Angelina Calderon

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My background includes strong experience growing businesses by driving partnerships and delivering innovative solutions. I’m a focused leader with technical literacy and strong process development skills. Successful with team growth, project ownership, and tight deadlines.


Get in touch with me: angelina@angelinacalderon.com


Facebook

I identify business partners for location technology to accelerate product development and maximize efficiency.

Day of The Shirt

I contribute to product development, support customers and analyze data for product research for our website and mobile app.

Musician

I perform in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and have experience teaching singing and choral music. Get in touch with me for my performance resume or to request a voice lesson.

Still home

2021 begins

We rang in 2021 nearly asleep as renegade fireworks erupted in pockets of the city for around 3 minutes. Since then there’s been a walk on the beach, the making of soup, some laundry, and dealing with adulthood. We woke this morning to some rain outside and the sounds of fast running water inside and a large puddle in the living room seeping from where a pipe had burst. 16 hours later a temporary fix is in place to the plumbing, our floors were mopped up, every towel in existence is being washed/dried, the Christmas tree removed and needles swept, and a drying service has installed several dehumidifiers in our home and in the building. We’re now down to a little less space while the water is removed over the next 3-5 days.

A few things that made 2020 ok in no particular order:

  • I’ve been drinking more ginger turmeric tea throughout the day, usually from Trader Joe’s. It’s calming with a punch of ginger every few sips.
  • I truly enjoyed The Overstory. It was worth the hype and your friends telling you to just read it already.
  • I voted in the US 2020 elections and am excited to see the Biden/Harris administration begin on January 20.
  • I got a Portal for work and purchased a couple for family members. It’s worth all the recommendations. I can have video calls with my parents over dinner and it feels like we’re in each other’s dining rooms. This means a lot as we haven’t seen each other in person in over a year.
  • Essential work done to keep us fed, transited, and given medical/dental/vision care.
  • Dogs! While we have two (smart, sweet) cats in our home, friends and family members have brought home George, Chase, Hazy Little Thing, and Apple Cider comes home shortly.
  • We’ve added the Ferry Plaza farmers market to our Saturday routine and appreciate the local produce, the complicated socially-distanced line at Acme Bread, the (essential) people watching, and the hike uphill through Chinatown on the way home.
  • The views, views, views from Broadway/Jones, Ina Coolbrith park, Crissy Field, and Lafayette Park. And Ocean Beach. We’re still close if no longer next door.

Home

09.12.2020

The COVID-19 pandemic persists. My favorite masks are made by a local artisan who sells at the Ferry Building farmers market. There are now wildfires blazing in CA, WA, OR as a result of human-created global warming and today is the 26th consecutive Spare the Air Day in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jacob Blake of Kenosha, WI is paralyzed in a hospital bed due to police officers shooting him while his children watched. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are also dead by police fire, having joined a list of 1,018 people killed by police this year. Former VP Joseph Biden has accepted the Democratic nomination for President and is up for election against the current White House occupant in November. Many people will vote by mail. I haven’t seen my parents since 2019. I last flew in an airplane on March 6. The South End Rowing Club will fly the BLM flag, as will our church. Neither have started yet. I’ve baked yellow cake, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, Rice Krispie bars, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Our kitchen filled with smoke the other night due to a poorly-performing grill pan and opening the windows co-mingled our kitchen smoke with wildfire smoke. San Francisco was orange on Wednesday. Our cats now have a small yard (we do, too).


Pi day

3.14.2010

Today is March 14, “Pi day”. I think of this same day 10 years prior. We were returning to Boston from a friend’s wedding in San Antonio and routed through O’Hare on a then-cancelled flight. With a free night in the Chicago area, we took the Blue line into the city to meet a couple friends in their drafty old house for a wide variety of homemade pie: savory veggie quiche with a parmesan crust, blueberry crumble, apple lattice crust pie, maybe a beer to wash it all down. We laughed at the circumstances that brought us together before an even later-night trip back towards the airport and an early flight back to Boston (routed through Indianapolis where I almost missed the flight due to a security checkpoint issue, but that’s another story). Social spontaneity.

Now, March 14, 2020. There’s a virus, COVID-19, spreading globally that the medical community is beginning to research more. A relative returning from vacation is in questionable quarantine at Travis AFB. We’re all staying home to prevent the spread of illness and working remotely if possible. Social interactions today have been over text, WhatsApp calls, and literal cheers across fire escapes. Church will be over Zoom videoconferencing. Theaters, the Opera, the Symphony are closed. Trader Joe’s is low on food staples. We’re thinking about what to do with a trip to Australia in 6 weeks. I miss the spontaneous gathering 10 years back but hope we can return the favor to friends who came to our rescue with a rescheduled Pi day dinner in our kitchen.


The past decade

Family:

  • Ben and I moved to San Francisco from Boston and now live much closer to family in the Bay Area and the West Coast. We also got married and are now planning steps to own property and have children.
  • Loved ones died: Jaime, Grandpa, Sandy. And new loved ones were born.
  • My parents got a new dog, Sunny.
  • We lost one cat, took a year off from pets, then adopted two cats.

Relationships:

  • I joined St. Francis Lutheran Church and, with it, several committees and Church Council.
  • I joined the South End Rowing Club. I’m grateful to a friend from high school who intro’d me to open water swimming and the South End.
  • Some old friends from Boston, New Orleans, New York, Wisconsin visited us.
  • I made many new friends in SF through Code for America.

Personal:

  • I swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, across Lake Tahoe, bodysurfed with sea turtles in Kauai, snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef. I learned how to surf (poorly) and how to row (getting better each day).
  • I sang in the Boston Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony choruses. We got an electric piano. I sang a solo recital.
  • I paid off my student loans.
  • I learned a lot about my health.

Books I enjoyed:

  • In search of Captain Zero
  • The Broken Earth trilogy
  • Crossing the Bar: The Daring Life of a San Francisco Bar Pilot
  • An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

Work:

  • I learned to code and volunteered at Railsbridge SF and the SF Ruby Meetup. I made this website and some others, too.
  • I learned about digital maps and how to build them in web and mobile apps.
  • I opened an investment account and started saving for retirement.
  • I earned paychecks from an eyewear company, a recruiting startup, a tech startup, and now work at Facebook where my work will directly impact software for AR/VR use cases, including eyewear (full circle).

The best pie

French silk chocolate pie, adapted from America’s Test Kitchen’s Cook’s Country:

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 1 cup chilled heavy whipping cream
  • 8 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
  • 1 stick softened unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 1 pie crust
  • 2 tablespoons vanilla

Steps

  1. Make crust: top contenders are a homemade graham cracker crust, the frozen Trader Joe’s pie crust, or whatever fits your needs. Prep, bake, set aside.

  2. Whip cream with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until you see stiff peaks. Cover and refrigerate.

  3. In a saucepan, simmer about 1/2 inch of water and cover with a heatproof bowl. Add the eggs, sugar, and water to the heatproof bowl, then beat with an electric mixer on medium-high until the egg mixture is thickened and registers 160 degrees (about 10 minutes). Remove the bowl from the heat, then keep beating the egg mixture until cooled to room temperature and is still fluffy (another 10 minutes).

  4. With the mixer still beating the eggs, add chocolate and vanilla slowly until it’s been fully mixed in. Then add the butter 1-2 pieces at a time. At this point the mixture will look silky and dark from the chocolate and butter. Stop the mixer, then take the whipped cream from the fridge. With a spatula, fold in the whipped cream until no streaks of white remain.

  5. Scrape filling into the pie crust and refrigerate until set, at least 3 hours and up to 24 hours. Serve with whipped cream and berries, or as is.


Cookie mix

In the past two blogposts I’d described a knee injury. I’d neglected to mention in the same accident I also broke my foot. This means one injured knee, one broken foot. On opposite sides. And lots of time at home.

So, 2 months of recuperation has meant 2 months of baking. The latest being cookie mix. It wasn’t bad. I probably won’t make cookies from a mix again but found the process worth documenting.

Ingredients:

  1. Chocolate chip cookie mix

  2. 1 stick of butter

  3. 1 egg

Steps:

  1. Soften butter.

  2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

  3. Dump mix in a large bowl. Add 1 egg + 1 stick of softened butter.

  4. Combine mix, egg, butter with a wooden spoon until there’s a fairly mealy but consistent substance that sort of resembles cookie dough.

  5. Form dough into small balls, about 1/2 inch in diameter. Place on a baking sheet.

  6. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

  7. Cookies!


Boiling water cake

My knee is mending slowly. I’m able to move enough to stumble through our apartment, shuffle between conference rooms at work, and take the stairs slowly to retrieve the Sunday paper. I spent all of yesterday at home reading about fish and listening to weekend public radio.

I also made a chocolate cake because a) it goes well with ice cream and b) adding the boiling water to the batter is one of the more satisfying actions one can take while baking – the batter goes from looking like brownies to dark chocolate silk.

Here’s my take on the recipe – it’s from the Hershey’s cocoa container:

Hershey’s perfectly chocolate chocolate cake

Ingredients

  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup cocoa
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1/2ish teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 cup boiling water

Steps

  1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease two 9-inch round baking pans or 1 13x9x2 inch baking pan.

  2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

  3. Add eggs, milk, butter, vanilla and almond extracts; beat on medium speed with a mixer for 2 minutes.

  4. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour the batter into prepared pans.

  5. Bake 30 to 35 minutes (more like 40 min with the 13x9x2 pan) or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for ~10 minutes.

  6. Skip the frosting and serve with ice cream of your choice.


Taking a knee

I fell on the sidewalk a week ago and landed on my kneecap, resulting in one of the most impressive knee lacerations I’ve ever seen. The accident happened in a public location, so folks got me connected to the ER and treatment ASAP. I’m now home recuperating. I can’t flex my knee and have crutches. I can rest, work remotely, commute (when I want to), and am in minimal pain. I’ve had to cancel travel, rearrange plans, and revisit my Netflix queue. I’ve also had incredible support from people who’ve helped me continue to get things done and a spouse who spent all day at the clinic with me.

My own thoughts want to discount the wound, but in reality it is severe and warrants time to heal – at least a couple weeks. So here I am writing this post as a reminder to slow down and recuperate when I need to, even if the cause doesn’t seem as bad in my own brain.


Rocky road

The San Francisco bay area is one of the best places to find ice cream, maybe 2nd to my home state of Wisconsin. We’re spoiled here. There’s all varieties of premium- or super-premium local brands, non-dairy alternatives, all the national brands, and a myriad of specialty ice cream shops (and long queues that go with them). Sometimes, though, I don’t want fancy ice cream. Sometimes I prefer cheap rocky road.

Let me explain. Cheap rocky road contains creamy not-too-strong-nor-sweet chocolate ice cream, the indication of nuts, subtle chocolate bits (not really chips), and perhaps if you’re lucky a mini marshmallow or two. I enjoy this combo immensely because it rewards the hunt for the marshmallow with the chance to eat twice as much ice cream. I like to eat this in a coffee mug. Sometimes even in a cake cone that’s about to crack because I’ve stuffed it full.


Regatta day

I rowed my first official regatta today – the Norm Petersen regatta. Our 6-person crew in the South End took a medal and everything. The course to the Golden Gate Bridge and back was smooth with a few roller waves abeam Marina Green. We launched fast to the start, sprinted hard against the other sweep boat over the 5+ mile course, and held our ground strongly to the finish. Less than a mile from the finish the other boat caught a faster current and won the race by 7 seconds. I also broke in a new oar with a couple blisters on my right hand (feathering the oar got sticky).