Life Updates on Sumner Evans

On Being Gay

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0600

Warning

This post is personal. If you normally read my blog for my travel updates or my software engineering takes, this is a very different kind of post.

If you don’t want to read about my personal life, this is a good post to skip.

It’s always awkward to come out, but the lead-up is always the worst part. Once it’s done, it’s done and I move on with my life. I have been out to my family and most of my friends for a few years now, but as one of my friends described it, I’m about as out as the sun on a cloudy day. Well, I guess it’s time for the sun to shine a bit more.

I'm Joining Can/Am Technologies

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today I am happy to announce that I have joined Can/Am Technologies as a Senior Implementation Tech Lead.

Can/Am makes a point of sale product for local governments called Teller. I worked for Can/Am in the past as a software developer and I am excited to return after nearly a decade in a new capacity. I will be leading the engineering team responsible for building integrations with third-party vendors. I’m excited about the opportunity this position will afford me to leverage my experience teaching and mentoring students at Mines in a new challenge of leading and mentoring a technical team.

Becoming a Homeowner

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:00:00 -0600

I recently became a homeowner. Here are a couple of reflections that I’ve had about this new phase of life:

The permanence of owning my own house is nice. The first time this really hit me was when I was putting up some decorations. I realized that it was my walls that I was nailing things in to. I don’t have to answer to anyone about the holes in my wall if I move out.
The responsibilities are a bit overwhelming. There are lots of maintenance things that I need to remember to do, and I just hope that I can keep up with them.
I feel kinda old now. I literally had an hour long discussion about mortgage rates the other day with a friend.

2022 In Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0600

This year was a good year. I’m going to list a few things that I’m thankful for, in no particular order.

I’m thankful for…

I Joined Beeper to Help Build the Future of Chat

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 08:00:00 -0600

Today I am happy to announce that I have joined Beeper, a startup that is building the future of chat by connecting all of your chat networks together in a single application. I will be primarily working on building bridges to other chat networks to bring more people into the Beeper ecosystem.

Beeper is built on top of the Matrix protocol which is an open, decentralized communication protocol. I have been interested in Matrix since college (we used it for computer science club communications), and have been following its development closely for a few years. One of the biggest factors that has caused me to be interested in the protocol is that it is decentralized by design via federation. That means that anyone can run a Matrix homeserver and federate (communicate) with all of the other Matrix homeservers in the federation. This is very similar to how email servers can communicate with one another (you can email people on Gmail from an Outlook.com email, for example), and you can even run your own email server!