Posts on The Dangling Pointer

The Auditorium of Grief

Each grief has a voice. Sometimes they speak at once. Sometimes they’re quiet, just sitting there with you. And for a while, you just let them.

Always on the cusp of something

That gap between the magic I know I can reach and how often it escapes me — that’s the hardest part of living in my brain.

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 decision paralysis and never write anything. I got laid off on May 4th, 2023. I was very upset by the whole situation, rage sold my SHOP equity, and…

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 is my first layoff (and probably not my last) and the approaches I've used in the past to find a new job don't really apply right now.

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 brain says “oh hey, it’s important, there’s no way you’ll forget it!” - where my mindful brain says “lol, you’ve already…

Hobbies, Accessories, and Unrealized Potential

Courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14781362334/ 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 to prioritize what I spend my…

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'm still in my onboarding time here, but my role and responsibilities will become clearer over the next few weeks. Shopify has a seriously well-organized program to…

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 had heard the name Automattic before – and after landing on the homepage, I realized why! It was because of WordPress and…

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 Mandino

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 could never put my finger on it until it clicked one day. Having the ability to skip a song makes the experience of listening more in the foreground where I have yet another choice…

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 accommodate that lack of in-person meetups. It's not the same, but it helps. Then yesterday, I got this in the mail. It's funny how…

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 tests are green checks ✅. Failing unit tests are red Xs ❌. Default behavior is to write your unit tests after…

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. 🤪

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 about something, it doesn't last long because my brain is moving onto some other concern or input. What do I worry most about?…

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 of June.

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 it hard to store contiguous memories. There are some things that are very clear in my head, though. One of those clear memories is of my…

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 GPS watch and use it track my runs, bike rides, and any indoor activities. I also have an Apple Watch Series 4 with Cellular but don't use it for…

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 why not share what I took. Videos should be published soon by the organizers. Download the PDF Download

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 handwritten notes. I thought I'd share my notes with you all in case you wanted to see some of the take-aways from the conference.

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 in person you look at people's eyes to show them you're listening. Doing that on a video call requires a bit of counter-intuitive body language by looking at the…

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 off. This experience was a huge shift for me living a life of priorities only set by myself. I had the ability to do whatever I wanted every day…

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 weak And pain should keep me from my sleep, Then will you do what must be done, For this — the last battle — can't be won. You will be sad I understand, But don't…

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 and ran to an Apple Store to buy another one just to keep it going. Even if I lost the streak, I'd know I'm still sticking to the daily fitness goal.

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 dog after he grew out of being a puppy. We could leave him at home without any worry that things would be okay when we got back. He loved being part of…

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 until now being on sabbatical to motivate myself to work with my mom on recreating the recipe. This past week I drove up to my parents' house and spent half of…

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]

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" is heavily laden with teaching references. Even dictionaries reference education in its definition: sabbatical | səˈbadək(ə)l | noun a period of paid leave…

Plex Media Server not showing updates

Since November of last year (roughly) I've noticed that the Plex Media Server app doesn't ever show that there are updates available. I've manually reinstalled the latest server copy several times and it still hasn't updated automatically. I found a solution that resolves this. On macOS you have to delete a preference key for the last time the server was updated. A borked version got released…

China is changing the future of shopping

A coworker referred me to this recent TED talk about how China is changing how commerce happens. Not only does it involve the ecommerce sales experience but all the way through the supply chain to how products are designed. This definitely has opened my mind to how mobile devices can be involved in a consumer's shopping experience.…

Don't do this with your Instant Pot

I bought my brother an Instant Pot for Christmas. If you've never heard of them before they're a fancy electronically-controlled pressure cooker. You can cook many different things in it and they even have a Bluetooth model. I've wanted one for a while but never could justify getting it - so my brother got to be the guinea pig. He absolutely loves it so I was motivated to finally get one myself.

Why My Shoes Can't Talk Any More

At the end of October I bought a pair of Merrell Bare Access Flex. Absolutely loved the shoes from the first run. I instantly became a fan of the zero drop shoe style which is closer to running barefoot. After only about 80mi / 130km of running, I started to notice some tearing forming on the outside of both shoes near that darker rubberized swoosh. Turns out I'm not the only one experiencing…

My First WordCamp US

This past weekend I attended WordCamp US 2017 in Nashville TN with over 1,000 other attendees. I don't know the actual number, but it was a lot. This was the first WordCamp US I ever attended - so I didn't know what to expect. I was given the honor to be able to speak to everyone in a session called "How Working Remote Saved My Life" based loosely on topics related to my favorite blog post .

My Two Favorite Logos

Here is a photo of my two favorite logos - the Jetpack logo and the That Conference logo. Jetpack is a plugin you can install on your WordPress site to give it super powers that WordPress.com sites have but still self-hosted on your own servers. That Conference is an awesome community tech conference that I've blogged about before. I've spoken there a number of years and really enjoy the mix of…

We Need to Re-Think How Music is Released

Having an all-you-can-eat music service like Apple Music is fairly incompatible with how music is traditionally released. Releasing singles and then eventually full albums and then sometimes deluxe albums and then even remix albums causing a lot of confusion. I end up with tons of duplicates in my library which then skews the "randomness" of shuffle. Here's the scenario: Hear a new song that you…

People Are Not Drawn to Perfection in Others

My leadership coach shared a quote with me today that I'm using to help develop a talk I'm doing about how working remote saved my life . In general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and an individual’s life energy. Humans connect with humans. Hiding one’s humanity and trying to project an image of perfection makes a person vague,…

I’ll never misplace this bag

Filed Under: Crazy Shit My Insurance Provider Does

My employer recently changed our insurance plans around because we're big enough now to manage our own insurance rather than use a third party co-employer. We actually have nearly identical plans with the same provider, Blue Shield of California. A limitation with their website requires me to register a new account to use with the new insurance plan. The stabby part of that is usernames are based…

Professionalism & Kerning

kern | kərn verb [with object] (usually as noun kerning ) adjust the spacing between (letters or characters) in a piece of text to be printed. • make (letters) overlap. design (metal type) with a projecting part beyond the body or shank. When I saw this poorly kerned sign in a doctor's office I suddenly became less trustworthy of their ability to perform as medical professionals.

Today I Climbed a Mountain

I did something amazing today. I climbed a freaking mountain. I'm at the Automattic annual Grand Meetup in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. I went on a hike with several of my coworkers up Blackcomb Ascent Trail. This was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I made it. Time: 3 hours 15 minutes Distance: 8mi Elevation Hiked: 3,900ft (1,200m)

Heading to Whistler

I'm off to Whistler British Columbia for another yearly Grand Meetup at Automattic. Eight days of face to face work and play with 600 of my closest coworkers. I expect to come back with a full heart, head, and notebook. I also expect to be emotionally drained from being "on" for that many days. Cannot. Wait.

What is Your Definition of Success in Life?

successful How do you define success or if you're successful in life? To some success is defined by their monetary reward or compensation. To others success is defined by the number of children they've raised. Success could also be defined simply as living a life you enjoy. Most likely once you've defined what success is, you're in a state of non-success. Success is something you still want to…

Vicious Cycles - A Stop Animation Film

My brother recently sent me this video and reminded me how much we thought it was funny as kids. Turns out that film got me interested (for a while) in stop animation. I created a couple hours of stop animation shorts with my friends and brother. Too bad I don't have that footage any more. Vicious Cycles was created in 1967 by Chuck Menville . Its production value is simple by today's standard but…

Mondays through the Eyes of ADHD

Stop being a butthole about what tech you hate

I renamed an article title and changed the URL. Follow this link to the updated post.

Stop being a butthole about what tech you hate

I’m attending an awesome conference this week and I’ve been seeing a trend that I want to address. On more than one occasion I’ve noticed people bad-mouthing a particular technology they’ve deemed as being inferior. Specifically I’m addressing the number of speakers and panelists bad-mouthing WordPress. On more than one occasion WordPress has been called (and I’m paraphrasing) crap and useless. As…

US Postal Service Scans & E-mails Your Incoming Mail Pieces

The United States Postal Service started a new service in April called " Informed Delivery " which promises to e-mail you images of the envelopes of today's mail being delivered. You'll know what important mail is waiting for you in your mailbox even if you're not at home. You'll also know if mail isn't getting delivered to you properly and you can report it to the Post Office with a couple…

How Would You Define a True Leader?

Some words I use when I think of a true leader I've been engaged with leadership coaches for several months as part of Automattic's internal leadership training program. Having a coach has been mind-opening and an excellent option for leadership training in a completely remote work culture. One of the recent questions asked of me was in regards to what I felt a true leader is and what qualities…

Bells on Road Bikes

Plenty of Roadies out there (road bike enthusiasts) are anti a lot of things - bells, kickstands, racks, etc. When I bought a Crossrip 2 cyclocross bike from Trek I decided I'd accept no kickstand. It annoys the hell out of me and I'm looking for other options like a Click-Stand to prop the bike up when I'm parking it. The one safety item I really needed but hated the look of was a bell.

Vacuum the Brain with Morning Pages

I've blogged a lot about my struggles with attention and focus over the years since I started working remote. I continue to find tools and adjust my behaviors tiny bits at a time to help align me with the world I work in. I've been doing mindful meditation daily, usually in the morning, to help calm the brain and prepare for the day. Just yesterday I was introduced to a fun practice called Morning…

Keyboard Wrist Rests are a Lie

Since December I've been working with a physical therapist to help with some shoulder and neck pain that keeps recurring. After many hours of therapy including dry needling we've determined there's nothing wrong with my back or neck and it must be posture-related. I've been constantly tweaking my standing desk setup to make sure I'm maintaining decent posture. Part of the research took me into…