Watermelons can be kind of a pain in the butt to cut. They are large, unwieldy, they roll around till you can get them cut in half. Well, have I got the kitchen tool for you! Behold: This is possibly the most ridiculous kitchen tool ever invented. A post shared by Karen Arnold (@iamkarenalma) on…
A few weeks back, I took a day off to go camping with my family. I am pretty used to working on the road while traveling in my RV with my family, but it was my intention to be completely offline for this particular outing. I had one message to send to someone before I…
I’m in Singapore for a work trip and am really enjoying the food. The breakfast buffet at the hotel is fantastic with a stellar spread of amazing fruit every morning. The dragon fruit is underwhelming, to be frank, I expected it to be sweet and delicious but it’s bland and sort of boring. The waiter…
The last time I had a milestone at Automattic I was too busy on my sabbatical to write about the anniversary but it’s been a year and here I am. Six years on February 6th! Wow. And what a year. I got a new awesome laptop. This usually happens at around four years but I didn’t need…
My brother brought me some eggplant yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to make other than Eggplant Parmesan, but since I’m doing the Whole30, a breaded cheesy dish is out. I searched online for other things to do with eggplant and came up with not a lot of options I thought my kids would go for.…
We are getting in the Christmas spirit around here finally. I made biscochitos with one of my sons today. We made one batch with rice/potato/tapioca flour another with wheat flour. Delicious.
Ever since I started at Automattic, the Dvorak keyboard layout has been lurking in the background. Matt Mullenweg wrote a great post about Dvorak so I won’t go into the history. You can also read this zine for a quick explanation. Basically, it’s a keyboard layout that puts the keys into different positions so it’s easier to type. Allegedly. I’ll give…
Every time there’s an election in Albuquerque, there are a number of bond issues on the ballot. And every time there’s an election in Albuquerque we vote on the following park issue or something similar: Shall the City of Albuquerque issue $22,473,000 of its general obligation bonds to study, map, plan, design, develop, construct, rehabilitate, renovate,…
I spent a few days in Sri Lanka just recently and one of my colleagues suggested I buy some tea. I’m not a very good shopper when it comes to touristy things but I guess, when you are in the place known for amazing tea, why not get some, right? So I took a look…
Since I started working with the hiring team at Automattic we’ve had a consistent focus on hiring Happiness Engineers all over the world. At times, we’ve even focused our recruiting efforts in specific areas like Spain, Argentina, and Brazil. Over the last few years, we’ve noticed that without intentional efforts, we just don’t get as many…
When I talk to people about Automattic, remote work is often a topic of conversation. And along with that usually comes some version of my personal story: my kids are homeschooled, I work from home 100% of my time, we spend an insane number of months traveling in a motorhome, etc, etc. How *do* you…
Having worked in customer support for over 5 years, I’m always noticing good or bad experiences with support staff out in the world. Spoiler alert: We had an amazing experience at the Jayco Motorhome Factory yesterday. Here’s the story. Some time ago we noticed a bump under the linoleum in the kitchen area of our…
