Archive for March, 2010
On a completely unrelated note to the previous post, today I learned the notion of suspended chords, which now enable me to play songs like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” on the guitar. In other news, I’ve also figured out how to quickly slide my hand up and down the fretboard while changing chord shapes, thanks to “Virginia Moon.” I have not, however, nailed the fingerpicking pattern on “Stop This Train” – that’s probably something that needs to wait until I get back to my guitar, the one that fits my tiny hands. I like this instrument. And it’s portable!
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Prompted by Debbie Chachra’s post in a similar vein.
Dear Mel-of-2000,
10 years (not quite – I’m a bit over a month shy) from now, you’re still alive – and you’re happy, and you’re not alone. And honestly, that’s all you really need to know.
That’s not enough for you? All right. You did always like more data.
So, here’s the thing: you don’t actually need this letter. I know you think you do; you cried yourself to sleep tonight because you’ve just learned what it’s like to mourn a dream – to take a future that you’ve come to love and let it go. Tonight you marked the IMSA acceptance packet with an “I regret to say that I will not attend” and left it on the kitchen table for your parents with a note saying that you’ve accepted their decision. And you dread having to tell all the teachers who’ve written and called and pleaded with your mom and dad on your behalf that it didn’t work, and you’re trying to figure out how to keep a smile on your face while the class is singing Happy Birthday, because tomorrow is the day you turn 14. You don’t know what’s going to happen now, and you are scared.
This is okay. This is normal. You’re a person; you have feelings. All those bursts of energy that explode out into math or reading marathons, sneaking science books into the bathroom in the middle of the night so you can learn more without being interrupted or getting in trouble for it – those are good. And the flip side still remains: despite your best attempts, that magnitude of intensity still equally applies to grief, terror, and rage. Don’t worry. Your control of that is good (not just for a 13-year-old – it would be impressive for anybody), and it is growing; you have blast doors strong enough to not hurt anyone except yourself.
Just know that someday you will also have to learn how to open them up again, because a large part of your power (yes, you have it) comes from the fierceness of your joy. Someday it will be safe to let that out; you will know when. Trust me on this – I know you trust nobody but yourself, but in a way, I am yourself. Just… older. Possibly a little incoherent to you right now. That’s okay.
I could tell you where you’re going to go to high school. I could tell you whether you did well, where you went to college, what you’re doing afterwards. But it’s much more fun to find these all out on your own (I know, you curse me now – you’ll expand this part of your vocabulary when you get to high school.) Here’s what I will say:
- You know that you are loved, and always have been; that’s why your family does what they do and says what they say. And you will find places where you are also understood. Spaces where people will know you and care about you. Yes, it’s going to feel weird. Get used to it. It’s wonderful.
- You’re a teacher. Get used to it. It’s wonderful.
- You can get tired. You’ll learn this one the hard way – multiple times. Get used to it, and take care of yourself as best you can anyway. Yeah, I’m still learning this.
- You’re going to learn about this word called “hacking.” You’re going to start making stuff and doing all these things you don’t yet have words or examples for. You’ll learn those words and wish that you could do them, and then, much later, you will realize that you already do. And guess what? You’re pretty good at it. (And by the way, it’s called “engineering.”)
- Your hearing is an asset, not a liability. Do you realize how fast you can read? Do you realize how quickly you can type? Keep saving up for that computer – once you get online, then… oh, your life is going to change. Overhearing conversations, seeing backchannels, being able to participate – it’s a lovely world, and you are very, very good at it. You’ll see.
- Improvisation. It’s not a bad thing. It’s going to serve you well. Get used to it.
- The crap you go through really actually does make you stronger. Seriously. Yeah, it’s still annoying to me too – but it is true. Get used to it. In a strange way, it’s wonderful.
- No, you don’t suck. Get used to it. It’s wonderful.
- Yes, you can change the world. Get used to it. It’s wonderful.
- You will not be alone.
I’m not sure if I’m used to the last one yet, but yes, it’s wonderful. Non-aloneness is a hard concept to understand, I realize; it’s like describing light as “the absence of dark.” But if darkness – or maybe, to be fair, dimness – is all you’ve ever known, then that’s the closest explanation you can get. I can’t claim you’ll never be lonely, because you will be. Everybody is sometimes. But I can honestly say that there are people out there who you’ll feel at home with. You just haven’t found these friends yet. You will start finding them very soon. You will keep finding them for the rest of your life. (So far, anyway.) And you’ll keep getting to know them better and better over many, many years, which is the best part.
And for the stuff you really, really want… keep working on it. It may take years. You may fail. You will learn things. You may be impulsive and impatient, but you can be persistent when it counts – and you’ll know when it counts. Being a stubborn git will sometimes work to your advantage. In the next decade, you will Do Things, and you will Be Happy. You won’t always take the easy road, but you will take the right one. Trust yourself more; you are smarter than you know. And you’ll grow up exactly as fast as you need to.
See you in 10 years.
–Mel
PS: If you could do me a favor – record your piano-playing, especially that lovely Impromptu you’ve been working on, because you are currently at the peak of your abilities in this domain, as far as the next decade is concerned. Oh, and… look up RSI, and be a little careful about typing, okay? Your future self thanks you.
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Brief thoughts, since hands are starting to get typing-painful and I should get to bed soon. Life-balance right this moment: I am bad at it. Things that could use a little more attention:
- Sitting still and typing for extended periods of time: not good for (1) hands or (2) most of the rest of me that isn’t getting any exercise. My heart rate elevates faster than it should when I am running; this is bad. I need to schedule in a daily walk – I think that since classes are now in session, getting myself to work from campus for part of the day should do the trick. Also, I need to get back into unknotting my muscles on a regular basis.
- Scheduling obligations past the trip I’m currently on – I need to figure out meetings and hang-out-with-friends times from April 10th (when I get back to Boston) to whenever-I-am-not-in-Boston any more. And block out time for less fun but more mandatory stuff, like doing taxes. (Yayyyyy.)
- Studying. Music, language, research methods, and reading scholarly papers in an efficient manner… I haven’t dived into them quite as much as I would like to, and I need to spend more time playing with this.
However, I’ve been doing pretty well on a few things I usually don’t do well with.
- Sleep! I’ve actually gotten it most of the past few nights! (There have been recent nights of anxious sleepless thinking, but once I started my grad school application, I slept like a baby. So that’s one way that I know it that was the right decision.)
- Food! I’ve been having it on a relatively consistent and normal-person basis, and it’s healthy stuff!
- Life! I’m actually doing things like (1) playing with tiny children and (2) having non-work conversations! Sometimes I even go outside!
Working through the muscles that are on the verge of being painful, and then sleeping.
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
It’s past 2am, so I’ve decided that:
- I’ve done enough POSSE stuff for one day.
- My presentation for tomorrow’s lecture is as good as it is ever going to be. I’m working with a class taught by Matt Jadud (POSSE ’09) and Darren Miller that will be spending the last 5 weeks of term learning how to contribute to Fedora – and we’re doing a lot of work in scaffolding them slowly into the community so that they will (1) be successful (we may have failures, but they will be successfully educational failures if so!) and (2) not completely overwhelm people with newbies are here and demand HELP NOW! but rather be an enthusiastic and encouraging productivity boost to the teams they join. And based on what I’ve seen so far, I’ve got high hopes.
- I’m going to worry about burning 40 copies of live media… later. (Dear lazyweb: there isn’t a F13 live image that fits on a CD, is there? The tricky part is that we’d like them to have a live image of something more recent than F12 so they can preview things but not have to install to hard disk… and I don’t have a DVD burner, just a CD burner and CDs. I guess I could burn them the KDE spin.)
My hands now hurt from typing, so I’m going to go to sleep. More on this “Fedora in the classroom” thing later; I’m just thinking out loud right now so people know what’s on my mind in this respect – I’ll write more about our approach later, once class is over.
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | fedora | 2 Comments »
Via John Poelstra’s blog, a lovely poem. Excerpt:
We will catch our own breaths
with the thrill
of it all
or we will fall
with a thud
to the hard, hard ground.
I have news for you:
it was there anyway.
It seems appropriate, given what I’ve been thinking about recently.
In other news, I’ve started.
That’s my grad school application (or what will become my application, rather), such as it is, right this moment. This will evolve (a lot – as you can see from its current horrible horrible messy state) and I will be refining it, taking it out to people for feedback, getting ideas, help, commentary, patches… it’s not a release, it’s not ready for public consumption in the “it is a useful artifact to someone now and is intended to be read and understood!” sense, but I’m doing this out in the open, and I will continue to do so, and… well, there.
I know that it is buggy and incomprehensible right now; right now I’m trying to get my own thinking straight, and patches and comments are welcome but may not necessarily be accepted at the moment because I’m seriously in a giant state of flux with regards to all of this right now and do not even vaguely know what the heck I’m doing. (This is an overstatement, yes. I’m doing something that I’m scared of, so I am flailing around a lot. When I calm down I’ll realize I actually do have quite a bit in mind already, and that it is probably not all that bad.)
I… am typing too much. This is a sign that I am anxious and should leave off on this and go to bed. Yes. That sounds like a good idea.
But I began!
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
This post is about a lot of things simultaneously, so if you think you know what I’m talking about, you’re probably half-right but also missing a bunch of stuff. It’s also deliberately cryptic because that’s the way it came out; maybe someday I’ll explain it more, but right now, I’ve got to go to sleep.
Long talk with Matt Jadud tonight. There is a lot that’s going through my head right now that would never be adequately summed up in words, except:
Sometimes it’s hard to do the things you have to do.
Not “have to do” as in “external requirements compel me.” Have to do as in… the world does not feel right otherwise. This is the path you are supposed to walk on, right now, with your life. Pyramid hunting, in a way. I don’t know if I’ll ever find mine, and if I do, I don’t know if I’ll get to go home afterwards, or where that is.
I have known this for a long time, and I’m afraid; and I will be afraid, and it will be hard, and at many points along the way it will be lonely. There’s nothing glorious or glamorous about it. But the alternative is killing part of me that I don’t want to kill, even if the tradeoff would be an easier and more comfortable life. It’s harder, though, when you can see the sort of the thing you might be giving up. But this does not excuse me from doing the things I have to do.
It also does not excuse me from doing the things I am obligated to do right now. So I will go upstairs, set my alarm for 6 hours from now (it will be an unusually restful night) and then wake up and Do Things. Have a long list. Will be functional.
If this really is part of my dream, I’ll come back someday.
Saturday, March 27th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I’ve had this blog since I was 18; the first post is from the beginning of my second year of college. In some ways, that was a long time ago; in other ways, it wasn’t. It’s been a bit over 5.5 years, though, and I’m feeling reflective today.
I’ll often say I blog for an audience of one, which is my future self. And sometimes when I’m searching back through old posts for a link or a note I think I’ve put there, I’m struck by a phrase and think “ah, yes – and the future self I meant to write this for has turned out to be me, right now.” Here’s what caught me today.
First, something that’s still very much true.
I’m not sure where people get the idea I’m organized. I’m really a massive entropy-spreading mess who’s developed a lot of coping mechanisms out of sheer desperation. –October 2, 2006
And then (with a spelling correction on “believe”) something that has indeed been confirmed (in my experience) to be true – although I never dreamed that things like TOSW and opensource.com would exist back then. I thought I was just talking crazy.
I believe many unix/open-source development tenets are useful in engineering and business in general, namely small is beautiful, choose portability over efficiency, and use leverage to your advantage (meaning “don’t reinvent the wheel” and “build on / stitch together the work of others whenever possible”). –August 16, 2006
From right around the time I first met Greg and was told that what I was doing – what I’d been doing unconsciously for years, all the while feeling guilty that I wasn’t spending all my time doing the “hardcore engineering” that I was supposed to – was community capacity-building:
Skills management. It is a problem. We are all learning how to solve it. This is a tough question, because conventional management training (I may be speaking wrongly, as I have little formal business training and have not read every book on the subject – but I’ve read a lot and asked around a lot) seems to focus on how to run things when you do have a chain of hired command. When you can’t order people to do things, you have to use other ways of getting things beyond your individual capacity to happen. How do you do that? –October 9, 2008
And something that still terrifies me to this day, and I think always will.
It scares me to be uncrippling myself. It is the right thing, and I’m much more… me, that way. Have more capacity to do things, good things, be a better person. And it’s dangerous for me to be that better person, because maybe because of something that I’ve unlocked today, it gives me the freedom and the ability to lash out and hurt someone badly. And I’d rather crush myself than have that happen. But I’d rather take the risk that I may have to do that later than to definitely suffocate myself, slowly, right now. –December 20, 2008
It’s nice to see how much I’ve grown and changed (or haven’t) over the past few years, and how much more infinitely far I have to go.
Friday, March 26th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Well, this is interesting. I never thought I’d be an anchor. Temporary Stability In Some Aspects Of Your Life: It Happens To Everyone. Now if only I could ground myself a little more.
Time for a couple hours of sleep, then up and at ‘em early to do work, overdue prep for my SLOBs meeting, more work, SLOBs meeting, work. I have been quite remiss at transcribing the in-person notes from conversations I’ve been having lately – they’re all in my notebook, just not typed. Perhaps I actually ought to get a tablet next time.
Also, a week nearly devoid of physical exertion is… not a good idea. I was tired and out of breath far earlier than usual when I went out today – perhaps I should stop working while lying in bed, and do things like (1) stand up and (2) move around and (3) stretch and (4) run (er, jog. well, really, walk). Why do I need a corporeal body, once again?
Oh, right – typing and dancing. Right. Okay.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Random thoughts from the day, in no particular order.
Fighting feels good. For the right thing, that is. Blaze, dammit, blaze.
John Mayer + guitar = wow. People can do some absolutely beautiful things with this instrument – my knowledge of the universe of how guitars can sound is very small (and extremely generic), but growing. Now if only Matt’s guitar were not quite so big, and better adjusted so the strings weren’t up so high above the frets – but hey, I’ll work with what I’ve got.
Sometimes, the only thing you can do is to sit and listen, and to just be there. And sometimes that helps, and sometimes that has to be enough.
I have a hard time convincing people that I’m very introverted (I’m basically a dead-on INFP). That’s probably because they don’t see me decompressing from the peopleness, since that usually happens sometime around the 2-4AM mark. Hyperactivity and enthusiasm cover up a lot, and then I come home and turn off the computer and (when I have the time to let myself feel this way) I’m tired and I’m shaking and I take a while to bring myself down from it – I am getting better at this over time, though. And it’s not bad – it means I’ve done something worth doing that actually taps me deep and makes me tired, and that’s wonderful. And I recharge, and I monitor – because I have seen past the other edge of burnout, years ago, and I’m not going there again. Life is too marvelous to do that; I will take care of myself.
Sometimes, Calvin and Hobbes comics just make me happy.
I have fallen so far off the “running” bandwagon that I need to crawl back on the walking/jogging one before I even think about going for full-out sprints, unless I want to do Bad Things to my ankles. There is sunshine here! I should enjoy it – I ought to go enjoy it for a period of time every day. With sneakers on. Moving at a brisk pace. Yes.
Wanderlust and impulsiveness and instability and recklessness have given me a lot of freedom – that’s a flip side as well. I am a grown-up in a lot of ways that count, but in other ways I’ve never had to take on much of what adulthood usually brings, so there’s this strange mix of naivety mingled with pockets of (what I hope is) maturity. Maybe it will always be like this – maybe people grow up in patches and pieces instead of in a steady even gradient. It feels like I’ve gotten lots of patches in the past month, and I’m slowing down a little bit as they all integrate back up into something coherent – at which point the next sprint will begin. The more I do this, the more fascinating it becomes, this building of a life.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
It’s Ada Lovelace Day. Well, for another few minutes in my timezone, anyway. Today is “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science,” and… well, to be honest, I wasn’t going to write about it at all originally. There’s so much other (completely unrelated) stuff going on. Sometimes I don’t like reminding people that I’m female. I’m busy; sometimes I get tired.
But I was talking with Matt today and something came out, and I saw other people blogging, and I thought… well, all right. It won’t be much of a post, and I’m not sending it to any Planets so nobody’s really going to see it, but when have I ever stopped a braindump? So.
Women in technology and science. I suppose I am one. I became one because I liked technology and science, not because I wanted to be a fearless crusader for the success potential of my gender or anything like that. Other women in technology and science? I guess I came across them in a couple book chapters in history every so often (always the same ones). I didn’t really see what the big deal was. I was a geek, I was a nerd, I was the little genderless imp that ran around, smaller and younger than my friends, 2N+1th wheel, always stuck with a book or (later) a computer; I never stopped running because if I did I wouldn’t get where I was going, even if I was never quite sure where that was going to be.
And that was it. I was a hacker. I could be a girl, or I could be a hacker, and I was a hacker. It was not a sacrifice; it’s simply what I was. And if you asked me when I was in high school what I was most afraid of, I would probably quote Eowyn to you: “A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” It’s still an accurate response, and how much of my recklessness and wanderlust and instability was amplified over the years in an unconscious attempt to become incapable of being tied down like so many people – mostly women – that I’d seen, I couldn’t tell you. If freedom meant rootlessness, perpetual restlessness, never being home or having someone to come back to, then… that was the tradeoff I would make. And it still is.
But in the past 6, almost 7 years now, there have been women who have stood as silent (well, usually not-so-silent) living counterexamples of this. I remember the shock I felt during my first year of college when I discovered my female (engineering) professors had families. When I visited their houses and met their families and saw how they lived – with great intensity, doing what they loved, and with the people that they loved. It was the makings of another kind of life. I saw it again when I began having older friends outside of school, people within a decade of my own age, but with the same thing; they didn’t have to run away from anything else in order to run towards the work they loved. And now I see it basically every day online, in the blogs and messages and posts and channel chatter of the women who I know in open source, and with my many Olin friends no matter where they are (there are a couple benefits to going to a nearly 50/50 gender ratio engineering school I never thought about when I went in).
I’m fortunate to have the privilege to say this, but for me, it’s never been a question that women could be great at science and technology. Of course she can. Of course she will – perhaps if she is lucky, like myself, to be born with enough privilege to be allowed to love doing science and technology, and lucky to have enough freedom to make a run for it. It was just a matter of how much that was going to cost, and what else you could have other than a driving passion for Making Things Work, and a life entirely consumed by just that calling.
Turns out that you can have a lot. It isn’t easy, but you can be a woman and a human being and a hacker, and be even more and better at all three of them than if you tackled only one of those alone. I can’t claim to have mastered being any of those yet (they’re listed in reverse order of my comfort with them, actually) – but I have models for this now, and have for the past several years. It’s not that they stand quietly in my peripheral vision (standing is boring), but that they run like blazing meteors across it, in and out, shining with brilliant intensity and leaving in their wake a searing trail that says and I am doing what I love. Their lives aren’t easy, but there’s a lot of richness to them, and they are doing what they love, and I cannot deny that.
I will not call out names here, because I would forget people, and also because there are too many to be listed. But the people who inspire me are not the women in the history books or the glossy posters telling me that GIRLS CAN DO MATH! (I mean, I knew that, really.) The women in science and technology who inspire me are my friends, and in a sense what they are teaching me with their lives is that people who do math can be girls (and for that matter, people).
I will do the work I love, because I can’t do otherwise. But maybe there is more than that – not more instead of that, but more in addition to that, in a way that doesn’t steal from the work I feel I’m called to do, but adds to it. And the women who show me that inspire me to work – and live.
Thank you.
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
