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JP

Oh, hello there.

Intro

tl;dr - I'm a , , software engineer from my beloved NJ. I write & , play & . I like , , & . 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 icosahedron.website/@pixelpape which I use for various writing talk and announcements.

My hub for finding me and my projects is 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.

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 lunastationquarterly.com, a speculative lit mag for women-identified authors.

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

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

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

You can also find my books and card decks here (sales announced on my alt):
• itch.io: pixelpaperyarn.itch.io/
• gumroad: gumroad.com/lunastationpress?s
• amazon: amazon.com/Jennifer-Lyn-Parson

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: buymeacoffee.com/pixelpaperyar

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JP

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.

takeonme.xyz/

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JP

Like, in all seriousness, this is healing to me.

serpentcolumn.bandcamp.com/alb

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JP

Just remembered (how do I forget?) that heavy metal is a key to getting past mild burnout.

Soft loops and gentle healing music only gets me so far. Eventually I just have to rock out.

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JP

Shame and software — Truss
truss.works/blog/shame-and-sof

Particularly in a field where there are many people smarter than us, with a great variety of experiences with the technologies and subject matter, the simple act of asking or answering a question often means we are practicing the art of trust.

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JP

On writing personal decision records

I have a few things in my life that I am having trouble making decisions on. None of them are life-altering, but they're small things that have some da

pixelpaperyarn.rocks/2021/09/0

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JP boosted
boldly

SIGH

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JP

Just finished playing Gorogoa and am pretty blown away. I can’t imagine what it took to create it. Wow.

It’s a bit of a bummer things like this and Monument Valley don’t have much replay draw for me. I want to experience them afresh but I think that will take a couple years so I forget everything.

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JP

In my 1:1 with my manager the other day we talked about ways I might try to build up my confidence.

Years of no support and active gaslighting that I suck as an engineer definitely took its toll. If I'm going to fix this anywhere, it's at this company. Ten months in and it's still a frikkin' unicorn in the tech industry.

Anyway, he told me flat out that he trusts me to work anywhere in the codebase of our project and then put the size of this project in perspective. That helped a lot. Sometimes, you just need to tell people they're good at what they do, yeah?

Then we looked at one of my biggest confidence gaps: backend. I struggle there a lot. Lack of experience combined with the aforementioned lack of confidence.

That said, we talked about how I really enjoy writing tests and he suggested I try working the problem by learning to write tests on the backend, which would do double duty of giving me something I enjoy to break down that "I'm scared of the backend" thing along with getting me familiar with how everything works.

Why did I never think of this before? It's kinda brilliant. So, I'm working on learning to write Go tests now and I'm kinda excited about it.

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Greg

Don't forget, tomorrow* is Bandcamp Friday: isitbandcampfriday.com/

* In less than 2 hours.

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JP

storm stuff, flood stuff, generally strong emotions, but good stuff too 

wow. the last 24 hours have run the gamut of emotions. last night as a tornado formed a few miles away, we had to hide in the basement which was terrifying. then today the weather is absolutely gorgeous, but there are such strong echoes of our flood 20 years ago that i just can't shake my anxiety.

state of emergency means E is home and that's lovely. but then the sirens have been non-stop all day going from one emergency to another and i am being grateful and also putting all the good vibes out to folks in trauma right now.

couldn't sleep last night because of the adrenaline, but binged half the first season of Ted Lasso and was unexpectedly swept up in it's kindness.

my body is rebelling after all that and i've felt sick all afternoon. i'm now sipping nettle and ginger tea and hoping it settles.

also, my noise-canceling headphones have been a massive help and i'm grateful for them.

hope you all are safe and sound.

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JP

Just officially rolled off a committee on my project and having a few feels about it.

I drove a huge change on this project by leading and facilitating that committee since February. Things are in good hands and stuff is in a great place.

Folks acknowledged my contribution and recognized the work I did to get us there.

Super satisfying to be able to walk away from it, but at the same time just wow.

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JP

Signed up for a couple of courses in September/October.

I'll try and share out some summaries of what I learn. Curious how much is going to be retread of what I already know. I'm most excited about getting more info on assistive technologies and testing tools.

One of the workshops is FREE, too.
smashingconf.com/online-worksh

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JP

Yay. I love being attacked and silenced. Good job.

I'll be back someday, but it won't be for a while.

I'll miss my friends here.

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JP

Goodness gracious.

youtube.com/watch?v=BQa7wOu_I_

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JP

Got my peer reviews back and omg I really do apparently do too much, don't have enough confidence in my technical ability, and am doing a lot of L4 work, though I'm an L3.

I feel simultaneously seen and called out.

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GunChleoc

@pixelpaperyarn It's also not inclusive to people who can't get a good internet connection or can't afford a powerful machine. At my workplace, most people even have their camera off, since we're looking at a shared screen for a document that we're working on anyway.

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JP

Someday I want to actually play Skyrim and not just treat it like a camping simulator.

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JP

i was thinking about switching projects, but i dunno. the new project is cool looking, helping get kids with dyslexia diagnosed earlier/more accurately and it would have interesting constraints (low bandwidth, limited resources) but i have so much good work i can do on this one.

and like, if i leave there's one less frontend person and i'm definitely the one most passionate about improving our tests. also, this project is good. the pace is excellent, i actually have wiggle room to work in refactors and be thoughtful about my code. that's not a guarantee with another project.

i'm also trolling pinterest for zine design ideas because i'm writing again and the next little project will be zines or chapbooks.

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JP

REFACTOR ALL THE THINGS! :allthethings:​

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JP

I had to restart my entire machine in order to get my local build to recognize changes. (WTF)

I'm not sure if it was VS Code or Create React App but either way I wasted 40 minutes trying to confirm I wasn't somehow in the wrong file or terminal or something else weird.

This is not the first time it happened and won't be the last. I don't know if we have a way of figuring out what the cause is and it's random enough (and I think it always happens for folks using Code) that I don't know if it's worth researching.

The most frustrating part was that the breakage was entirely undetectable and I only guessed from experience that the build was in this weird state.

The most interesting observation for me was that I automatically assumed I was doing something wrong.

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Sailor Kingu
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