technology

My new retirement hobby: I just built my first app, in less than a week

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I’ve spent 40 years in tech (in roles including support, community, and product marketing), but I’ve never been a coder. I’ve worked closely with software engineers doing user experience testing and writing documentation, and I’ve done various kinds of tech marketing. I’ve designed simple web apps and done other coding-adjacent tasks like context-sensitive help, and I’ve dabbled a little in HTML and CSS — but that was the sum total of my coding experience.

Until now.

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A Theater Lover’s Diary

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You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown – Did I actually see this during our ~1969 home leave? Maybe with my mother in San Francisco (what were we doing in San Francisco?)

Indian Ink – Art Malik and Felicity Kendal, London 1984

Little Shop of Horrors – London 1984

On Your Toes – London 1984

Cats – Broadway, 1985, just before going to India.

Les Mis – Kennedy Center, probably with my dad, 1988 or so. Maybe London also.

La Cage aux Folles – New York

Anything Goes – original cast on Broadway, 1988

Into the Woods – original cast on Broadway, 1989

Cats – Little Rock AR, 1992 – Rossella’s first show, she was scared during the dark part at the beginning

Cabaret – Studio 54 revival with Molly Ringwald and Raul Esparza

Hairspray – Broadway, with Ross

Chicago – London, Chita Rivera

Avenue Q – London

Spamalot – London, on the very last night Tim Curry performed in it. Dad had bought us the tickets but was not well enough to come.

His Dark Materials – 2 nights – London, with Dad.

The one that got away: Chess

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I’m an Australian Citizen!

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November 13th will always be a happy anniversary for me: I became an Australian citizen.

My path to citizenship was easier than many, because I married into it. Brendan is Australian and we always knew we would eventually move here. We had originally planned to leave the US in late 2021, but the pandemic made us anticipate that by a year, so I arrived in Australia as a Permanent Resident in December, 2020. I then had to wait four years (everyone does) to apply for citizenship. With the help of my excellent immigration attorney Valerie da Gama Pereira, I submitted the application in January, 2025, knowing it would take at least six months to process. On July 29th I received by email my Approval of Citizenship by Conferral. 

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Learning to Scuba Dive

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During one of my winter vacations from Woodstock, when my dad and stepmother were living in Bangkok, my dad and I did a scuba diving course. Dad had started diving during our year in Hawaii (1966), and I’d been hearing his stories about it for as long as I could remember. Getting certified together sounded like a fun father-daughter activity, and it was.

Our instructor was “Dusty” Rhodes, who had served with distinction in the US Navy during the Vietnam war, and had then settled in Thailand. I did not realize until years later that the preparation he gave us went far beyond typical scuba instruction.

"Dusty" Rhodes, an older man with gray hair, wearing a slouchy, faded blue cap with a bill and an orange diving vest with an inflation tube going over his shoulder. someone off camera is gesturing towards him with a small knife (no, it was not a threat)
Dusty Rhodes
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Memorabilia: The Little Man in the Boxes

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In my many moves around the world, I have brought with me a few items that remind me of specific times, places, people, and adventures in my life. This painting is one such.

While we lived in Thailand, my parents acquired some interesting pieces of original and local art, which moved with us and formed a familiar backdrop to our homes from Bangkok to Pittsburgh to Connecticut. We did not take much when we moved to Bangladesh in 1976, most of it went into storage. Sometime while I was attending the University of Texas at Austin, our household goods were moved from storage in Connecticut to my aunt’s property in Texas, where our old dishware may still be languishing in a disused falling-down barn full of rattlesnakes. I later rescued a few items, including the above which had been painted by our family friend Irma, an artist who owned a Scandinavian design shop in Bangkok.

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Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia