Tag: automattic

London, 2025

Better late than never, eh?

I just want to document the trip to London Kiki and I went on. Our first trip together I think since 2000 or so. Pre-blog!

I had a conference for work (the same one I went to last summer) and so the plan was for her to meet me afterwards and we would stay on for another several days.

The trip didn’t start out promisingly – I was supposed to arrive the day before the conference so I could get some sleep beforehand, but my flights were an unholy mess and I didn’t arrive until the morning of the conference, and I was a wreck. I’d had to get a hotel room in Miami for a few hours during the day just so I could get some sleep. A little. But otherwise I’d been awake for two and a half days on maybe 5 hours of sleep total. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. But I made it through, got to see my coworkers, had a great conference.

Karen and I went into London together, then met Kiki at Paddington. We had lunch at a cute pub near the station. I had bangers and mash. Yum.

After lunch, Karen went to her hostel and Kiki and I found our airbnb, which was fantastic. It was across the street from Battersea Power Station, and even though it was south of the river, it was quite convenient and easy to get around from.

That evening, we got some groceries and stayed in, since Kiki was pretty tired.

Saturday

Took a walk to Camden. Went to see a play with Ewan McGregor (play was meh, but we breathed the same air as him so it was worth it.) Had dinner at a Michelin star restaurant. Forced Karen to come meet us one more time.

Sunday

Walked across the river, stopped by our old flat, met a friend for tea at Liberty. Bought some fabric. Bought some shoes because my feet were killing me.

Monday

Took boat to Greenwhich, explored the o2, took gondola across river. had lunch at Seven Dials Market (featuring the cheese conveyer belt), went to bookbinding store (thank you Kiki!)

Tuesday

Went to Kensington, walked a bunch, did pedal boats, got lunch at Harrod’s, ate at park, Kiki let me go back to book store (THANKS KIKI!) Dinner at Dishoom.

Wednesday (home)

Borough Market, ate a bunch. Walked around a bit, went to airport.

And some more pictures from various days (I can’t remember which, exactly. I know I could figure it out, but if I don’t finish this now, I never will.)

Hopefully it won’t be 20+ years before we do this again!

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Earlier this month I went to Istanbul for a work trip and I swore to myself I’d blog about it because it was such a memorable place.

When we weren’t working, we were walking around a lot. We ate delicious food. We petted cats. We shopped. We probably didn’t haggle as much as we should have.

We visited very old buildings. We drank tea and coffee and people tried hard to sell us rugs. We stayed in Europe but visited Asia.

Did I mention there were a lot of cats?

Not a clue. But no complaints!

The street where our coworking spot was located was full of lighting stores. It was really interesting. Lamps and neon and parts and bulbs and everything you could possibly need to provide light. That was every store. There was another street that was all power tools. Another that was shops selling screws and nails and nuts and bolts. I loved that.

It took a long, long time to get there and a long, long time to get home, but it was worth it.

Five days in NYC

We got home a week ago from our second-ever family vacation (I mean, that was only the five of us, not the entire extended family.) We were originally going to go to the Pacific Northwest, but uncertainties around the costs of car insurance for teenage drivers and because our mortgage went up a LOT thanks to stupid *$#%& homeowner’s insurance, we opted to save a bit of money and go to New York instead.

Why New York? I mean, why not? The boys had only been once before, and loved it, and I love it, and George loves it. And I was able to get a good deal on our plane tickets, thanks to Southwest miles. (Not to be confused with Southwest Miles, which is Miles in New Mexico.) (Sorry, dumb joke.) (You know what, I’m not sorry.)

We stayed in a fantastic hotel, one I highly recommend, the Life Hotel. It was small, so not overwhelming, and the rooms were absolutely adorable (but not tiny.) And I mean, two big hotel rooms for five nights in NYC is going to be a lot of money no matter what, but for what it was, it was quite reasonable. (And it’s the former home of Life magazine. Pretty cool!)

So, on to what we did:

Thursday

Arrived in the late afternoon. After a taxi ride to the hotel (did you know that even the minivan taxis can’t really accommodate a family of five? George and the boys had to sit four across in the back seat. Yeesh.) we unpacked and rested for a little bit before going to find some dinner.

We ate Detroit-style pizza, as one does in New York. (Look, it was somewhere we’d eaten in 2019 and so it was an easy decision.) On the way, we went into the lobby of the Empire State Building, and then we passed a Paris St Germain shop (Miles’s team) so had to peruse the goods there before heading to dinner. We took the subway to a nerd store for George, then we walked around some more and headed back to the hotel to sleep.

TIP: You won’t spend more than $34 per person riding the subway/bus if you tap to pay with your phone. And we took the subway (and buses) a lot. I put my Apple card on the boys’ phones so I wouldn’t have to tap them in at every station, and we ended up hitting the cap on Monday.

Friday

We went to visit my company’s office space. It was gorgeous! There were free snacks and lovely views and a weird vibrating chair.

Then we walked to a store that sold vintage soccer jerseys, and after that, headed to the 9/11 memorial. (We were going to take the Staten Island ferry there and back, but decided against it when we learned we’d have to wait an hour for a ferry back.) Ate some lunch, then I made them go with me to the Peloton store so I could get a shirt for my classes.

So it turns out, I have a really terrible sense of direction in Manhattan, because I was constantly getting us lost. I cursed Google Maps many, many times, and used the compass app on my phone a lot. And we retraced our steps frequently. And don’t tell the others, but once we stayed on the bus a bit too long and had to backtrack.

We rested for a bit, then took a shorter ferry over to Brooklyn, then went to Grimaldi’s for pizza.

It was a long and exhausting day so I was about to drop by the time we got back to the hotel.

(Did I mention the heat was worse in NYC than in New Orleans? It was so draining – at least in New Orleans, we hibernate when it’s this hot. We don’t walk miles around a city.)

Saturday

In the morning, we met up with Erica and her family at Bryant Park. I finally got to meet her son!! (and her husband, who I know I hadn’t met before, but it felt like it, you know?) We had some food and hung out, then went across the street to the library (not the huge one with the lions, but the building across the street) where there’s a terrace on the 7th floor that was perfect for 2 year olds to run around and grown ups to chat (and teenagers to lounge, sulkily.)

After saying goodbye, we went to the Natural History Museum, which was of course fabulous. Sitting in the Planetarium for a show saved us, but we nevertheless only lasted a couple of hours there, because we were all still pretty wiped from the day before. We did eat an overpriced lunch there, where we had…pizza. (Among other things.) We took the bus back to the hotel (stopping at the PSG store again as well as the Apple Store) and chilled until dinner.

Did I mention the amount of ice cream the boys ate? It was a lot. They’re big soft serve fans, and basically wanted to get a cone any time we passed a truck, which was often.

Dinner was takeout pizza from a really adorable place near the hotel where everyone was delightful. After this, George and I vowed no more pizza.

Sunday

My first Peloton class!

After, we took the subway to Brooklyn to meet Madi and her boyfriend Aaron at a cute little cafe. Madison used to be so shy and now she is almost THIRTY which I cannot handle and it was such a delight to hang out with them. And I was happy to see a part of Brooklyn I hadn’t been to.

We decided to go to the Transit Museum after, because it wasn’t too far away. It was an unexpected delight! It wasn’t huge, but the lower floor was an old platform that was filled with old train cars. We had a lot of fun critiquing them, and sitting a lot.

The boys and I went to Rockefeller Center after that to go to Oliver’s team store as well as another vintage soccer shirt store, and I had banana pudding, so even though we got lost a bunch, it was worth it.

We went back to the hotel for a while, then George really wanted to go to a diner, so we went to the Tick Tock diner that turned out to be in the lobby of the hotel we’d stayed in for our fifth anniversary trip, so it wasn’t our first time eating there. The breakfast fiends were in heaven.

Monday

My second Peloton class!

Afterwards, I went to Mood and I was VERY PROUD of myself for being decisive and just buying two gorgeous pieces of fabric and then getting the hell out.

The boys and George were sitting in Bryant Park again, so I met up with them and we went to the Intrepid, which was George’s big ask of the trip. (And after I went to two Peloton classes, I couldn’t exactly say no, not that I would have.)

We spent several hours there. George was in heaven. It was pretty good, but I had my backpack and it was very heavy and I kind of wish I’d dropped it off at the hotel before we went, but I survived.

We walked around Central Park a bit after that and then went back to the hotel.

Our hotel was in Koreatown, so we found a ramen place around the corner and had delicious soup for dinner. It was the boys’ first time having “real” ramen, and they all enjoyed it.

Tuesday

Sadly, time to go home. I went for a nice peaceful walk by myself because it was FINALLY not sweltering. I also went into the Harry Potter store but did not buy anything because I’m not about to put another dime in that evil woman’s wallet, but it was fun to look around anyway.

And then it was time to head to the airport. In an Uber this time.

And then we came home and picked up Ziggy and all was well with the world.

Books, books, books

You may have noticed that I haven’t made any clothes in a while. (That’s a joke because I haven’t blogged about anything, much less sewing so how would you know?) Anyway, it’s partly because I have a new hobby I’m hyperfixated on…bookbinding!

I took it up last summer after being intrigued by it for years and years. (I designed a book right before the boys were born that was published by a local museum.) I enjoy all of it, from typesetting the words to making it into a physical book.

Earlier this year, a “club” was started at work for those who create, and I decided to make a book. There was an “art show” today (on Google Meet) and everyone showed what they made. There were paintings and music and fun sculptures and drawings (and a book.)

All of this to say, here’s my book! It’s a photo book documenting the past ten years of work travel since I’ve been at Automattic.

But this is the real fun part…a sped up video of the making of the book!

September recap

Well, that was a month.

Started off nicely with a work trip to Ireland that really deserves a post of its own. But let’s face it, I’ll never get to it if I don’t post about it now, so let me post about it now.

I arrived in Dublin around lunchtime on Saturday, and met up with my coworker Tiffany, who also arrived that day. Everyone else was getting there on Sunday. I went a day early so that I could meet up with Alicia, but for reasons, she was unexpectedly in Louisiana. So Tiffany and I met up with her husband Mat instead, and it was a fun night. Maybe too fun. I did not feel well the next day, let’s just put it that way.

The next day, we picked up the rest of the team and made our way to Kilranleigh Lodge, a house a bit over an hour outside of Dublin, the location of our meetup.

It was gorgeous, but somewhat rustic. The wifi wasn’t great, the heat wasn’t on yet so I was freezing the whole time, and it took a while to get anywhere, but the scenery made it worth it. And the dogs.

We spent one day in Dublin, and I did finally get to see Alicia, so that was fantastic. And then we went on a little Irish music pub crawl, which was very entertaining.

My trip home was not uneventful. Due to my flight being delayed, I missed my connection in DC so I got to see my sister and her family, and I got to stay with Kiki that night! Bonus!

And the other bonus I got from the trip:

After 3.5 years, it finally got me. Thankfully, it was mild, just like a cold, but I tested positive for over a week, so I only just got out of isolation. It was nice to get to hug the boys again!

So that’s about it, really. Ireland and Covid. What a September!

Goings on and whatnot

I never want the monthly pic to be the only thing I post on my blog, but it looks like October went by without anything else, so I am going to make up for that now. Buckle in.

Just kidding, it hasn’t been that eventful.

Let’s see, the last thing I posted about was my new coat, which I have had several opportunities to wear. Which brings us to topic #1, my first work trip since January 2020. Automattic has gotten very very large since our last Grand Meetup in late 2019, so they decided to have smaller division meetups instead. So I spent last week with almost 500 of my colleagues in Denver.

It was so nice to see them, but quite bittersweet not to see my other coworkers and friends who I might never see in person again! Don’t really like to think about that.

A truly random assortment of pics:

Let’s see, what else? Oliver went to homecoming, his brothers did not.

I made a hoodie dress. It’s exquisitely cozy.

I got another tattoo! Well, actually, I got two more since I last posted about tattoos. I hadn’t get posted about the one I got in August. I had been wanting one of star jasmine, because I love it, but I don’t really know a tattoo artist in New Orleans whose style I really wanted. Until someone I know posted a picture of a tattoo she’d gotten by Mecca at Hell or High Water Tattoo, and I immediately booked an appointment.

The inspiration/tattoo:

And I loved it so much I went back for a magnolia.

And I love that so much I made an appointment for my birthday, but I won’t spoil what I’m getting.

Everyone is asking “are you doing a sleeve” and I am a dorky middle aged soccer mom, I’m just getting flowers I like without much of a plan.

Speaking of flowers, the camellias started blooming again.

Ziggy remains cute.

Halloween was fun because I got to give out candy for the first time ever. I made a shirt to wear.

Well, I guess that’s it? School soccer has started, but the first two games happened while I was in Denver, so I’m looking forward to seeing them play this weekend. Linus scored a goal at their first game!

My desk

I have been utilizing the services of a coach at work to help me with time management and today we talked about the state of my desk and how it affects my productivity and stress levels. So my assignment at the end of today’s session was to clean off my desk, take a picture of it, and blog about it. (I was going to post it on one of our internal blogs at work, but someone did a “show your desk” thread a few months ago, so I figured I’d post it here instead. I mean, if you want to show a picture of your desk in the comments, feel free!) The blogging part is for accountability, and if you look in the menu up at the top and see all those 365 projects I did way back in the day, external validation is a powerful motivator for me. (Words of affirmation are my love language, yo.)

(Also gifts.)

I’m getting off topic.

Voila!

Somehow it looks way neater in real life. But trust me that is as clean as it gets. Hooray!

Next step: Every morning, I will spend five minutes straightening it up before starting my day. (Hopefully won’t be too necessary, but just in case.)

PS Cleaning up my desk had a beneficial side effect: that Amazon gift card had $15 on it!

Grand Meetup 2018 – Orlando!

Before too much time passes, I have to blog about this year’s Grand Meetup! It was my fifth, can you believe it? (In a way, it’s my sixth at Automattic, but I didn’t go to the 2013 one – but I was on trial and I sure did work my butt off while it happened.)

I hate to say it, but I wasn’t as excited about the GM this year as I have been in the past. I mean, Orlando? It’s hot, whine, whine. One of the greatest things about the GM for the past four years has been the weather. Actual fall weather! In the mountains! And the forecast for Orlando was hotter than New Orleans, bleh. And the only mountain around was Space Mountain, and I wasn’t going to be going near that. And I wouldn’t go on it even if I could (THANKS DAD FOR SCARRING ME FOR LIFE.)

On the bright side, the flight was under two hours and direct! That almost made up for the weather. I mean, not having to take two long flights to Vancouver and then sit on a bus for two hours to get to a (granted, gorgeous, luxurious mountain) resort was amazing. And I did sew all of the clothes I wore (with the exception of my bathing suit and workout clothes and one team t-shirt) so that was stressful fun.

But once I got to the airport in Orlando and started seeing friends, and then to the hotel, well, you know, it was awesome. The whole thing.

We arrived on Saturday and the opening party was around the pool at the hotel. We got fancy water bottles and fun buttons to attach to our lanyards. Needless to say, there was plenty of food and drink and lots of people to catch up with. Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, the boys were at a soccer game, and Miles scored his first goal of competitive soccer! This mama got pretty weepy at having missed it. (Thanks beer!) Sigh. But still, a great night.

Work started the next day – we spent it with our team. Actually, I spent the whole week working with my team, but some people spent other days in classes or working on projects. And then we did have some downtime for socializing. Like in the party suites. And at Disney Springs. Even went to Orangetheory one day.

But the VERY BEST PART of the whole week (erm, aside from, you know, uh, hanging out with my amazing colleagues) was Tuesday night.

Dinner at Harry Potter World!

Ack!

After hours – so we had that section of Universal to ourselves! It was seriously magical. Of course, I had special outfits for the entire day. My day outfit was my Harry Potter t-shirt with a pinafore, and my evening outfit for HP World was a Harry Potter skirt. We got to ride the rides and there was food and drinks and we could get free ice cream and wander around Diagon Alley and eeeek, it was so awesome. Words can’t really describe. Fortunately, I took pics. Natch.

Day Harry Potter
Cashmerette Upton Skirt

One of the best parts about the GM for me (and the most nerve-wracking) is meeting all of the people I’d interviewed and/or hired over the past year. One of the days we had a Happiness Hour, where all of the Happiness team got together and did some activities (like writing cards that were delivered throughout the GM) and got t-shirts and hung out. The crazy thing is that Happiness is now the size (or maybe bigger) than the whole company was when I joined. Insane!

Sadly, I had to leave a day early because of the boys’ soccer tournament in Pensacola (yes, also Florida) but that’s a post for another day….

SD Expo 2018 recap

This may come as a surprise, but I didn’t go to Portland solely to shop for fabric. The main reason I went was to give a workshop at SD Expo, a conference for support professionals.

My former coworker and current friend Andrea Badgley now works for Support Driven, the company that puts on SD Expo, and I was excited to hear that our flights arrived at about the same time. We took the train from the airport into the city together, and then met up with Denise, another Automattician for lunch at Deschutes Brewery. It was so great to see them again!

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Later, we went to the AirBNB offices and met up with some of the conference attendees and also toured the offices. Sounds weird, right? I was a bit skeptical about touring offices, but they were actually pretty cool.

The next day, we were up bright and early for the expo, which was held at an arena on the campus of Portland State University. Automattic was also a sponsor, so we set up our booth and I freaked out about my workshop, which was that morning.

My workshop was meant to help customer support agents get to the bottom of confusing questions from users. It happens. It was charmingly titled “I’m sorry, can you repeat the question? Getting to the bottom of what the customer is really asking”.

I didn’t finish polishing it until the night before I left for Portland. I work best on a deadline, and I know this, but nevertheless, I probably could have done without the stress. And I was also determined to tailor a couple of WordPress t-shirts to wear, but they weren’t getting delivered until that day. So yeah. Time management skills are definitely not my forte.

Since I was running a workshop and not just giving a talk, I needed an activity. I had a basic idea of what I was going to do (use low-tech scenarios to have people role-play customer and support agent) but I wasn’t sure how to execute it. I just couldn’t make it gel. But finally, about a week before, it came to me in a flash.

Fast forward to Thursday at about 10:45am. I’m walking towards the workshop room with my colleague Ainslie, who volunteered to help me demonstrate and keep things moving. There was a crowd of people waiting outside the room.

No, surely these people weren’t waiting to get into the room for my talk. Surely they were just…waiting in line for the bathroom? Or just chatting? Or were lost? Alas, my dream of having a half-full room for my workshop (just enough to not feel pathetic, but not too many to be overwhelmed) was shot down when all 48 seats at the tables were taken and another dozen or so people sat in chairs along the walls.

I nervously confidently got started, and fortunately, only had to talk for about ten minutes before the fun part started – the activity.

Looking nervous confident in the shirt I tailored (I can’t not talk about sewing a little.)

And also looking just like the nerd emoji. 🤓

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Uncanny.

The workshop part went like this…everyone divided into pairs. One person was the customer, and the other was the support agent. They were given an envelope with two sealed cards. The customer’s card detailed a problem they were having with a company’s product. The support agent’s card only said what the company was. The agent had to guess what the problem was, using techniques I’d discussed in my talk.

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In the demo, I was the customer, and Ainslie was the support agent.

Her card simply said “You are a support agent for ACME BOOKSELLERS”

I started out saying “I got a book to read to my kid, but I can’t read it!” She asked, “is there anything wrong with the book?” I clarified that no, the book itself was fine, the pages weren’t torn or anything. But I just couldn’t read the words. And YES, I can read.

After a few probing questions, she thought to ask me to spell a few of the words to her.

“B-O-N J-O-U-R”, I said. And voila! She figured out the problem.

Here’s what my card said.

The rest of the scenarios were similar, and you can download the set here, if you like.

The discussion was lively, and people ran through several scenarios in the time we had. The room got loud! So loud we had to borrow one of the participants to whistle for us.

There were still about ten minutes left, so I opened the floor to let people talk about their experiences either at the workshop or in real life, or if they had questions. Naturally I expected dead silence, but I was happy that we had a lively discussion with people asking questions and hands being raised and I got to call on people and pretend like I was a teacher and everything. It was fantastic.

But the best part of all was after. The people who came up to me to tell me how great it was, and how much they got out of it. It really made all of the stress worth it. But maybe next time I’ll start earlier. (Yeah right.)

I can’t talk about SD Expo, though, without talking about my colleagues’ talks. Denise gave a workshop on weekend scheduling that gave me a profound respect for the work she does at Automattic. Maureen talked about the concierge support we give to our Business-level users, and we got to do a fun Mad Libs activity. And Kathryn talked about her experiences in the WordPress community forums, which she’s been involved with for many years.

I also got to talk to potential Happiness Engineer candidates (you know we’re hiring, right?), pick the brains of other people who hire support teams for their companies, eat amazing doughnuts, meet some famous cats, and fly home first class. Not bad!

 

10 years on WordPress!

It’s hard to explain how the decision I made on July 10, 2001 to document my marathon training literally changed my life. WordPress didn’t even exist yet. In the beginning, this blog was just an HTML page that I updated and each month I’d start a new page. (Not to worry, you can read all those posts here – I copied them into blog posts a while back.)

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Hand coded HTML

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Every website needed a splash page in 2003!

But ten years ago today, on July 11, 2008, I moved my blog to WordPress.com – for several years before that, it was hosted, uh, elsewhere. But once I met WordPress, it was love at first site sight.

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Finally on WordPress.com in 2008!

And of course, in 2013 it led to me working at Automattic. My dream job!

I don’t blog for a big audience. I blog to document my life, so I can go back and read it later. (I’m hopelessly nostalgic.) I blog because there was no way I was going to be able to keep three baby books going. I blog because I love photography. And I love to photograph my kids. I blog because I like to keep in touch with old friends.

And if it weren’t for WordPress, I surely would have given up long ago. And I wouldn’t have the amazing colleagues and friends I’ve made over the past four and a half years. I wouldn’t have a job I love, that constantly challenges me. I wouldn’t have Ziggy!

This is post 3,808.

Here’s to 3,808 more.

2017 in review

Years that end in 7s have typically been pretty eventful for me. Well, at least two of them have. I spent a good chunk of 1997 in London, which was life-changing for me. And 2007 brought a trio of little clones into our lives. So I expected 2017 to be equally eventful for me personally. I mean, hey, it was also the year I was 42, so expectations were high.

But it didn’t end up being particularly noteworthy, at least not for me. In fact, generally speaking, I’d say it was not a great year overall. But for our family, it was fine. Let’s recap. Read More