Muffin test kitchen

I've been testing out muffin recipes, especially Paleo and gluten-free ones. These are the successes, I've only had one really bad fail. The biggest lesson I've learned is that manually grating a carrot is a lot of work. Paleo Morning Glory muffins I used

Résumé do's and don'ts

(Written for a friend who was teaching a class of young people.) Do be selective. You don't have to list every job you've ever had. Highlight the relevant ones, and highlight specific things you learned or did at those jobs. The purpose of a résumé is

Nonfiction reading

Starting November 2013, I've been reading more books from the business, management, leadership, and creativity sections of the book store. By a wild coincidence, I took on more leadership-ish things at work around then. These are ones I've finished so far: Jurgen Appelo "Management 3.

Goodbye FitBit, Hello Garmin

I've had a FitBit tracker on my wrist for about two years, first the Flex, then the Charge, which was a Christmas gift from Husband last Christmas. Less than seven months ago I had a brand new Charge, what I currently have is a Charge where the adhesive

What's in a title?

Riffing off the sci-fi novel "Bowl of Heaven" with Husband, I was sad to find out the second book in the series was not "Spoon of Heaven," or "Weetabix of Heaven," because it would fit perfectly. We came up with some other novel titles

Travel lessons

Airplane travel Some day, you and your checked luggage will be parted. Maybe for a day, maybe forever. Have enough in carry-on that you can survive a day while you get replacements for the essentials. Medications go in carry-on bags. If you fly more than twice a year, do the

What NOT to say to your QA

It's a feature, not a bug. But why would you even do that? QAs are just failed developers. My code is perfect, I don't write bugs. You're not supposed to do that in the app. It's a design error, not a bug.

First speaking event complete

Last night I spoke at LaunchCoderGirl, an all-women group learning how to code. I spoke about what QA does in an Agile software development environment. People laughed at most of the places I wanted them to laugh, and when I was done there were several questions, then people wanted to

How to have a meeting that doesn't suck

Have a defined end-point for the meeting, and get there as soon as you can. Take your own notes, by hand, on paper. You'll notice what's relevant to you and the act of writing helps you recall it. Allow audience participation, it's not a

Patience, a story in one hundred words

Rain and grains of hail bounced off her hide with a metallic ting, falling to the cobblestones below. Solidified iron draped over her crouched form, holding her in place and burning her skin every second of every day, eyes propped open, ears half-blocked, muscles aching to stretch and open her