The last trip on the Islander

We took a day trip to the island yesterday, and I brought my camera with me on a last minute whim. When I saw we were taking the Islander, and realized this is her last week of service, I was glad I did.... I took over 100 pictures, here is a collection of the best of them:

she's home!

We picked Georgia up today and she's been home about an hour. Her rambunctious children, Batman and Eve, immediately became submissive to mom being around so while I was worried that having six dogs would be harder than five, it may net be easier.

She did well at Westminster: she won Best of Opposite Sex to her brother's Best of Breed for field spaniels. I couldn't be more proud of her if I tried - it was a wonderful day in NYC, and I am still floating on air.

She seems happy - she's been with a wonderful professional handler since September. She was well taken care of, and did well on the show circuit all along, but I can just see her in ruby slippers (four, of course), saying there's no place like home, there's no place like home.

She's smiling, and so am I.

Georgia's Big Day

is tomorrow. Georgia (Ch. Freedom's Always On My Mind) is Batman and Eve's mother - and the #19 field spaniel in the country as of 12/06. She's competing at Westminster against 8 other field spaniels, including her brother (#5). Two years ago, she won Best of Opposite Sex, this year, there is more competition, but I am still hopeful she'll do well. Regardless of how it turns out, it's an honor for her to be at Westminster, and I'll be very proud of her.

She's been with a professional handler since September - and after this she's coming home :-) This may well be her grand finale in the show ring, though sometimes I think I may show her once in a while (maybe I'd do better with a dog who actually knows what they're doing, that way one of us would!)

Her day at Westminster will be immortalized at this link - right now it just shows her entry, but tomorrow it should show the results, and a video of the breed judging!

Here's hoping #7 is lucky!

Hand me downs and birthdays

Last Saturday, my fifth son got his driver's license. My fourth son, who is working during his gap year, bought his own car, and the keys to Blueberry have been handed down to yet another young driver. Blueberry has been the first car driven by each of my sons so far. She didn't suffer for it at all until the third son, who was rear-ended by a Saab wagon. That damage was pretty easily repaired. The fourth son had two accidents of his own - both front end collisions that were his fault. As my fifth son takes the keys, I hope that this is not a progression of some sort and that his tenure in Blueberry will instead be as uneventful as that of the first two boys.

At least I got to drive Blueberry a bit in the interim. A car in the care of a teenager can suffer a bit. When I first drove her, she seemed quite rough on the highway, and overall not herself. An oil check revealed a likely reason - she was down two quarts of oil. That got fixed on Friday, and today I took her out on the highway, and she seems much better. I can't say she's as peppy as she was when new, but she's doing quite well considering her nearly 192,000 miles.

At 4:40pm today, my sixth son turned 15. Another year and he'll be behind Blueberry's wheel learning to drive. He was only two and in a car seat when we drove home in Blueberry for the first time - miles and miles in between, bringing him to this 15 year old young man who plays basketball and World of Warcraft today, and who will be driving Blueberry all too soon.

surprise :-)

Or maybe not so much of a surprise at this point, but a good thing nonetheless. Domino Designer in Eclipse did itself proud today - and I was so very happy to be able to show it. I think I got the distinct impression that we should keep going with this.

My Lotus Component Designer sessions were also fun - though there was far too much to show than could be done in 60 minutes! Tonight was full of celebration :-) More tomorrow, at this point, it is long past time for sleep.

ready... set....

Almost ready to leave the office, I'm almost sure I have everything I need for Lotusphere... I am sure I'll keep tweaking the demos, but I'm mostly ready. Tonight, time to pack and be with my family before I have to be away....

You can see to the left a little hint of something close to my heart... The full picture is quite nice :-)

And so it begins again!

Five things....

Tagged by Pete, here I go...

1) I grew up in Tonawanda, NY, in the full swing of the baby boom (I will not say what year). My kindergarten class had 60 kids and two teachers in it. I missed a lot of days in kindergarten and 59 days of first grade because, as an only child, I finally was introduced to a germ pool. By fourth grade, my parents transferred me to an all girls school, where there were 13 in my fourth grade, which shared the same classroom and teacher as the third grade. This was an improvement, particularly in fifth grade, when I could listen in on the sixth grade material. After nine years in the same school, I was the only girl not crying at graduation.

2) I can only light a match under great duress. As a chemistry major, this caused me much difficulty with my bunsen burner. For a while I was paired with a partner in lab, but after a while got tired of doing all the work EXCEPT lighting the match. I can light wooden matches now, if I really have to, but still can't light the matchbook kind. Birthday cakes are always lit by Steve or one of the kids. My graduate degree is in theoretical chemistry, where computers take the place of bunsen burners.

3) I dropped the only computer class I took in college, as it meant three labs that semester, which happened to be the first semester I had a serious boyfriend. Besides, toggling assembler programs into a Nova II console (with paper tape and a drum for storage!) just wasn't fun. No UI! For anyone trying to figure out my age, my college did not have state of the art computers :-)

4) I can get seriously addicted to games like Tetris, Katamari, or Sudoku but just cannot focus on other kinds of games. I'm sure that says something about how my brain works, but I'm not sure what. It also means that I have a seriously high barrier to even trying something like Second Life.

5) My first car was a blue 1970 Mustang convertible (used, for anyone still trying to determine my age). I loved that car, and even learned the Bic pen trick for starting it when the carburetor was feeling sticky. When I finally could afford a new car, I drove my Mustang home to my mom's house, where it stayed in her garage for three years. Three months before I got my own first house (with a garage), she finally had enough of keeping her car outside in Tonawanda winters and got rid of it. I still miss it.

OK, that's five. I tag Jen and realized everyone else in my bookmark list has been tagged! But I reserve my four remaining for future use!

be careful what you name things

they may end up being gifts to posterity.

I was doing a side project all on my own, so I named a directory something kind of silly. Soon others joined me on the project, and now this directory's silly name has been immortalized in source control....

It's a diversion to put cutesy names in your environment, but you can never be sure how widely used they may end up being....

two kittens a grandmother make?

My son called me last night with a request that I mail him a few things he left here over Christmas and some unexpected news. He and his girlfriend had adopted two kittens. Ever since, I have been unable to shake the feeling of being a grandmother.

Now two kittens really don't make me a grandmother. But my child has taken responsibility for another living thing (or two) in his own household. It feels like a baby step towards a future that still feels like it ought to be distant.

I am not ready.

Champion Batman!!

Batman (my field spaniel puppy) is at American Spaniel Club in Philadelphia this weekend without me. By mid-December, he had previously accumulated ten points towards the fifteen needed for his championship. My ability to handle him in a show ring has improved, and he's been learning, too.

Today, at American Spaniel Club, *the* place to be if you're a spaniel, he won Winner's Dog in an entry of 12 field spaniel dogs to gain another five points - making him a Champion. His official name is now AKC Ch. Freedom's Caped Crusader.

There's a little part of me that is sad that I wasn't the human at the end of the leash, but he was very well handled by his breeder and my friend Julie, and it is said he's becoming too much of a mommy's little boy, so this is good for him.

Earlier this week, I was feeling so guilty about sending him off without me that I almost didn't send him. I'm very glad that both he and I decided to be brave.

Maybe next year he'll be at Westminster :-)

writing prose or code, it's the same.....

I just read that Donald Murray died - I was one of those readers not in his age group who really enjoyed his writing. I had been too busy to read his columns lately, but boston.com linked to his recent columns - this one captures how I feel about coding. Coding feeds my innate insecurity - just as he says, every time I sit down to a problem, I'm never sure I can solve it. As a corollary, if I already know how to solve it when I sit down to code it, I'm bored before I begin and the task is infinitely harder. Sometimes people think they're doing favors to programmers when they tell them how to do something, but giving someone the answer ahead of time spoils the fun.

I echo his wish for us in 2007 - may we all find something we can't do. That's the only way we know we're achieving the most we can.

re-creation

I was as they say "bone tired" before Christmas. I was working hard and getting less and less effective because I needed a break. And getting more and more stubborn about not taking one. But finally the lack of Christmas shopping reached a sufficiently perilous state that I finally started vacation halfway through the Thursday before Christmas. Right up to Christmas Eve, I was very busily shopping.

Christmas morning, the boys actually slept til 9. All six were home, which was very rare, and we had a very nice day and dinner all together. I can't say I've accomplished all the things I wanted to since Christmas - I haven't played the viola every day, I haven't spent enough time on the elliptical machine, but I have slept in, baked some cookies, reached the yoke of the Icelandic sweater I'm knitting, and feel much better than I did a week ago.

In the first few days of vacation, my work would try to push through my mind, but I was able to push it back. Even Lotusphere could be put on hold - I know roughly what I want to say and demo, and while there's still lots to do, I'm not panicked (yet).

I remember Pete telling me once right after we shipped R5 that he needed to take a break so coding was fun again. That really rang true for me this week as coding had ceased to be fun before Christmas.

I haven't rebooted my laptop since vacation began. There in the task bar is my development environment. An hour or so ago, I maximized it, just to look at something quickly to put a thought to rest.... Before I knew it, I had a file checked out, a new file created, and here I am in the thick of it again.

I think it's fun again :-)

still a wii little boy....

The Wii I promised to my son on his birthday 3 days after its launch finally arrived yesterday (after persistent pursuit, I finally managed to find one online at retail price!) He's 19 now, but has definitely grown up with Nintendo, and this was his one wish for his birthday. It was late, but quite anxiously awaited.

He was so excited, it was really fun to see. He had his first Wii related injury within 5 minutes playing the tennis game - he managed to scrape his knuckles on the ceiling... He was still up when we folded for the night, and when we got up this morning, we found him curled up on the couch, the Wii remote dropped out of his hand. All I could think of was when he was four, refusing to nap, but finally falling asleep in place in a similar pose.

It was nice to see the little boy inside the gruff teenager. Good to know he's still in there.

the music is on again

My mother noticed long ago that she could tell how I was doing by watching how much I listened to music. In a particularly dark period, my stereo went unconnected for two years. That is so not me, that she knew that things were wrong.

I used to code to music most of the time. In the past year, with more meetings in my life, I have gotten out of the habit of turning on the music when I get those precious chances to code.

Today I remembered... And at the end of the day, my code was working, and I felt better and less fragmented. The music is going to be staying on!

cyber monday thoughts.....

I spent more than a bit of time on a variety of websites in desperate search for a Nintendo wii for my son's birthday this past weekend. That effort was fruitless, but I also found the UI of many of these sites was driving me out of my mind.

There are some great applications of mouseover effects, but it's being overdone, and not in a considered manner. I'm pretty darn good with a mouse, but I often found a popup obscuring what I was aiming at in the website's zeal to provide me with dynamic content. I'd hate to think how my mother (who frequently calls with "I lost my toolbar" kinds of mouse accidents) would navigate these sites.

Just because we *can* do something technically doesn't mean we should do it everywhere!

this was unexpected...

You have a classic style, but you're up-to-date with the latest technology. You're ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you're one of the elite,and you know it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

cycles

I am so glad I'm not a manager. Managing engineers (particularly those who are ex-quantum mechanics) must be very difficult. When will this task be done? Unless the task is as meaningless as a string change, the honest answer always has a probably in it. And I am particularly difficult to pin down - Heisenberg made a strong impression on me.

But as a product nears completion, you can feel a shift. The tasks are done, and you continue to polish til it is ready to go out the door, but part of the energy starts shifting towards the next release. As work begins in earnest on the next release, it becomes an annoyance to go work on the product that is done in your mind, but not yet in deed.

That's a good thing - we release a more stable product if development actually slows down before delivery, and that's how we build software. But a side effect of that is that when the product actually ships, it's more like a whimper to the engineer. When a product ships now, I sometimes feel like I've missed that moment of birth - it's an oh yeah, it's out the door now, rather than the excitement of being currently focused on that product and being completely overjoyed with its shipment. A release should still end with a bang, not a whimper!

disconnecting

When I first heard the news about the wind causing possible power outages this weekend, I turned into a flurry of activity. I did the dishes at midnight rather than wait til morning, started a load of laundry, filled some pitchers of water (we're on a well), and nested. All Saturday, a part of me was in wait while the power stayed on through heavy rain and wind.

Today the power went out for a couple of hours because a tree fell on wires on our street. When the power went out, my initial reaction was excitement - it feels like an adventure (at least if it's only for a few hours!) We made tea over a camp stove, and I walked away from the computer with a burst of energy that I didn't know was pending, and started sweeping the stairs, and when I finished that, I tackled the top of my dresser, which was beginning to look like a leaning tower of clothing. I heard the power come back on, turned on a light to be sure, but because I wasn't ready for it yet, I turned the light back off and kept going.

The world is different without electricity - and in some ways, it's better. I think when the power went out, my energy burst was a refocusing of the energy that usually gets focused on electronic devices. It's neat to do something different with that energy - to feel a different part of life.

poor blueberry

I wish I had just stopped him from driving today. It's a very rainy, stormy day. Steven was running just a quick errand.... I didn't want him to go out in the storm, but at 18 you have to start letting them go.

Too soon after he left the house, the phone rang, and he had been in an accident. Probably not his fault, and no one hurt on either side. Except Blueberry again (and the other car looked worse than Blueberry).

I could drive her home, so I think she's fixable. When she's fixed, I think he has to drive a car that means less to me. I have a newer car, but Blueberry is like that old comfy Aerosole shoe that fits just right.... And they don't make Camry wagons anymore, so she is truly irreplaceable.

I feel like my priorities are all messed up. I am grateful no one was hurt, especially Steven. I am fortunate that my biggest worry is my car - I haven't lost sight of that, and I feel guilty to be so upset over a car. But upset I will be til I drive her home in one piece again.

Gym class, revisited

I was never good at gym. I dreaded gym day throughout grade school and high school. I just was not interested enough in any of the activities to actually care enough to put any effort into them. And I felt not very good at it, which gave me another reason not to put effort into it. Even now, when looking at my kids' report cards, I just don't care about their gym grades - it's not academic so it's just not important to me.

I have not had a lot more luck showing Batman. He got two more points at a second show, but in the shows since, I've had trouble getting him to stand still when he's supposed to... Today he won his puppy class, but when it came time to go back in the ring with the winners of the other classes, he just didn't want to cooperate.

A lot of this is in my own head, I think. I'm feeling like I'm not good at this, so I don't approach the task with confidence. I feel far more confident in front of 6000 people with my computer at Lotusphere than I do with Batman in a show ring with only 10-2o people watching. Just like I would have far preferred to go to any class other than gym at school...

I have to show him again on Thursday - I'm going to try a new approach - confidence. He's my dog, I'm entitled to walk him wherever I want. If I want him to stand, he will. I want him to do well, and he needs me to be confident to do that.

And if that doesn't work, I can always retreat to my laptop.