Tag: work

Dirty Old Town

The last time I was in Ireland was December 1999 at the end of my study abroad, around my 22nd birthday.  I’ve written a lot (maybe too much) about my time in Ireland, but now I get to go back for the time in nineteen years!

Working at Automattic, we gather with our teammates on a trip or two each year.  Being a distributed company, my particular team has members in Australia, New York, and South Africa.  We’ve decided on London for meetup this year and I’ll extend my trip for a few days in Dublin.

I’ll fly into Dublin on a Wednesday night and sleep in a hotel near the airport.  In the morning I’ll make my way into the city and do some exploring.  Afterwards I’ll stay with a college friend and her husband about 40 minutes south of Dublin.  We’ll spend Friday hiking and exploring Glendalough or other areas nearby.

Embed from Getty Images

That leaves a little time left on Saturday before I fly out that afternoon.

While not exactly the trip I’d envisioned for my return, my hope is that’ll recharge my Ireland batteries for a bit.  Here’s to making it back before another 19 years pass!

Read All About It!

WordPress has been a part of my life for nearly 9 years.  This particular blog was created for a class I taught on free and easy website creation at my alma mater.  I demonstrated Weebly, Wix, and Google Sites, but I spent the majority of time focused WordPress.  I outlined the differences between WordPress.com and a self-hosted site running the software available from WordPress.org.

I’m very proud to say I now work at Automattic, the company that manages WordPress.com. Okay, it’s actually been sine last August and I’m just now getting into regular blogging.

WordPress was the solution to a problem I was having.  I knew basic HTML and some CSS and had used those skills to create sites for sharing my artwork.  If I wanted to make a change on one page, say the footer, I needed to make it on all of them.  And there was no real easy solution to making galleries on a static HTML site.  I started doing some reading and found WordPress and gave it a shot.  I’ve lost count of the number of sites I’ve created for friends, clients, and myself, but it’s something that I truly love.

I work on a product called Jetpack, though not as a developer. I often test new releases, help with marketing materials, and, more recently, send merchandise to events around the world. Jetpack is another product I’ve used for years and it’s been fascinating to see the internal workings. The short explanation of what Jetpack does (a question I get frequently) is bridge the two versions of WordPress to add functionality to your self-hosted site.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds with this job. I certainly never expected to be here, but I’m glad that I am!

TV show referenced: Read All About It!