Archived posts from Facebook
Day 2 at YOW 2024 Melbourne! I saw fantastic talks about getting executive buy-in, why you should develop your tech lead skills, how Spotify built Discover Weekly, nuances to programming in Rust, horror stories about not using feature flags, and why 100% efficiency is a bad goal. #yow24
Next stop Brisbane! ✈️
Having a great time so far at YOW 2024 Melbourne, catching up with friends and learning from some amazing speakers. #yow24
Heading to Melbs for YOW Conference. Looking forward to catching up with everyone! ❤️
I blogged about my experience and takeaways from attending Web Directions Next last week. It was a unique event that highlighted that tech is inherently political (the US election and the AU social media ban for under-16s were hot topics) and that we have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to build a better future. Also, there was a giant teddy bear. 🐻
Renovation update! The landscapers have been hard at work for the past week working on our three sets of stairs. Each of them is being clad in “bluestone” (same as the big pavers), and they have had to cut every piece to the right size. For the ones off the back door, they had to first remove the old cladding… which meant jackhammering. 😬 They’re getting through it though, in spite of shocking heat. I was amused to see that the guys turned my clothesline into a shelter!
Sydney folks – we are selling our dining room set! We’ve had it for 20+ years, but it’s still in great shape. Solid timber with 6 matching chairs with blue upholstery. Happy to discount if you can pick it up in the next 48hrs…
Whoa – the guy who played the OG Roman Brady on Days of Our Lives just passed away. Our babysitter when I was little was obsessed with DOOL so I watched it most summer vacations. In college, @[791620642:2048:Elizabeth McKillop] and I even had a column in the Notre Dame newspaper where we recapped it! (Lest you be tempted to make a joke about him being replaced by Drake Hogestyn – aka Fake Roman aka John Black – he passed away a few months back too.)
Have fun at re:Invent, everyone! I’ve been amused at how many folks messaged me to see if I would still be there. Guess what? When you don’t have someone else footing the bill, trips halfway around the world aren’t nearly so fun. 💸😱 You enjoy yourselves though, and be safe! ❤️
Any other Sydney Uni alumni at the festival today?
I blogged some photos from our visit to the Sydney Uni Alumni Festival today. We toured the New Law School Building and engineering facilities, and we saw a talk from the first astronaut to qualify under the Australian flag (a woman!!). 🇦🇺👩🚀
The fine folks at Multitudes have posted my talk from yesterday, if you missed it and want to check it out!
Happy Thanksgiving! It’s way too hot to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Sydney this week, so I decided to spin it into a classic American picnic: chicken salad rolls and potato salad. Yum. 🦃
The Snook had a special Thanksgiving surprise for me: he downloaded the 1997 MTV Thanksgiving special, with poor Kurt Loder trying to interact with Beavis and Butthead. 😂 It’s terrible.
My pumpkin pie ice cream turned out really well! Much more suitable on a hot day than trying to bake.
I discovered this week that 7-11 Japan recently took over the Australian franchise, and as a result we are finally starting too see some of the amazing Japanese “konbini” foods here in Sydney! They are currently selling three different types of onigiri, and I was thrilled to see the special wrapping that keeps the seaweed crisp. ❤️🍙 I bought all three and tried them over two days… https://www.web-goddess.org/archive/26306 and https://www.web-goddess.org/archive/26327
It’s 35C/95F out; all of Sydney is under extreme heat warning; and all I want is a can of pumpkin so I can make pumpkin pie ice cream for Thanksgiving. But alas, none to be found, not even for ready money. So I will be roasting butternut this evening once the sun goes down…
Oh, and I asked the butcher how much it would be for a turkey breast to sous vide, and he told me $97 AUD (that’s $62 USD), and I laughed in his face and then bought a couple chicken breasts instead. I think it was actually a turkey crown roast, but whatever. Chicken it is.
Final call! In 30 minutes I’ll be ranting about AI online at Tech Leader Chats.
