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A Vacation From My Vacation

Yesterday I flew back from the States, jokingly to escape the Area 51 raid, but seriously cause it was the end of vacation and since said vacation was two weeks taking care of Boy Twin and Visiting Family, I am taking the next four work days off.

Also #JetLag

While I don’t normally do this, I have a ton of Paid Time Off accrued from when I was pregnant with twins and sick nearly every single day and all that vacation rolled over and since the project is mostly quiet in July and I’m also taking off for the week of Gish, I’m pretty much all of July.

My colleagues are going to forget what I look like!

But seriously there are three major projects I’m working on in my copious free time and I’m going to take the next few days to dive into them.

Would you like to know more?

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Let’s Talk About Diversity Scholarships at DevConf.US

MacBook on woman's lap
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

Two posts in one day WHAT!

This email came to my attention just this morning and the deadline is TODAY so it’s getting posted ASAP.

And YUP that means Two Posts On One Day WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE PEOPLE

DevConf.US is a free conference in Boston, MA on August 15-17.

It is organized by Red Hat’s Engineering and dedicated to open source technologies. The conference has the following tracks: Application Development & Containerization, Building & Running Cloud Infrastructure, Ensuring Software Quality, Machine Learning & Privacy & Big Data, Serverless, Open Source & Process, Systems Engineering & Hardware, and User Experience in Open Source.

You can learn more about the conference at https://devconf.info/us and see the schedule from last year at https://devconfus2018.sched.com

In an effort to create a more DIVERSE and INCLUSIVE event, the conference is offering diversity scholarships that cover travel-related expenses for attendees from the U.S. or Canada who do not work at Red Hat and who are students or are relatively new or returning to full-time work in technology.

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I Seriously Cannot WAIT To Get THERE

Dear Ifat:

I suppose that I should make an introduction of you before simply sending you a blog post, but THAT’S HOW I ROLL. To cut through introductions, I’ll just link to your personal trainer website. And can I also totally recommend a makeover on that thing? Like, the content is solid, but let’s get rid of all the adobe flash, yeah? Also, I take back what I said about the content – it’s static. You NEED a blog on there. AND your latest social media content COUGH INSTAGRAM COUGH displayed on the home page.

And can we talk about how there are NONE pictures of me on there?

Pfffft.

But, of course, you know exactly what I’m doing right now.

I’m procrastinating.

Yes, I packed for the gym today. Yes, I’m going to go to the gym. Yes, here’s what I plan on doing.

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Gypsy Sprinkles Homework

Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

My grandma’s memorial is this afternoon in Alexandria Virginia and my Aunt Julie has agreed to read a small message from me since I can’t be there. Here’s what I wrote.

The best part about someone else reading your statement is that you can write whatever you want and they have to read it.

Hello, my name is Julie and I LOVE to wear pink.

But, seriously, this is a message from Grandma Porter’s granddaughter, Kristin, who lives in Europe.

She says,

“For me, funerals are a celebration of life, rather than a lamentation of death, and to that end, I’d like to share three moments we shared that made me realize that Grandma is one of the fiercest, bravest women I have ever had the honour of knowing. And I’m so thankful that we’re related because now I can blame my obsession with sprinkles, my twisted sense of humor and my urge to buck the system on her.

Grandma always kept sprinkles in the house for me.

Sure, it might’ve also been for other kids or MAYBE for Grandpa, but I always thought of them as MY sprinkles.

And, of course, there was always plenty of ice cream.

One night, I was eating ice cream with sprinkles and enjoying it so much that after I finished everything that could be scooped with a spoon, I started finishing it up by licking the bowl.

Grandma was aghast.

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Goodbye, Grandma

The following piece is written by my grandpa, Edwin Arnold Porter, and my cousin, Cassie Lopez.

In the early morning hours of Thursday, 14 March 2019, our beloved Dorothy Genevieve Porter died peacefully in her sleep at home.

Dorothy was born on 5 February 1926. She was adopted by Adolph and Harriett Hoven and grew up in Tillamook, Oregon. She married Arnie when she was 20 and he was 19. They shared nearly 73 years of marriage, as an Air Force family. They lived across four countries and moved fourteen times, having three kids along the way- Steve, Lisa and Julie.

She studied music at Northwest Christian College and became a Church Musician. She sang, played the piano and organ and conducted prize winning choirs almost everywhere the family was assigned. 

Continue reading “Goodbye, Grandma”