Capture Bonding & Professional Respectability

Many of us have made a life of hoping to get chosen for jobs, chosen for awards, chosen for acceptance from people, structures and corporations bred on white supremacy. We’re hoping to get chosen by people who can not see us. Knowing that they hate and terrorize us doesn’t stop us from wanting to get […]

Moving Away From Google – One Year Later

A year ago, I wrote about my switch away from Google for search and email. The switch has largely been successful. I don’t miss using Google at all, as the services I chose — Fastmail and DuckDuckGo — meet my basic needs.

#CharlestonSyllabus

A crowd-sourced collection of readings that can be used to start conversations around the Charleston massacre. I’m pleased to have assisted with collecting the readings into a list.

Distress Signals

It is a peculiar time to be a black American. Maybe there has always been tension in this relationship; maybe in the past I’ve been more willing to live within that tension, to use it to test my own limits of what I can endure. Those limits were pulverized into powder this week. America is […]

Scene From The Staff Elevator

I work in a scent-light workplace, so I try to be conscious of wearing heavily perfumed grooming products. This morning it couldn’t be helped because I was out of my usual hair gunk and had to use Oyin Handmade Burnt Sugar Pomade on my hair. A guy who works in IT got on the elevator […]

An Open Letter to Active Transportation Advocacy Groups

(I originally posted this to Facebook, but the response I got there convinced me to post it here.) Dear Active Transportation Advocates & Advocacy Groups: I’m fat. Until very recently, I rode a bike everywhere. I was still fat. I’m not alone. Oh sure, there aren’t many of us in Vancouver, but there are in […]

#L1S Tweetchat a Success

The inaugural First Generation Library Professionals chat went very well last night – much better than I expected. The biggest takeaway for me is that there is definitely a need among those of us who fall into this group to network and discuss issues around class, access, and navigating professional responsibilities. What I didn’t expect […]

Contributing to Open Source Projects – Hoodie

In a previous post I called out Hoodie as an example of not-terribly-clear instructions on how to contribute to their project, so I was happy to discover a post that clearly states how you can get involved in some of their open source projects. Go read Contributing to Hoodie and get started!

Tweetchat for First Generation Professionals – Monday June 1

Looks like Monday is the preferred day for our Tweetchat, so let’s chat on Monday, June 1, at 5:00pm Pacific/8:00pm Eastern. We still need a hashtag, as #1GenLibProfs doesn’t exactly sing. Suggestions welcome!

Today in "Man, I Suck At This"… (Adventures in Learning Ruby)

There is absolutely nothing in this world like the feeling of sucking at something and then improving at it. Ta-Nehisi Coates on the hard work of getting better at something. I’d do well to remember this whenever I want to quit learning Ruby. I’m on my third go-around with Skillcrush’s Ruby Blueprint, and once again […]