Bibble & Sip is a cute little bakery in NYC on 51st Street. That happened to have the Asian desserts I am used to. I unfortunately ate my delicious cloud-shaped thing before thinking to photograph anything, so all I can show you are my Winnie-the-Pooh macarons. These were not as good as the cloud-shaped thing, which was clearly fresher, but they were still delicious and quite fun to look at. Ah, I will enjoy being back in Asia where I can get cute and delicious desserts every day!
When Small Sophie first played with these round locking blocks at a little under 15 months of age, she did not know what direction to put them in. She understood that the round part aligned and accurately placed those—— but upside-down or right-side up? She had to try both if she first went with upside-down. By the second day, she understood that they go right-side up and consistently placed them correctly. However, she often left blocks halfway locked. We would help her lock the blocks now and then, else the towers would fall. (She put them back up if they…
Right as Small Sophie turned 14 months old, I decided that it was high time for Young Sophie to learn to sleep in her own bed. 14 months is a large number! It has two digits! And I had endured many months of her rolling, flailing, and climbing on top of me throughout the night. Although she has had her own bed for the majority of her months alive, she was in the habit of rolling into my bed and on top of me every night. You see, her bed was placed next to my bed: In one easy motion,…
At 14 months, Young Sophie does not have the height to reach interesting hiding places. Fortunately, she, too, can participate in egg hunting by picking eggs off of the grass. She surprised us all by picking us her basket and taking it to the eggs. We had thought we would have to carry the basket for her. I bought 2T and 3T outfits when she was a few months old thinking they would be good for growing into. The dress is 2T sized and fits fine now that she can walk. I actually had laid out a white onesie for…
I was not an extremely early adopter of Bitcoin, but I owned some a long time ago. When the price rose to about $10 per BTC, I bought myself a collection of 1 gram metals from Amagi Metals. The collection is no longer sold— but now I can show off my 1 gram of lead and 1 gram of aluminum and 1 gram of… well, moving on. I unfortunately had some Bitcoin on MtGox when it fell. I still occasionally receive emails in Japanese to the email I registered with the site. A private wallet with a fraction of a…
Young Sophie cannot yet read. Were she able to, she would know that she sometimes bears what my husband calls “Mommy Propaganda”. He refers to the common “I love mommy” quotes printed on babies’ bibs, footies, socks, and more. There are many variations of this. (I did not buy any of these clothes. They were all gifted.) “Do you want to wear your Mommy Propaganda shirt?” he asked our grinning infant as she lay on her back, beaming after a diaper change. “Oh, look, it’s your Mommy Propaganda bib!” he would exclaim while grabbing the topmost bib from the clean…
I am going to graduate from college in a year. How can I look like a more appealing candidate for a developer position? From what I am told, I had two traits that led to great popularity: I ended with a 4.0 GPA in Computer Science and I am female. Just like that, I was inundated with interview opportunities! My brother, who studied Computer Engineering and did not grow up to be (and did not start out as) a woman, was not nearly as popular. If you have the misfortune of not being like me, do you have time to…
When it comes to contributions to open source software, the quantity of patches a company or individual adds clearly affects how important of a contributor the company appears to be. Contributors usually agree that they want to focus on the quality instead of quantity. A Linux Kernel maintainer wrote a somewhat adversarial message directed at people associated with Huawei about numerous submissions they have made which are not very substantial. Basically, Huawei employees submitted many individual small changes— including insignificant spelling corrections or minor cleanup. While one might argue that those are still useful changes, consider that Huawei could have…
An estimated 21 million Bitcoin is irretrievably lost. I have contributed to that number. I first began using Bitcoin in 2012 when a college friend insisted that it was the future and tried to get everyone else he was friends with to use Bitcoin, only send signed and encrypted emails, and to use Tor for any sort of web browsing. I think everyone else eventually gave up or refused to do some of the things. I was in Bitcoin early enough that I was with MtGox— and lost some Bitcoin in the MTGox hack. Anyway, my only retail transaction was…
What is the cost of giving birth? How much does childbirth cost in a hospital? I looked up these and other similar terms after deciding I wanted children and again after getting pregnant, but very few pages actually explained the breakdown of their bills and what sort of insurance they had. I am sharing my costs in case there are others who were trying to read more about the same things. My insurance for this childbirth was Cigna Open Access Plus In-Network with HRA. There is a $4000 deductible and $4000 Out-of-Pocket (OoP) per person, with an $8000 family Out-of-Pocket. The…