Katy Dickinson

1st Caboose Move Permit Done

Last week, the San Jose Water Company issued its formal permit for us to move WP668 into our backyard sometime during the next year. Hooray! We are now waiting for the San Jose city planning department hearing and then permit.

We are also waiting for the leaves to drop on our two mature ash trees so that they can be pruned. We want to cut back the trees before lifting in the caboose so as to damage as little as possible. We last had the ash trees' canopy trimmed (which the arborist called "lifting their skirts") two or three years ago. The ash near our back door in particular has been very happy about our removing the brick patio which was over its root system: its canopy has grown about 1/3 larger since it was last pruned. We think the ashes were planted when the house was built, so they are about 80 years old. They had a very bad pruning about 10 years ago (before we bought the house) but they have mostly recovered and are very handsome now.

Here is a current picture of WP668 (with its new roof):

Image by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)

Posted at 11:55AM Nov 13, 2006 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

8 SEED Mentoring Program Applications

The worldwide Sun Engineering email announcement from Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos went out on 9 November and we have so far received 8 applications for the SEED Established Staff term. SEED program participants are expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering's individual contributor or management ranks. All application materials are due on 24 November. The term will run January 15 - June 15, 2007. We plan to accept about 40 participants. Tomorrow is the first of three phone-in question and answer sessions we have scheduled for potential applicants and their managers.

Tanya Jankot and I are worried about the tight timing of this application period. We usually start earlier in November but with managing Sun's involvement in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (October 4-7, 2006 in San Diego), shortly followed by the world-wide SEED Event (24-25 October 2006 in Menlo Park), we have been busy. We allowed over two weeks for the application period but for the US-based Sun staff, that time includes the hard-to-get-any-work-done 2 days during Thanksgiving.

The problem is that in the US, the winter holidays come so fast after Thanksgiving that from now, what with family travel, distracting-if-fun parties, and official days off, there are only really five working weeks left in 2006. SEED needs a week to verify application data and then pick the participants. The participants need a week to prepare their 15 name Mentor Wish Lists. Also, we want to include at least two weeks of mentor matching time in before 2007. This is a very close schedule.

SEED runs into this problem for every term we run. We maintain a World Schedule to avoid national, religious, and company holidays as best we can but we still ended up with the term for India running into Divali, the term for China overlapping Labor Day, the term for Russia starting during Russian Orthodox Christmas, and the annual SEED event getting too close to Rosh Hashana. Every term, we get pleas for extensions to respect or allow for one event, holiday, observance, or another. We long ago decided that no time is convenient for everyone.

Posted at 09:47AM Nov 13, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

_She's Such a Geek_

A new book is just available called She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff by Annalee Newitz (Editor), Charlie Anders (Editor).

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (November 28, 2006)
• ISBN: 1580051901

My 17-year-old daughter Jessica is one of the essay contributors (shameless plug!). I recently received email from Amazon that my pre-order had shipped so the book may even show up in stores.

Here is the description from Amazon:

She’s Such a Geek is a groundbreaking anthology that celebrates women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders bring together a diverse range of critical and personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't afraid to match wits with men or computers. More than anything, She's Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it's a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, and run the government.

I have read several versions of Jessica's essay and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book when it arrives.

Jessica also had her "Why I am a Librarian" essay from last year republished in the current issue of the Church and Synagogue Library Association newsletter. The timing of these publications is wonderful: she can list them on her college applications which are due at the end of next month.

Posted at 08:46AM Nov 13, 2006 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[1]