Life in the hornline

A conversation with myself, based on real questions people have asked me (yes, even the first one).

Q. Who are you?
A. I’m a 27-year-old girl living in the Silicon Valley. I do lots of geeky and not-so-geeky things and then write about them here.

Q. What’s with the blog?
A. It started out as a MySpace blog (the gateway blog), as an outlet after a breakup when I was sad and lonely. Now I am not sad and lonely, and people actually read this blog, so I write about my life and my thoughts. It usually ends up being rants about random things, detailed accounts of where I eat and drink, and my various plans and ambitions.

Q. What do you do, like for a job?
A. I am a technical writer, but you’d be surprised how little time I spend actually writing.

Q. Oh, ok. Wait, so what do you do?
A. I write documentation for static code analysis software.

Q. Really? People do that?
A. Really. These things don’t get written by themselves, and you don’t want to see what software developers try to write.

Q. Static code what?
A. I work for Coverity, which is small company in San Francisco that develops code analysis tools. They find problems in code. I haven’t been there very long, so that’s about all I can tell you. Before that, I was at IBM for five years.

Q. Wait, so did you move to San Francisco?
A. Not yet. well, sort of. I have a place that I share up in the city, so I there some of the time. I still spend time at my condo in San Jose, but now I have a roommate.

Q. Are you an English major then?
A. No, I never took an English class in college. I have a Bachelor of Science in Technical Communication from the University of Washington.

Q. So is that like an English degree? Or Communications?
A. Not really. It is considered an engineering degree. I took classes like Computer Documentation and Technical Editing.

Q. How did you get into technical writing?
A. It is a long way from my early aspirations of wanting to be a princess or a figure skater, I admit. I started out in college doing engineering stuff, but I realized that I didn’t like physics or calculus. I found that I could hold my own in CS classes, but didn’t like computers enough to be a CS major. So I found a degree where I could take a broad range of classes and still graduate and get a job. And here I am.

Q. I got these instructions to assemble this bookshelf, and they were terrible–
A. Sorry, that isn’t a question.

Q. Sorry, so where are you from?
A. I was born in San Francisco, but I grew up in Spokane, Washington. After I graduated from school in Seattle, I moved to San Jose.

Q. Doesn’t it rain a lot in Seattle?
A. I guess. It is usually more of a drizzle.

Q. Doesn’t the rain bum you out?
A. Not really.

Q. What’s with you and skiing?
A. I love it. I will go whenever I can. I skied a lot when I was a kid, and then for various reasons, didn’t ski for almost ten years. Last year, I skied eight times in six weeks. I just love being in the mountains. The snow hasn’t been good this year, so I haven’t been up yet.

Q. You talk about going back to school. What’s with that?
A. I don’t want to be a technical writer forever. It is one of those things that I do because I am relatively good at it and it is pretty easy for me to do. But I am always thinking about what the next thing for me is. And one of the options is going and getting my master’s degree. We’ll see.

Q. You also talk about food a lot. Are you a foodie?
A. I guess. Food is really important, and I like good food. I love to cook and bake, and share with my friends and family. Some of the best conversations happen at the dinner table. I am also really interested in how our food policies and food culture are affecting other aspects of our lives and our world. I support local organic farming, and I hate fast food.

Q. Can I buy you a drink?
A. Yes, please. I’ll have a sidecar.