memorial day

I can't say it better than John Gorka did in his song "Road of Good Intentions" on his Writing in the Margins CD.

I always come back to the soldiers
with their courage and ideals
I’ve seen them smoking in the airports
there’s no telling how it feels
on the road of good intentions
all gets justified to hell
the price revealed in stories
too short, too sad, to tell

One of those soldiers was my dad.

He was sent to the Pacific just before the end of WWII, served in the army of occupation in Japan, went back to school, returned to the army, went back to school, went to the Korean war, went back to school....

His story was too short, but I remember it.

Prom Day!

Tom's Junior Prom was today - a beautiful May evening at Mechanic's Hall in Worcester.  That part of the evening was their own - this part, as they awaited their limo-chariot ride to the prom, was shared with the parents who were uniformly marvelling at the transformation of their children.  I hope their evening is as magical as they are!

 

... See my Tabblo>

The measure of a man

I'm just back from taking my fifth son to be measured for his tux for his junior prom. I'll never know what it is like to help a daughter shop for a prom dress, but I expect the experience is very different.

I couldn't really get Tom to look at any of the tuxes while we were waiting - he waited until he was asked by the clerk what he had chosen to actually investigate. "Black" was the primary criteria, and I can't say there was much concern for stripes or pattern or number of buttons or material... He did say the word green about a vest and tie, and did find one that he was happy with.

Then you watch the little boy be measured for his thoughtfully chosen tux. Instructed by the store clerk to put his arms at his sides, to stand straight... When he tried on the pants, he was told to wear them at his waist at least for the pictures at the prom...

When I saw him in a try on for size tux and shoes, I wondered who is this man they just measured? That experience is likely to be the same as the mother who gets to see her daughter try on the first prom dress. He looked so grown up!

something funny with Google maps

I've noticed an odd behavior on my machine. I have two VPN programs currently installed, one of which is obsolete. Normally, this causes absolutely no problems. However, any time I go to a website that has a Google map on it, and some other google based sites (a Google group), my other VPN program launches itself and asks me to authenticate.

Now I'm happiest in UI code and networks and connections are pretty far from my comfort zone and even farther from my area of expertise. But I can't help feeling suspicious that there is some kind of network querying going on in Google's html....

how important is LotusScript?

Is JavaScript good enough, or is it important for LCD to think about what it would take to support LotusScript? Is it better to support LotusScript or other languages such as PHP, etc?

Inquiring minds want to know :-)

when it rains...

you discover what matters most.

The recent Nor'easter caused a flood in our basement. Nine inches deep of water everywhere... We had never totally unpacked from moving here almost five years ago, so there were many too many boxes, and much too much in harm's way.

Lots of things are headed to the dump, but many are still ok. And it's been a nostalgic trip through our history - that Mark Knopfler song "This is Us" keeps running through my head.

The value of things lost is not at all measured in monetary terms. Some college books are ok, others are not. I found I felt little nostalgia over my graduate school texts, which are probably far more valuable than my undergraduate texts. But I didn't enjoy BU like I did Canisius, it simply reflects the value I place on the memories.

Ironically my graduate diploma is fine; my bachelor's is irreparably damaged. I would not have bothered replacing my graduate diploma; I will be contacting Canisius to find out if it's possible to get a replacement....

In a very wet volume of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Letters to His Daughter is a priceless letter my mother's college roommate on my 14th birthday, the first birthday I had after my dad died. The book may need to be replaced (the jury is still out), but the letter will be ok, and it will be carefully placed back in the book (or its replacement) when it can. The book *can* be replaced, the letter cannot.

Baby pictures, some picture albums, genealogical research, fortunately much of that is ok. Toys, some books, some older electronics, are destroyed, indeed some pictures, are destroyed, too.

It's also fun to tease my husband about his carefully attempting to rescue letters from some of my old friends, but not the ones from an old boyfriend :-)

It's a horrible amount of work to clean all this up. But revisiting our past has been a gift, too. It slows the task down to read the old letter, or to look carefully at the picture of my grandmother... But it offers spring cleaning of the soul in return.

Not much is heard about grandmothers-in-law, but I was blessed with an amazing one. Steve's grandmother would have been 103 in June. She left us yesterday morning.

She was a very bright lady (a Smithie), who knew and spoke her mind. I hope I can be half as spunky as she when I (hopefully!) reach her age. When she could no longer drive, she just took taxis to Legal Sea Foods, not to be denied her favorite lunch. A voracious reader, she also loved the ocean and Cohasset. I didn't know her when she was young, but I know she loved her family, and I can see her influence in Steve and in our boys. I am grateful for the influence she has had on me.

I am very sad she has left us, but happy for her that she is now with her husband again. I will see and feel her spirit when I watch the ocean with her grandson.

a new rythmn

It used to be that the night before Easter meant assembling six identical Easter baskets, then hunting for six new dog proof locations to hide them before going to bed much later than I wanted to. Last night I was falling asleep early since I had to be up very early that day to take Eve (Batman's sister) to a dog show in Springfield in the morning (she didn't win, but she did well, so I was proud of her!)

Anyway, as I was starting to fight the battle of staying awake another hour or so, it occurred to me... Teenage boys sleep in. There's no need to assemble and hide the baskets tonight - I'll be up before they are in the morning, I can do it then. And that way the Peeps won't be stale!

This morning, I assembled four Easter baskets (the older two no longer live at home). One is yet unsearched for as its owner hasn't arrived home yet (college kid due in later)....

It seems the pattern of our lives is changing a bit. We're still pretty far from most people's definition of empty nesters with three kids living at home full time and an itinerant college student, but it is so much less populous than it used to be, and the kids are far more independent. One Friday this month on the way home from work we realized that no one was home... We impulsively stopped for dinner on our way. That must be what it's like to not have kids at home.

I think it's going to be ok.

the fear is still there

When I read the comment to my last post asking me to participate in the Merkel Cell Carcinoma discussion group, I think my heart stopped. That was a painful part of my past that I am proud of surviving, but have since tried to distance myself from. To a certain extent, getting over it meant forgetting about it.

But needing to forget means that at some level, the cancer still controlled me. I had been thinking not remembering was being cured. Maybe remembering and taking control is being cured. The scar on my left temple is my badge of courage, it is not invisible, it is part of me.

desperados waiting for a train....

I have a new old album on... Tom Rush with a reissue of Ladies Love Outlaws and Merrimac County, all on one CD. It helps me remember who I really am, or at least who I thought I was going to be. The delta is a bit unsettling.

I hear this music, and it's July 3, 1975, and I'm on a picnic blanket on the side of a hill out in Lenox, Massachusetts. It's an all day concert at the Lenox Music Inn with Tom Rush, Wendy Waldman, Leon Redbone, Orleans, and others I don't quite remember. I foolishly wore long jeans, and foolishly rolled them up and got a terrible sunburn on my legs. The lemonade was cold and sweet... I was with my first true love - and it could not have been more beautiful a day. A bit tinged with sadness around the edges - when Wendy Waldman sang about "nothing to do but let your wild bird go.." I already knew that love would end someday. But that was still a ways off.

I saw Tom Rush again last summer on the island. He's aged a bit, but is still amazing. Just him this time, indoors in the Old Whaling Church, so no sunburn. This time I was with the true love that lasted.

When I hear this album, I hear both the summers of 1975 and 2006. They're both all good.

No Regrets.

extension points....

OK, everyone keeps saying they want the new Domino Designer to have oodles of extension points. Based on Eclipse, extension points are of course a natural.

To help us out, though, since at some point a program actually has to have some immutable code, what pieces are a priority for you to extend? Since we are taking an iterative approach to moving Domino Designer over to Eclipse, starting primarily with the script editors, what extensions will you be looking to add, and what Designer behaviors do you want to contribute/attach to?

thanks!

I don't know how I feel about this...

I'm writing this post in line at the Steamship Authority in Vineyard Haven... They now have free wi-fi, even once we're on the boat!

I suffer from being online way too much, and it used to be that the boat was a safe haven, in so many ways. Now with the world so much with us, will it remain my sanctuary? How can we escape when there is no escape?

Just drove on the boat, and had to reconnect, but I'm still live, even on the freight deck of this massive four story boat...

Which means of course that the control must come from within... Time to go up on deck and look at the sky...

polls and rumors

Life has been hectic in February, and I was just catching up on my reading when I found this post and feel I should set some things straight.

I know Stephen created his poll with all the nicest intentions, but I did worry when I saw it that it would have exactly the effect that John describes. But I thought maybe I was worrying too much (worrying is one of my best things...) and put the thoughts aside til I read John's post.

At this point, it does seem important to state a few things. First of all, it isn't just me believing this needs doing, my boss does, my boss's boss... They wouldn't let me talk about it if they didn't believe in it. We have real people working on it (as their day job), as it clearly is so large of an endeavor that while I love to code, I could not possibly accomplish the project by myself in a reasonable amount of time.

So work is ongoing, and we are lining up the right release vehicle for the work. What release it will be will be a calculus of a critical mass of features and alignment with a Notes release. I don't know the answer to that yet, or I'd be screaming it from the rooftops. There are the usual caveats as in any engineering project that we might hit unsolvable problems, past performance is no guarantee of future results, etc. But the reality is that we are working very hard on it!

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!