Remembering Nóirín Plunkett

Head and shoulders photograph of Nóirín Plunkett, a pale skinned white person with glasses and dyed pink and orange hair, wearing a white lacy blouse. They are smiling straight at the camera.
Nóirín in 2011, by Paul Fenwick CC BY

This article was originally published on the Geek Feminism wiki . It is republished here according to the terms of its Creative Commons licence, with a revised title and slightly edited.

Nóirín Plunkett (1985–2015, also known as Trouble Plunkett and for a few years as Nóirín Shirley) was a Apache Software Foundation VP, technical writer, public speaker, FOSS documentation contributor, and software and technology industry project manager. They died in July 2015.

Memorials

Warning: not all memorials used Nóirín’s preferred pronouns: they/their/them.

Obituaries: Irish TimesMassachusett

External links

Internet Archive: Nóirín’s blog

Creative Commons License
Remembering Nóirín Plunkett by Geek Feminism Wiki contributors and Mary Gardiner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/N%C3%B3ir%C3%ADn_Plunkett.

Red Dirt Falls

When asked for a Waimea Canyon lookout, Google Maps took us to an essentially arbitrary place on Waimea Canyon Drive with perfectly decent views of the canyon, rubbish parking, and a rather scary dropoff. But coming up Waimea Canyon Drive meant that we ran into another essentially arbitrary place with truly terrifying parking: the Red Dirt Falls, about 2km south of the fork with Kokee Road.

Red Dirt Falls

Pool, Red Dirt Falls

Red Dirt Falls

Pool, Red Dirt Falls

Stream, Red Dirt Falls

Photos of Kauaʻi, January 2018 (in progress).

October 2015 photos.

Shipwreck Beach

For almost all of our trip, Kauaʻi beach safety reports seriously overestimated how dangerous the surf was. Theory: it’s winter, it must be terrible! Practice: my non-swimming four year old is safe and comfortable.

Shipwreck’s Beach was the major exception. It was certainly survivable, particularly past the breakers where not coincidentally most of the swimmers were, but neither of my children swim well enough to penetrate a churning wall of water.

Pretty though!

Surfer, Shipwreck Beach

Late afternoon, Shipwreck Beach

Swimmer, Shipwreck Beach

Shipwreck Beach

Photos of Kauaʻi, January 2018 (in progress).

October 2015 photos.

The road to Makauwahi Cave

Makauwahi Cave sign

It was slightly too hot for a comfortable walk, everyone was a little tired, the kids were grumpy. They wanted to go down to the beach, we didn’t want to slog back up the hill covered in red dust. And when we got down to the promised cave, it had shut for the day and we all had to turn tail and go home.

You’d think this would be difficult to forgive, but this made it possible:

Road from Makauwahi Cave

Road to the beach near Makauwahi Cave

Beach near Makauwahi Cave

View from Makauwahi Cave walk

View from Makauwahi Cave walk

Makauwahi Cave from above

View from Makauwahi Cave walk

Photos of Kauaʻi, January 2018 (in progress).

October 2015 photos.

A very short list of things I liked about being pregnant

It was all over four years ago yesterday, and here’s what I remember fondly:

A week and a half of not testing, and just walking around being pretty sure that everything was changing.

Seeing a beating heart on the ultrasound during a threatened miscarriage, and walking home feeling so proud of the tiny little thing in there, beating its heart like that.

The first time I felt a baby move inside me; the sensation of rolling over and something rolling the other way, like a bolt had come loose inside me and fallen away.

Rubbing a baby spine through my belly.

Listening to the heartbeat storm up on the monitor as the baby prepared to kick at the sensors squeezing my belly.

Labouring at home in the light of the many blue LEDs I didn’t realise we had until that night.

People politely waiting around a hospital room for contractions to pass every 3 minutes or so, so we could resume our conversation.