Archive for May, 2010
Shameless linkspam: Jason Hibbets pinged me on IRC today with a link that I immediately went “ooo, shiny!” on – opensource.com interviewing Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields about open source community leadership.
Some tidbits:
“I firmly believe that open source principles can help combat what I see as a growing problem: local apathy. Apathy comes from feeling you don’t have a voice or a way of making change, while open source makes the opposite possible… two important and connected tenets of the open source way are (1) not letting the possibility of failure get in the way of doing something potentially great, and (2) recognizing when you’ve failed so you can learn from it and move on.”
Paul calls out the Fedora QA, Translation, Docs, and Marketing teams, among others.
“…these teams all strive to grow participants into leaders. When we find a process that is not easy to understand for a new participant, we encourage that person to help us explore, document, and solve the problem. The whole team learns something in the process, the new member feels a sense of belonging with the team, and is empowered to drive further improvements. This process also effectively accelerates the new member’s movement from novice to expert, and we actively encourage members to become teachers themselves. The members that naturally gravitate to more responsibility, involvement, and communication with other Fedora Project Teams effectively identify themselves as future leaders.”
In general, (1) yay Paul! and (2) good stuff. The full article is on opensource.com at http://opensource.com/life/10/5/paul-frields-leadership-trust-fail-early-and-often, just in time for the release of Fedora 13.
(This has been your shameless linkspam of the day. Carry on.)
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | fedora | No Comments »
I woke up this morning, read email, and went “Ohhhh boy. I have so much to do and I am so behind.”
My old habit of dealing with this is randomly flailing in the direction of any sort of productive task, because I used to be able to power through everything by running like a maniac. However, the list of possible things I can do has since exceeded even my capacity to worksprint. Therefore, I am instead trying to remember the difference between “urgent” and “important” (thanks, Greg), and so with that in mind here is my Crisp List O’ Deliverables[0] for the morning. It’s 9am as I type this and I’ve just finished breakfast – my plane out of California leaves a bit past 9pm.
- Expense reports for Q1
- Finish everything related to the Fedora Scholarship
- Finish all Marketing deliverables for Fedora 13
…at which point I will come back to the house, eat lunch, read a book[1] and breathe a bit, and figure out what to do with POSSE, and what else remains on my plate. I know one of the things is formally transitioning Marketing leadership over, but I want to complete all our F13 deliverables for Marketing before that happens, so… there is a deadline.
I say “come back to the house” because I have decided that Huntington Beach Pier, which is within walking distance of the couch I slept on last night, will be a lovely place to spend the morning knocking off those three things.
I am off.
[0] I sorta halfway finished all of these over Friday and in bits throughout the weekend, so it’s really powering through the last 20-30% for each task that actually needs to get done. I need to work on Finishing Things.
[1] Turns out my aunt has this book on investing that looks interesting, so I reckon I’ll take a few minutes and zoom through that while I finish the leftover kare-kare.
Monday, May 24th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I just sent this email to the Sugar on a Stick mailing list and am too tired to make it sound less like an email and more like a blog post, yet thought people should read it and see what we’re up to in preparation for the impending Tuesday release of this Fedora spin.
With the impending Tuesday release of SoaS v.3 Mirabelle, and one of the goals of the release to make the project more sustainable (in part by making it easier for new contributors to get involved), we figured that a contributor portal would be a good idea.
Behold the draft: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_Pagerevision (with many photo thanks to Mike Lee!)
The idea is that http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/ will be the main “shiny” user page for those who simply want to learn about the
project, download the image, and use it – and that the wiki page at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick will be replaced by this
page revision at the end of tomorrow (Monday) and serve as the main contributors portal, with the two referring to each other.
You may notice that four stubs remain:
* http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_deployment_process
* http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_release_process
* http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/How_to_fix_an_Activity_bug
* http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/How_to_fix_a_sugar-core_bug
Pointers to resources and/or help filling these out is super-welcome, as is feedback on the idea as a whole. I’ll be looking at feedback and
making the merge when I’m out work tomorrow night; we can of course make edits after that (it is a wiki, after all) but it would be nice
to have something shiny-looking and shippable when the release goes out.
PS: As a reminder, we have our SoaS v.3 “how did we do?” review meeting on Tuesday, June 1st, in #sugar-meeting at 1900 UTC.
Monday, May 24th, 2010 | fedora, soas, sugar, teaching open source | No Comments »
There are ads for cholesterol-lowering medications that say something like “there are two sources of cholesterol: family and food.” In my case, the two usually go together. It has been a while since I was in a house overstuffed with people eating massive quantities of leftovers from disposable plates. Conversations in a mix of three different languages (only one of which I really understand) are flying around, and multiple cousins are coaching Ian on how to say “thank you” in Mandarin (谢谢). The kids are coming down the stairs in their pajamas, we had leftover wedding cake (lemon-flavored – no chocolate left, alas) and… yeah. I miss this too.
For lunch, 6-ee (my aunt June, the 6th sister of my mom) and I went out to Goldilocks and had kare-kare, dinuguan, and halo-halo. Next door was a Filipino grocery, where I picked up little bags of atsuete (for use in huana miki) and spice mixes for some of my favorite dishes – sinigang (sa sampalok – way better than guava for this, in my opinion), kaldereta, more kare-kare, palabok. You can’t find this stuff in Boston, and I’m guessing it’ll be similarly impossible to find in Raleigh, so now I have my little bag o’ comfort food (I can make lugaw anytime, though century eggs are hard to get).
I played with the mandolin for a while – I’ve learned a reasonable number of chords now and can pick my way through “Take Five” and “Lullaby of Birdland” (yes, I like jazz) and in general feel reasonably comfortable on the fingerboard although I haven’t yet learned which notes go with what spots on the fingerboard.
My family is also pretty much the only place where I’m actually surrounded by women. I went to a magnet math and science school, studied engineering, work in the software industry… pretty much all my best friends are guys, and I’ve picked up a lot of habits from them. “You know,” my female relatives will constantly remind me, “you are a girl.” And yet I’m always surprised when I realize how much stuff other women bring with them when they travel – face wipes and makeup and three different kinds of soap and lotion and a jar of “dry scalp treatment” goop - I… bring toothpaste.
Or how much effort goes into outfit selection, which I am still not quite trusted to do despite being ordered to have my aunt Lynne May and my cousin Melanie select my wedding outfit – which they did – my mother brought a backup dress and backup shoes for me, and my aunt June brought two backup shirts. (“I’m not that bad, am I?” I moaned, to which they gave me The Look.) Turns out I had to use a backup shirt anyhow, since the original shirt selection was white, which is a color of mourning in Chinese culture, and… eh. Well. I wore pants, so it’s all good.
Anyway, it’s a rare thing for me to be in a world of women, but that’s another thing I get when I’m with family. So late in the afternoon today, the other younger women in the house went out walking and invited me to come with – Tintin (Elinor/Nono’s youngest sister, who is 24 in October) was the youngest, then me, then Tintin’s two older sisters (Elaine and Lilliam) and her sister-in-law (JoAnn, Willison’s wife). We strolled down to Huntingon Beach; Elaine and I were the only two who made it all the way out to the end of the pier (the others got tired/cold and dropped out along the way to sit in the middle of the shopping plaza waiting for Willison to pick them up).
The sun was setting as we walked out on the pier, and the day was warm, and the waves were in fine shape. They were huge beasts, cresting as they swept past us under the pier, crashing on the beach. The sky went all orange behind the palm trees, and the sea was gray and foamy, and it’s just… I could have stood there for a while just watching that, leaning against the strong wind as it swept by. Elaine’s lived here for five years and never walked out to the pier, let alone to the end of the pier. (“Well then, it’s about time you did!” I replied when she told me that.)
It was a good stroll, and I appreciate long solo walks during times when nobody else is really out (same reason I like driving in the middle of the night). They’re good for thinking. The pier opens at 5am, and the sunrise (according to the internet) is at 5:45am tomorrow, which is 8:45am Boston time. I have mobile broadband, so… this might work out well.
It’s past 2am in my time zone, and I’m definitely feeling it. I ought to go to bed – I finished scanning my receipts for expense reports, and have a few wiki edits to make before I pass out, but… yeah. Mm. So I’m doing that, then going upstairs and sleeping on the floor in front of the house’s computer desk (go figure). On a plane again tomorrow night – red-eye from 9pm California time to 8am Massachusetts time. Hurrah!
I really am happiest in motion. Or maybe it’s that I don’t know what will happen if I stop – but this life seems pretty dang good to me so far.
Monday, May 24th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I sketched these out after Ian and Elinor’s wedding, because I found the dynamics to be just hilarious. First, the ceremony (the numbers of people aren’t accurate, mind you – but I think they’re roughly to scale).
After the ceremony, there was toasting and the cutting of the cake and snacks being passed around and whatnot as they cleared the deck where the ceremony had been and set it up for dining.
At this point, the couple had their first dance, and then the DJ announced a surprise; a mandolin appeared and they walked through the tables, Ian playing “Dance Tonight” on the mandolin, encouraging people to get out of their seats and dance. Several minutes later, the dance floor looked something like this. Best wedding soundtrack ever, by the way – their exit song (instead of the boring normal wedding march) was by the Beatles (“All You Need Is Love”) and was followed afterwards by Jack Johnson, Coldplay, Dave Matthews, yet more Beatles, yet more Beatles, yet more Beatles…
I went up to them afterwards. “That was the coolest wedding ever! Can I try the mandolin? I didn’t even know you played the mandolin!”
“I didn’t,” Ian said. Apparently they’d gone to a Paul McCartney concert the previous summer and he had heard Sir Paul play the song and decided to learn it. “Do you want it?”
So I have a mandolin on long-term loan – long-term because they don’t move back to the US (from Beijing) for three years. I’ve figured out a few basic chords and can play 12-bar blues now, Dance Tonight (of course) and… I’ll find more. I don’t know what mandolin music sounds like, but I’ll find out. Apparently some people play the blues on it. It’s high and twangy, and I can barely hear the top string (er, two strings – it’s an 8-string instrument, but the strings are tuned identically in pairs with the same intervals as on a cello) but… mmm, electric mandolin. New thing to play with!
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Congratulations to newlyweds Ian and Elinor (my second cousin Achi Nono), who could not stop looking at each other and laughing during their vows today. (Yes, it was very cute.) I wish you both a long and happy life together.
The wedding was fun. (I’m still somewhat in shock; I don’t typically associate those two words.) I have illustrative diagrams from it that I shall post at some point. At one point in the wedding they walked around the tables to get the guests to dance while Ian played Paul McCartney’s “Dance Tonight” on a mandolin. In other news, I’m borrowing Ian’s electric mandolin for the forseeable future, and at some point will figure out a way to get it to them in Beijing (where they are apparently moving for three years for work starting in July).
My family is awesome. Ian has just made it awesomer. Welcome to the clan!
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
- Today (starting at approximately 1:30am, but really more like 5:30am) has been a very good day.
- Andy Pethan makes my life extremely interesting.
- Relaxing feels so weird.
- Time for me to start my grad school application again.
- Perhaps someday I will explain these bullet points more, but right now I am exhausted.
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tonight was a good night. I took a nap, ran some meetings, called Andy P on the way to DJ and Ginneh’s house and ended up making a lunch appointment with him tomorrow. It was starting to rain by the time I reached Medford. And it was getting dark, and it was cold.
So we went tree-climbing – in the rain and in the dark – I hooked my knees on a branch and swung upside-down, turning a flip to land. We couldn’t get up a good number of trees because the bark was too slippery. But there was one that both DJ and I made it pretty much to the top of, going very slowly and carefully so we wouldn’t fall and break our necks. I haven’t done this in years.
Got back to their house wet and filthy, played a little music (my fingers are very sloppy on the piano, but I was able to pick out the bass line from “The Story” on DJ’s lovely 5-string bass, and we had an intriguing conversation about teaching Signals and Systems as an electric guitar class) and finally left to try and get back at a reasonable hour so I could do more work (POSSE). I hadn’t totally dried off yet, so I was shivering in the car until I hit the highway and the heat kicked in enough that I could take my hands out of the hot-air vents I’d been alternating holding them in front of (so I could at least have one warm hand at a time).
And now I’m systematically going through POSSEs, one at a time, before I go to sleep. RIT got done this morning, as well as Worcester. China’s done. CMU is about to be done. Then it’s Carolina. Then California. Then… unconsciousness! (I’ll do expense reports tomorrow.) Getting my moments of rest where I can – I’m happy. I am happiest in motion. Can’t wait to hit the road again.
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Had lunch with Nikki and her family today, since they were eating at Cabots’ which is halfway between Walter’s house (we were working on POSSE in the morning) and my aunt’s house where I’m working for the rest of the day. Nikki is one of my freshmen (who is now a newly-minuted Olin alum), and is this sort of stern managerial force for disciplined stability and sanity in my life (which otherwise utterly lacks it). In exchange, I provide random injections of ridiculous amounts of happy hyperactive energy into hers, and randomness, and… dunno. Fun, perhaps?
Within a few minutes of me sitting down next to her, Nikki turned and signed to me: “You are a puppy.” I beamed.
(Some time later:)
“Your happy is very loud.”
“Sorry. I will try to be quieter. *dances*”
“Not that kind of loud. It’s like Chernobyl, except instead of radiating radioactiveness, it’s happy.”
I’m not sure when we’ll get to hang out again, since we don’t know where she’s going to work yet, or where she’s going to be, and I’m a nomad. (Nikki pointed out that she never really knew when she was going to see me again anyway, and I countered with a “yeah, but you knew I was coming for your graduation at some point.”) That’s always a little strange, saying goodbye to a good friend and not knowing when you’re going to see them again. At least we know it’s going to be at some point. Yifan, too – although I think I’ll stop by her place in New Jersey on the way to Raleigh at some point, if I make the drive before she goes to UCLA to get her PhD.
Maybe folks with most of their friends in one stable place get to say things like “see you next week.” We say “see you around at some point,” or “see you online,” or just “see you.” Dunno when, but “someday” is good enough for us, for the most part.
And you know what? The nice thing about good friends is that you can go several years without seeing each other, or even talking at all – then start arguing again within minutes of getting off the train. (I’m looking at you, Mark Penner.)
I never thought I would have friends like this. I’m glad I do.
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
This week’s schedule has been a magnificent combination of:
- “Oh man, I spent the last week in Raleigh and need to catch up on my massive email backlog now”
- A good number of my friends graduating and wanting to see me RIGHT NOW before they LEAVE BOSTON
- The return of the cough, which makes me sleep far earlier and more than usual (I hate being just mildly sick)
- A bunch of Boston-area meetings for Red Hat stuff (POSSE, SCOPE, blah blah blah) that all need to happen in the next 3 days in between all the rest of this
- Etc.
I’ve schedule-shifted to be an early sleeper and riser since 12 days ago when I went out to Florida to hang out with Andrew. I suspect it will shift back this weekend when I’m in California for my cousin’s wedding, but while I have it, I will take advantage of the early-morning productivity time (hypothetically).
Prioritization! I can haz it?
Monday, May 17th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
