Katy Dickinson

Dumbarton Train Bridge

Last Friday, we drove across the Dumbarton Bridge from Sun's Menlo Park campus during heavy traffic. We went slow enough to get some good photos of the Dumbarton Train Bridge running parallel to the automobile bridge. According to a history I found:

The Dumbarton Bridge was the first road bridge to span the Bay, and today it connects the built-out Silicon Valley to the real estate of the south-east Bay. The train bridge south of the Dumbarton Bridge was the first rail bridge across the Bay, the Dumbarton cut-off, opening in 1910. Service stopped in 1982, and the rotating span, which allows boats through, is now welded open. ... The old Dumbarton Bridge, which opened in 1927, was replaced by a new bridge built next to it in 1982, and the drawbridge in the middle of the old span was removed.

Driving from Menlo Park to Fremont, it almost looks like the rotating span is moving (motion parallax). Behind the bridge, look for Hangar One and Moffet Field on the far shore.

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Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 09:59PM Jun 04, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  |  Comments[1]

SEED mentoring application update

The SEED program is now accepting applications from Sun Engineering staff worldwide for its Recent Hire and Established Staff terms which will start in September 2008. (The next PreSEED term does not start until January 2009.) The application deadline is 9 June.

To date, we have received 82 SEED applications, 23 of which are complete. SEED has applications in from Sun Engineering staff working in Canada, Czech Republic, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, P.R. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. They work for Sun Labs, Microelectronics, Global Sales and Services, Software, Storage, Systems, and Worldwide Operations. 22 of the applicants are recent hires and the rest are established staff.

Last week, I sent out an email to the SEED list of 400+ potential mentors to ask for volunteers to join this year's Recent Hire executive Selection Committee. I was looking for six or seven volunteers but got twenty so quickly that I stopped accepting participant requests. What an amazing and enthusiastic group of volunteers! SEED's 2008-2009 Recent Hire executive Selection Committee now includes two Distinguished Engineers, six Directors, and a Senior Director, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, New Jersey, Beijing China, Bangalore India, Prague Czech Republic, and Colorado. Three of the executives are SEED participant alumni and seven are SEED mentors. I still need to pick the SEED participant member of the Selection Committee from the 2007-2008 Recent Hire term.

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

Posted at 03:27PM Jun 04, 2008 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Lizard in the Drawer

Our Willow Glen neighborhood had a group yard sale last Saturday. One of the items our family put out to sell on the driveway was my son's old red chest of drawers. Paul has grown so tall that his clothes hardly fit into it now. The chest didn't sell so I am going to put it on craigslist next. As my son and I were moving the chest back into storage, we were startled to discovered a hitchhiker had crawled into the bottom drawer:

Alligator Lizard in Drawer

Out of the Drawer

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 02:58PM Jun 04, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |