About Me

Hi! I'm Laura. I'm a software project manager, with a focus on software development process, usability, and communications. That's my day job. I also enjoy doing corporate identity work, working on my dollhouse, and working on my actual house.

I play (or have played) a few instruments. My piano skills are not nearly what they used to be, but maybe I can change that. In the past I've played violin, flute, xylophone, and a host of other percussion instruments.

I also have a pretty strong interest in design, which means that I wish this page looked better. But, I am still learning how to code at Wikipedia, and it seems more worthwhile to spend my time actually contributing.

Contributions

I enjoy cleaning up articles. I've been trying to go through the Dead-end pages and articles that need to be wikified. It's slow going though, as so many of them seem to have copyright issues. There are a few that need so much clarification I can't tell exactly what the topic is, which makes it very difficult to wikify or copy edit.

Spoken articles

• History of New Jersey
• Solar eclipse - Finished right before it hit the main page. I was so proud :)
• Markup language
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia:Etiquette
• Binary star

Please do give me feedback on my sound files. I'm keeping the raw data for as long as it will fit on my hard drive, so I can correct errors (although hopefully I've caught them all already). I'm also interested to know how my voice, pacing, etc. are. I'm a really fast talker, so even slowed down a lot I'm afraid they might be too fast. (On the other hand, I have a hard time listening to the really slow ones.)

All in all, not bad for a newbie!

To Do

Language

English (American English) is my native language, and sadly, my only language period. It probably says something about foreign language education in the U.S. that I took French for six years in school, got straight A's in all the Honors and Advanced Placement courses, and never actually managed to speak French. I can understand a very, very basic amount of Italian if it's spoken very slowly and simply with a lot of body language, but can't speak it at all.

When it comes to English, though, I'm pretty good. I'm also slightly snobby about some punctuation and grammar rules, but try not to be obnoxious about it.

All my spoken contributions list my accent as "American", because even though I am from New Jersey, I definitely do not have a Joisey accent.