Blog

• Eat. Sleep. Code. and Other Negative Culture Signs

  While reading up on some posts around the campfire this weekend, I caught a post about negative and toxic cultures. 🔥 Some people are privileged to not experience that. I’m envious of them. 20+ years in the field, and I am still cautioning women that tech really hasn’t gotten better over the past couple decades. Let me share some examples of why.

• The Lightning Talk on Kindess

  We do internal trainings at work, and sometimes we do lightning talks. ⚡ These are 6-minute long talks on anything. They don’t have to have slides or even visuals. Today, my teammates did some awesome tech lightning talks!

• A Week of Mondays

  This has been a week of Mondays.

• Vibe Coding a BINGO Caller

  July is a busy month for me - from birthdays and anniversaries to prepping for my family reunion. I come from a very large family, and we all get together once a year to see each other. There are hot dogs, horseshoes, the business meeting, egg toss, kids’ games, crafting contests, and BINGO!

• The Tumbling E Developer - Or a Grown Up T-Shaped Developer

  I’m in a Discord with a lot of friends that I’ve known for almost 20 years now. We’re techies of all sorts. Some are job hunting, so we’re talking about our careers, what we’ve done, and where we want to go.

• M365 Password Update Experience SUX

  Oh look… another Sadukie on User eXperience (SUX) post, and big surprise it’s about Microsoft. 😩

• Running Open WebUI + Ollama in Portainer

  Recently, my husband decided to explore running Portainer to learn about containers. Since we’re both on container adventures at the moment, we’re both working with containers on Portainer.

• Why Engineers Need More Than One Road

  Let’s be honest, the phrase “stay in your lane” has been tossed around a lot lately. It’s often offered as advice, a comforting little nugget of wisdom suggesting you focus on your specific expertise and leave the rest to others. But in this economy, clinging to that advice might be one of the most dangerous things you can do.

• The Weight of Community Work

  For over 15 years, many of us have poured our hearts and countless hours into building and nurturing this community. We’ve watched it grow, celebrated its successes, and weathered its storms. It’s been a labor of love, a testament to the power of collective spirit. But lately, that love has started to feel like a heavy burden, and frankly, some of the long-time organizers are getting tired.

• The Unsung Heroes of Open Source: Why Transparency, Gratitude, and Sustainable Support Matter

  Behind every successful open-source project are dedicated maintainers who pour their time, expertise, and passion into building and sustaining these vital tools. Yet, the realities of open-source maintenance are often misunderstood, leading to friction and unrealistic expectations within the community. It’s time to shine a light on what truly makes open-source thrive: transparency, genuine gratitude, and a sustainable model that recognizes the immense effort involved.

• No Apologies for Experiments

  Recently, a former apprentice of mine reached out with an apology. They’d joined a new team, embarked on an experiment, and the results weren’t what they’d hoped for. “I’m so sorry it failed,” they said. My immediate thought was, “Why are you apologizing?” And that got me thinking about the true nature of experiments and why we often misunderstand their purpose.

• Choosing Not to Support Technologies

  Today’s post is about choosing not to support technologies. There is no rule out there that says “Once you have used a technology, you must continue support it for (the org you moved on from/people who are using it similar to how you used it/others).”

• Stir Trek 2025 recap

  On May 2nd, I had the opportunity to attend Stir Trek. While Dante kept telling me “I’m not supposed to be here today”, I knew the universe had reasons for playing out like it did. So for that, I’m thankful!

• Not Supposed to be Here Today

  As I prepare for Stir Trek 2025, Dante from the Kevin Smith films is in my head, saying “I’m not even supposed to be here today”. So let’s talk about this.

• Why I Do Both Written Content and Videos

  Yesterday, I was watching Ted Young stream on Twitch. He streams on things like Java, Java Spring, and testing. He also is in the Domain-Driven Design community, which is how I found him.

• Representation Matters

  I’m normally not this fired up unless something really irks me. I heard this news earlier today and am still seething late in the day. Time to blog.

• Sarah Broke It

  How did I manage that? Have you met me?

• Getting Back to My Roots

  A long, long time ago, in this galaxy, there was a girl who enjoyed writing updates about the high school news. She used an editor known as Adobe PageMill, and she made sure people knew what was going on. A few months into that adventure, a guy showed up at the afterschool club and asked her why she was using PageMill and why she wasn’t writing HTML. She learned HTML and fell in love with programming even more – after seeing what she could do with Applesoft Basic years earlier and now seeing what she could do with HTML on “the web”, she knew this would end up going somewhere.

• 2024 in Review

  As we’re about to wrap up 2024, I wanted to answer some questions people wondered about this year.

• 🎅 LINQing Up Christmas: .NET 9 Features in Action

  In November 2024, Microsoft released .NET 9 and C# 13. There are all sorts of gifts for .NET developers in this release. Today, I want to share one of my favorite ones – the LINQ updates! What better way to share news at this time of year but with a holiday theme – and especially as this post is a part of C# Advent!

• Checking In

  It’s been awhile since I last wrote here, so I wanted to check in and let you know what’s going on.

• Gemini Adventures: Skibidi Learning with Ohio Riz 🤔

  I have to thank CodeMom for introducing me to Mr. Lindsay videos in understanding the ridiculous statements that my middle schooler may throw at me this year. (Yes, my oldest is a middle schooler this year!)

• Musical Memories – Go-to Songs

  Last night, my family went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at Blossom Music Center, with the soundtrack being played live by The Cleveland Orchestra. As the musicians were coming out and warming up their instruments, my husband noticed how excited I would get when certain instruments warmed up. He asked me a question he hasn’t asked me at all in the almost 3 decades together – what are my go-to pieces for warming up? Ok… let’s go through those songs.

• Bouncing Between Self-Employment and Other Employers

  I was hanging out in the Multithreaded Income podcast‘s Discord server, and a conversation about staying freelance versus working for “the man” an employer got me thinking. I have been bouncing around between working for myself and working for employers since 2011, after solely working for employers since the late 90s.

• Unveiling Self-Confidence - Retrospective of 2023

  As we’re getting ready to wind down this year and ring in 2024, I figured I’d reflect on this year’s adventures.

• CodeMash 2022 Recap - Sessions Day 2

  There were 2 days of precompiler (workshop) sessions and 2 days of conference talks at CodeMash. These are my tales from day 2 of conference talks.

• CodeMash 2022 Recap - Sessions Day 1

  These are the sessions that I caught on the first day of sessions at CodeMash 2022.

• CodeMash 2022 Recap - Precompiler Days 1 and 2

  Last week, I went to my first in-person tech event for 2022 – CodeMash. These are some of the things I caught over the first couple days.