Category: General Reflections

Working on a Holiday

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Deadlines are a part of life. We all hate them, but they’re their and they certain won’t be going away. Sometimes those deadlines mean you have to work on holidays, and that’s rotten.

Today is a day like that for me, so I decided to make the best of it. I’m working outside, enjoying the gorgeous 75 degree weather, drinking tropical flavored water, and pretending that I’m on vacation instead and writing the next great American novel. It’s still not as fun as if I were hanging out at the pool, but at least I’m not trapped in an office.

How do you handle working on the holidays?

Exploring the Unexpected

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Welcome to 2016!

I hope your New Year’s Eve and Day were fun and safe. How did you celebrate it? I had a nice evening with friends, one of whom hosted a hot pot. It was a newer experience for me. I like quiet dinner parties for New Year’s. I’m certainly not brave enough to face the crowds.

The new year, of course, brings up talks of resolutions and goals for the coming months. I learned a long time ago that I’m not great with keeping to goals that are based on calendar months. It’s so arbitrary. Having a goal to loose weight in 2016, for example, is difficult because it’s so vague and holds you to very little action. Your goal could be something more active like go to the gym every day, but even then you’re likely to hit a plateau or have a bad day and the goal to become unattainable.

Instead, I like making challenges for myself that are action oriented, but are more fun. I want it to be something I look forward to, not just do because it’s a typical goal to achieve. Continue reading →

The Post-Breakup Challenge

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I recently ended things with a guy I’ve been seeing for quite some time now. It was nothing serious – that was the issue – so I’m not as devastating as I could be. However, it’s still sad to lose something. With the holidays and New Year it wasn’t the best timing, but it’s best to start fresh with a new year, right?

I hate being the wallowing girl who falls apart because of a breakup, so I developed a challenge for myself years ago. It’s gotten me through quite a few boy dramas. Maybe it can help you too? Continue reading →

From Bathrooms to Ballparks, the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration

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“A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.” – Admiral Grace Hopper

Last week, I attended the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, presented by the Anita Borg Institute (ABI). It’s the largest conference for women technologists in the world. It’s a cool historical feeling, to attend. ABI and GHC grew out of Systers and, an idea Anita Borg first thought of when she only ran into other women in the bathrooms at tech conferences because there were so few of them. Now, 15 years later, GHC is so large women routinely take over the male restrooms, and we had a dance party that filled the Astro’s ballpark.

Minute Maid Park

Minute Maid Park

It was my first time attending, and it was unlike any other conference I’ve ever attended. Not because it is rooms upon rooms filled with an elusive type of person – the female engineer and coder. Not because I was surrounded by 12,000 (that’s right 12 THOUSAND) women. Not because the big name male CEOs, like Blake Irving, straight up addressed the issue of gender discrimination.

Those are all true, and certainly make GHC an interesting experience. But the reason that makes GHC truly unique?

Continue reading →