Next adventure

I started Jeet Kune Do today.
Last Monday was a trial class.
This morning I read about the art on Wikipedia.
Today's class, my second, taught more new concepts than I can absorb in one hour. Yet -

I started Jeet Kune Do after today's class ended, sitting in quiet a passageway in the shopping center.
Do I have time for something new in my life? No. Am I going to welcome it anyway? Yes. I asked the universe for more, and this opportunity arrived. It was by association that I chose to attend this class, not deliberate selection. Only this morning (reading on Wikipedia) did I learn anything about its philosophy.

 I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds.

Be like water

truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back.

This resonates with me. JKD aims to remove unnecessary movements, rather than add its own forms. It stresses reacting to the problem in front of you, not following formulas. This is how I strive to code, and live, and it is how I will learn to move.

 

 

Pipes

My friend had a vision, in which he was running around a bioler room trying to keep it from exploding. There were all these pipes, steam pipes, and each need to be depressurized by pressing a valve. He kept running back and forth from pipe to pipe, releasing pressure from the one closest to explosion, reaching for others and running faster, faster trying to keep them all under control.
The pipes represented the different needs in his life, his needs and the needs of those who depend on him. Work, music, kids, wife. Family, personal growth, career ambitions, sex, friendships. He couldn't keep them all happy and the pressure was building.

Then the Epiphany. The solution is not to abandon parts of his life that are important to him. Nor is it to run faster and faster, push himself harder until he collapses. The solution is to bring the pipes closer together.

Activities that release pressure from multiple pipes are the goal. Work that is intellectualy stimulating and career building, on a team of people who are friends, who can discuss music and life. Friends who share many interests, with whom you can work, from whom you can learn, and even have sex. Romantic and intellectual and emotional and sexual stimulation with the same person, who also plays with your kids? Priceless.

i look for people and opportunities that let me bring the pipes closer together. I love learning, meeting new people, speaking, drinking beer. User groups give me all this plus career advancement. Friends who let off steam from multiple pipes get more of my time. If he has kids in elementary school, then we can talk shop while our kids entertain each other. Playing tag is both exercise and high-value bonding time. This strategy lets me accept more richness into my life.

Girl programmers

There are not enough girl programmers.
We keep running around blaming programmers for this ("hostile work environment!") when maybe we should also blame... girls.

Female peer pressure is one reason girls don't go into coding. Programming (and math and hard sciences) are not valued in the female community. Women who want to be accepted by other women aren't going to choose a field most women don't understand.

This idea applies to other underrepresented minorities too.

Creating a female-friendly work environment is necessary but not sufficient to getting more women into the programming workplace. We also need to work on the larger environment among females.

"Geek" has long since moved from insult to tribal identifier. Can we achieve the same critical mass of female geeks?

Greatness and User Groups

"At the heart of it is the idea that the only person responsible for and capable of securing my own happiness and fulfillment in life, is me. [Ayn Rand] taught me to look at the world as an active agent, not a passive observer; to realize that, while there are many things beyond my control in life, I can still use my mind and my life to be productive, positive, and great in the things that I do. And not only that, I learned to look at other people that way too. That's one reason I started the ALT.NET group -- because I believe that there is greatness in people, and those are the people I want to be around. Another thing her books emphasize is that people are "traders" -- that we give and take, in both material and non-material ways, and this trading is what allows many individuals to act in concert as a society. Its easy to understand this in terms of physical things -- I trade my labor for a paycheck, for example. But we also trade in emotions, encouragement, knowledge, etc. Because Rand views people as heroic, and capable of greatness, she emphasized that when you trade "value for value" with someone, you should always trade your best for their best, realizing that by doing so, you have increased the sheer amount of AWESOME in the world. This is the honest way of living."

@nicholascloud

Women and math

In Brain Rules, John Medina talks about differences in male and female brains. Two of the differences he mentioned are relevant to women in technology. As presented here, these are total generalizations, just food for thought.

In school, girls are better at verbal skills. In mixed-gender classrooms, girls speak up more often when verbal topics are studied. The discussion can work well with the girls' cooperative communication style. Boys are behind in elementary school at verbal tasks.

Then in math and science, boys and girls have equal aptitudes. In a topic where there is pretty much one right answer, the boys' competitive communication style dominates. While the boys try to outdo one another, the girls are intimidated into silence. The girls can do it perfectly well, but when the boys turn the classroom into a competition, the girls withdraw.

Those trends may be the beginning of some of the disparities we see in career choices.

Next, there are the genetic differences between boys and girls. One generalization we can't argue with: boys have one X chromosome, and girls two. Many of the genes on the X chromosome affect brain function. In each cell, only one X chromosome is needed, and the other is deactivated. Boys, they're all the same. Girls,determined each cell randomly turns one off. This means girls are sorta the average of two X chromosomes, while boys are defined by one. Maybe this is part of why there are more men at the extremes of intelligence: men are more likely to be retarded, and more likely to be freakishly intelligent.

Easter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend we had an awesome visit from Iris (4 3/4)and Camille (8 mo), who came all the way from Sweden! Evelyn is very impressed by the distance between here and Sweden on the shower curtain map.

More from Allison's wedding

 

 

After the wedding, Lindita explored the Wash U campus. "Sit on rock. Mama sit on rock."

OK, and a totally unrelated story about Evelyn:
one of her teachers said that the other day, she was trying to get the kids to guess "something that we all need to bring to our meeting." Kids guessed toys and books. "It is something with four legs." A dog! A cat! "It is something that is not alive." Evelyn: "A dead horse!"

Arrrr

 

You have to talk about piratey things!

sisters

 

Where is Evelyn?

 

This is from our 4th of July trip to Kentucky, iirc.

Tyler's House

 

Tyler and his wonderful mother invited us to visit their house down in the woods in southern MO. We had a fabulous time. Here, the girls help bake cookie dough. Check out the awesome cupboard with the rising-up shelf that holds the mixer.

Marble Play

 

Family Portrait

 

Cake Bakers

 

 

Mom turns 32

 

For my birthday, nana helped the girls make me a cake. It was beautiful, orange with orange sparkles!

First tandem motorcycle ride

 

Here we are on Eric's motorcycle, Mango. We took our first ride together in my new gear. Next week I take the class to learn how to drive.

Allison's wedding

 

Here are Eric and me on the way to Allison's wedding. I should have taken that sweater off to show my pretty dress. You can see my new haircut. It's too short for my taste, but that's a problem that will fix itself.

The wedding was amazing and very fun!

May

This morning I sent Evelyn to the dining room to put on her shoes. She came out with her princess shoes (not suitable for play.) Then Lindita came out with shoes: two different Evelyn sneakers. Very silly! Later, Evelyn got revenge.

 

 

 

Also this morning, we found a large beetle in the kitchen, under the farmer's market bag. Lindita picked it up and took it outside for me.

Yesterday was Evelyn's Show and Share day at school. She took her Sorry Sliders game to play with the other children. Only when it's her day to Show and Share (and mark the calendar, and be Line Leader) does she say, "Can we go yet? Let's go to school!"

Last week we went to Chattanooga to visit with family, because my great-grandmother (their great-great-grandmother) died. The girls had a great time playing with cousins. They miss Faith, Ellie, Amanda ("man-a!" -lindita), Toni, and Liz. The morning after we came home, Evelyn came down the stairs chanting, "Mama Cat. Mama Cat. Mama Cat!" She was sad to hear that Mama Cat had gone home to Hannibal. "Why?"

They both loved having extra time with me. Evelyn is going to be unhappy when I go back to work full time. Me: "I will not leave you, Evelyn. I will never leave you." Her: "You leave me every day to go to work!" ouch. ouch ouch ouch.

Linda and Lindita