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Easter weekend I needed to drive a long way home by myself.  To keep myself awake, I downloaded Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In”.  And then promptly listened to the radio instead for the 5 hour ride, singing at the top of my lungs.

This week I realized my trial subscription to Audible was soon to run out, so it was time to see if audio books were worth the monthly fee.  Each morning I’ve put in my earbuds and listened to the narrator read through Sheryl’s description of and advice for women in professional fields.  Interesting stuff, mostly.  Since I’m already ‘leaning in’ in every way possible, it’s mostly interesting from an anecdotal, other folks have been there kind of experience.  And then an experience today resonated with a big old ‘bong’.

Today I got told that I’m seen as ‘unapproachable’.  Thankfully, not by members of my team: if I’m not approachable to them, they won’t be able to share information that’s key for our collective success.  No, I’m deemed ‘unapproachable’ by members of our client’s advisory team, or at least, that’s the word from my client.  Tomorrow I’ll be following up with the original source…  But today’s the first day where I started to appreciate Sheryl’s statements of how important it is for women to come across as likeable, how that so resonates with folks inherent understanding of women that anything other, any other primary focus causes basically a cognitive dissonance (my phrasing, not hers).  My focus hasn’t been on being likeable; it’s been on helping my team be effective, in helping the advistors be effective in interacting with my team.  Likeable doesn’t enter into it, and isn’t my aim.  Trustworthy, accomplishing things, focused on accomplishing the right things, overcommunicating, … those are the things on which I pride myself.  You don’t like me?  That’s OK, so long as we can still work productively together.  In fact, I’ll respect our working dynamic all the more, actually, if I think we’re making things happen for a reason beyond some likeability factor.  Our relationship is a work relationship: if it proceeds into a friendship, great.  But in the meantime we’ve got work to get done.  I’ll schmooze in the context of work…

Uh, note that I’ve heard no such feedback on my male teammates, who’ve made much less effort….   Hence the mental connection to Sheryl Sandberg’s thoughts….  And high level of annoyance.

 

 

 

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Keeping geek notes for myself once in a while – forgive the lack of useful additional information for other folks.  If you have an interest or an expertise in these areas, happy to hear comments or thoughts….

 

Working in how to integrate Spring security, CXF, and OSGi…  (http://enikofactory.blogspot.com/2009/10/cxf-wss4j-spring-security-recipe.html)

Then interested in how to additively build up Spring security’s construct for interceptors…

 

Also see http://cxf.apache.org/distributed-osgi-reference.html

 

Additive:  Declarative Services, whiteboard pattern…..

 

Documentation – converting live docs on GitHub to other forms readily… (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2606606/jekyll-documentation-to-pdf-with-toc)

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I’m ready to get my next tattoo, or even set of tattoos.  Kid-themed, I think, where kids = bears, squids, and maybe CareBears.  That’s parental love, if I end up with the pain of inking for a CareBear.  Given that Callie just got her hair dyed blue (ends only!), I’m now thinking Squid Girl – anime series.

Tattoos for my kids.  Not exactly the kind of rebellion I imagined when I got my first at 19…  But somehow a good marker of my life and how it’s changed since then.

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After more than a year of being “the” person who had the knowledge of how to not only to build out a set of code, but then also integrate its JAR and configuration schtuff into our products, this week hit the ‘automate it’ tipping point. I’m “the” person because I have the right combination of access, knowledge, and just plain commitment to making sure that things happen.  That also makes it too easy for me to just do something, rather than knocking down any of those hurdles for someone else to handle these. That’s not only a risk to me that I’ll be the ‘stuckee’ for this task ongoing, but also of course is a risk to the project. If I’m not around, nothing happens on this tasker.  And because it requires knowledge, if I’m brain-addled for any reason, it’s too easy to make a mistake in configuration.

Enter automation, via an Ant script.  It’s simple, efficient, and lets me set up either a dev/test configuration, or a mechanism bundled up for distribution (e.g., without shipping out server certificates, cert passwords or any remaining log file output).  Spent probably 2 1/2 hours yesterday sum total, and then built out the last piece on my laptop this evening, just finishing out a sleepless night with a quick blip of code to help solve a problem for both me and my team. Integration in this morning, and booyah!  One button integration, which means less time checking/double-checking/triple-checking before shipping out a new capability.  Check the script into configuration management, and implicit knowledge share.  Share out my VM, and knock out another hurdle for access.  And, of course, the next person to touch the script will inevitably find some way they think it should be improved.  All I can say is: “Moose Turd Pie!”  Improve to your heart’s content!   (So long as it still works…)

It’s a sad statement on how much code I get to write from scratch that this gives me such satisfaction.  But a little bit of geek on is a good way to start the day.

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Savvy or slimy? Ordering flowers from Teleflora, there are options for standard, deluxe, and premium. Premium is of course the defaulted option, which I realized when I saw the bill in my cart. Removed the item and went back. Selected ‘standard’ that time. Taken again to the cart, and this time I have three buttons to let me toggle between standard, deluxe, and premium. No such buttons when they defaulted me to premium. By the way, if you select -premium- from the cart area and recalculate the total, you suddenly lose all buttons again and can only adjust the size by removing the item from the cart and starting over. Sorry, but it is worth a bit of headache to me to take $20 off of the bill. And now that I’ve recognized the tactic, I may choose another florist company the next time round.

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Excerpt from a conversation with CleverBot, a web application that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to chat back and forth.

Cleverbot: You want me to quest for a good film?

User: Quest? Sure!

Cleverbot: Yes. What is your quest.

User: My quest is to find a good idea for a mobile game.

Cleverbot: You are a female?

User: Yes.

Cleverbot: What do you look like?

User: Wow, that’s the stereotypical response online!

Cleverbot: Yes it is.

User: Ugh.

Cleverbot: ‘ugh’ is not a proper response.

User: Neither is ‘what do you look like’ when told I’m female.

 

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This weekend one of my teammates threw a birthday party, as she had turned 25.  25!  I think I was done playing rugby at 25.  I was done my college playing years, had done the club rugby thing for a year or two, and then got married and began planning a family.  I returned to rugby again last spring, having had our three kids and now being well past 25.  I wonder whether these young ladies will continue on and through, or whether they’ll take a temporary or worse, more permanent break from the sport.  One woman I talked with on Saturday, just perhaps hitting 30, feels as if her body doesn’t recover quickly enough from the abuse our sport deals out, and so she’s considering stepping away.  I told her I had dreams of rugby fields at night, that that’s what drew me back in, abuse or no.  (To be fair, she had a pretty tough injury season this go-round.)

Our coach is 58 (?!), I think, and still plays occasionally.  I’m not yet 40, though approaching it quickly, wondering how long I can keep going, and hoping it’s a good long time.  I’m daydreaming of throwing a birthday party this year with my rugger team, just to show them a number higher than 25, still out on the field, still making the tackles, still taking the hits.  Age, so far, has been a matter of needing to counteract slowness to recover with more vigourous preparation beforehand.  I’ve gotten faster and stronger through many sessions at the gym.  I’ve gone to all the pre-season practices to get to rugby readiness.  In March we’ll begin our spring season, and the not-yet 40 year old will be on the field with teammates literally young enough to be my children.  (I did graduate from Glen Burnie, after all…  some folks get a good jumpstart there on child rearing..)  And I’ll be kicking some tail, and showing ’em it can still be done, well past 25, well past 30, and keeping on rucking!

 

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Submitted for OSCON 2013, in what’s now become an annual tradition.  I attended in 2010, submitted briefs in 2011 and 2012, and now submit again in 2013.  I have the topic to bring it home: two, actually, both related to government FOSS, with a third idea in mind related to some innovations in our new architecture.  I also have, of course, the strong interest to be a visible female presenter at a technology conference.  Today’s sermon topic at church had to do with living big dreams, specifically those that are bigger than your largest life-bound items, which are tied to purposes put in place for you before you were even born.  I keep returning to themes in my life of Christian business, Christian women leaders, female technology leadership…  these appear to me to be directly in line with listening to talents and interests given, and using them to help show paths to other women so that they too might make use of their talents.  I am convinced that one could update Proverbs 31 to show that same woman providing for her family through programming.  I say with quite a bit of tongue in cheek that her “lamp does not go out at night” could be because much programming is done in the late evening hours.

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Rather than resolutions, I’m going to try a Ben Franklin-esque approach, adding new habits over the year. He built himself a list of 13 virtues, and then a cycle in which he concentrated on one per week. He kept a log which then let him hold himself accountable: each day in which he didn’t accomplish his virtue habit, he put in an X mark.  The goal, of course, was to have a week clear of X’s.  On week 1, he worked on habit 1.  On week 2, he logged how he did on habit 1, but really focused on habit 2.  The idea was that by concentrating on a particular habit and logging previous, you’d do well at your focused habit, and at least better than you were doing previously on your previous habits.  Rinse and repeat 4 times (4*13=52) during the year, and you’re making some real progress..

Not being _quite_ so formal here, in terms of keeping a log, but definitely trying an additive approach for habits on for size.  Thinking here the advantage, as opposed to New Year’s resolutions, is you’re adding targets iteratively, rather than having a really large set that you’re bound to fall over on early on.  Previous attempts to set New Year’s resolutions end up with 10 out of 13 failing within the first two months or so.  This, instead, lets me succeed a bit at a time, and also then know I get three more cycles.

– Eating more healthfully: Vegetables, consumption of alcohol
– Spend time with God: Bible-reading, prayer, …
– Organization – day timer system,…
– Spend more time with family – consistent in/out time for work

You’ll see we’re in the first week of the new year: I “cheated” and started early on eating more fruits and vegetables – started the week before.  With the minor scariness of having an apparent allergic reaction to a vegetarian pizza, things have gone swimmingly.  I’m in week 2, working on reading the Bible each night.  Chronological Bible in hand, doing a bit each evening.  So far, success – this one has proved challenging for me before to sustain, though – previous attempts to read through the Bible in a year have take 2 1/2 years or more.  I’m also trying out a new organization system in my Day Timer – counting this as a week 3 thing, as I’m not yet sure what the mechanics for my system are…  Uh, not doing so well on getting out of work on time lately – let’s make that a habit to tackle in week 4 or so..  🙂

Advantage here: I haven’t yet determined all 13 habits.  Observations on the way the year’s going can influence what habits get added in later weeks.  Agile self-improvement.