letterboxd.

November 29, 2021

My Movie a Year Challenge

I watched one movie from each year since 1975.

Angry Germans from the Simpsons with caption, 'actually, it is all of our website'

November 24, 2021

It's Your Website

No one cares about your stack.

A search for 'butt' using Algolia

August 29, 2021

Adding Algolia search to an Eleventy site with Netlify

After months of struggles I finally found a relatively easy solution.

Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston in Loki

July 25, 2021

Variants

Thoughts on traveling the sacred timeline.

Extreme Makeover Homepage Edition

April 6, 2021

Extreme Makeover Homepage Edition

I am the Ty Pennington of Lighthouse scores.

Mike's attempt at a clickbaity YouTube thumbnail

March 25, 2021

Cool CSS

Turning my CSS methodology into the last framework I'll (hopefully) ever have to build.

Dae Su from Oldboy contemplates 15 years in confinement

January 1, 2021

2020

Well, that sucked.

A fireteam advances at dawn.

October 22, 2020

Why I Love Modern Warfare (Again)

Once more into the fray.

Extra Life 2020: November 14, 2020

October 14, 2020

Extra Life 2020

Our seventh year of helping sick children.

An illustration of Mike with the phrase,

July 23, 2020

Goodbye, Groupon

Leaving the longest job I've ever held.

A refreshed design of Groupon's deal page.

July 6, 2020

Simple Groupon

Demonstrating the power of design tokens for a hackathon.

The residents of Quarantine island

May 4, 2020

Why I Love Animal Crossing

A small comfort amidst a pandemic.

Masked up to brave the grocery store.

April 13, 2020

Quarantine Diary 1

Notes from a pandemic.

Still from the movie, Waves.

January 31, 2020

My Year of Film

My attempt to watch one film per day in 2020.

Mike and his family with Santa Claus.

January 1, 2020

2019

A look back at 2019.

Extra Life 24-hour Marathon - November 2, 2019 at 8am Central Time

October 8, 2019

Extra Life 2019

Leveling up fundraising in year six!

Title card from the Netflix series, Dark

June 27, 2019

Why I Love Dark

The best show on Netflix you (probably) haven't seen.

Butterfly man meme. React devs looking at literally every layer of a Sketch file: Is this a DIV?

May 16, 2019

Don't Let Your Engineering Team Bleed Out

Thoughts on being a CSS medic.

The lovely folks of Groupon's Design Union

April 24, 2019

What's Next?

Am I having a mid-life crisis?

A screenshot of Slay the Spire

March 14, 2019

Why I Love Slay the Spire

My latest video game obsession is killing my productivity.

Characters from the game Apex Legends

February 18, 2019

Why I Hate Battle Royales

The latest trend in video games is not for me.

My newborn son, Ryan

February 14, 2019

Ryan

Reflections on being a new dad.

An illustration of Jeff, Devindra and Dave, hosts of the Slashfilmcast

January 15, 2019

500 Episodes

My favorite podcast celebrates 10+ years.

A photo of Mike's family with Santa and Mrs. Claus

January 1, 2019

2018

A look back at the longest year in history.

A photo of Ronaldo and a bust of him that looks horribly disfigured

October 17, 2018

Should Painters Sculpt?

In which I ponder that age old question.

Several blind monks feeling up an elephant

September 7, 2018

Driving Your Design System with Tokens

Design tokens are the key to a maintainable, cross-platform design system.

Olivia's foot

August 26, 2018

Four Years

It's been awhile.

Extra Life 24-hour Marathon - October 25 at 8 AM Central

October 23, 2014

Extra Life for Lurie Children's Hospital

I'm playing video games for 24 hours to honor my daughter, Olivia.

Groupon's CSS framework for internal tools.

August 10, 2014

CSS at Groupon

A look at our CSS frameworks at Groupon.

Dr. Evil doing airquotes with the caption

July 9, 2014

Building a Dream Team

My beef with the term "full-stack developer."