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Getting the Piano
Probably one of the hardest things to coordinate was getting the piano out of my mom’s house- which she had finally sold- and up to my apartment. 150 miles, from a large Victorian in Pacific Grove, to a small 1-bedroom in San Francisco. First, I read an email in line at Trader Joe’s from my…
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Tips on Working With Diverse Teams: Conversation Style
Look how many women are at Google I/O – this is my world. Let’s change it. I was recently on a call with a developer (woman), and a colleague who was her supervisor (male). This colleague is *very* well-intentioned and the last thing he wanted was to alienate, silence, diminish, humiliate, or shame the developer.…
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Those Anonymous Buses of Digital Workers, and Commutes
You’ve seen them- large, ghost-like double-decker buses, careening around the narrow streets, in the Mission, or North Beach, picking up nicely dressed young people and carting them off to hinterlands of Silicon Valley. Is it a sign of exclusivity, of belonging, being part of a bigger machine, the companies that can afford their own bus…
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The Weeds of Bay View
I’ve been working in the northeaster corner of the San Francisco neighborhood, the Bay View for a few months now. It’s an geurilla gardener’s delight. There is so much land- unloved, untilled, un-staked out by seemingly anyone. So, if, for example, you are interested in gardening but the closest community garden has a 5-year waiting…
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Startups Silicon Valley Reviews In No Particular Order: Women in Silicon Valley
Ed: Second in the series, see Dwight for earlier one. My reviews of Bravo’s Startup Silicon Valley What I learned from Bravo’s Startup Silicon Valley about Women in the Valley I could write a detailed diatribe/analysis of the reality series in contrast to my life as a woman engineer in the city I’ve lived in…
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Start-Ups Silicon Valley Reviews in No Particular Order: Dwight
Dwight is the engineer formerly from Google who is the archetype: young, white, male, nice, and smart. His Achilles’ heel and dramatic tension would either be his inability to admit his undying love for his friend Kim OR his intermittent abusive social drinking that leaves him blacked out and wondering what the f**k he did…
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Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
I’m sitting here at work kinda slammed and sick, but hey, it’s ALD, and that’s kinda cool. At work, we were talking about Ada Lovelace – interesting because we are in fashion, and her first application was making jacquard. I love that fact. In thinking about Ada with this coworker, I realized that she is…
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Why non-native mobile frameworks suck
Hm. Opinionated a little? A couple of times, folks ask me: do you know X? And I say, why, no I don’t. I do know the language that X avoids. X is: Objective-C, Java, etc. the list goes on. Tonight at a study group, a friend who had just learned Objective-C agreed with me (I…
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Demo Gods Were Not With Us… #iosDevCamp
My hackfest-programming-partner Stacie Hibino and I submitted ChickenDance to the 2012 iOSDevCamp Hackfest. We were in the first batch called up to demo, and had various network issues that resulted in the much competed for prize: “Best App with Demo Fail.” I had been holding out for a “Had Most Fun Making App” award, but…
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Mayer & the Glass Cliff
The New York Times just announced: Marissa Mayer took the position as Yahoo’s CEO a few minutes ago. She has broken through the glass ceiling at Google only to encounter the “glass cliff”: via Wikipedia/Univ. of Exeter: A glass cliff is a term coined by Prof Michelle Ryan and Prof Alex Haslam of University of…