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Saturday of a 3-day weekend…  We thought we were sneaking to the dealership to look at a bike and then head to the Ren Fest.  Instead, brought home a different bike than the one I went in to look at.  Meet my 2012 Honda Shadow…  She doesn’t have a name yet, but she’s definitely a she.

 

Motorcycle Day 1

Now, this picture shows me confidently holding up a thumb for the sales guy to take a picture as I drive her off the lot.  That happened, yes, but the drive was only as far as the next door parking lot.  I’m not brave enough to take her out on the highway yet.  Later in the day, my brother-in-law was kind enough to come back with me and drive it home.

Since this weekend was a long weekend, I got a bit more time to go play..  Sunday afternoon and Monday evening both had me tooling around the local high school parking lot, seeing if I could put her through her paces.  As I remember from the class, right-hand turns are harder for me for some reason.  I’ve stalled out at several stop signs, and the U-turn is still a hit-or-miss endeavor.  But that’s what practice is for.  Since I need to make a left-hand turn out of the high school to get home, and that light’s sensor doesn’t register that I’m sitting there, I’ve had to drive a bit further on the roads in my town that I’d otherwise anticipated.  Mild panic when I need to stop at the bottom of a hill and keep my 400+ lb girl from nosing out in traffic while avoiding stalling her so I can make the jump across the lanes to make the left..

I did let my hubby jump on the back of the bike this evening, just long enough for a loop around the school parking lot.  We drove all of 15 miles per hour – haven’t asked him yet if his heart’s stopped pounding….

 

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I’m a government contractor.  Government contractors (and I assume many folks in private industry who work with data that should be protected) work on networks in which sys admins keep things locked down.  This presents real challenges for software developers.

1.  The tool list one uses has to be blessed.  Meaning, the tool itself and its version.  Meaning, there’s always a lag for anything to move through the process.  You’d like to use an IDE with a time-saving or other productivity feature?  Well, we already scan these other 3 – not sure why we need to add your 4th one to the list…..

2. The operating system one uses has the same challenge.  The time required to cross-check an operating system, given the base layer at which it operates in the technical stack, is significant.  Don’t think you’re using that new optimization anytime soon….  And, of course, tools which require relatively new versions of OS’es (Docker, say?) are tied up for a good long time.

3. For those of us with Linux operating environments, locked down operating systems often mean working with dated yum repositories.  You want that thing that was released 6 months ago?  It might make its way in in another 6 months when that repositories’ contents are brought inside.

4. “Air gap”…   We’re not even talking about compatibility here or concerns about dated artifacts…   Don’t think about using a yum repo that’s not already been imported in.  It’s just not “there” for you to use…

Challenge of the day: I want to use a Chrome extension for use in AngularJS debugging.  An older version of the extension’s available in my world, but my / my team’s primary development environment is CentOS, which doesn’t support Chrome.  There are folks who’ve contributed scripts to get Chrome running on CentOS, but those require access to repos which our sys admin team likely won’t let come through…  Reasonably certain of that, but still working through a set of steps at home to set up a CentOS VM, install Chrome, and install my extension.  Key items being that all things needed for installation have to be able to be brought in as specific artifacts.  I’ll need to test by installing them on my VM and then disable Internet access out to verify no secrets up my sleeve.  None of that can really happen on the work network – need to prove it _can_ all work out here to be able to then make an argument to import the artifacts in where my team can make use of them.

My work-around hack in the meantime: from another OS, ssh tunnel my web app’s port across and through, so I can run Chrome from the supported OS and hit my not-yet publicly accessible web application.

None of the above are things you ever get exposed to in college, etc – you figure our your own hacks to get your job done once you hit the field.  That’s what makes you an engineer, rather than just a code monkey…

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Motorcycle dreaming… I have this image of me on a cruiser, feet out slightly in front of me, riding down the road. The road isn’t crazy, but it isn’t an empty country road, either.

Have had this dream for a good long time. Long ago, I did my first bit of dream fulfillment, buying a black leather motorcycle jacket at a yard sale. I’ve checked out bikes in parking lots and in magazines while waiting for haircuts. I’ve ridden on the back of bikes, and have a brother-in-law who was gracious enough to let me drive his bike around his apartment parking lot.

What I haven’t had is a license and my own bike. This week, I started to correct that. On my birthday, I started my first day of a 4 day motorcycle class. Tomorrow I get to move from classroom to driving range. I’ll happily get up early on a Saturday to get a chance to advance this dream. I’ll be on a Harley Davidson Street 500…  not thinking this is my dream bike, but I’ll happily learn on it for a day or two.

Can’t wait to see what the weekend holds, and where my heart and brain are re: motorcycles by Sunday…!

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Doing AngularJS development for work.  Relatively new, but getting things done.  Have learned the angular.element($0).scope() command to let me poke around in FireBug, but find it, well, lacking.  Batarang appears to be the thing to practically use…

Batarang is a Chrome extension.  The machines at work are CentOS.  CentOS apparently doesn’t just nicely have Chrome.  It could have Chromium, which would apparently support Batarang, but our yum repos don’t have such nice artifacts within them.

Geek hack of the day: ssh tunnel into my CentOS machine from another machine which does have Chrome.  Install Batarang on that other machine.  Invoke my web app in the remote machine, over ssh tunneling, as if it were localhost.  Bada-bing.  Final note: add to the dev wiki at work to help the next guy/gal out, rather than have them beat their heads against the same wall.  Software developer productivity win.

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Is this a programming blog? There’s a discussion going on on the devchix Google group about building a list of programmer blogs  by women.  This is a blog by a woman who often talks about programming.  But it’s not dedicated to programming.  It’s definitely not dedicated to women programming, as the topics that that could cover are relatively narrow (meaning, the topics that are exclusive to women in programming) and my interest in them doesn’t stretch far enough to fill many blog postings.  Yep, there are too few women.  Yep, I like to help women be more visible to help encourage both other women to enter the field / stay in the field, and to make it clear that women belong.  But part of demonstrating that women belong is just, well, belonging.  Not necessarily standing out for being a woman.  Standing out for being good at what I do and standing out for always getting better, for always putting in the effort for what the team’s promised to deliver.

I’ll happily talk to women in the field.  Heck, I organize a regular meetup for women to get together and swap stories.  But, as you often see on this blog, there’s lots more to talk about in lots of venues.  So, if you’re here because you like encouraging women programmers to blog, great!  Just sit through or skip through the rest of the stuff.  Because like (I hope) most people, I’m not so easily labeled as a single category.

 

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I can juggle.  Before you send me a Cirque Du Soleil job posting (ooh, I could be a clown for Cirque?  More realistically, I could do IT for Cirque???), know that my juggling to-date has been of the three ball level.  I learned how in college – I had three softballs, a dorm room, and a roommate who didn’t do anything more violent than complain as the softballs went past her head.  If I’m standing up and have three objects of a reasonable size and shape, I’m likely to start tossing them up in the air and mostly catching them.

What I hadn’t done till recently is have any success with adding a fourth ball.  I’ve been able to juggle two per hand, but only one hand at a time.  (Think: two in right hand, two in left hand – while one’s up, one’s down per hand.)  Whenever I added the second hand, the balls would collide in the middle somehow.  But I’d been told that that’s how to juggle four, so I kept trying.

Last week, I had a breakthrough.  Rather than try to juggle four, two per hand, I treated it as three, where one hand just happened to be holding an extra ball.  That worked – I was juggling three, and had this extra one in my hand.  Not quite juggling four, but a step forward.  My hand had to move and deal with this extra ball.  Then I just tried every so often switching which ball I was holding – e.g., if I threw ball A the first time and held ball B, I might every so often toss ball B and hold ball A.  It’s still not quite as smooth as I’d otherwise like, but it doesn’t screw with my brain the way juggling two per time per hand did.  I’m finally unblocked and making real progress to juggling four.

It struck me that this approach of finding the smallest change that’ll work might suit me in other areas, as well…  instead of crafting a large-scale vision for a software project that takes weeks to go over in my brain, start with a small potentially throw-away step to help me learn more.  Instead of working on a big vision for a technical conference talk, pitch a vision at either a local Toastmasters’ club (to see how the story carries) or at a local tech talk (to see how the tech approach sounds) before investing effort.  Or heck, write the vision or pitch up here and post a link to Twitter.  Get something small down and see whether it seems like it’s moving forward.  Then take the next small step.  For my juggling four, instead of intermittently throwing the ball up, try alternating every 3rd or 4th toss, etc.

For my next circus trick, I’d like to learn to ride the unicycle.  I have a unicycle, so that first step is done.  If anyone has an idea of a next first step, lemme know!

 

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I’m over 40 and overweight.  It’s common enough that as I look around my peers, I can _nearly_ justify that I’m less overweight than most.  But it still bugs the crud out of me to find myself past certain scale thresholds… So, when a local gym that a friend attends put on a weight loss challenge, AND that local gym is a martial arts gym where I’ll get to hit things – I had to give it a go…

3 times a week, I leave more sweat than I ever thought possible on the mat in its classes.  I’ve done more burpees of late than I’d imagined possible.  Tons of pushups and squats, too.  And yet the scale goes nowhere.  Even, on days that cause me to curse, slightly up.

But I continue in the classes…  Because on those days where I curse at the scale, at least I get to hit things.

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“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done, Mom?”, asked my eight year old.  I’m not sure what prompted his question, though I’m certain the chance to get an answer which delayed bed time might be part of it.  I thought about it, and answered: “Having kids…”

Undoubtedly that’s not what a kid wants to hear from their mom.  I went on to tell him that at his age, and much beyond, I pictured my life as kid-less.  I’d have a house full of puppies, but no kids.  It wasn’t until well after I met my husband and started to think of kids as a creation coming forth from both of us that my picture changed.  That I went from dreams of puppies of all sizes, to wondering what our kids might be like, and looking forward to how we’d raise them together.  That I stopped thinking of all the pain in the rear part of having kids to considering the joys of seeing things through new eyes, of getting to see these young people grow up to have opinions and interests of their own.

So my son got to hear that he was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done, and that I love him (and his sisters) immensely because of it.  Oh, and that going out for rugby was on the list somewhere, too, and that the opportunities presented by “craziest things” are to send you off in new directions and new experiences.

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Diving into the summer…  feels like such a chance for new adventures.  I’ve often asked my kids to make ‘adventure lists’, both because I want to inspire them to think big and because I want to come up with big ideas and actions with them.  Follow one’s dreams, not blindly, but with excitement and anticipation to see what paths may open before you.

So, some dream following of late:

1. Taking a chance on a MMA / boxing fitness class.  Working my tail off, with an idea of seeing whether this might be a new competitive outlet for me.  The fitness class was one thing – crazingly sweat-inducing and body shaking.  The striking (meaning hitting and kicking) was another…  even absorbing blows with pads was eye opening.  As in, wow that’d hurt if that landed, and boy, I’m enjoying the effort of hitting these pads.

2.  Letting my daughter head to Puerto Rico to visit some friends.  It’s a scary thing to let her do this on her own, even knowing that there’re trusted folks to receive her on the other end of the plane ride.  She gets on a plane tomorrow: I think once I know she’s there, it won’t be as scary an idea, but right now my chest feels a bit too tight.  I’m proud of her, and delighted that she can have this opportunity.  It’s a gut check, though, on that idea of being parents who help their kids explore the world safely.

3. Started a new job.  The existing one was a great job, but I was no longer seeing that chance to make an impact at it.  I could do well at it, and that in itself is honorable and good.  The company is a fine company, one I was proud to work for.  But I need to see a company grow and shape because I’m molding it.  Having to step up into bigger language – just started to type – “molding some area of it”.  But the truth is, I want to mold something more completely, maybe not all at once, but over time, I want to see where I’ve brought it forward.  I’m coming into someone else’s company, because I didn’t jump completely into the deep end to start something brand new.  I joined a company where I know and respect its owners, and they and I want to work together to continue to build upon what they’ve begun.

Dreams yet to pursue:

1. Going to pull that unicycle out of the basement this summer.  Since I have two thanks to a generous friend, giving one to a neighbor, and learning on the other.  Debating whether to take it with me to our summer getaway and just dedicate some time each day.

2. Stock options from my old company are about to convert my motorcycle dream into reality.  The stock is a good investment, but sprung free it’ll make donations to worthy causes as well as cruising wheels.  And heck, the drive to my new job is relatively short / safe – great jaunt for a motorcycle this summer…

First day of summer just this week: summer adventuring under way.

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Found a way to “justify” my recent splurge on a Raspberry Pi 2. Truth be told, I was enticed by an deal I saw on Lifehacker. I was drawn in by the idea of applying IoT on a new platform. Last year’s Arduino is sitting up in my closet, alongside its Furby friend, awaiting a visit with a soldering iron.

Lo and behold – one of my DevChix fellow email listers posted that Strange Loop’s Call For Proposals is open. Hmmm – if I can submit a talk, surely that justifies the dollars spent, yes? And heck, if it’s accepted, then I’ve further advanced a personal agenda of making women more visible in technology by showing how this ordinary woman becomes more visible in technology.

The trick: figuring out a topic that’s interesting enough _to me_ to justify the hours I’m going to spend building out the talk. For a technology talk, something just isn’t going to work out as originally planned, and there’ll be hours spent debugging and revising your original approach. Unless, of course, you already have the talk written, and where’s the fun in that? No, in my case, I want to see enough of the connect-the-dots to assure me it’s doable to get there, but not so many that there isn’t still a ‘reach’ and a ‘stretch’.

This go-round, I’m revisiting the Furby. It’s an easy attention-getter in an abstract. This time, though, I’m interested in playing with a new robotics kit called Gobot. I’ve been working with Go at work a bit, and getting a chance to see that skill used in a less practical form sounds like a lot of fun. Raspberry Pi is one of the platforms it supports, though it looks like I may need to contribute either an example or even possibly some driver code to help deal with sound… Knowing the hurdles I hit before with my Arduino/Furby talk and where I’d have liked to go farther, I’m really interested to see where a Raspberry Pi 2 + Gobot solution goes…

I’ll apparently find out by May 29th, and then the conference itself is at the end of September.  Looking forward to seeing what happens!