I’ve had “Let it Go” from Frozen stuck in my head for weeks. And this is AMAZING.

Fitbit Force Recall
WHAT?! “Fitbit halts sale of Force fitness band, issues recall due to skin irritation.” I’ve had my Fitbit Force since just before Christmas, and I totally love it. I haven’t had a single problem. And that’s kinda weird, because jewellery with nickel in it usually causes a reaction on me. But I wear my Force fairly loose, so maybe the fact that I get some air flow in there is helping. I’m definitely not sending mine back. I love it! I loved my One as well (which the Snook now uses*), but I underestimated how much of a difference the wristband form factor would make. I only take it off to shower or swim, and a full charge lasts more than a week. If you’ve got a Fitbit, feel free to friend me…

* I actually lost my Fitbit One at the company Christmas party. Dejected, I ordered my Force and then contacted support to get them to remove my One from my account. (The reminder to sync on my dashboard was making me sad.) To my surprise, they offered to replace it! So I got a brand new one, which the Snook is now using. Amazing service. I’m a total Fitbit evangelist now.

A big step up…
So some amazing stuff has happened in the past week. I mentioned last month that my job was going well and that I was taking on additional responsibilities. At the start of February I was struggling with the increased workload, so someone else was brought on to help with my team’s day-to-day stuff. It all came to a head last week when rumours of a massive restructure started swirling. I thought maybe I’d been groomed to move up a step on the ladder. Wednesday morning I found myself in a meeting room with the CIO, where she drew out the new org chart and then offered me a spot … several levels higher than what I’d been imagining. I was pretty floored. I needed to give them an answer ASAP, so the Snook met me in the city for an emergency pow-wow at lunch. Yes, the position came with a nice raise, but it was also a big step in terms of responsibility (and probably workload). It’s also my first ever opportunity to move into people management, something that I hadn’t been interested in before but I’d been learning a lot about from working with Jody. I just couldn’t turn it down. So I accepted that afternoon. My new title is TV Development Director, and I’m responsible for the entire TV side of web development at Mi9. IS THAT CRAZY OR WHAT?

The week since the offer has been a rollercoaster. Unfortunately the restructure wasn’t as positive for some other people, which has meant a little bit of guilt over my good fortune. I haven’t had much time to meet with and support my circle of work friends, mostly because I’m trying to finish handing off my IM role as quickly as possible while getting up to speed on the new one. Sunday night a routine deployment for my team turned into a four hour incident that I had to manage via Hipchat from home. I’m having daily one-on-ones with the CIO and trying to figure out what the boundaries of my job actually are. There are a lot of holes on my team structure, so I also need to get involved with recruiting ASAP. I’ve had to draft emails to be sent to the entire technology team. Last night I left work at 6pm, which was my earliest night in some time! I’m really hoping things settle down quickly.

But there are still high points. The CIO said that the reason she felt comfortable offering me the position after only eight months was that several people high up in the organisation had pushed for me to do it. A LOT of coworkers and friends gave me wonderful congratulations and feedback last week, both at work and on social media. And on the weekend the Snook took me over to Broadway to buy a new MacBook Pro, which I’d been coveting for some time but hesitated buying.

So far 2014 is definitely looking up!

Presenting Your Hack – Channeling Your Inner Peggy Olson
Last week I presented at the February Girl Geek Sydney event at Atlassian. The theme of the night was the upcoming She Hacks all-female hackathon, and there were two technical speakers and myself. My topic was on the importance of presenting your hack and being able to sell your idea to the audience. You can see my speaker deck below. (I had sort of a Mad Men thing going on.)

DIY Pin-up Photoshoot, Makeup and Hair, THREAD HEADS 3.3 – YouTube – Not sure I’ve got enough hair to pull off a victory roll!

Made in K-town: African Flower Square Tutorial – These are beautiful. I wonder if I could talk RoseRed into showing me how to do it one of these days…