About

The who and the why.

The Human

I’m Nikki. For most of my twenty-five year career in technology, I’ve written software or managed those that did. I have worked at a number of early-stage start-ups that you have never heard of (employee #7 at Aereo), including CTO of The Financial Gym¹. I wrote my first program in 1986 at the age of eight in BASIC. I built my first website in 1997. I am a self-taught programmer.

The technology industry is changing. AI is ubiquitous. I am both enamored with this new technology and slightly repulsed by it. Extremes aren’t useful here but adaptation and resiliency are; they are key to all hardships or upheavals. It certainly is an interesting time to experience, especially considering the state of the world in mid-2026.

This site is a limited and somewhat curated view into my mind and who I am. Often, that means something recently written may contradict something previously. I am okay with that. As Walt Whitman so perfectly puts in in Song of Myself, 51:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman

I’ve given myself the grace to show up imperfectly. I extend the same to everyone.

Why .LOL?

Because it’s truly all a gas, as they say. Each person is born with a unique view into the world and how they approach it. I choose to view the world with lots of love, laughing out loud (double LOLs). It does not mean naivety or a lack of seriousness. It does mean meeting each challenge—whether that’s individual thoughts or collective troubles—with collaboration, kindness, and a huge smile.

Colophon

All words on this site are written by me, a real, live human. No AI/LLM was used for the prose on this site, whether that’s a note, and essay, or a piece of fiction. The code this site is built on has been built with the use of Claude Code and myself.

A note on the use of em dashes (—)

One of the tells of AI-written prose/content is the use of em dashes (—). You, dear Reader, may notice quite a few em dashes throughout this site. To be clear, all prose (essays, fiction, notes, pages) on this site is 100% human written and made. I enjoy using em dashes as it is indicative of how my mind thinks; often starting with one thought, which is interrupted by another—the beuatiful em dash allows me to relate a thought to the previous one while, at the same time, marking it as a thought that can stand on its own. AI use in prose is never used (I like my voice too much to have AI make it generic). AI was used extensively in building the code for this site.

Get in touch

I love people and I love hearing their stories. Want to chat? Email me at hey@nikki.lol. I will respond!

The Financial Gym was acquired by new owners in mid-2025. I left in early 2022. ↩