Katy Dickinson

Bougainvillea in Bondage (update)

You may remember my March 18, 2008 blog entry called "Bougainvillea in Bondage". Here is an update photo from my project to turn a red Barbara Karst Bougainvillea vine sprawled across a low fence into a small tree.

Vine on Fence 2007

Vine in Bondage March 2008

Happily Blooming Now

Images Copyright 2007-2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:23PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Creating a Cactus Garden, Part 3 (Creating an Arroyito)

Last weekend, I continued creating the little dry creek or arroyito, that runs through the new cactus garden beside WP668, our backyard caboose. I have many sizes of stones and three colors of gravel with which to create the illusion of a natural creek bed. Picking through the stones for those of the best shape and color and then fitting them together takes time. Pictures follow.

John and I have also been hunting contractors to work on WP668. I can tell that our local housing industry is in trouble because I am getting calls back from my messages and estimators will come out to give us a bid within just a few days even though ours is a small job. (To give you a comparison, it took 8 years to find someone who would put a fancy stucco finish on our cabana because the job was too small.) This week, we have finally found a metal roofing supplier plus someone to install the linoleum floor. Those projects should be done within a month. The stained glass should also be completed and installed before June. We are still looking for a woodworker to build 8' x 16' of floor to ceiling glassed bookcases and a window seat. We found someone who agreed to do the work but then he got too busy.

Arroyito photos:

Partly done

Arroyito overview

Work in Progress

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:45PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Cottonwood Fairy Fuzz

The female Cottonwood polar trees along the Guadalupe River behind our house are now filling the air with fuzzy seeds. Sometimes when the wind blows, it looks like a snow storm or a great invasion of tiny white fairies. We know where all of the spider webs are on the house, garden, and our backyard caboose, WP668, because they are full of cottonwood seeds. This happens every year but the volume of seeds is still awesome. Some photos:

Windowsill with seeds

Seeds in window web

Seeds in caboose web

Seeds in Aloe Web

Seeds in cactus web

Seeds on geranium buds

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:12PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

52 PreSEED Participants Selected

On 25 April, we selected the 52 participants in the PreSEED Engineering mentoring program for the June - December 2008 term. There were 65 applicants to the term from Sun's Software Division worldwide but not all applicants were eligible because of incomplete applications, or a mismatch with the scope of the program.

Tanya Jankot and I are now preparing for next month's announcement of the 2008-2009 Recent Hire and Established Staff terms of the SEED mentoring program. Because of PreSEED's success, we are redesigning the scope of all three mentoring groups (PreSEED, SEED Recent Hires, and SEED Established Staff) to fit together better. We have a flow chart already and will be announcing the new scope's details soon.

The next steps for new PreSEED participants are:

1. Participants will create their 10 name Mentor Wish Lists due on 5 May 2008 (9 a.m. Pacific time) by way of the internal web site.
2. Participants will work with Tanya Jankot to personalize the participant web pages she will create.

About the New Participants

65 Applicants
52 PreSEED Participants Selected

Work Locations: China, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland,
Japan, Russia, USA

Division: 100% Sun Software Group

Gender of Participants:
    * female: 8  [ 15% ]
    * male: 44  [ 85% ]

Grade Level: all Members of the Technical Staff, levels two to four (MTS 2-4)

14 Previously Applied to SEED, 27%

Countries of origin this term include: Austria, China,
Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Germany, India, Iran,
Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Slovakia, UK, USA, Viet Nam

Software Chief Technologists Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED's pilot term Champions. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED program executive sponsor.

PreSEED is a pilot of the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. More information on SEED is available at http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Posted at 03:37PM Apr 29, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |