Archive for August, 2009
In 1.5 hours, it will be September. September will be interesting.
Andrew and I have issued mutual challenges to each other. I find it exceedingly difficult to rest, logging between 3-5 hours of reluctant, intermittent, and often discontinuous sleep per night on average; consequently, every day this month I must get 6 consecutive hours of sleep (under extenuating circumstances, 2 stints of 3 hours each may be accepted). He has a difficult time asking for help; consequently, every day this month, he has to write a letter to somebody asking for something (it may be as simple as advice). We will keep each other accountable with daily emails.
We’re not quite sure what this will do to us. Yay, friends! They help you be educationally masochistic!
Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
I’ve been amiss in posting (and in keeping up with email) because of a recent life development that’s rendered me useless with happiness for large swaths of time this weekend. Transparency fail! To remedy this, see post title.
It’s taking every bit of self-control I can muster to not immediately jump in and sign the offer (which was my first impulse, before even reading anything else that came with it), but – this is Important. And I want to make sure I Understand Things. And I want to Do This Properly.
Not actually knowing what “properly” means, I spent the weekend reading books, websites, poring over documents, doing math, and (most of all, and most importantly) on the phone with a wonderfully supportive network of friends and mentors. Thought process: “If I were smart, how would I do this? I do not know, because I am clueless on this topic. But these people are smart about this! I will ask them!”
I had no way of figuring out what questions to ask or what was important to think about or look at, so I asked people to walk me through their thought processes, and listened to them talking with each other (watching two people who Know Stuff talk about a thing is sometimes much more efficient than asking n00b questions right from the start, because you can see the mental model of Knowing Stuff take shape between them as they talk). And slowly, somewhere in the midst of conflicting advice and wildly different perspectives and generally awesome chaos – my own understanding of this started to form.
I’ve logged close to a dozen hours on the phone for this so far – this is unthinkable, for someone who will (in moments of suboptimality) spend 5 hours online to avoid a 5-minute phone call – so that gives some sort of indication of the Magnitude Of Awesome I attribute to this. And now I think I know what I don’t know, which means that now – after I take a moment to pull it all together – I can ask. Yep, I’ll be documenting this process as soon as I get through it myself.
Tremendous gratitude to everyone who’s gotten me this far. You folks rock.
More later.
Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
My brother showed up in New York with an immense Ziploc bag stuffed with individual vitamin packets.
“From Mom.”
“I’m supposed to eat one of these six-pill thingies per day?”
“One morning, one evening, and this bottle of… pro-fla-va-nol.”
“That’s 16 pills. Per day. What… how much did this cost?”
“We probably don’t want to know.”
A decent portion of my family’s generation-above-me is crossing, will soon cross, or have just crossed the 50-year mark. Consequently, the’ kitchen Pill Basket has gone from containing a cheap multivitamin (for the grown-ups, never eaten) and dinosaur-shaped chewables (for us kids, eaten only when forced to) to an overflowing collection of fish oil and calcium and
individual-letters-of-the-alphabet jars and a bunch of things labeled in Chinese that makes no sense to me. (I can parse the individual words, but figuring out that “Capital City In Memory Of My Mother Loquat Syrup” is for cough reduction is another story entirely.)
Little cups of aloe vera, pomegranate, and acai juice are being sipped from bottles in the fridge. And if it’s good for your parents, it must be good for you – and so I now take vitamins that probably cost more than what I spend on groceries. (If Mom keeps giving it to me, I will keep eating it. I am a good child.) For the record: pomegranate and acai are delicious, aloe vera tastes like hydrogen peroxide smells, and glucosamine reminds me of fermented Gatorade (that’s not a good thing).
This didn’t start happening at any particular clear time. Godparents, uncles, aunts, parents, etc. turned 50. We had the usual birthday hullabaloo, both remote (cards from my grandmother, phone calls from my parents’ siblings, emails from the kids – generational communications differences nicely exemplified) and local (red clothing, noodles for dinner). Life seemingly proceeded as usual.
Then you start to notice that words like “free radicals” and “omega 3 fatty acids” come up a lot more often in conversation than they did a few years back. And that their morning routine has changed from running out the door to work sans breakfast to sitting down with oatmeal with a prominent “may lower your cholesterol!” label on the package. And that when they offer foods to you (we’re a Chinese family, so we offer each other food a lot) they inevitably end their description with “…and it’s full of antioxidants!”
Someday, I’m told, I will appreciate the taste of bittermelon (when more of my taste buds die). Someday I will appreciate the quiet of the (boring) suburbs, the (agonizingly) slow pace of a casual park stroll, the benefits of a (time-wasting) long nap. Someday I’ll grow tired of (WOOOO!) travel and no longer be able to work (WOOOO!) 20-hour stretches on a nearly-daily basis followed by downing two double cheeseburgers and a 12-scoop milkshake without blinking. It’s interesting to see how my parents’ generation navigates getting older compared to what my grandparents did; more Western medications and treatments, less sheer masochism; more “research proves…” emails forwarded without checking snopes.com first, thinking of winding down (in the next 10-20 years) a long, stable career path for a retirement that’s full of relaxation and Not Work.
I doubt my path will be the same. Retirement? Working for joy instead of joy and money, maybe. I’ll save up. But I’ll check Snopes first before freaking out about microwaved water causing cancer, though I’m sure my generations’ kids will find something to groan about in turn. Something to think about someday. Meanwhile, my grandparents and parents sail through seniorhood above me, and my cousins (I’m the oldest of 14) sprint through childhood below me, and I set up computers and serve as online shopping proxy and teach bike-riding and help edit college essays and enjoy the beta release of my adulthood. (You ship your alpha at 18 and spend the next 5 years bug-squashing so things run with a semblance of stability.)
Time to find that packet of the morning’s vitamins.
Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Home. Exhausted. Happy.
Going to bed now. Dealing with life in the morning.
Friday, August 28th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
It’s been a hectic week. I’m slipping on a bunch of things right now and need to clear my head so I can get a jump on them. This is for the head-clearing.
The day begins when you wake up. Tuesday started with a lazy hour – I’d been up working ’till 5am the night before (I, uh, sometimes hyperfocus and lose track of time) and so I started Tuesday with a long, slow breakfast and a book, stretched out in the sun on a bare mattress on the floor.
Instead of eating lunch that day, I grabbed Abelian Newspaper*, rode to U-Haul, chucked my bike in the back of a gigantic white pickup, and drove (gingerly, at half the speed of normal traffic) through the tunnels to East Boston to move out of my apartment. It was like navigating a very small and agile whale through a 2nd grader’s Marbleworks contraption. Boston: Where Streets Are Not Made For People (TM).
*what’s black and grey and commutes?
They had, of course, decided to do utility work on the street directly outside my door that day. This made moving furniture (with help from Lincoln) lots of fun! (Discovery: when all else fails, dragging cheap particleboard furniture across a litter-ridden sidewalk isn’t as bad for the furniture as one might think, so long as you are not concerned much with cosmetics.) I hauled the load to Newton to discover that (1) everyone was out of the house and (2) I had no key. I was (and am) out of shape, and if I were to wear boots and a coat and put all sorts of electronics in my pocket, clip keys on my belt, and jump into a river and emerge sopping wet (it, uh, tests the durability of the electronics), my bed would still weigh more than me. I looked at the pile in the truck and pondered for a bit.
20 minutes later, I was back on the road blasting classical music from the windows of a now-empty pickup truck. Behind me, my aunt’s garage now held an L-shaped desk, two bookshelves, mattress, and a giant wooden bed with drawers. Physics: It Works. (I later learned at dinner that it had taken 5 people to move the bed inside the house.)
Marketing meeting, some more work, and then… it was time to go and retrieve Sondy’s bike, which had a frozen lock down at the Longwood T stop. Previous attempts to cajole the lock to release (force and WD-40) had been fruitless. This time, I decided to use something different: threats.
Setting: The Longwood T stop, rush hour. Commuters mill around the platform. A large white pickup drives up, something rattling around in the bed. It is a GIANT BOLT CUTTER. In clear view of the frozen lock, I place the bolt cutter on the ground and stare at the bike meaningfully. Completely go to town with WD-40. I brace my foot inside the lock (now thoroughly dripping with solvent) and pull.
The lock creaks free. Commuters look at me strangely as I wheel the bike, GIANT BOLT CUTTER awkwardly slung over my shoulder, WD-40 can in pocket, to the truck.
More work. Bike to dinner, dinner, bike from dinner, head to the hotel where my family’s staying, so I can spend my last night with them (we’re all going to the airport in the morning anyway). 2 beds and a roll-out, 6 people. I get the roll-out. I subsequently learn, while everyone else sleeps, that washing t-shirts in the sink works marginally well, and washing blue jeans in the bathtub is a giant pain, and if I’m improvising laundry on the road I should Wear Pants That Dry Faster. Also, hair dryer != clothes dryer, because apparently this was not obvious to me. (Hey, it was an experiment.)
Sleep sometime between 1:30 and 2am. Wake up at 4am to say goodbye to first plane batch. Wake up at 6am to say goodbye to second plane batch. Wake up at 7am and check out and eat breakfast and go off to the airport. Proceed to sit on plane seat clearly made for someone a head shorter, which renders further sleep impossible. (Am too excited to sleep anyway, and don’t really need to.)
And then… Raleigh! 3 of my 4 months as a Red Hat intern have involved a trip to Raleigh (June was the exception; I went to DC and NYC instead) and believe me I am not complaining. Every single time I’ve been here, my mind has been utterly blown – would that I could sit next to Greg or wander into Brand or talk with Marketing or discover Legal’s bookshelf every day. (Westford is awesome too – it’s just so far! Mostly because I have no car. However, the shuttlebus ensures I don’t stay past 10pm every single day, which is probably Very Good.)
Okay. I think I’m decompressed now, and I can sleep, and then wake up and plow through slippage. Insights from the conversations I’ve had in the past two days aren’t yet expressible in coherent English sentences; I’m working on that (and need to work on that in general, really; I need to practice live debate).
Right now, though, I can say this: I am incredibly fortunate. I am incredibly blessed. I hope to someday have the chance to pay this forward. This gratitude has been a common theme in my life lately, and I am doubly thankful for that – that this is life now, all these awesome things, and not just Isolated Really Cool Experiences – and I hope I never forget it.
Another thing I’m thankful for: North Carolina BBQ. OH MAN. Also today: fried {okra, green tomatoes}. Ahh. I still love Boston, but at some point, I need to spend more than a week here.
Okay, it’s bedtime.
Friday, August 28th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Via Kevin Mark: Music may enhance hearing. (No, really?) If only I could get piano lessons counted as aural rehabilitation therapy.
What do governance, feminism, and open source communities have in common? A great essay on Jo Freeman’s classic 1907 article, The Tyranny of Structurelessness.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to manage having a family. I already get discombobulated when my cousins (whom I love dearly) visit town – if I’m in a flow state, wrenching myself out of that is like trying to stop… trying not to exaggerate here, so perhaps a fast bike going down a steep hill. (I’m talking me on my normal ol’ bike here, not Lance Armstrong. Not that fast.)
It’s physically possible. You almost certainly won’t die. You probably won’t get too seriously injured. But it is hard, and it will hurt (you, the cyclist, and the bike), and you won’t be able to really control where you end up. It feels better to let the cyclist continue hurtling down the hill, speeding through the wind, gloriously swift.
I can’t let myself start on work I might get really into if I might be interrupted by family. Which means that they’re almost mutually incompatible – when I’m in maker mode, I need at least half a day to be in maker mode, and I can’t break out for family stuff in the middle of it or I’ll lose everything; when I hang out with family (less so with friends, because they tend to share my work interests and I can get into productive flow state with them) I have to accept that I won’t be productive for many hours. And I have a hard time accepting that, and I have a hard time quelling my impatience when I feel the call to Do Things! in the middle of being with people whom I really, truly, do adore and love and enjoy spending time with.
It isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. I’m not convinced my two worlds need to be immiscible, but that’s what it feels like right now. And I don’t want to ever, ever, ever resent having to interrupt a paper to pick up a sick child, or skip half a seminar for someone’s basketball game, or… basically, feel trapped. If I do those things, it should be out of love. Doesn’t mean it won’t be hard. Does mean I won’t resent it. Not sure how that transformation happens.
Sometimes I’m not particularly proud of how I choose to handle things; this is one of them. I’m writing this out in an attempt to understand the way I’m thinking – not to change it yet, just to turn it around in my head and see it better. That’s the first step to changing something; understanding it.
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
What’s your school up to? Wikipage creation help and documentation ninjahood available upon request – I’m always happy to help folks showcase their school’s work in open source.
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | olin, teaching open source | No Comments »
…and totally blow my mind (and, when I recover, rock my world) simply by doing so.
http://www.hackabilityblog.com – I view ability hacking like any other kind of hacking – you’ve got an itch, you scratch it. One of my itches happens to be “I can’t hear stuff.” Liz uses crutches. FOR AWESOME. Why this is my kind of blog:
Does this funny way I thought of to use a spatula “count” as a hack?
Hell yeah! We want a range of hacks from “handy way to use a piece of string” to “blueprints and CAD files for jetpack”.
Why should I give away my ideas for free?
Because your invention will reach more people. It will help empower people with disabilities as part of the independent living movement. It might help free someone from life in an institution, or from poverty and dependence on others to provide them with overpriced mobility equipment that no one will fix. Ideally, your plans and how-tos will be translated into many languages, and will spread to many different countries and populations. The DIY hack ability approach might turn out to be good for people with disabilities in the developing world.
Hoo-yah. I’ll be writing up my hacks here for sure.
Geek women who give fashion advice to other geek women. I feel silly admitting this, but sometimes, not knowing how to dress in anything other than a t-shirt and jeans and broken-in sneakers does bother me. This happens very rarely, usually around the time of occasions where I am not allowed to wear my usual hacker uniform and find myself completely at a loss. Since it seems like dressing-up occasions are unavoidable if I wish to consume my family’s holiday dinners, see friends get married, etc., I’d like dressing-up occasions to be times of joy, not pain. (Or at least not of extreme pain; I’d settle for that.)
I look forward to (once again) tackling this problem with my female hacker buddies (and any guy hacker buddies who like staying up to date with womens’ fashion – though I certainly do not). I look forward to this in the same way I look forward to being vaccinated; not getting measles is good, and being able to comfortably and appropriately attend social functions is also good, and I might as well try to have as much fun as possible in the process.
Amusing moment: at the end of POSSE, when Red Hat t-shirts were being distributed, I reached the pile and discovered a choice between XL and XXL shirts. There is a picture somewhere of me attempting to wear an XL shirt; this picture could be captioned “badly-cut tunic” as the shirt reaches my knees… cutting down (X)XL shirts to sizes that fit me is possibly the strongest motivation I will ever have to learn how to sew.
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
I will take a moment (again) today to give thanks for being surrounded (now and in the past) by people I want to grow up to… I’ve previously used the word “become” here, but that belies the subtle connotation I’m trying to express – that the reason I admire them so much is because they have become themselves, and they make me want to grow up to become myself. The best version of myself. And help others do the same. And in that sense, become “like them,” by being quite different from them.
This is something I write about frequently, because I haven’t found the right words to express it yet. Ayn Rand caught part of it in The Fountainhead, in the parts where she describes how Roarke’s presence spurs his workers on to do their best – particularly the scenes where Roarke and Steve Mallory and Mike and Dominique are working on the Stoddard temple; there’s also a quote by Marianne Williamson about how “as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
Thanks to my teachers for granting me permission in a way that has let me never have to ask for it again.
I will also take a moment to laugh at online translate-bots and polite existential angst.
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Actually from last night; actual posting was interrupted by small child.
Via Becky Scholl Hayden:
The Transcriptional Repressor DEC2 Regulates Sleep Length in Mammals: We have identified a mutation in a transcriptional repressor (hDEC2-P385R) that is associated with a human short sleep phenotype. Activity profiles and sleep recordings of transgenic mice carrying this mutation showed increased vigilance time and less sleep time than control mice in a zeitgeber time– and sleep deprivation–dependent manner.
This completely made my day; I think we both had a good laugh over it.
Completely unrelated topic: I’ve missed a house stuffed to the gills with people. Huge dinners with mishmashes of pitched-in food, overlapping instrumentation (simultaneously playing piano and teaching guitar), sitting on the sofa with two cousins giggling wildly as they paint my toenails alternating red and glitter-green. (It makes them happy, and I know where the bottle of non-acetone remove-this-stuff-zomg-now solution is.)
Completely unrelated topic: Matt Ritter, you are awesome. I got back from the Freedom Trail today to find my inbox utterly stuffed with marketing resources. (Matt is my roommate and works for an urban sustainability venture capital firm.)
Completely unrelated topic: Putt-Putt Enters The Race has just demonstrated that my 5-year-old cousin has better hand-mouse-eye coordination than I do. I’ve also been told that I am “okay on the wii, for a grown-up.” (Hey, I fell off the edge of Rainbow Road far less frequently the 2nd time I played it. Give me some credit, guys. I’m learning this.)
Ok, lunch over; deliverable-crankin’ time… and where is that nail-polish remover?
Monday, August 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
