Oh, hello there.

Intro

tl;dr - I'm a #queer, #pagan, #autistic software engineer from my beloved NJ. I write #fiction & #essays, play #videogames & #read. I like #tea, #comicbooks, #oldtech & #music. I'm older than most of you.

Most of my posts are self-indulgent ramblings about stuff that passes through my head and grumblings about technology. I don't shitpost. ymmv.

My alt is https://icosahedron.website/@pixelpaperyarn which I use for various writing talk and announcements.

My hub for finding me and my projects is https://paladin.space/

I enjoy showing my learning process, hopefully demystifying how the tech industry works. I chat about the ideas I have that I don't have time to manifest.

I'm a neutral good paladin and I am friends with chaos. Systems have their uses, but my moral code will always take precedence.

I believe in kindness and do my best to help when I can.

#introductions #reintroductions

Projects

I do a LOT of things, many of which are meant to be helpful to others and some just because I love doing them.

I run http://lunastationquarterly.com, a speculative lit mag for women-identified authors.

I run https://selfcare.tech & its bots for those that need self care resources.

I've have a newsletter (https://buttondown.email/commonplace), create web development guides (https://aquantityofstuff.com/guides/), and maintain a digital garden (https://www.woolgathering.xyz/).

Details on all this stuff and more are here: http://pixelpaperyarn.rocks/projects/

You can also find my books and card decks here (sales announced on my alt):
• itch.io: https://pixelpaperyarn.itch.io/
• gumroad: https://gumroad.com/lunastationpress?sort=page_layout&tags=jennifer%20lyn%20parsons
• amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Lyn-Parsons/e/B008A5Z8YA

Support

I'm fortunate enough to be financially stable right now so please feel free to donate elsewhere. That said, if you'd like to tip me for my community work, I always enjoy a cup of tea: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pixelpaperyarn

I’m unabashedly proud of something I’ve made. “Take On Me” is the best thing I’ve ever written.

It’s a story about love, grief, food, music, and the people who accept you exactly as you are.

And now it’s not just mine anymore, it’s yours, too.

https://takeonme.xyz/

Don't remember where I found this (possibly here?) but this food history timeline is a gem and why I still love the internet.

https://foodtimeline.org/

Listening to Brian Wilson's new solo piano album, "At My Piano", and it's the balm my soul needs today.

https://combine.fm/spotify/album/2wA42FpaNT9PKJn1RLdWwO

Grateful to be home, back in my real life.

Y'all remember that XKCD comic about engineers goofing around with the excuse that there code was compiling?

Yeah, as a front-end focused engineer, I never thought I would get to use that excuse, but here we are.

Current status: waiting for migrations and docker to run and waiting for Cypress to build and launch.

Spent about half a work day playing whack-a-mole with our css files.

So frustrating when you can see folks were doing stuff without a baseline understanding of the design system. Instead of applying global styles, or making special cases more global and visible, there's a lot of single property overwrites.

I think I might have it solved. We'll see what Happo has to say about it.

A neighbor up the street has a rooster! Fortunately they’re far enough away for this to be entertaining rather than an annoyance.

He does his thing not just in the morning, but at odd times throughout the day. For whatever reason I find it highly amusing.

🐓

Gosh, Phil Collins is just so damn GOOD. These songs hold up incredibly well.

I keep running into various covers of his stuff and it consistently leaves me gobsmacked at what a solid songwriter he is.

#np #nowplaying

Most important task for the next three days:

Making sure I have easy access to Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie for the drive to my parents' house.

Can't wait for the long weekend. I realized I've failed myself a bit this year considering how much PTO I have left "in the bank". Getting up has been hard the last couple weeks. I had a great weekend, but again this morning waking up was difficult. I genuinely love this job, but I'm realizing that if you're not careful the "too much of a good thing" rule comes into play. Might not be traditional burnout because job satisfaction is HIGH, but it's definitely time for some REST.

It's honestly the first time in my adult life where I've had to navigate this. Every other job where I've felt this tired has been traditional burnout, so this is new. The tools to work on it still seem the same, though. Take time off when possible, manage boundaries, self care as much as possible.

Heh. Just remembered I can hide boosts and replies from my feed here. I can always turn it back on but for now, I'm just getting pure, original content from y'all. :D

Exported my opml file out of The Old Reader and into Feedly as a backup (and obvs saving the opml file).

My feed reader is now near to clear as well.

I'll be purging my Twitter feed (again) and probably this home feed as well.

I'm also playing with a couple ways to have news fed slowly into things, too.

I'm looking for a slow drip across the board so even when I look at all of it I'm not trying to sip from a fire hose.

Just purged almost all my email newsletters. Next up is my feeds.

I have plenty to read and get caught up on in the next year, but I'm also trying to make some breathing room in my head.

I saved a copy of each thing I unsubscribed from in a folder, so I can re-evaluate this time next year and see what I want to add back in.

I also have such a massive backlog of things to read that it’s getting ridiculous. Working to read through them and absorb the information sounds good.

I think for the coming year I want to unsubscribe from all my newsletters and feeds for the year and read slow news, articles and nonfiction books, information that is more thoughtful.

I might make a few exceptions for things like The Red Hand Letters.