Category: Life
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This job is undoing me
… in the best way possible. My protective casing of hard-earned cynicism is being rubbed away by all this genuine kindness, cooperation, good culture, and all that jazz. It’s honestly kind of uncomfortable, like molting. You need to understand – I have this hard-ass candy shell for a reason. My first job in technology was…
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When the cat’s away….
…the mice will self-organize? My manager is on vacation. Like really a lot on vacation. Logged out of Slack, not on email or phone, not showing up for meetings, none of that. This appears to be what he’s doing: And he’s been gone, like weeks. OK, I think it’s 2 weeks. But it is significant…
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Milestone anniversary
We’ve been married 20 years today! My wife and I got married on a snowy January day, 20 years ago. We were young, and broke, and hopeful. It turns out, our hope was justified. Here are a few of our accomplishments: We still enjoy being married to each other One bachelor’s degree for each of…
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Well, that didn’t go like I imagined
The Toggle Talk As a speaker, there are three things I count on to give a talk: Slides Narrative flow Speaker notes My dependence on these elements decreases as I give a talk multiple times, but I use the slides to help me remember where I am in the narrative even if I don’t refer…
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#2018Liberation
I loved Cate’s post about deciding on liberations instead of resolutions. If I think there’s a change I should make in my life, I try to just… make it, instead of waiting for an arbitrary time marker. mostly because if I think about it too much, I’ll often talk myself out of it. But liberations?…
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Shoes and software
I bought a new pair of shoes when I went to New York City the last time. I am trying to find shoes and boots that look good with both skirts and pants, fit properly, and are good for a full day of standing/7 miles of walking. This is a pretty tall order, as you…
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Nothing gold can stay
This month marks the end of two organizations that were really important to me, and I want to tell you about them. Alterconf Alterconf was a conference series that happened all over the world. The organizing spirit was Ashe Dryden. She took all her experience with the tech industry, gaming, and conferences, and used it…
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Packing, optimizing, and satisficing
I’m off on a two-week trip that happens to be broken by an 18 hour stop at home. (Nodevember, North Bay Python, SpringOne Platform, LaunchDarkly writing sprint). Every couple months, I try to clean out my bags entirely, get rid of the trash that accumulates, make sure that I have room for all the new…
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New employment: LaunchDarkly
Last week I told you about my exciting new job title, Developer Advocate. This week, let me tell you about my exciting new employer! On Monday I started a job with LaunchDarkly, a startup that does feature flags as a service. Feature flags are a way to distribute software with reduced risk. For example, if…
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New job title: Developer Advocate
I’ve had a lot of job titles in my career: Technical Writing Intern Queen of Documentation (It was 2000, OK?) Technical Writer I, II, III Technical Communicator Senior Technical Writer Technical Writing Consultant Documentation Architect Documentation Mercenary You might notice a theme there. I’ve been a technical writer for a lot of different companies, because…