Rare Updates & Very Important Thoughts

The Heart Nos I vividly remember my first big NO, professionally speaking. I'd been successfully and quickly climbing the corporate ladder at a Fortune 500 company. A corporate take-over ensued, and a nonsensical re-organization was initiated by our new parent company. After a sterling couple years of great reviews, excelling at my job, blowing sales goals out of the water, and building a great book of loyal clients, my entire job was re-organized. I was ...
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Greetings and salutations, friend! I hope you are happy and healthy as summer gives up the ghost to cooler days and pumpkin-flavored everything, and we head into the season of pretend-autumn here in Los Angeles. Brace yourself as flip-flops are replaced with Uggs, and the charming scent of wood smoke wafts over the Southland, where night temperatures plummet dangerously into the mid-fifties. STUFF I’VE BEEN DOING It was a busy summer for me. It began ...
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The More You Know A few weeks back I got a call from a confused compatriot: "One of my clients just got a warning letter that their website isn't ADA compliant, and they have to fix it before they get sued. Know anything about this?" Who knew? was my first thought, followed quickly by a cascade of terror, as I thought about all the websites I've built over the years and realized suddenly that this compliance ...
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My cousin sent me this quote from her nine-year-old son. Pay attention, y'all, because I am officially the only cool adult who exists. When the children revolt, you're gonna need my ambassadorship ...
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So, here's a thing about me: I don't really have my own story to tell. I've traveled, played in bands, befriended hundreds, rich and poor, and animals and very old trees; I have obtained equal enjoyment from taco trucks and Michelin starred restaurant food, I have loved good company and alone-ness in great metropoles and deep wildernesses, alike. When I look for the story in my experiences, I see loosely connected moments bound together only ...
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I never really used to understand it when people told me they were impressed with my performance just because I'd show up to a meeting on time or hit a deadline. See, I'm not 100% consistent on hitting deadlines. When you're in development and working on projects with clients, sometimes there are delays. Sometimes it's technical, or because the client lags on delivering crucial information, then doesn't get back to you until you're entrenched in ...
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The first few years I taught computers to K-5 grade at a little local charter school, we were working with an unmatched set of donated machines that were running everything from Windows NT to Vista. The computers were...unreliable, at best, when it came to performance. Some of the monitors were pretty sketchy, too; mostly they were big, old CRTs that weighed about eighty pounds, screens slowly wobbling left and right like an Air Dancer in ...
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Part 1: The Rules of Engagement I read an article this morning about what it means to be a freelancer, written for those who are just dipping their toes into being The Boss of Your Own Domain. While some of it rang true, I found it sadly lacking in the depth I would have appreciated when I started out over a decade ago. Yeah, sure -- you're not really your own boss. It doesn't take ...
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I was recently invited to join a chain mail type email thing. This is not something I ever have, or thought I would ever do. But, as it encouraged me to send a note of encouragement to a stranger and held the prospect of insight into other people's source of inspiration, I bit. I said yes to the chain letter, and sent off my missive. And if only to share one of my favorite quotes ...
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