Web developer, Mom, Runner, Baker, Music lover, Reader, Chaotic neutral
I'm lost!: A brief introduction to web landmarks
20 July 2017
Let’s pretend for a minute that you are a new visitor to Washington DC. You look around and see a lot of streets, buildings, and other structures. You need to get from one point in the city to another. You...
Stop 👏 putting 👏 text 👏 in 👏 images
18 July 2017
I can’t believe it is 2017 and I have to say this, but stop putting text in your #[email protected]&*% images!!! It boggles my mind that content editors and website managers think this is still OK, but I see it everywhere,...
Bold and strong are not the same thing
10 July 2017
Believe it or not, the <b>, <i>, <strong>, and <em> tags have all been a part of the HTML spec since nearly the beginning. All four of these tags were introduced in HTML 2. However, for a very long time,...
03 July 2017
For those of you who don’t know (and many people don’t), I made the choice to become a single mother after years of debating this. My first actual attempt happened on June 17. I started to work with a fertility...
Keyboard navigation when carousels block your way
20 April 2017
Oh… carousels. Carousels have become a major web design trend over the last several years. They are everywhere, from home pages to slideshows to product galleries. Carousels are terrible. From a content perspective, the majority of users only see the...
15 March 2017
My doctor-imposed 2-month delay on starting my treatment (thank you chicken pox immunity woes) has given me a lot of time to think. Too much time, really. The tech world has a phenomenon called “imposter syndrome”, where you are working...
21 February 2017
I am finally (gloriously) done with the testing phase. I actually finished last week, but have been procrastinating writing about it. Last week was intense between the HSG, an appointment with the counselor, and the final blood work. Counseling Most,...
HSG: The final (testing) frontier
14 February 2017
This is an intense week of testing due to scheduling and where I am in my cycle. I had my last test today, the HSG, or hysterosalpingogram. (Say that five times fast.) The HSG is simply an X-ray of most...
01 February 2017
I took a couple baby steps in the last 24 hours to prepare my brain and body for the months ahead. Prenatal vitamins I stopped by the store after work last night for a couple of things and figured it...
30 January 2017
I had my initial consultation with Clinic Beta today. I had some initial concern that my experience with this new clinic would mimic that of Clinic Alpha. I was pleasantly surprised. I sat down with the doctor and we went...
Taking action when you have social anxiety
22 January 2017
I attended the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. This march that was the largest inaugural protest in US history, with over 500,000 people in DC alone. I also have anxiety disorder and my anxiety is strongest when I am...
A complicated tale of research
10 January 2017
This is a tale of two fertility clinics. I do not want to use names, so I’ll call them Clinic Alpha and Clinic Beta here. Getting Started My gynecologist referred me to Clinic Alpha first. I had an initial consultation...
The dilemma: A brief introduction
10 January 2017
I want a baby. I am also a single woman, a fact that does not seem to be changing anytime soon. What makes me think I can handle raising another human being by myself? The last living member of the...
Not making new year resolutions
31 December 2016
It has been a year. Some of us have had a really rough year, while others had a pretty good year, but feel awkward admitting that 2016 wasn’t all that bad. At the end of 2015, I had asked for...
Accessibility and phone number formatting
02 November 2016
Accessible phone numbers on the web is a more complicated topic than you would think. Screen readers are remarkably inconsistent in the way they handle phone numbers. This is a huge issue from an accessibility point of view. Highlighting the...
Accessibility testing: Screen reader edition
16 September 2016
Accessibility testing on our websites is a large, large topic. I am writing about testing with screen readers here, but please keep in mind that accessibility testing != screen reader testing alone. There is a already great article from Viget...
01 September 2016
Imagine this: You have a file in your Git repository that you need to modify. Perhaps it is a settings file for your CMS. The settings file works perfectly for your QA or production environment, but you need to modify...
Solving my internal CSS framework debate
11 May 2016
Just when I finished teaching my students about CSS frameworks, I come across an article telling me that “You Might Not Need a CSS Framework.” I am not telling my students yet. Let’s just say that is too much too...
4 ways teaching code made me a better developer
11 May 2016
Late last year, the good folks at General Assembly hired me to teach one of their part-time Front-End Web Development courses. I have been coding for years and, more recently, have given a few one-off guest lectures. However, I was...
01 January 2016
2015 was a strange, strange year. I started the year with a brand new job that had a ton of potential. I later discovered working for that particular company was a huge mistake and, after being miserable for several months, had the...