career Figma is freaking great I've been meaning to write up what's been going on since I left Shopify last year. ADHD brain makes me want to come up with a long well-written post with a storyline and quippy section titles. Well, then ADHD brain aborts the process because I get
Life after a Layoff Finding a new job takes a lot of effort. I've been recently laid off from Shopify (along with 20% of my friends) and have been spending the past three weeks applying for jobs, connecting with friends, and searching for that next thing. It's exhausting work. This
ADHD Reminders, ADHD, and Siri I heavily rely upon Siri (and Google Home sometimes) to set reminders for myself. I have ADHD. I have hundreds of thoughts flying through my brain throughout the day, all at the same priority and speed. Once in a while, I catch onto something that I need to remember. ADHD
Hobbies, Accessories, and Unrealized Potential I was having a semi-philosophical discussion with a friend about hobbies, which inspired this post. In my mind, I have a long list of things I want to learn. Technical things for work, technical things for personal projects, fun stuff, hobbies, etc. The ADHD brain in me makes it difficult
Hello, Shopify! Well, I took some time to figure things out, but it didn't take too long to make the final decision. I'm now working at Shopify (and we're Shopifolk, lol) as a senior development manager for the Point of Sale retail channel and apps. I&
Automattic Farewell, Automattic! On April 3, 2013, I was sitting in the #devmke Freenode IRC channel talking to other developers in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA) area. I saw a conversation about one of the people working from home and thought, what an incredible place this must be to work! For some reason, I
philosophy Love the light and endure the darkness I saw this quote on a friend's wall as I was leaving their house. I found the original and decided to share it here. I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. Og
philosophy The Radio Effect I listen to a lot of electronic and trance music to keep a part of my mind occupied while I focus on my work. What I've noticed over the years is using a playlist or a service like Pandora doesn't quite do it for me. I
Sometimes it's the little things... I haven't seen a majority of my coworkers off-camera for 559 days as of today. The mobile teams at Automattic got together in Chicago at the beginning of March 2020, right before the pandemic hit the USA. We continue to do things to help connect people together to
feedback A short analogy on Feedback & Unit Tests Unit tests are something that engineers write to test the work they've done in smaller pieces. Code that is tested tends to perform closer to expectations. Future changes to old code protect the way things work by causing unit tests to fail if something is changed unexpectedly. Passing
ADHD When my brain goes on a little adventure It me. What a funny (and accurate) way of describing the mental float during conversations when my ADHD is ramped up. This cracks me up! I feel like there should be some background sound effects with this. A nice animated parallax effect would finish it off. 🤪
ADHD A letter from your ADHD friend or family member I worry a lot. Let me rephrase that - I worry often. Additively I think my worry amount is low, as if there were any way to measure worry definitively. Having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, to me, shatters my day into so many small moments of time. When I worry
ADHD & that feeling when That feeling when you have so many ideas for blog posts but never have enough time to put them into words for others. I do have one idea in-flight, and a coworker helped me copy edit. This is my accountability mechanism to get that post out there by the end
ADHD The Impact of Sixty Seconds as a Kid I have memories from my childhood but most of them are fragmented with how my ADHD brain works. There have been plenty of times talking with family about things that happened when I was young and I have no memory of it. I suppose my crappy attention & focus made
fitness Garmin Forerunner Pace Alerts Don't Make Sense The TL;DR is that Garmin's pace alerts seem to trigger on average pace but the alert on the screen shows current pace. It can be confusing especially early on in a run where the average is much more volatile. Garmin Coach I own a Garmin Forerunner 245
conferences The Lead Developer Austin Notes I attended The Lead Developer which is a single day conference for people leading engineering teams / teams of developers in Austin, Texas. I took notes on about ¾ of the talks on my iPad using Goodnotes. I'm getting closer to sketchnotes the more I practice this and I figured
Swift by Midwest 2019 Notes I attended Swift by Midwest in Chicago (Elk Grove Village) IL this past week. The Klein family did another great job hosting an iOS conference and I enjoyed every minute of it. I recently bought an iPad Pro 11" and have been really loving using Goodnotes 5 to take
communication Being mindful during video calls Working remote means I'm on a lot of video calls. I've come up with a bunch of little tweaks to help with attentiveness and mindfulness during the call. It is important to show you're listening. Look at the camera often When you're
sabbatical About getting paid to not work for 90 days I've been on sabbatical from work since mid-August. Today was my first day back. What did I learn in that time? No single moment of truth achieved I did not have that quintessential "aha" moment of clarity that I thought might come during this unique time
inspiration The Last Battle The last few weeks have been hard for me getting over the loss of Burkley. Every day is a little bit easier. Things like this poem have been helpful. Grab a tissue, it's a good one. The Last Battle If it should be that I grow frail and
Longest Move Streak: 567 Days I just reached an arbitrary goal of 567 days of closing my red ring on my Apple Watch. I do have rest days once in a while and I'll set my move goal down about 40% for those days. I've forgotten my charger on a trip
Goodbye, Burkley ❤️🐶❤️ On May 10, 2001 Burkley was born. On August 4, 2001 we found Burkley at a pet store, brought him home and named him. We knew he was going to be a huge part of our lives and we would become caring pet parents quickly. Burkley was a very trustworthy
Making bread with my mom My grandmother died in 2003. I miss her dearly. She used to make the best bread and always would freeze a loaf for me to take home and enjoy. I've wanted to learn how to make her bread myself to keep the tradition going. Sadly it took me
Community What does community mean to me? At the opening remarks of That Conference 2018, Clark Sell asked every attendee to post a short video of what community means to them. Here's my contribution! [wpvideo 34LbZJva]
Automattic Ninety days of getting paid to not work Yesterday began day one of 90 that I'll be taking as a sabbatical from work. Every five years at Automattic we're given an awesome gift of a paid sabbatical - something I've never dreamt possible in our current age. The word "sabbatical"
