Katy Dickinson

Caboose Hearing Update

Yesterday, we finally got the yellow postcard from San Jose's Plan Implementation Division assigning us a planner. (We had turned in our Variance Request on 12 January.) We were assigned the same planner as before. John talked with her today and are we scheduled for a hearing for the caboose project on 21 February 2007. There is a letter coming with specific questions we need to answer.

Progress at last on getting official permission to move WP668 into our backyard!

Posted at 06:10PM Jan 31, 2007 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Naval Books Worth a Second Read

I am in a re-reading cycle just now, following a naval adventures theme. What I have read so far:

• The Honor Harrington series by David Weber:
  • On Basilisk Station
  • The Honor of the Queen
  • The Short, Victorious War*
  • Field of Dishonor
  • Flag in Exile

  * The title comes from two epigraphs which almost feel drawn from events of today:

  • Vyacheslav von Plehve in reference to the 1904 Russo-Japanese War:
    "What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution."
  • Robert Wilson Lynd:
    "The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."

• Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October

Next on my re-read list is Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and then Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. My favorite part of Dana's story is the last chapter in which he visits San Francisco Bay. The description of the Bay Area taken from his diary in the late 1830's (before the Gold Rush) is fascinating.

Posted at 03:39PM Jan 30, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[1]

3 Books on Women Engineers

Ira Pramanick (Senior Staff Engineer, in Sun's Software Systems group) is invited to be the Keynote Speaker at the Women in Tech conference co-sponsored by the William Jewell College (Liberty, MO) and the Girl Scouts next month. Ira and I recently discussed some of the reading which she would recommend. Here were my top book picks :

• Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing
  by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher
  Publisher: The MIT Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 2003)
  ISBN-10: 0262632691
  "Convinced that 'women must know more than how to use technology; they must know how to design and create it,' Jane Margolis, a social scientist, and Allan Fisher, a computer scientist and college dean, devised a four-year study (involving some 230 interviews) at Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. They found that the seven percent of female undergraduates at the college started out with as much excitement and talent as their male counterparts, but often wilted early on, perceiving that male students had come to college far better prepared than they had." (text from amazon.com review)

• Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers
  by Sybil E. Hatch
  Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers (February 20, 2006)
  ISBN-10: 0784408416
  "Through real-life stories, the full-color, 256-page Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers celebrates the contributions of women engineers to every aspect of modern life. Explore the lives and careers of hundreds of women engineers of all ages and backgrounds - extraordinary women who serve as role models to tell the untold story of engineering." (text from amazon.com review)

• She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff
  by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders
  Publisher: Seal Press (October 23, 2006)
  ISBN-10: 1580051901
  "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." (text from amazon.com review)

Posted at 11:24AM Jan 30, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Money Awareness

One of the things we did to get ready for our 18-year-old daughter to go away to college in September was to get her a checking account with a debit card. I started auto-depositing her allowance into this account and refusing to give her cash or to pay for small things as I had before. This has done more than all of our conversations and references to articles on The Motley Fool to raise Jessica's awareness of how money works.

Yesterday, Jessica was going to a birthday party. She took $30 she had earned babysitting the night before and went to the book store to buy something for her friend. She came back upset, with two books and no money left. She had always bought two books for friends' birthdays but she was new to paying for them herself. Yesterday, when she saw how little her money bought, she made the mental connection between work and goods:

1 long night of babysitting = $30 = 2 books

I just smiled and did not say a word.

Posted at 08:08AM Jan 29, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

My church's Outreach committee has been discussing the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight goals are:

1. Eliminate Extreme Poverty
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
4. Reduce Child Mortality
5. Improve Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainablity
8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Our national Episcopal Church and our local diocese Diocese of El Camino Real affirmed their commitment to the MDGs in 2006. All Saints' (Palo Alto) parish is now working out what that means in terms of real work and money.

In last month's Outreach meeting, I took responsibility for researching specific options for donating All Saints' pledged 0.7% MRD funds. Based on my research, I recommended at last night's meeting that Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), specifically their "Food Security/ Hunger Fund", is the best focus for All Saints' MDG donations. I contacted ERD directly today and was told that 90 cents of every dollar donated goes to their programs, meaning that they would make good use of the money.

Here is what ERD's web site has on its Food Security program:

Our food security programs ensure families have the means to access and secure healthy food sources. We make sure families have enough food to eat on a daily basis and food supplies are available, affordable, and accessible. Our programs:
• offer seeds and tools so communities can grow better crops, build healthier nutrition, and increase their yield in areas where poverty limits resources and access to food.
• provide opportunities for people to create and operate small businesses and expand their sources of income.
• give families healthy animals which produce food and income.

There does not seem to be a USA component to ERD's Food Security program. However, for many years All Saints' has hosted and supported successful local programs for the hungry and homeless, including the Opportunity Center plus several InnVision programs, including:

• The Food Closet (based at All Saints')
• Hotel de Zink (hosted twice at All Saints' in 2006)
• Breaking Bread, Hot Meals Program (hosted at All Saints' twice a week)

All Saints' is and has always been strongly called to follow Jesus' exhortation to "Feed My Sheep".

Extreme poverty outside of the US is probably the best focus for donations in any case. I recently read the following in the "World Ark" magazine from Heifer Project, (January/February 2007 issue, p.50):

Extreme Poverty on the Decline

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 28 in 1990 to 19 percent in 2002 -- a remarkable success. However, progress varied by region. Asia led the way in reducing poverty, but sub-Saharan Africa realized only a marginal decline in poverty rates. Chronic hunger (measured by the proportion of people not consuming their daily food needs) also saw declining rates -- but at the current pace, overall progress is not on track to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals targets. The number of people going hungry is actually increasing, with Eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in greatest need of scaled-up efforts. Keep up to date at www.un.org/millenniumgoals.

Posted at 04:35PM Jan 26, 2007 by katysblog in Church  | 

Strange College Mail

We got two strange letters in the mail this week with regard to my daughter's college applications. We still will not know which colleges have accepted her until 1 April. While we are in the unpleasant wait-and-see period between sending everything in and hearing back, there are still small communications with the nine schools considering Jessica.

The first odd letter was from Rice University. Jessica and I visited Houston 18-21 January (last weekend). On Tuesday, 23 January, we received our Rice campus visit package. It had been mailed on 10 January. Our visit certainly would have felt friendlier and more directed if we had gotten the package before we left. I now understand some of the Admissions secretary's confusion when we arrived in her office asking basic questions. Oh well.

The second strange letter was from Jessica's high school: it contained her first Senior semester grade report. Since these grades are the last that colleges will see before they make their acceptance decisions, they are important. We were very surprised to see an "I" for Incomplete instead of the "A" she was told she had in English. I got to practice deep calming breaths while Jessica worked with the high school administration to sort out the grades and reinstate her "A". All is well now.

I am reminded of a story I heard when I was a Sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My undergraduate transfer to U.C. Berkeley had been accepted at the same time that a dorm-hall friend had been accepted to U.C. Berkeley's graduate school in Chemistry. He went to the UCSB Chemistry department office for his Senior transcript review only to find that a whole year of upper division Chemistry class credits had been dropped from his record and replaced with a year of Sociology credits. The department secretary explained that my friend couldn't graduate because he hadn't met the requirements. He said he would rather commit murder than take one more undergraduate class. They came to an understanding; his upper division Chemistry class credits were restored and he was graduated on time with honors.

Posted at 02:09PM Jan 26, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

SEED Program Odds and Ends (SEED-2, 4-Site Term, etc.)

The SEED Engineering mentoring program has been working through old and new business the last few weeks. We have been matching the last few participants in the 2007 Established Staff term, rematching a participant from the 2006-2007 Established Staff term whose mentor left Sun, accepting applications for the SEED-2 alumni term (which runs March-September 2007), and preparing for a new term which will open for applications in March 2007.

SEED-2 is an experimental term (pilot) to see how it would benefit SEED participants who entered the program some time ago to be matched with a subsequent official SEED mentor. SEED was asked to run such a term many times over the years. However, when we opened the term, we were surprised when only ten people applied. We had been prepared to accept up to 25 participants but, after verifying application information with HR, we accepted all 10 alumni participants. This group is remarkable for its accomplishments (7 of them got two or three perfect annual perfomance ratings in the last three years) and seniority. 4 of them have already served as SEED mentors. It will be a pleasure to work with them. The SEED-2 group is putting together their Mentor Wish Lists now (due on 5 February). Here are some of their diversity patterns:

• Location of Participants
  • Central USA: 1 [ 10% ]
  • Eastern USA: 1 [ 10% ]
  • India: 2 [ 20% ]
  • Western USA: 6 [ 60% ]
• Division of Participants
  • CTO/Sun Labs: 2 [ 20% ]
  • Software Group: 6 [ 60% ]
  • Sun Services: 1 [ 10% ]
  • Worldwide Operations: 1 [ 10% ]
• Gender of Participants
  • female: 2 [ 20% ]
  • male: 8 [ 80% ]

We have also been preparing for SEED's next international term. The "SEED 4-Site Term" will benefit four Sun Engineering sites outside the United States: Bangalore, Beijing, Prague, & St. Petersburg. This is the 6th pilot term SEED has offered. The SEED program from time to time creates one or more pilot terms for which the rules and process are somewhat different from the regular worldwide all-Engineering program. These pilot terms serve two functions:

1. Test a new rule or process to see if it should be rolled into the regular program. (This is how the Established Staff part of SEED was created in 2002.)
2. Focus on a particular group in which we want to build a critical mass (or supportive network) of SEED participants.

In order to run a SEED pilot, we need an Engineering base population of at least 300 to pull from. Experience has shown that a group smaller than 300 will not have enough rising stars and superstars to make up a SEED term. The six pilots so far have been:

1. The India Engineering Center (IEC): 2005
2. The Sun China Engineering & Research Institute (SCERI): 2005
3. Europe and the Middle East (EMEA) two groups: 2006
   Dublin-Grenoble-Hamburg-Prague, and St.Petersburg-Tel Aviv
4. Legacy StorageTek: 2006
   for Former StorageTek Engineering staff acquired by Sun
5. SEED-2 Worldwide Program (for SEED Alumni): 2007
6. 4-Site Term: Bangalore, Beijing, Prague, St. Petersburg: 2007

I have visited most of the target sites during the application period when SEED has run a term focussed on Engineering staff outside of the USA. In 2004, I visited Bangalore, India. In 2005, I visited Beijing (China), Prague (Czech Republic), and Hamburg (Germany). Tanya Jankot also visited Dublin (Ireland) and Grenoble (France) on behalf of SEED in 2005. In 2006, I visited St. Petersburg (Russia) and Tel Aviv (Israel). In March 2007, I will be in Bangalore again during the 4-Site application period. I am looking forward to talking with as many of the Engineering staff in Bangalore as I can fit in.

My husband, John Plocher, who manages the process and tools for Sun's Architectural Review Committees will be able to travel with me again. John was also able to work from the Engineering sites at Beijing, St. Petersburg, and Tel Aviv when I was there on SEED business. We also hope to be able to do some weekend travelling in India.

Posted at 09:53AM Jan 26, 2007 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

2 Great Restaurants

About 6 months ago, we were mourning the retirement of Adam Sun, the former owner and amazing chef at Szechwan Cafe on California in Palo Alto. Adam was a great cook, an inspired fruit and vegetable carver, an enchanting flute player, and he seemed to remember most of his customers' names and tastes after just a few visits. (Also, Szechwan Cafe is right across the street from Know Knew Books, a used book store always worth the browse.)

At the same time that Szechwan Cafe changed hands for the worse, two of our favorite Vietnamese restaurants also closed. This was not good! We have been hunting for alternatives for dinner-out-on-the-drive-home ever since. Several weeks ago, our search was rewarded with two new and excellent finds:

• Joy Luck Place Cantonese Cuisine
  Cupertino Village (near 280)
  10911 North Wolfe Road, Cupertino, CA

• Saigon 75 Vietnamese restaurant
  (near San Jose State, at 8th)
  304A Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA

We went to Joy Luck after it was strongly recommended by some friends. It is sure to become a regular stop (and not just because it is near where my daughter takes singing lessons). On Monday, my family had a meal of salt and pepper crab, scallops in black bean sauce with snow peas, braised eggplant, and sweet and sour chicken. With the exception of the chicken, this was possibly the best Chinese food we have tasted since we flew home from Beijing. It is also near the Ten Ren tea shop for those with a taste for cold milky tea with "spit balls" (tapioca pearls).

Tonight, we ate at Saigon 75 for the second time. We were just as pleased this time as we were two weeks ago. Paul and I had clay pot dishes (he had chicken and I had catfish), Jessica had a lovely green salad with chicken, and John had a big bowl of pho (beef noodle soup). We are very pleased to finally find a restaurant a short drive from our house with such excellent Vietnamese cooking.

Posted at 09:29PM Jan 24, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

More on Rice Univ. Visit

We are back from our trip to Houston, Texas and Rice University. Jessica enjoyed her visit to a Shepherd class and she came away impressed with the music school. Jessica also enjoyed her dorm stay. Rice is a "wet campus" and the girls who were kind enough to host her were on a party hall. So, Jessica learned two beer drinking games. One involved tossing pingpong balls into a cup of beer and the other seemed to be a speed drinking contest. She said that the students were chill and did not pressure her to participate beyond her comfort.

At least a hall-wide drinking party meant that the students were talking and enjoying each other's company. It was better than her experience last summer at U.C. Santa Cruz where the students just stayed in their own dorm rooms and smoked. We need to wash her sleeping bag because of the fresh and used beer that was on the dorm carpet. Even though she had fun, Jessica said she does not want to be on a party hall when she goes to college next year.

We spent Saturday seeing something of Houston. In the Museum District, the Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, and Byzantine Chapel nearby are very impressive. The Rothko chapel in particular is a remarkable space. As we sat in the dim light of the quiet 8 sided room, the deep colors of the large canvases felt increasingly complex. The sizes, positions, and relationships of the panels became more interesting. Those which were all deep matt purple revealed their horizontal brush and vertical drip patterns while those painted in glossy bordered rectangles shone softly under the skylight. The 14 paintings are presented in three sets of triptychs, one of which is set into an apse or large recess, plus 5 panels. We were there on a cool overcast day . I imagine that bright light and heat outside would make the chapel feel quite different.

Jessica has an audition next month for Lawrence Univ. (the school is in Wisconsin but they hold regional auditions in San Francisco). There are a number of schools to which she is re-sending materials she submitted earlier which they can't find. Plus, she has a few more interviews. After all that is done, we wait until the college acceptance decisions arrive in the mail on 1 April.

Posted at 02:46PM Jan 22, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Visiting Rice Univ., Shepherd Music School in Houston, Texas

My daughter and I are in Houston, Texas visiting Rice University and the Shepherd Music School. Jessica is now staying over in one of the dorms (at Jones College). Of the universities she and I have visited, Rice feels most like Carnegie Mellon U in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are both strong Engineering schools with excellent programs in the humanities, sciences, professions, and music. We had to come to Houston because Shepherd only offers on-campus auditions (no regional auditions).

We walked from our hotel to Jessica's audition at Shepherd this morning. Houston is cold and rainy and there are vast puddles and red mud everywhere. The most common trees seem to be big oaks, many of which are edged in tiny ferns and moss. The flat campus is bordered with huge parking lots. Most of the signs relate to parking rather than to the buildings or life of the university.

The only graffiti I saw was on a section of the Berlin Wall in the lawn outside of the Baker public policy building (that is, Official Historical Graffiti). Very few of the buildings have more than a discrete identification label. Our student tour guide said that about 3/4 of the students live on campus but cars still seem a big part of campus life. I saw some bicyclists but this is clearly not a bike school like the University of California campuses at Davis or Santa Barbara.

The campus has all been built since 1912 and there are clear generations of architecture among the brick and stone buildings. The school's founder William Marsh Rice was murdered in 1900 (yes, the butler did actually do it) but his money ended up creating an impressive and clearly well funded institution. The center of the school is the bronze statue of founder "Willie". Interestingly, it was James Baker the lawyer who found out Willie's murderous butler. His descendent, James A. Baker, III founded Rice's Institute for Public Policy. This is the same institute which recently issued the controversial Iraq Study Group Report.

Jessica was happy with her very brief vocal audition but we will not know until 1 April what their acceptance decision is. The Director of Admissions said it was mostly a "numbers game" and that excellent students were turned away every year. Shepherd only accepts about 30 students a year in all areas (instrument, voice, music theory, etc.). We were surprised to find out that Rice has an "all or nothing" admissions policy. If a student applies to a school in Rice and is not accepted, they are not accepted to Rice at all even if they have other academic interests. I am not sure how Rice manages students who enter with an undecided major.

During our brief orientation at Shepherd this morning, we were told that music students are discouraged from trying to double major. However, the Rice Senior with whom we went to lunch said that "Musies" (music school students) often did double major and should not let Shepherd push them around about their life choices. He also said it was easy to transfer from school to school, which does not seem to go with the all or nothing admissions.

After she left with her dorm hostess, Jessica was going to visit a class by one of the Shepherd teachers she asked for. Shepherd has students apply to work with individual professors rather than to the school as a whole. Since I did not see a class, I have less of a feel for Rice than I do for other universities.

I was concerned to hear one of our tour guides, a Mechanical Engineer, say that most Engineers have either a desktop or laptop computer but some don't have either. Coming from the Silicon Valley, I know very few High School students who don't have their own laptop. In the dorm room we visited, both students had up-to-date desk computers. It feels odd for a famous and well funded Engineering school to have students without their own computer.

Another concern was physical safety. There is a prominent framed sign in the women's bathroom at Shepherd about sexual harassment and rape, giving very detailed instructions about what to do if it happens. When I was walking back to the hotel, a man stopped me and said I should hide my gold necklace chain because it might be stolen.

I liked the Rice institution of college Masters. These are professors and their families who live in an on-campus home located near the dorm which is part of each college. Our tour guide said that the masters provided all of the good parts of family (an emergency ride, a shoulder to cry on) without complaints about finishing homework and room cleaning.

I walked over to Rice Village after visiting campus. In addition to national chain stores, there were a few local shops and a wide variety of restaurants, including many international choices. The campus area seems prosperous. This is not a student slum with funky stores but rather an upscale community outdoor mall: more like Stanford Shopping Center near Stanford Univ. than Telegraph Avenue near U.C. Berkeley or Isla Vista near U.C. Santa Barbara.

The two edges of campus I walked along were more designed for cars than pedestrians. The sidewalks were often broken or tilted and there were sections roped off where the walkways were ripped out entirely. The family homes were interesting with varied architecture. Most provided large private parking areas in front with small border gardens.

I look forward to hearing what Jessica has to say about her dorm visit. Her hostess said they planned to have dinner tonight at Rice Village. We plan to visit the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel tomorrow (they are about 2 miles from Rice). My mother's old friend Walter Hopps was Menil's first Director and the collection is the listing for Houston in one of my favorite travel guides 1000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List by Patricia Schultz (2003).

Posted at 07:56PM Jan 19, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[1]

Caboose Variance Request

John took our rewritten Variance Request to San Jose city planning this morning. The guy who accepted the paperwork seemed to think it was straightforward (and a cool project to move a caboose into our yard). We should know who our new planner assignment is within a few weeks and then we will see about next steps. We may even get a refund for the almost $2K in fees they had us pay for the first permit request last November! We may yet have WP668 moved before her first birthday in storage.

Posted at 04:44PM Jan 12, 2007 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

A Girl's First Java Class

Yesterday, Lucy Sanders of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) had lunch with Sun's "Succeeding @ Sun as a Woman Engineer" (SASWE) networking group. Lucy talked about NCWIT's mission to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. I came away from the lunch with questions about why young women aren't more fascinated by computing.

Last night, my 18-year-old daughter was studying for her final High School exam: Java programming. (Jessica does not have to take another exam until the end of her first college semester in a year.) She loved her Java class and wished she had more time to learn programming. Sadly, with just one semester left in High School, Jessica has run out of class slots and it is too late for her to join the Advanced Placement in Programming year-long class.

Jessica's High School required her to take introduction to computing in her Freshman year. She was miserable and never wanted to take another computing class. Now as a Senior, she loves her new Apple MacBook Pro laptop and wishes she had known how much fun programming can be. When she took a break from studying for the exam, I asked Jessica what made this class different and why she loved programming. Here is what she said:

• Teachers need to be comfortable with computers. Computers are just a tool, like a pencil, not something you have to use or something that is special or different.
• It would be good to have both men and women role models. Her High School has women math and science teachers but no women in its tech department.
• Practical tasks, not abstract concepts, are fun. This programming class taught Jessica how to make an on-line robot walk and beep and do things.
• Programming class should have no stigma. There should not have to be a big push to get in. It shouldn't just be the prizefighter girls who take programming and join the Robotics Club. It should be normal to take programming.
• Some work, like learning how to write a perfect bibliographic citation, is better done by computers. Time is better spent programming the computer.
• Computing teachers should hold themselves to a high standard and expect the students to do well. Teachers should be disappointed when their students don't work hard. (Jessica described great teachers as "battleaxe" - a good thing!)
• Geeks get enthusiastic. Teachers who are really into it are cool, are better role models. Honest geeks do not pander to the subject or condescend to the students.
• Talking with senior women who are succeeding in Computer Science helps.
• Lego robotics are fun. They are good for a beginner: practical, effective, with immediate results. Show the future action potential or beginning students get discouraged.
• Reading books like She's Such a Geek (Ed. by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, Seal Press 2006, ISBN-10: 1580051901) helps to keep Jessica excited about computing. It's not just that she has an essay included the book - it is being part of a group of excited girl geeks.

Some of what Jessica said reminded me of a section called "More Attention to Good Teaching" in Unlocking the Clubhouse (p.131, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, The MIT Press, 2003, ISBN-10: 0262632691). This section addressed some of the changes made by Fisher and Margolis in Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate Computer Science program:

...good teaching is especially important to women because failures in pedagogy or in curricular integration affects women disproportionately. Our main effort in this regard was to use the teaching assignment process to put better, more experienced, and more senior teachers (note that these are not always correlated!) into the earliest courses of the curriculum, where women reported having the most distress.

In March, after we find out which colleges have accepted Jessica, I hope she will choose a school with a great undergraduate Computer Science staff. It would be sad to see all of her computing enthusiasm trashed by bad teaching.

Posted at 03:01PM Jan 12, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Xbox Sonnet

My son's High School Freshman English class at Paly has been studying poetry all semester. Paul has been writing poems in 7 forms: haiku, limmerick, cinquain, free verse, narrative, and sonnet. He told me on Tuesday that he had 5 done and needed to write 2 more poems by Thursday (the last day of class). I haven't written a sonnet in years but we sat down and worked out the following on the subject dearest to his 14-year-old heart: Xbox video games.

Gaming Sonnet

X-box video gaming is fun to do,
You can choose to be on the Red Team,
Or you can choose to be on the Blue.
You must always want to sneakily scheme:
Your reflexes must be fast and sure.
People that are good at an X-box game,
Have intentions that are not often pure.
Most people play Halo2 about the same,
But some gamers are very fast,
So they win their matches clever and quick.
Imagination makes a good game last,
Crushing Red soldiers bloody and slick.
X-box gaming is never boring,
So gamers minds are always soaring.

The meter and number of syllables are flawed but it seems like a good first effort.

Posted at 01:04PM Jan 12, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

44 out of 49 SEEDs Matched with Mentors

We only have five more SEED Engineering mentoring participants to match in the 15 January - 15 June 2007 Established Staff term. So far:

• 24 November 2006 - applications were due
• 28 November - 49 participants were selected
• 11 December - first 49 invitations to mentors out in email
• 14 December - 15 matched (31%)
• 18 December - 26 matched (53%)
• 25 December - 37 matched (76%)
• 1 January - 37 matched (76%)
• 8 January - 44 matched (90%)

I just announced the SEED-2 term as well. This is an experimental term (pilot) to see how it would benefit SEED participants who entered the program some time ago to be matched with a subsequent official SEED mentor. SEED-2 will run March - September 2007. We already have two applications in, all materials are due by 19 January 2007.

Posted at 02:34PM Jan 08, 2007 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Vocal Conservatory Auditions

We are still finishing up and following up on all nine of Jessica's college applications. My daughter gave her first vocal conservatory audition this morning at 9 a.m. in San Francisco. We started driving at 7:15 a.m. She was singing two songs for evaluation by Oberlin Conservatory:

• La lontananza (Gaetano Donizetti,1797-1848) in Italian
• American Lullaby (Gladys Rich) in English

We arrived about 20 minutes early with Simona (piano accompanist), Jessica's resume with an 8x10" glossy black and white photo, and the music binder. The amount of arranging it took to get the accompanist, the photo, and the girl to the audition on time was tiring even though the audition itself only took half an hour. We now have Jessica's audition photo on-line so we can print as many as we want. We will hear in March whether Oberlin is interested in taking Jessica as one of their 15 vocal music students for next year.

Carnegie Mellon school of music has already listened to Jessica's audition CD and declined to hear her in person. Since the audition is 80% of the acceptance decision, this means that CMU music will not take her. She was disappointed but still hopes to get into CMU as a regular student even if she cannot be a conservatory student there. In two weeks, we fly to Houston, TX to audition for the Shepherd School at Rice Univ. Next month, Jessica sings for Lawrence (in San Francisco). Simona will play piano again.

We have mailed out all of the audio CDs to the other schools (Princeton, MIT, Brown, Smith, and Univ. Rochester). Jessica is working out the remaining in-person interview dates and also checking with each school to be sure they received everything they need. She has already re-sent some materials to Rice.

Jessica sent her Advance Placement test scores out last month. However, when she got the confirmation letter from the College Board, she found they had sent a set of scores to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy instead of to MIT. She called the College Board and got them to send in the scores to MIT. The next day, Jessica got an application packet from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. I guess they liked the scores even though they were sent in error!

On top of all of this, Jessica has first semester final exams next week. She already turned in her final project for the Great Novels class. She composed and then recorded a CD of four songs from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (one of the Great Novels they read). It's a great deal of work to be a High School Senior.

Posted at 10:50PM Jan 07, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |