Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: oped

  • Calm Under Pressure

    Calm Under Pressure

    A friend remarked she was impressed I was able to stay calm under the abuse slung my way. I have a secret.

    I’m Often Very Angry

    I’m not calm. I’m often quite irate and I froth and I rant. Some of my friends hear those rants. The complaints about how can people be that myopic and obtuse run rampant. I also do on occasion see red and feel my blood pressure rise and I want to reply to people so angrily.

    I really do. I want to scream and use all caps to emphasize that lying to people, trying to trick them, or otherwise doing bad things makes them bad people. I really want to shake some people to make them see they’re hurting themselves more than anything else. Some people I want to take their computers away because clearly they’re too immature for even free plugin hosting.

    That’s My Secret

    If you saw the movie The Avengers, then you may recall a moment when Bruce Banner said he controlled the Hulk by always being angry.

    The trick of that is its simplicity. You see, if Banner could only control the Hulk by not getting angry, then he’d lose. But by accepting his anger and being always angry at the state of the world, at his situation, and so on, he doesn’t have to control the anger anymore. He has to control his temper. That is, he controls his response to anger, but he allows the anger to happen.

    It’s Okay To Be Angry

    We all get angry. We see people doing stupid things and we get mad. But we have a choice in how we respond and react to those things. You can’t stop yourself from being angry, but you can stop yourself from being an uncontrolled Hulk when you’re angry.

    Seeing people not care about others gets me madder than anything else. Be it cutting in line, stealing, abuse, or the government. Or, yes, plugins. I get pissed off. I find that lack of humanity, lack of humanitarianism, to be appalling and disgusting.

    But I don’t lash out and hurt people (at least not intentionally) when it happens. I try to educate, to discuss, and to communicate.

    We Have A Choice

    We usually have a choice on how we react. There are, of course, situations where we are not in control of ourselves, where we react before we can control. Trauma triggers cause that in many of us. But where and when we do have a choice, we must remember our humanity. We must chose control.

  • While Not Being Consumed

    While Not Being Consumed

    I get painted as a bad guy a lot. I’ve been called names, everything you can think up. I’ve had my gender, sexuality, appearance, and ability all mocked and derided. And most of this has happened since I took up the role of a volunteer in WordPress.

    Creation, Editing, Fitting In

    As a writer, which is how I’ve always seen myself first, I’m used to the ruthlessness of the editing process. I’ve seen papers torn apart and painted red with corrections and commentary. Why this? What are you saying here? I understand the reason for ripping apart creativity to find it’s heart and crux and meaning. Art for the sake of art is different than art for the sake of consumption, after all.

    But instead of a career in the arts, or journalism, I had a different path. Out of college I went to work for a bank and quickly learned how to fit myself into the cog of a machine. I had a role and a life that did not encourage innovation and uniqueness, but that of interchangeability. And in that work, I began to understand the reason for patterns and the similarity.

    I’ve always been fascinated by patterns. I liked to see how the number went from 09 to 18 and 27 and obviously the first number goes up while the second goes down, and isn’t math cool? Seeing the pattern in the work at the bank taught me that while we are all creating and inventing, what we make has to be used in many different ways, and they all need to talk to each other. So we have to make sure all the little cogs and wheels interlock properly.

    It’s Still Creation

    I like to watch the behind the scenes parts of movies. It’s why I prefer to own physical copies. I have watched all the extras for the Lord of the Rings movies. That’s why I know Tolkien disliked when people were obsessed with his work. Because he was not obsessed. He liked what he did, but it wasn’t the end of the world if people didn’t care for it. He made something neat to tell the story he wanted to tell

    Often we as developers fail at this. It’s not entirely our fault. We’re told that what we do is engineering or science, and we forget to stress the creative aspect of inventing that which has never been seen before. We forget progress is forged by dreams. And that’s why, when you see a one star review of your work, it flays you open, leaving you chained to the rocks for the crows to eat your innards. You gave fire to man, and this was your reward?!

    Let’s breathe. What Tolkien didn’t seem to understand was that he had created life. He had made a world so amazing and vibrant, people saw it and wanted to be a part of it. Similarly, when we create code, we give life to others.

    The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

    I’ve gotten the greatest compliments on my work in the form of someone telling me it helped them achieve their goals. People have started businesses, found success, and made something of themselves, all because of something I did.

    But more often, or at least what I remember more, are the names and the anger and the harassment. The people who stalk me down on Slack and Twitter, demanding that I pay attention to them right now and that they are the most important thing… while being angry when I do devote that time, but that my answer is not what they wanted.

    Remember Your Self

    Originally I titled this post “When you’re evil for doing good.” Really that didn’t touch on the real feeling I have about this. Because at the end of it all, I sit and look at the work I’ve done and I ask myself “What was this for?”

    I have a strange life. I have a job that is essentially trying to keep 26% of the internet safe from itself. So my answer for “What was this for?” has become a question of itself. “Is this going to make it better or worse?”

    When I come to decisions, like to tell someone we cannot host their code because they have lied and broken the guidelines too many times, it always comes from this place. Will I make things better for the majority or worse? And in that moment, I ignore the other question. “Will this hurt me?” Because the answer to that is “Yes, probably.”

    “Honor is what you know about yourself.”

    There’s no way I can make hard decisions and not get hurt. There’s no way I can do it and not hurt others. But I sit and I remember my self. My inner self that wants to make things better, safer, and as fair as possible. I remember the me who wants to say “What I do makes the internet better.” And if that comes at a personal cost, well. I will know this.

    I have integrity.

    I have honesty.

    I have empathy.

    As long as I have those, and as long as I do my best and keep learning and becoming better, I will be doing the right thing. And I can live with being ‘evil’ when I’m doing good.

  • Defining Yourself

    Defining Yourself

    If you took the 2016 WordPress survey, you were asked to define yourself. Blogger, developer, designer, and so on. It’s a profound question, and not just in the metaphysical way.

    More Than One

    I am many things because I represent many things. When I speak, I speak forever with the weight of who I am. I speak and it reflects on DreamHost, my company. On WordPress, where I volunteer. If I were to say I hated Akismet, for example, it could end up on various sites and Facebook groups that the Plugins Team hates Akismet.

    I’ll get back to that in a minute. Last summer I talked about handling bad reviews at WordCamp Europe. I don’t want to repeat that, you can watch it. People leave angry, mean, and outright bad reviews for a lot of reasons, and you can handle them constructively or not, as you like. Obviously I think constructive is better, because those bad reviews, the way you handle them is what’s going to make your reputations.

    The Forest for the Trees

    The problem is that you, the creator, feels so close to your code and creation, that you have trouble divorcing yourself from the review. I find that the more someone has worked in journalism or writing, the less personally they take the reviews, because they have seen their works ripped apart by a red pen before. Artists have to learn how to handle being edited.

    But the other problem is that you forget you’re NOT an artist. If an actor or a musician blows up at people and rants and raves, it may hurt their career, but… people still hire Mel Gibson after his anti-Semitic rant. And Tiny Fey, love her, has been rather transphobic. No one is perfect, not even our idols, and we accept that.

    The Goose vs the Gander

    People are less accepting of their peers. If you get a bad review and explode on someone, calling them names, you’ve hurt yourself and your brand more than any single one star review ever could. Worse, they may treat you like a celebrity, over analyzing every word you say. That one’s a hoot.

    The truth of all this is depressing. You will be hated, intentionally misunderstood, thrown under a bus, leibeled, and slandered. People will assume the worst of you. And because of this, they will assume to worst of your project, your brand, and your company. Forever.

    And this too is depressing, because you will never be free of it. I posted on my blog, sometime last year, a post called “What they don’t tell you.” It listed the downsides to the community, and how these days happen and they suck. And you can’t stop them. I walked away from things decades ago, and they follow me. They haunt me.

    Is There a Truth?

    The obvious question now, the one I am reluctant to answer is HOW do you cope?

    I don’t know.

    I can tell you how I cope, but I don’t know if my answers will help you. I can tell you that it does all suck sometimes, but not all times, and you should have other outlets. I cannot offer the answer, though, because there isn’t just one.

    The one truth I have is that defining myself as someone I can live with being is my answer. For the truth within myself is that as long as I know I am being good and honest and as fair as I can be, I am a good person. And being a good person is what matters most to me.

  • Why I Write About What I Code

    Why I Write About What I Code

    I was asked this the other day. Obviously sometimes I write about technology in general, or software I find and like, but a great deal of the posts here are about how I figure things out. And the reason I do that is, simply, it makes me a better writer and a better coder.

    Want to write better?

    There’s nothing that will make you a better write than writing. You will learn your voice, your tone, and your flavor of writing only if you write. It doesn’t matter if your writing is bad at first. By writing more and more and more you will only get better and better at the process, and more comfortable doing it.

    Getting into the habit of writing, where it’s an every day occurrence in your life, is imperative if you want to write better. It’s a talent, yes, but it’s also a skill. And if you don’t practice skills they get rusty. If they get too rusty, they break and you give up.

    Want to code better?

    The fastest way to get better at code is to read and review other people’s code and try to figure out how they did what they did. The reason I can continue to think as sharply as I do about plugin reviews is that I do it every day. Every. Single. Day. I look at 30 to 100 plugins, review the code as written by just as many developers, reverse engineer what they’ve done, and I start to understand better. I peer review people’s code, day in and day out.

    But nothing makes you a better code than coding. Obviously. And yet there’s one thing most people miss. You see, the critical review of your own code is absolutely necessary if you want to become a better coder. And in the absence of peer reviewed code, the best thing to do is rip it apart yourself.

    Can you explain your code?

    That’s it. That’s the magic. If you can explain your code, why you did what you did, why it does what it does, then you are at the step of critically reviewing your code. The number of times my code has improved because I’ve blogged about it is uncountable. As I write my post, I find myself typing “I used the function X because…” and I stop. Why did I use that function?

    It’s in the questioning of my own actions that I begin to understand my own internal logic. You know, the part of your brain your parents and teachers helped you form. Those early days of logic where you learned fire was hot and one plus one was two, you also developed your own style of thinking.

    Can you explain why?

    My father likes to tell me I used to do my math backwards, from left to right, before my school taught me otherwise. On occasion, I still do it that way because I want to look at my math from a different perspective. Talking about why I do that changes my understanding of the process. The solution was always the same, but the process of getting there is vastly different.

    When I talk about why I chose the path I did, I do more than just verbalize to myself what I’ve done, I teach someone else that there’s an answer and there’s a way to their answers as well. I’ve shown a path.

    I write to understand myself

    Above all else, I write to understand myself. Only by doing that can I improve at anything.

  • Will You Help Me Sell My Plugin?

    Will You Help Me Sell My Plugin?

    I get asked this a lot. It comes with the territory, but people ask me to help them monetize their plugins all the time. And my answer is always the same.

    No

    As much as I am a strong advocate of people making money off of WordPress, and as much as I support plugin and theme devs in their work, I’m not out here to help you run your business. While I do spend time thinking of ways to get people to pay for services and software, I don’t prioritize it, and most of my ideas are just that. Ideas.

    Really what people are asking for is my ideas and my free work. And to that, I say no.

    Business Help Isn’t Free

    If you wanted to hire me to help, to look at your code and to assist you in coming up with business strategies, based on my experience in the WordPress world, that’s a different matter. That gets a ‘no’ because I don’t have the time to dedicate to that work. I have a full time job that I do like, and I have some volunteer work I enjoy, and I have a very addictive side project. Since I enjoy being married, I don’t take on extra work right now. I don’t need the money.

    But the point here, if you can’t tell, is that yes, I would expect you to pay me for my work.

    I’m No Good At Sales

    Of course, keep in mind the fact that I’m a terrible salesman. I don’t like exaggerating what a product can do, I don’t like even suggesting a lie. I downplay. And that’s because I don’t like it when people promise the moon and only deliver low Earth orbit. I want realistic goals and possibilities. Can you do anything with this plugin? Sure. But it comes at a cost and I feel people should know that cost.

    I’m Hard to be Bought

    Everyone may have a price, but my price is rarely money. I know this sounds weird, since I said I expect people to pay me for my work. You see, asking me to do you a favor for free doesn’t really happen. But also, asking me to do you a favor for pay won’t happen.

    And by this I mean reviews.

    I’ve been asked, many times, to review people’s themes and plugins and post about it here. And in general, I say no. I review the things I use and like because I use and like them. I’m driven by usability. If I like your ‘thing’ and I think people should hear about it, I’ll talk it up. If your thing is free or for sale, I don’t care. What I care is if your thing was what I needed and wanted, and I liked it.

    I Won’t Help You Sell

    That’s not my deal. It’s not my deal on this blog. I’ve never been bought off for a review, I’ve never been asked “Would you review this product of mine?” unless I’ve already been known to use it. And even then, I’ve told people “You don’t want me to review it. I like it, but you have some bad bugs.”

    I’m honest. I’m direct. I’m incurably truthful.

    You probably don’t want me to help you sell your stuff, but if I really like it, I may anyway.

  • The New SEO Scam

    The New SEO Scam

    The email looked innocuous.

    I was just browsing Ipstenu.Org and saw in this post (link from 2002) you were interested in tech, and so I thought you might also be interested in linking to a resource we put together on the ways technology is improving health.

    It went on to tell me about how they were comprehensive, up to date, etc etc. I admit, I wondered how they got my email in the first place, since it’s not listed on my site on purpose. But barring anything nefarious, I assumed they guessed, and since it wasn’t important to me that a personal blog post from 2002 get updated, I deleted the email.

    Every five days after then I got a ‘follow up’ email from this person, Camilla Hathaway, and it was strange. I didn’t reply so why would they keep doing that?

    But then I got an email from another company about a different post, asking me if I wanted to link to their article about ddos protection. And another from a third company for a post about cPanel.

    They all sent follow up emails and they all were very ‘nice’ about it, praising my writing and telling me about broken links.

    Spam by any other name…

    If the email was about running a banner ad on CNN for $725, you’d know it was spam.

    If it was from the FBI telling you the corrupt government owed you millions, you’d know it was spam.

    This appeared to be from a real person, a real reader. Except for the fact that there was no way they should have been able to find that particular email address. Except for the fact that they kept email. Except for the fact that who the heck reads old posts on a personal site from as far back as 2001 (I’ve been blogging a long time) and tell me that a link is broken or the information is out of date.

    It’s weird, isn’t it?

    Well, it’s spam.

    The New Spam Game

    The old SEO spam was a lot more overt.

    We are a Leading SEO & Web Development Company and one of the very few companies which offer organic SEO Services with a full range of supporting services such as one way themed text links, blog submissions, directory submissions, article writing and postings, etc.

    or

    I was doing some research on [Subject] and landed on your website.

    You know the obvious ones. These new ones are more clever. They sound more like people. And the worst part is they aren’t all fake people.

    You see … A real company, a legit company, run by real people in the UK, spammed the hell out of me with offers like this. Every day for almost two weeks before I blocked the accounts. This was after I pinged them on Twitter and asked them to leave me alone.

    I shouldn’t have to.

    If I don’t reply, I’m probably not going to. But I surely am not going to reply within a day if you email me daily. The new spam game, the new scam game is to be nice and hammer you with a request over and over and over.

    If It Looks Too Good To Be True, It Is

    The bottom line is that if it looks too good to be true, it is. No probably about it.