by ·0 Comments

Writing a proposal for work. Realizing I overuse the following words:
– key
– capability
Wishing I knew a way to get Word to give me a word frequency picture, so I could see where I’m bludgeoning someone with ‘and this is key, and a key concept, and a key capability’…

My overall writing and editing process works out something like the following:
– brain dump which has half-formed thoughts, extraneous details, and not quite reasonable flow… gathering raw materials, basically
– edit for flow: what ideas need to hit full force, in what order?
– edit for wording: my first dump of words is usually too long and needs to be written to not be so lengthy / imposing / voluminous. (See, I need to edit this post for wording!)

I was mean and pushed out the roughest rough draft to a few members of my team today to make sure I was heading to some sort of reasonable realm. Good feedback from one team member in particular, and need to make sure I laud her in the right circles at work. My ulterior motive in letting some see “raw raw” is to show how rough and dirty these things start, so someone itches to show how they can do it better. Nothing like showing a low entry bar to suck folks in past the ‘oh, I couldn’t do that’ kind of idea….. Leadership gamesmanship of a sort…

by ·1 Comment

I’m helping out with my daughter’s Upwards basketball team this season and loving it! This is her third season with Upwards – the first was cheerleading (no chance there of me helping!) and then she transitioned to basketball. [She decided that the basketball players looked like they were having more fun. Go, Cora!] This season the coach sent out a message looking for a ‘Team Mom’ and ‘another Dad’ to help with the drills. Uh…. hmmmm… snacks or drills? Think I’ll take drills, thank you very much. One email later, indicating history coaching kids’ sports and doing kids’ ministries, I had me an assistant coaching gig! Except that coach neglected to tell league commissioner, and then coach’s kid had an emergency the first night of practice, leaving assistant coach to introduce herself to the league commissioner and tell him coach wasn’t going to make it. Awkward! Commissioner, to his credit when confronted with an adult who he had no knowledge of, ran practice himself. 2nd practice went a bit more smoothly: coach was there, I knew the kids, and good basketball drills were had by all.

Can’t say enough good things about the Upward program. Kids athletic based ministry to communities. Multiple sports (cheerleading, basketball, and soccer at least), all kids play equal time, devotions both in practice and in the games… oh, and did I mention the homily for the parents at half-time in the games? What a way to intersect with parents AND kids! Very glad to get to participate and contribute. I’m not a member of the church that’s sponsoring this Upward program, but maybe I’ll get invited to stick around.

by ·0 Comments

Had a training day earlier this week. Great class, interesting topic, instructor was pretty good, and my classmates were interesting and engaging. I was fully engaged through the morning.

And then lunch hit. Eating food didn’t kill me. It was seeing the email backlog of things piling up, that I was otherwise ignoring by being in class. Lunch hour wasn’t nearly long enough to deal with them all, so I went back to class mentally prioritizing and preparing responses to the growing pile.

Not sure how to handle that well. That email didn’t interrupt me physically didn’t save the backlog of tasks from interrupting me mentally.

Worst part? The afternoon’s topic was on listening.

by ·1 Comment

One of my goals for this year was to speak at a conference. Guess what I got to do last week? See http://www.mil-oss.org. SlideShare’s not playing nicely with me at the moment, but the deck’s up at http://www.slideshare.net/onesimplehuman/mil-ossowf.

by ·0 Comments

I had the opportunity to go to OSCON last week. Great conference, great city, lots of great (am I using that word a lot?) technical topics. I was out there to learn from my peers how to run open-source software projects, so spent most of my time in sessions related to that. That means I did NOT attend the Android Hands-On workshop in which Google gave away free Nexus One phones. But, hey, I’m only mildly peeved, not radically bitter. It became a game after that to try to track down an excess phone. A game which I unfortunately lost.

However, I did discover that I am immortalized in the OSCON photo logs, an item which gives me a small amount of joy.   See me pontificating here with the (small) set of women in attendance at the women’s gathering organized by O’Reilly. Women's OSCON Lunch

by ·2 Comments

I’ve been described by folks who know me as ambitious. I’m a goal-setter and list-maker, and I push myself to get to the next rung on my personal ladder. That has both its pluses and minuses. On the minus side, I end up frustrating myself if I’m not making forward progress towards a goal. Hence this post…

I started my current job some two plus years ago. It’s a good job, with a mostly good company. Note that mostly good is pretty high praise for any company: I figure that just like people, companies have their quirks. You have to decide if your particular company’s quirks are ones that you can work with, and/or work to improve. (I don’t think I try to change my husband, but I definitely count it as part of my job to improve my company.)

The quirk with which I’m wrestling and which I’ve wrestled for most of the time I’ve been there, is to determine whether it fits my career goals. If it doesn’t, it’s time to move on. I’ve aspired to start my own company for quite a while now, and I’m interested in proving my business acumen and leadership potential for someone else’s company’s benefit, with the idea that I’m also doing it with a stable salary till I build my own confidence level to go it on my own. Haven’t seen much opportunity for that in the last two years, even though I’m not shy about discussing my goals with my managers.

My annual performance review is coming up, which will round out last year’s cycle in which I listed some specific opportunities I wanted to work on with my manager. Not much progress there. So I’m now at a crossroads… stay in the stable job, doing good work for a decent salary and benefits, or risk the new job path? Is staying put giving up on the next rung? And if it is, am I willing to do that, and what does that say about me? Walking into a new job requires building new networks again, and being seen as the newbie again: are there other options I’m not seeing in my current job to get past the ladder block? Debating… and really tempted to illuminate this debate to my manager at the performance review. Stretch his people-management and coaching abilities…

Interested in thoughts…

by ·0 Comments

04:42:43: nice round numbers that correspond to what a race pace calculator thinks I’d complete a marathon in, assuming I continued on the 10:47 pace I ran this morning for the 16 mile run.  That 10:47 pace, though, includes various stints of walks up nasty hills on the Strider’s training course.  I’m a lousy hill runner.  Today was better than many: I did at least make it up some PART of the hills at the end before walking, but I still haven’t managed to break those hills before they break me.  And it’s not as if I somehow have the gusto to speedwalk those hills: when I’m slowed to a walk, it’s more in the 16 or 17 minute per mile pace. 

 All of that to say, I’m getting more and more excited about the Marine Corps Marathon at the end of October.  If I can run what would be a 4:42:43 on THEIR course, my expectation is that I’ll do better on the Marine Corps course.  And even if I don’t, I’ve still got 18 minutes leeway to make my goal of running a sub 5 hour marathon for my first time out. 

I got my latest issue of ‘Runners World’ today.  In the articles there, they describe folks whose first marathon experience was in the 3 1/2 hour range.  Hah!  I’ll likely never be there…  But sub-5 looks promising, and I’m already dreaming of what marathon I should enter in the spring.  It’s very empowering to think that by 10am, you could’ve already run 20 miles.  And to compare your commutes to the grocery store or to work to the lenght of the LSD (long slow distance) run for the week.  Just as a cross-comparison to today’s training run, my commute to work is something like 16 miles. 

by ·0 Comments

So, a few weeks ago I mentioned needing to run between 7 and 8.5 miles to hit my next milestone on the marathon plan.  I’m happy to say I ran 8 miles that day along the local trail.  That meant Saturday was a nine miler.  I got up in time to go out and beat the heat, but then, so did my son, and since my hubby’s never been one to go to bed earlier than way later than he should, didn’t seem quite kind to get him up so I could go run.  Cameron and I went for a walk instead.  Later in the day, though, when it was way too hot to be out pounding the trail, I did my 9 on the treadmill at the gym.  Boring, but effective. 

My marathon strategy is to recognize that I’m neither a fast runner, nor a great endurance runner.  I can, however, run for stints of time over and over again, so Galloway’s method of run/walk works by me.  At the moment, I’m a 6 minute run, 1 minute walk person, which puts me in at around 11 minute miles.  (I did mention I’m not fast.)  Since I just want to finish, preferably in under 5 hours, that puts me in good shape.  This upcoming Saturday is my first training run with the local running club.  I missed the cutoff date to get my entry bib into the Marine Corp marathon, but the local runners’ clubs have first-time marathoner entries.  Gotta suck up the 6:30 am start time, and the ten mile + training runs, though.

In the meantime, I’m running loops at work at lunchtime, making good use of that afore-mentioned shower in the ladies’ room.  The loop is 2 miles, with a nearly .5 mile trek to get there (with an almost .5 mile trek to get back).  By the end of the summer, I want to run the loop twice, getting me a 5 mile trek.  Short-term, I just want to run the loop itself without stopping.  (Closer today, but still walked on the uphill side.)

I like goals.  Running gives me goals, and accomplishments.  Given how slow/out of shape I am, I can pretty reasonably continue to set incremental goals, and with some work achieve them.  The upside to the side-effects of 3 pregnancies, too much beer, and too little exercise.

by ·0 Comments

My princess-savvy girls have discovered Lego Star Wars, the XBox game.  They’re too young to watch the Star Wars movies, but they make those Lego parts fly with their light sabers.  And, of course, they fight over who gets to be Princess Amadala.  Even better is when they’re BOTH the Princess…  all sorts of confusion ensues.

Peek at some screenshots here…