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Demand vs. Supply

Published July 24, 2011

It was a gorgeous day in Redmond today, and it was an unlikely Saturday where I had the day to myself. I eventually headed out to shop for a few hours – with the life I’ve been living lately, shopping in person is rare indeed. And if you’re going to shop at the Redmond mall, you’d better pick a nice day since it’s an outdoor mall. Outdoor malls made sense in Palo Alto, but Redmond? I’ll never understand that choice. A few things struck me about the experience today. The Borders denouement: It’s one of the anchors at the Redmond…

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Life as Origami

Published July 2, 2011

There have been certain moments in my life where it feels as if a majority of my disparate life experiences are combining to inform a particular critical moment. In some cases, it’s not entirely surprising – like the feeling that all that Sim City play as a kid was meant to inform my future job at Maxis. There are other times, however, where one’s experiences combine to create something so utterly inexplicable that my brain has difficulty parsing the situation. As if all of the folds in life’s blank sheet of paper have come together to form some astonishing new…

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What Comes After Ever After? (Part 2)

Published June 7, 2011

In Part 1, I matriculated to CMU thanks to a presentation by Randy Pausch, but the promise of CS was about to change drastically. By the time my senior year at CMU rolled around, I had completed a successful internship at Pittsburgh area design firm MAYA Design, and they had expressed interest in offering me a full time position. Everything seemed to be coming up roses, and I was happy to plan on staying in Pittsburgh indefinitely. That all changed on September 11, 2001, when the stock market crashed along with those ill-fated planes. MAYA’s financial sector clients vanished, and…

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What Comes After Ever After? (part 1)

Published June 2, 2011

In “Muppets, Technology and Me” part 1 and part 2, I went into my background as a young geek desperately in love with theme parks, computers, and Big Bird, in no particular order. That story was intended as a prologue to this story – my personal story about how I finally realized it wasn’t “normal” to be a woman in technology, how Randy Pausch both inspired me and changed my life directly, and why I’m so passionate about causes like IGNITE now. I was what I call a “walking GPA” in high school. Tied for valedictorian in a graduating class…

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Anatomy of a Good Day

Published June 1, 2011

It was a 13-hour return to the world for me today after a little over a week recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery. Recovery was slow going; the drugs were rough, and the intubation sore throat bad enough that I’m still not on a full solid diet yet. But at the end of my long day, my knee sore and cranky at the exertion, driving across the 520 bridge, I felt almost on top of the world. (No, I wasn’t still on the painkillers.) The day that started early with my postoperative appointment at my surgeon’s office. It’s the end of…

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