When I was little, my mother was really into freebies. She'd send away for all kinds of free things, and one of them included a postcard from Amy Carter, the daughter of President Jimmy Carter, who was in office at that time. Amy was just a little bit older than me, and receiving this postcard from the daughter of the president of the United States in our mailbox in a tiny town in the middle of an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean shifted my view of the world and my place in it. I bec...

A different kind of concert experienceMy partner and I went to a very different kind of concert for our shared birthday: James Blake's "Piano Tour" in San Francisco. The show, to be held at an unspecified venue within 15 minutes of San Francisco, was organized through bside. Bside connects independent venues and artists to the fans that support them. I got early access to tickets by being a James Blake subscriber on Vault.fm for $5/month. Vault.fm enables artists to drop music on their own te...

Hunky Dory is the first David Bowie album I owned. At the time, I would have preferred Let's Dance, but I couldn't convince my mom to buy it for me o...

As a writer — creative and technical — I refused to use Grammarly, an AI writing assistant. This refusal was a matter of pride and principle. I also ...

Testing

It’s been a few weeks since 18,000 people gathered at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. I attended with a focus on learning more ab...