Decided The Hacker Chick Blog needed a bit of a face lift. Nothing major – just hopefully a little cleaner, maybe a little more playful. Hope you like. A couple things:

• I finally managed to update my About to reflect that I’m no longer at Microsoft (yeah, I’m a bit behind) and to use a picture of me that’s not as old as my blog is (ahem).
• Added a link (up top) to my slideshare where I’ve been putting several of my presentations. If there’s one you’d like but don’t see, just ask.
• Also to my resume, if you want to hire me to do awesome shit for the startup community, that’d be cool. Just sayin…

Finally, I pushed my WordPress theme up into github in case that’s useful to anyone creating their own theme. You can find it here: https://github.com/HackerChick/WordPress-theme/tree/master/hackerchick.

That’s all for now. More posts coming soon. Until then – Happy New Year!

[Update 11/29 – I’ve moved The Hacker Chick Blog to http://www.HackerChick.com instead of just having that redirect to the blog. If you were getting here through another URL, everything should start redirecting as soon as DNS propagates. If you’re having any issues though, just let me know.]

When I first started writing The Hacker Chick Blog, I was incredibly taken by Kathy Sierra and her Creating Passionate Users blog.

I loved how fun and edgy she was. I was in awe of her fearlessness in advancing her own ideas even when they flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Not only was she unapologetic for this, she clearly reveled in the idea. The mere thought of publicly standing up for my own ideas when they went against what others thought scared the hell out of me. But here she was – not only doing it but thriving from it. She was a huge influence in how I did The Hacker Chick Blog and I really tried to match her in both courage and style.

Later, while watching the early seasons of Criminal Minds, I became captivated by Penelope Garcia’s character. This crazy, edgy, ingenious hacker who was not only a girl (that parts okay) but she was downright flamboyant about it.

As someone who’d been coding and doing all sorts of other primarily male activities my entire life, I’d been a tomboy since I was a kid. I made it a point of pride that I personified J. Random Hacker – right down to my obsession with wearing hiking boots everywhere (you know, in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room).

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If you’re one of the many disgusted with GoDaddy for “actively applauding” the Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) act then here’s how you can stand up and – pretty easily — transfer your domains off of them.

For background – I had 11 domains pointing to two different hosting providers and forwarding to a few different URLs. Some were paid out through as far as 2017. I was really worried about losing things I’d already paid for (I didn’t) and having this be a huge hassle (it really wasn’t and it was all transferred in under 30 minutes).

After being recommended to Hover, I first checked their twitter to find this:

and then their website, which says “Transfer your domain to Hover for only $10. Includes 1 year registration.”

[Update: I hear they now have a coupon code “SOPA” that gives you 10% off]

When you click the link, you’re given a 1-800 # which, when you call, is answered up by a human being who will then walk you through transferring your domains (or you can do it yourself – but I appreciated the help!)

A few things to know when you transfer your domain to a new registrar:

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Taking my queue from Seth Godin, I’m posting my list of what I shipped in 2010.

As Seth describes it…

“Yes, I know you’re a master of [whatever]…
But what have you shipped?

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world? 
Go, do that.”

So to close out 2010, Seth posted his list of what he shipped and asks that each of us do the same. “Doesn’t matter whether it was a hit or not, it just matters that you shipped it.”

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