Susanna Codes

The Need For Written Instructions I have one and only one overarching accessibility need. And that is the need for written instructions. My disability around my neurodiversity is mostly to do with processing and remembering information. And with following instructions. It makes me quite tired. That I constantly have to try and find ways to beg for things to be in writing. Basically. If you want me to do something. And you tell me on the call. If it’s short enough or vague enough  That I can write it down or scribble it down Then it will probably happen.  But if it’s new information. If it’s linked to something that is new. Like a new ticket. Then I don’t have a hope in hell. Unless I write it down. It won’t happen. I will forget it. I will forget the instructions. Or worse the whole thing will get blocked. Sometimes I feel like I have to fight for people to see my accessibility requirements and challenges as real. But I know all about this. Right? Because I have spent the last...

When I Get A New Ticket, I Need to Drop Everything to Process It I can’t believe I am writing this again. Here we are. But somehow, I just don’t get it. I think that what would’ve really helped me as an autistic person  Always Is a really clearly written job description. I have one major accessibility requirement. And that is to see things written down. Unfortunately it is an accessibility requirement I have to fight for and one that people don’t often understood. If I was blind it would be clear to people - I can’t see. But it is not as clear to people. That if something important isn’t written down, it didn’t happen. That if an instruction isn’t written down I can’t process it. I have to admit that I am tired. I am feeling really tired. I am on holiday and I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I shouldn’t be thinking about this at all. But here we are. At this time as well. Something got me thinking again  And I wish it hadn’t. And so. Sometimes I get a new ticket. I know my p...

What They Never Taught Me About Software Engineering  My heart is filled with love. I am back home in Luxembourg. I would give anything to stay here. Maybe one day when I can drive. Maybe one day I’ll get a renewable energy job out here. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to get back here. But for now I dance through the energies as the air kisses me. And the air is filled with love. From all of the thousands of trees. And from the fresh air following the rain Thank you  Now what they never taught me about software engineering is this: Is how to read and process tickets in a way that makes sense to me. And while some people told me and I have pieced it together over the years no one gave me a formal and structured process. So I am here to devise my own frickin method. Here it is. After all of these years. How it is I should approach a ticket: How to Approach A Ticket in 5 Easy Steps  Make sure you are clear on the acceptance criteria. Check if the ticket has acceptance criteri...

Night Brews, and All The Mysteries Descend Upon The Forest I want to give you the gift of how the forest feels at night. Of the way the forest descends into darkness. And the magic of the earth brews. Every night, a new fairy story. Creatures come out. Plants unfurl. Even fungi do something. As the night descends the heat of the day ascends into the sky. Radiating out of the earth like the warm magnificence of love. The magic of the forest manifests itself. Loving itself for being itself. For its own sake. Glorious and rich and abundant with its own beauty Basking in its own beauty  Basking in its own glory Basking its own mystery Can you tell I am back in Luxembourg Thank you I wish you all the magic and the mystery of knowing the forest at night 

Investigating our True Nature, Even When Things Are Going Well Hafiz said: “you can either be brought into the house of god dancing or you can be brought into gods ward on a stretcher. The choice is yours.” He nailed it. When things go to shit I investigate my true nature. It brings me back to God. Then things go to shit again. What if I didn’t wait for things to go down.  What if even when things are good I turned within. “Whatever is happening good or bad is all happening to draw us in.” Rupert Spira once said this at one of his meetings Leonard Cohen put it really well: “and when he knew for certain  Only drowning men could see him He said all men shall be sailors then Until the sea shall free them.” He was talking about Jesus. He meant God of course. It’s all the same thing. I had another quote but I forgot it. God will call us in God is calling us in either way. Oh yeah Ajahn Brahm says. Ajahn means teacher in his tradition. And so everything is our teacher. Ajahn seizure...

I am always I, part 3 I am not always Susanna who works at a fancy tech company. I am not always Susanna who wakes up on the floor with leaves in her hair. I am not always Susanna who doesn’t understand a ticket. I am not always Susanna who cries because she doesn’t understand a ticket. I am not always Susanna who raises a PR. I am not always Susanna who gets on the bus in her lanyard in the morning and feels competent and professional. I am not always Susanna who is slaying on the dancefloor. I am not always Susanna who is on a fancy expensive meditation retreat. I am not always Susanna who is laughing with her sisters. I am not always Susanna who is in her shower with the amazing new filtering shower head which I love. I am not always Susanna who finds it easy to get hired. I am not always Susanna who struggles if she can’t follow written Instructions and cries when  She can’t articulate how she can’t follow them. I am always I

Learning from my Myriad Mistakes with Kindness, Forgiveness and Compassion I love myself. I love myself so much. I am so proud of making it through all of the crazy and beautiful and wild challenges that I have made it through in my life. Compassion is my middle name. It has to be. To have made it through everything I have made it through in my life. I have required nothing but compassion.  Compassion, compassion, compassion. Compassion. But as Lupita Nyong'o said - true beauty is compassion. And compassion for me involves being compassionate around my software engineering mistakes. Or challenges. So here are my compassionate software engineering learnings from today. With kindness. With an open heart. Never too full to write another blog post. Never too full to listen again. Never to experienced to learn another lesson, or hear another lesson again that I have heard once before Lessons I Learned This Week What to do if a Slack message is confusing me If a Slack message is confusin...

Learning GraphQL from a Different Video I am so lucky to have such amazing mentors. I mean this seriously. And one of them intervened and told me I was doing the wrong GraphQL video. Of course he did not put it quite so dramatically as that. He just said that it was overkill. So he recommended me another one. Then another amazing colleague who I consider to be an unofficial mentor to some degree recommended a course. But then he said the course was a bit more advanced. So he agreed that the video my mentor has recommended was better to learn the basics. Okay thanks. And he asked me to let him know if I had any doubts.  I asked what doubts. Ooops. On a side note, as I have moved quite a big pairing session to Friday, I have to make sure I work hard enough  On Thursday (today is all booked up). Because Friday is my last day before holidays. So I would be cramming then. But as I have a pairing session then. I will be cramming a bit on Thursday. But I will be tired after my medica...

Why does not using a cleanup function in useEffects cause memory leaks? I was really stumped on this. So my colleagues sent me an article. And replied to some of my questions. So let's check out  Now I just need someone who knows how to read. Now, if only I could read...  Okay so this article talks about the useEffect hook. That's great - good start. "When I was learning the functionality of this hook, I could not understand the reason to use the return in this function." But with time and with the life cycle of components the author realised that: "It is important to use the return in the hook useEffect, especially in the side effects." Um what... hmmm? What are the side effects? Fetching data from a remote server Reading or writing to local storage Setting up event listeners  Setting up a subscription (???!) These can happen when A button is clicked A form is submitted A component is mounted or unmounted (and so on... etc.).  And why clean them up?  When a...

Learning  More useEffect Firstly it clicked for me while I was brushing my hair this morning. It's so simple. You specify a function to call (maybe functions? I'm not sure. Can you have more than one? I don't know yet. I need to find out), and then you specify the conditions for it to run. The variables that change and so on. Or nothing. Or just on mount. An empty dependency array. I don't know. I don't know. Arrrgh. Learning More useEffect Right, let's take a look at the lesson. "If our effect returns a function, then the useEffect() Hook always treats that as the cleanup function." "React will call this cleanup function before the component re-renders or unmounts." "Since this cleanup function is optional, it is our responsibility to return a cleanup function from our effect when our effect code could create memory leaks." A mentor told me that he has never ever used or seen a cleanup function used in his whole career. Um.  Hm. Th...

Learning GraphQL from a Video I tried to do this without a blog post and I failed. Look. It's HARD having such a unique learning style. It's harder still trying to explain it to people. GraphQL is a way to use existing tools. With Rest API, you might have to hit multiple endpoints. You might have to re-hit endpoints with multiple parameters based on information you get back from prior queries. You might get far more information than you need. GraphQL from what I understand allows you to just hit one endpoint to get the information you need. And you can specify different parameters and things that you want etc. All to get back exactly what you want. This feels very magical. Very magical indeed. Right.  So this is the video I am watching: It will of course take me much longer than 40 minutes to watch this - and that is okay. I learn slower, but I learn thoroughly. So this video has an example. The example  In the example, we have to build an app. We have two inputs - authors and...

Forcing myself to confront useEffect properly Because it won't click until I force myself to write it out word for word it seems. This is why I can't stop blogging, right, come on. I'm doing it for the wind farms. Let's go. I am always always doing it for the wind farms. My friends. I can see them out to sea - and they are soooo beautiful. Right. There are some clues in the lesson. The Effect Hook "runs some JavaScript code after each render." Hmm. The moments when components re-render are a good time to execute effects - effects that we will want to happen when the component re-renders, and only in certain circumstances. There are three moments when a useEffect can be executed. Here they are When a component is first added to the DOM - this is known as mounting  When the state or the props of a component change - this changing causes a component to re-render When a component is removed from the DOM - this is known as unmounting The Effect Hook The Effect Hook...

Even in the darkest of nights, Mike Oldfield will come and catch me  Mike Oldfield is along with John Denver the sound of my childhood. Memories of dancing around the living room  With members of my family to Mike Oldfield are some of my earliest ones. And so it is that even when things are rough Mike Oldfield will come and rescue me. Will come and catch me. Right now I am looping The Bell. I can’t even tell you The Bell what it means to me. And how much it heals me and what significance that song has to me. It is such an emotional journey. Kind of like life. And I have to admit that writing this my heart is opening up with love and pouring out with love. Because. It feels as if I am coming to the end of a long very long healing journey. And that journey has taken over 15 years. And it led me to being a Frontend developer - which I am so so happy about. I rarely think about past me. But I think she would’ve been very very happy with where I am today Thanks  A photo of the...

The dogs were whistling a new tune, barking at the new moon, hoping it would come soon Today is day 3 of the dance workshop. Surprisingly, nothing hurts. I feel really good. Full of energy. Ready to dance again. The thing about happiness. Is that we don’t wait for things to be perfect. To become happy. If you are going to be waiting for things to be perfect to become happy then you will be waiting all your life. When I was 11 and 12. I watched a huge amount of music TV. I discovered so much music on there. And a lot of it I listen to still. But Nelly Furtado All Good Things Come To An End hit me harder than anything. I am listening to it right now. It’s been decades of listening to it. I remember figuring out the chords on the guitar. I’ve been playing it on the piano for years. Why do all good things come to an end. Dance workshops. Why do people have to die. And yet there is some beauty in sadness. Rupert my nonduality teacher always said grief is love. That there is love concealed i...

The Dancing Little Girl and the Golden Dragon I once had a golden dragon. She was very enlightened. But the dragon left me for a little girl in Southampton. This is the story. When we all got laid off from my last job we got invited for an open day at my current employer. On my way to the office I found a toy shop. Genius that I am I spent a lot of money on a cuddly blue and red dragon. And then a month or so later when I had the technical interview which by the way was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (I did a Django test with no backend experience) I did it in person  And so I went back to the shop. And got myself a golden dragon. And that golden dragon  Came on two meditation retreats with me. The blue one even came on one. And so Yin was a very enlightened golden dragon. And my Dutch friend Simone really liked my blue dragon Yang. So did a lot of my colleagues. True to his name Yang would give people supports of energy. Anyway one day. When my seizures began to ...

Reflecting on a Beautiful Story of Love And Passion For the Wind Farms and for Software Engineering This is a story of the day I started this blog. So sweet and innocent. So cute. I knew I wanted to be a web developer. I met with a colleague on the weekend. She told me to take a Frontend course and start a blog. I went to Rottingdean that day (where I am dancing at the moment). I wrote in a journal. I wrote down all the steps of my Frontend course. It all seemed so impossible. I came up with a name for this blog. I hiked back to Brighton and changed it one final time. I decided to be a Frontend engineer. You see I was right. From day one I knew. In rottingdean I looked out at the wind farms. In Brighton I looked out at them too. I once decided with my dad I wanted to be a renewable energy frontend engineer. I lost that suddenly and I had to fight to get back to it. But here I am. Because nothing can take the wind farms away from me. And no one can take me away from them.  Thank you...

Ecstatic Dancing I am crashed out on the sofa after 8 hours of dancing. Everything hurts. My legs, already very strong, just went even deeper. I love this. I love having leg muscles omg. I grew up on a hill and so had really amazing leg muscles. But they don’t compare to the muscles I have from dancing. And so my wish is to dance more. To find time for it every day. To allow it to help me through the realities of life and tech life and the emotions that we all must face. There is nothing I love more to do than to dance. There is nothing to love more to do than to feel so alive. And after 8 hours today. Yes I am feeling every emotion in the world. But isn’t that normal? Isn’t that the practice? I am dancing with a teacher I last danced with 6 years ago in Liverpool. My last words to him “I hope we dance together again one day.” And his? “I hope so too.” A mural in Rottingdean  Wherever I look, I can only see the wind farms

Light Magic After the first part of our weekend long dance workshop, my friend drove me home last night. It was the single most beautiful view ever. After leaving Rottingdean, we drove into Brighton over the hill just as the sunset was ending. I was speechless. Too lost for words. And then I looked out over to sea and saw the wind farms. All lit up at night. Their red lights flashing. Then we saw the people raving on the beach. Fatboy Slim was probably there. When it comes to Brighton - he’s always there. He’s like our national icon When we got to my town I got out of my friends car and said goodbye. Then I made him get up out of his car as well. Because the sky was moving. There were blue patterns and lights in the sky. 🌌 they were moving in a rhythmic pattern I thought it was the northern lights. But then he said it was the lights from the people at the beach at the concert - probably fatboy slim.  Mural from a youth hostel in Shoreham, where my dad and I recently went for lunch...

Testing Frontend, Part 2 Okay so yesterday we literally zoomed in and saw what the jest test object was. So let's find out some more. Okay so there are loads of methods. I think the best way to learn them will be to see them in action. As there are so many of them - right? There are a few categories which might be a good place to start: Mock Modules Mock Functions Fake Timers Miscellaneous Of course not all of this makes sense to me - I mean I get mocking functions and I think I get fake timers Expect I feel like expect is going to be very similar to assert in pytest. Especially because I learned some jest before I ever learned any python. So firstly there is just the initial expect - expect(value) . You don't really call that alone. It says it is rare. I wonder when it would be. You are more like to have expect(returnAValue()).toBe(thatValue); Hmmm. Modifiers You can also do some shit like expect(functionCall()).not.toBe('value') And so on. Matchers Okay so I used thes...

Picture Me In The Trees The last month  Has been so tough. Everyone I work with will hopefully understand. Out of honour and respect and dignity I don’t want to talk so much about the devastating loss that we have all faced. It has ripped my heart apart. I feel such devastating grief. It is so overwhelming. Really it’s hard to know what to say and I know that so many of us have been so badly affected and so many so much more than me. Hence I feel I want to be careful and gentle in what I say. I want to say that my heart has been broken  And ripped up into two. and to all of my colleagues who have been affected by this devastating loss. I want you to know how strong you are. And how much I love you. Thanks It has been harder to write although I know I have written at times. I can’t remember what life felt like before I heard this devastating news. That’s how it is with great trauma. We can never remember what life was like before it. I have been left with a rift in my heart. Th...

Starting Frontend Testing Again, Part 1 I was doing Cypress when I got laid off suddenly along with 50% of the staff from my last tech startup. Yep. Good memories - not. But so happy everything happened the way it did because it got me to where I am today. Right so anyway yeah. Working on a test for my current team. And so my lovely and wonderful colleague sent me the docs. Now everyone knows reading is a challenge. So as always I am doing the best I can. There are a few links She has sent me three - one one the jest object, one on expects, and one on react testing. I am so overwhelmed and don't know where to start - and have an hour less for this than I planned to. Okay cool have postponed meeting - now have a lot more time. Time to stay focused then. The Jest Object Okay. Bear in mind a might know a lot of this from Pytest but not realise. I don't know if it's similar or not. I don't know it if it's different. I know nothing. Thanks. Whenever you write a file name...

Atomic Design Methodology - Part 1 Okay I have been putting this one off for ten thousand years. So slightly against my plans - I am going to read this one now. Thank you  "All matter in the universe can be broken down into a finite set of atomic elements." A but what is an atom made out of? Pure being. Pure consciousness. Pure God. Pure divine bliss. Pure love. And what did Balyani say? "When the secret of an atom is discovered the secret of all created things is made clear." And then this article goes on to say: "As it happens, our interfaces can be broken down into a similar finite set of elements." The article then shows a really beautiful HTML style periodic table of elements. For copyright reasons I don't want to post it here but please do see it here .  "Because we're starting with a similar finite set of building blocks, we can apply the same process that happens in the natural world to design and develop our user interfaces."  En...

A Love That Is Greater Than Any I've Ever Felt In My Life Before (Part 1 of 2) Many years ago, during Covid, I chanced upon a tree. It was a tree at the foot of a path. So many paths were unexplored in my village until I like a brave adventurer discovered them. And so at the foot of this country lane, where a unicorn used to live in an enclosed hedge grow with an arched hedged entrance, I once hugged this tree. I wasn't ready for what came next. I felt that the love in this universe is infinite. Of course, this is true. Since everything is made of love, there is nothing that can be not love. The whole universe is made of oneness. Everything we see think touch and feel is just love pulsing as a whole. This goes way beyond romantic love or familial love. I used to think romantic love was different from any other kind of love. But all love is the same. In romantic love, we simply find another way to express that one love for the universe. That whole universal oneness. But ultimate...

Things Are Never Quite What They Seem I caved and bought the sims enchanted nature. I played with my fairies for hours and hours. I have been to places in the woods where I felt sure the fairies were real. Secret streams  And magic forests. The only problem is that I get scared. My biggest love in the world is the forest. And yet I get scared when I am in too deep too far on my own. Not scared of getting lost. I have the world’s most outstanding sense of direction. Except for when I am in London. No, I get scared of wild animals. Or of strange people. Or perhaps most of all of fear itself. If I get too scared I won’t be able to function. I might shut down. And then I might really lose all my senses. I don’t know why but I am thinking of the time I met my first boyfriend. It’s a taboo for women to talk about their personal lives. We are meant to focus on our work instead as people automatically expect us to talk about our personal lives. Well I say fuck it. I met my first boyfriend ...

Par is Speaking On my train down to Devon They were announcing the stops. And they announced "Par." And something really spoke to me about it. I looked it up. Huh. Cornwall. Now I had dismissed going to Cornwall because a friend told me a story about a bad experience she had there at my birthday party. But when I realised that I was on a train  That was going to Cornwall - even though I was getting off that day in Devon I knew I had to go. So I did. And I had a rough day. To put it simply, my seizure symptoms, which had come back a bit the day before, went crazy. Always a massive problem. Really uncomfortable and painful with inevitable consequences. But that COULD NOT stop me from falling in love with Cornwall. I repeat - that COULD NOT stop me from falling in love with Cornwall. Now. I had a really rough day in Newquay. Although it was beautiful and so healing. All the way through.  Omg. But due to extreme delays and cancellations - I did end up getting to see Par after all...

When you can’t fall any lower, the floor will catch you If there’s one thing I have learned from my beautiful and precious and unique lifetime it is the above. I can confidently say very few people have shared my life experiences. How privileged and lucky I am to be me. So unique. Unique story, unique life. Unique mind. I hope it only gets better from here. Recovering from the stuff that I have gone through in my life, I can confidently say that there were times when I thought I couldn’t go any lower. And that’s why I am ultimately very grateful to have had a seizure disorder  Because it taught me one thing. When you think you can’t get lower, when you think you can’t mess up any more than you already have (been there one thousand times), when you think you can’t get any worse. You realise the floor will always catch you. I feel emotions in my body way more than most people do. This is why I am a dancer. And what a dancer I am too. I am such an embodied dancer. I love it, and I kno...

The Most Beautiful Moment of Beast Games SPOILERS!!! Now listen to me. I have a sociology degree. My sociology degree was very hard earned and took me five years to get as I dropped out in the middle and had to redo year two at a different uni. No shame; I had all my undiagnosed stuff; I was dealing with immense personal trauma. But I got that sociology degree. Beast Games is a sociologist’s heaven. There is so much I could comment on about this series. The way money is worshipped. The openly religious speech  The instant gratification.  The sensationalisation.  The way real human  Emotions are used and exploited for content. Regardless of this I found the show massively entertaining and am constantly rewatching. The most beautiful moment for me though is when 952 wins the private island. The way she knows in advance that it is hers. The way she says she has prayed to god for this. The way she says she knows that it is hers. The music. The way both players seem to tr...

This is a place where I don't feel alone, this is a place where I feel at home "I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being." - Hafiz. I first discovered the nondual understanding in April 2022 when someone ordered me a book on it. The book disappeared. So she ordered me a second one. I got it and I didn't like it. It said "You are not the body." I struggled with disassociations; how on earth was this going to help me? I donated it. On the way back from the charity shop, my neighbour came to me: "Susanna, I have a parcel for you! I've had it for two weeks." I can take a hint, okay! It was the book. I watched a video by the author, Jean Klein. My life has changed in the biggest possible way since I saw that video. It only took a few more videos from Francis Lucille and Rupert Spira for me to never be able to see myself as a separate human being again.  My life was filled with magic and tra...

Listening to my Body Our bodies never lie. I learned this when I was young theoretically - learning it in practice has been the story of my life. I got a lecture from someone today and I thoroughly deserved it. I am so glad that that person  Was there to give me the right lecture at that right time. He basically told me I had to listen to my body. He told me that as I had been dealing with my seizure condition For 15 years it was pretty much time for me to start saying. “No, I can’t do this. If I get too tired I will collapse/have a seizure etc.” I don’t know why but for years it has been impossible for me to say this. It was because I was so secretive I think. But what is there to be secretive about. I have nothing to hide. Yes I live with this thing. Yes it’s so horrible. And no no matter how much better it gets - it doesn’t go away completely at least not yet, not for now anyway. And yes it fucking sucks. And yes I am fucking grateful for it. Because it opens my heart and fills ...

A story where everything can be changed - and everything can be healed All my favourite stories of all time and most healing stories of my childhood take place by the sea. I am tearing up. The Fire Eaters by David Almond. The Sleeping Sword by Michael Morpurgo. And so many more. Stories of the healing lands of the sea. And the healing powers. Well you only have to go to Cornwall to see it. The healing powers of the landscape and the sea were so obvious to me. They spoke so strongly to me. And so beautifully to me. And I know my story is one of healing too. And I am not afraid anymore  Saying goodbye to my Air BnB in Devon

A Little Princess “A little Princess” was one of my favourite films growing up. I read the book too and I loved it. As the lyrics of the song go: “Take my heart, take my heart, kindle it with your heart And my heart Cannot be Kindled without you With your heart Kindle my heart” One of the greatest lessons  I have learned. Is that we need to love EVERYONE. EVERYONE. Even the people we think don’t deserve it. ESPECIALLY the people we think don’t deserve it xxx I made a promise to myself on the platform in Newquay today. I don’t want to go into too much  Detail but I was feeling extremely rough (physically). And I made a promise to myself. I regretted not buying a beautiful Buddha notebook in Newquay and I decided When I go into town tomorrow if I find a nice notebook I will get it I will use it to keep track of every meditation I do from my meditation teacher on his subscription service and on YouTube  I want to do more meditations when I am actually awake and not just when...

Cornwall Shattered My Heart In Two With Its Supreme Beauty Look, I went to Cornwall and it was chaos. I ended up going to a completely different part of it than planned. The trains delayed me coming home to my place in Devon  By almost three hours. And so many things went wrong - my phone charger broke, I was sitting next to some real weirdos on the train  And I had a lot of physical stuff come up which is so horrible as I am used to it getting better. But things went right. One lovely train  Conductor gave me his mobile phone cable for his old phone. I know for real! Another train conductor rescued me from the noisy racist guy and put me in first class. And Cornwall has beauty like I have never seen before - beautiful trees, beautiful boats and beautiful beaches. I have fallen in love. I want to see more. What a beautiful part of the country! Tomorrow I have a last morning in Devon  And then I’m going home Before my next adventure 

You don’t need a faraway Church I am in Newquay and I feel sad. I couldn’t go as far as I would’ve liked to go. Pull off as much as I wanted to see. There are days where my body just can’t do it (for now). And today is a day full of limitations. As I wait for my train sadly I look off at the mysterious and mystical far away far off church in the distance and I realise I don’t need that church. The light of God is already shining inside. There is no mystical or magical church  No secret practice or dance teacher. There is no pilgrimage. No spiritual trip. That can take you to God. There is no magical practice or event that can heal me from the sexual trauma I went through  Why disclose it here after all of these years? I don’t know. But I am tired of hiding it. Tired, sick of hiding it. Of course the world and his wife knows. I have had so much help. But I just don’t want it to be a secret anymore. I got tired, exhausted of hiding it. I don’t know. I don’t want it to be a big t...