WS Dudette

Two different blogs for Ada Lovelace day

2010-03-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Last year in this blog, I honored my fellow technical women working on Standards bodies.

On this day, I decided to honor technical women who run and shape up our digital communities.
I will not repeat the contents here. Please read my actual blog in at Force.com website.

My additional honorary mention is Moya Watson. I decided to add her to this personal blog, because she is a community leader inside AND outside her work. I met Moya when she was delivering a presentation internally at SAP before I got to know her. Later on, I attended her talk on web2.0 summit which I had the chance to attend the following year. It was Halloween. She came as a scarecrow and had the spirit to deliver a very creative presentation combined with visuals to her fellow workers in that outfit. The same day I debated whether I should show up at work with Lederhosen (well, this is a German company) for Halloween but chickened out. It was somewhat a conservative place after all.

Moya's energy and creativity is inspiring. She knows how to use the right technology to deliver her message, whether it is creating and drawing attention to No on Prop 8 website, or rallying against SF school teachers getting pink slip via twitter or getting attention to women tech leaders at work. Go Moya! I am very glad to be your friend starting from accidentally walking in to that presentation you gave on Eventus several years ago. For some reason, I think you would have liked the lederhosen outfit, too :)

Ada Lovelace March 24th, Time is running out

2010-03-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

I am getting a bit depressed. Maybe it is my cold, maybe I mistakenly stood up a friend at a restaurant because I recorded the wrong date.

I am also depressed because Ada Lovelace day is upon us but not enough folks signed up yet.

Come on people. I can not believe that there are not enough technical women to brag about that is worthy of your attention. I am sure you know someone who made your day, even she may be just a colleague near your cube, slaving away in the Agile drumbeat just like you. Every appreciation counts.

Please go ahead and blog, publicize women technology leaders, contributors, thinkers, doers that you admire, love or simply think that they need a tad more recognition in their lives for what they do.

Please do so. The deadline is coming.

Time Scabs All Wounds

2010-02-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

I realized it has been a while from my last blog. I have been to many places, met with a lot of people, especially old friends. In the meantime, I learned/Relearned a few things:

Get laid off to learn who your true friends are.
Spend several nights at the hospital attending others to appreciate health.
Spend several nights at the hospital as a patient to appreciate life.
Sometimes the best place to discover others is to be away from all.
When things get tough, the best way is to take a road trip.
Time passes by and every moment spent on worrying about silly things is stolen from people you care about.
America is full of scams. Especially regarding employment, finance and insurance.
You rediscover old forgotten friends as you get older.
The next generation of people have no intention to learn from the previous one's mistakes.
Never, ever forget the good, the bad and the ugly.
If a personal brand is really needed, then this would be mine "jack of all trades, master of all".

Time passed. Here we are, in a new year.

I intend to write about my trips later.

BTW, if you are looking for techie wisdom, I repeat some of my techie content here, but the inclined reader should check my current employers blog esp. on matters that I am currently focusing on. These days I am dealing with cloud computing.

Strolls in My Neighborhood in SF: Qoio in Noe Valley

2009-07-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

This blog is not about technology. This is about one of my favorite stores in San Francisco. Period. I am not getting paid for doing this, I am not a marketer. Just writing a more meaningful note of my experience in my neighborhood.

I get so many complements about my necklace finds and about the presents given to friends, I had to let everyone know where they came from. Among all my gem design finds in US, probably 40% of them come from here, right in my neighborhood. Made by Gilbertina with her keen eye and creativity that spans materials including surgical wire. My other favorite place is in Turkey, specifically Antik Tugra at Ankara, which I will write about another time.

Austin discovered Gilbertina's designs several years ago (at least 7) when she had a small store in a basement, working from her store directly using a multitude of gemstones. He showed up with a necklace. I was hooked. I ended up with several of her unique pieces, purchased them for others as presents, introduced them to friends.

Although I learned how to make jewelry later on, my appreciation in her creativity as a result grew. The more you know, the more you appreciate how one approaches to the creative process. Furthermore, I got to know her, her attention to detail and her customers. Hence, the blog.

The Designs I owned over the years:

The Amber:

This piece got so many comments such that I had to include it here. People stopped me on the street to ask me where I got it from! It was a birthday present. For some reason, Austin got this after seeing the Flintstones on TV, but I already had an eye on this design. Viola, it showed up as a b-day present. Later on, Gilbertina showed me that it appeared in a magazine.

As a klutz I am, I broke couple of the pieces by putting a heavy object on it. Gilbertina not only replaced them for me, but also rewired it.

The Coral:

What I love about this piece is the silver rosettes and the way it complements clothing. It looks fabulous with very casual as well as very dressy clothes. Shown here with a T-shirt.

The Amethyst:

I had this necklace and everytime I wear it again, the questions arise. Where did you get it? Now, you know. This piece is a combination of many gems, one being the African jade.

When I was looking for earrings to complement it one day, Gilbertina made them for me during a lunch hour break I had. Simply like that. So, if you need a complementary piece to finish the look, just ask. You may even get it while you are shopping for other things in the neighborhood.

The flowers:

This design is created by using surgical wire. I love this design so much that I gave it as a present to others or my friends who went shopping with me got them. Here, a friend is wearing the necklace.

Check out the Yelp review online for more designs and reviews. As you can see here though, you do not need to be a model to carry the look of the jewelry, they just turn simple clothes like T-shirts into something special. If you missed the T-shirt discussion, see the previous blog on this very topic.

As far as the prices are concerned, it varies with the amount of gems, the complexity of the design as well as the exposure of the designs. See more below.

Where is it Qoio?

The search on Google will bring you to their Columbus street location as seen below. But this blog is about the Noe Valley location.

Qoio

www.qoio.com

509 Columbus Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133-2801
(415) 982-4438
Get directions

1 review - Write a review
More information »

I recommend checking out the Noe Valley store where Gilbertina is most of the time. It is so delightful to talk to her and get her to explain you the designs, make suggestions, seeing her match her designs with your style, it is well worth the trip. Several of my friends went to the store with me after seeing what I wear and they like their new designs. Further, it gets you to walk and discover famous 24th street, a great neighborhood with many discovery opportunities.

In Noe Valley, Qoio is located on 24th Street as shown below:

View Larger Map

The store front has many designs but it is like an iceberg. The interior of the store is divided into logical categories based on color coordination. It is simply beautiful. Thus, you can find your corals, your onyx, etc in separate groups with complementing stones. Anyone who steps inside gets amazed. They carry a large number of African masks and artifacts from Indonesia. Make sure to check out the lucky Garuda which is unique. However, don't bother to ask its price. It, certainly, is not for sale. I tried...

If you are looking for a true bargain, sometimes Qoio's original small store which turned into an annex is open and sells designs for more than 50% off. You will find many bargains on that day when you catch it. The annex is also in Noe Valley, on 24th street right below Artsake.

Enjoy your walk in Noe Valley.

Style, Shopping Locally, Internet and the Economic Crisis

2009-07-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

I am a technologist. However, this is not a blog about technology. Well, not so directly.

I also, hum, like fashion. You may wonder. Why hesitate to say?

In every tech presentation on user roles, there comes a presentation where there is an icon for the HR, the techie "guy" (yeah, do not start me on that one, it is a guy, but lets pass this for the time being), the senior exec, and the user.

Yep, you know where I am going. The techie guy is depicted with Birkenstocks and a T-Shirt. The HR wears high heels and a skirt. The exec is a suit. The user is equally divided in a virtual presentation.

I love my Birkies and my Ts, too, but somehow the label restricts the spirit. Not only the gender, my existence also defies the stereotype. There are other women like me out there.

Defying the convention and the conventional defines my style. In our grand illusion of sorts, one would want to believe that they are unique. They are not. They also seek out those who are like themselves or whose styles they like.

I am not a prolific shopper. I have a very acute sense of style, what works or not. I also get amazing amount of positive comments. Given that people tend to criticize more than giving praise, I concluded something must work. Lots of my friends always ask me where I got this and dat.

So, where do I shop? How do I shop? What is my philosophy?

Sometimes people are amazed to see that they came from very humble stores, but mostly near my neighborhood or the neighborhoods I visit. I live in San Francisco, and I occasionally travel as my roots are in a different country. People may be passing by the same road like me many times, but have not got into one of these places or let their mind wonder or get to know the shop owner, inquire about items, etc.

Putting pieces together is still fun. Just like constructing jewelery, writing some code, architecting a new solution. A lot of times it is not only the stones that make the piece, but who put it together and why and how they did it.

A lot of people shop from online catalog these days. Comparison price shopping apps are everywhere. Do I shop online? Sure I do. Yep, you can select a good outfit from Victoria's Secret anytime. Everything has its place. Apart from that, truth behold, my perspective to apparel shopping is not to look for item X online and compare prices, etc. You can do that for books, watches, airline tickets, sometimes shoes (yes, if you are looking for a Birkie in a certain style).

For apparel, and its variety of choices, it simply does not work all the time. Further, I am weary that my email is full of sales coupons, sales items, notifications, this and that. Too much. I almost need a soft spam filter for real businesses that I shopped before at this point.

I go back to my local neighborhood. Not everything is online. Not all experiences are online. Unique combinations are not online. Not everything that can be acquired online can provide you the sense of the style. Not all designers, brands are online. They may be in a different country. The pieces of a combination may be coming from different locations, different suppliers. If this was not true, women's magazines would also be in trouble, women will not go shopping with their friends anymore, they would not be talking about it anymore. Everything has its place.

Some people are thinking about cost and variety by now. I know.

Not everything is about the price. If you are spending two hours on the internet for getting $10.99 difference in the price of an item instead of buying it in your local store the moment you saw it, you may have wasted, a lot of money. Cost is not only what you pay. Your time on the internet, the amount of connectivity you wasted, the sleep you sacrified at night (you are not doing comparison shopping while you are working, are u?) all have a cost. People are not good about quantifying them. One of the cost is the elapsed time in getting something. A lot of people utilize fast shipping options whereby increasing the actual cost of an item, as well. Shopper, be aware ☺

Unfortunately, we, women, have very different bodies. It is unlike that we could order a 34 inch waist trouser and get into it. It aint work that way, even with catalogs online. Most of the time, when you get something online, you wait, you try, you discard, you sent back, or stick in the closet. Did you notice how Zappos made a lot of business, because you can send an item back free of charge. Of course, it is not completely free but they tried to take one aspect out of the equation: inconvenience. Still you lost time if something does not fit.

Instead you could have got some exercise, walk in the neighborhood and make your neighborhood a better place and discover something that may truly be different, try it out and buy it in place.

The economic crisis affected a lot of brick and mortar small stores, it has made the neighborhoods decline. Some stores in my affluent SF neighborhood closed. I fear that more are on the way. They are on the way in a lot of neighborhoods. Does this mean they do not bring any value and you can buy the same thing online? Hardly.

Local shops, especially those that are targeting unique, different items that cater to a particular esthetic can not be replaced by online experience. However, they can be helped and augmented by technology.

Technology can be used to help encouraging shopping locally for helping retaining the local economy. To execute what I preach, I decided to write a couple of articles about people, places and things I discovered over the years. Hope you will find my treasures acceptable. Hope you can see them yourself by going to these unique places. More to come.

Enjoy.

Women of High Standards

2009-03-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

Ada Lovelace Day is a celebration of women in technology.

In honor of this day, I would like to use this wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of not only one, but three fellow technical women. I shared a lot of experience with them in Standards Bodies. I loved working with them, learned from them and continue to correspond with them as this is a rare friendship.

All the women in this blog demonstrated excellence in their contributions to the standards as they have high standards for their work. They are detailed, yet never lose the sight for the big picture; they excel in understand the implications of the technology vs political decisions yet try to achieve to serve the community in the best way possible; they strive to produce easily consumable documents so that mere humans can read them; they are approachable and very nice to work with. Consequently, I enjoyed my relationship with them tremendously. Many specifications you may encounter, especially in the Web Services and XML area, owe a portion of their development to these women who never sacrifice quality. Further, they are multifaceted as they are also artists, musicians or athletes.

I am honored to work with them and look forward to the next opportunity where we may work together again or simply discuss where the technology is heading to and how it is changing.

Maryann Hondo is an architect who is an expert in security and policy at IBM. We first met during a WS-Metadata Exchange meeting and I had the chance to work with her in WS-Policy working group in w3c. We collaborated on the guidelines for WS-Policy assertion authors document and contributed to the working group. Maryann has been instrumental in getting me enlightened about the security implications and the relationship of the policy framework as one feeds on the other. She brings perspective as to the challenges of a design may exist and what pitfalls one may fall into across multiple specifications and assertion families. Further, beyond our shared experience in standards, she is very versed about emerging technologies and how can shape our future. Maryann is my sounding board.

Eve Maler is a technical director at Sun Microsystems. I met Eve when I was involved in XML standards in Sun and she was our AC Rep to w3c. Her understanding of the evolving standards and how certain players may help or hinder the evolution of a certain specification never ceased to amaze me. She certainly understands how standards can help or hinder. Her contributions to XML and Security standards are too numerous to mention. Further, her positive personality is simply contagious. I look forward to a meeting to sync up with Eve and learn about the larger perspective.

Monica Martin is a program manager at Microsoft. She has contributed to with many vertical and XML/WS/ebXML standards and acted in leadership roles. Her keen eye in making the specifications coherent is impeccable. She can see the relationships and implications between specifications that others will miss and will work hard to correct inconsistencies between them. Further, Monica is always willing to share her knowledge with others. I learned a lot from Monica beyond our technical experiences in together. My regret is that I never had the chance to work with her on business processes. Hoping that one day it may change.

At these uncertain times when many technical women are either forced to leave standards or technology altogether, these women and their invaluable work should be cherished. The institutions where they work are very lucky to have them.

Hence, this blog.

The Past and The Future at Bay Area Geek Girl Dinners

2009-01-29T23:24:00.000-08:00

I am stunned and amazed. There are many technical, geeky women are out there in the bay area (and beyond who were visiting) that participated in the Bay Area Geek Girl Dinner. The third one in the series.

There were themes listed on each table. I sat at the cloud computing table. There was not much discussion on the topic though, rather who each other were and how we ended up at the dinner, what we do, and our thoughts about technology and its role. I did not even have time to tweet about the event, during the event.

The crowd is a younger crowd. Things are different, but also a lot the same. I was involved with systers mailing list very early on. No social media, no facebook, no twitter, no websites back then. Plain email. Word of mouth. I saw today the video circulating on the web/twitter about the birth of internet news http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/29/you-need-to-see-this-video/ and realized there is a similar analogy here. It is like an old Virginia Slims ad that stuck in my mind. "You've come a long way, baby". There are many tools, many communities. Technical women like to connect, but there are many other channels, now including She's Geeky unconference, as well as subinterest groups from technie women in SF to Linux geeks, women 2.0.

Systers mailing list is still there going strong. There were attempts to put the discussion on the web, but resorted to the simple "push" solution, email. Many many years later, the contrast reminds me how a younger generation is embracing different tools for the same purpose to create communities. The word of mouth is no longer in a single email, or with a friend, it is also on Facebook, it is on a news tweet, it is everywhere. The need to link up and feel part of the community is the same.

Just this week, my company is nominating me to be one of the Anita Borg Institute of technology ambassadors. I am looking forward to it. To my surprise, there are women in my table who did not know about ABI, the systers mailing list or the Grace Hopper Conference, YET. I am glad that there was a lineup of introducing the existing organizations geared towards technical women. Thanks to BJ Wishinsky who introduced ABI and distributed systers stickers and people had the chance to learn about it.

The internet, the way we work, connect, and communicate are changing. One wonders though whether the challenges that technical women face in the industry are, though. The technology is different, but
the road to success and recognition is still uncertain. Despite this new wave and energy, we have not succeeded in making more CTOs out of the talented technical women. YET. The problem is well documented in this study, Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level women in Technology by Caroline Simard. The problem is real. Still real, after all these years.

My hope is that our new advanced ways of communication spread the word about this problem and get corporations to acknowledge it. Our collective thinking and cooperation may then allow us to help solve it, attracting more and new generation "sisters" who then in the future, hopefully, would not even know that such a problem ever existed.

How many profiles must a (wo)man write down...

2009-01-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Social networking and communities are so "in" these days. Gone are days when one complained about multiple IM contacts and enviroments, and the desperate aim to link them together in one single interface. Welcome to the new world of chaos, and following events and people around like a stalker in the making.

The rate that tools and communities are exploding is making even myself dizzy. I created a thought provoking quiz to make us realize where we are with respect to this craziness. It is all for humor, so take it that way. Please take the following quiz to find how popular you are, shall we start?

Count the number of times you answer "yes" to the following questions.

Are you a member of Facebook? Were you an early user of Facebook and recruited other friends to create specialized groups?

Do you have your linkedin profile? Was one of your old-time buddies involved in linkein early on and get you connected right away? Does your profile get regular hits from 10 people a week?

But how about these Plaxo friends? My God, do you have a profile there? Wait, hang on. Your buddies from Microsoft want you to be part of the Microsoft Live network. Did you forget to sign in there? Haven't you forgotten to register with Spock, get your glorious ratings also in Namyz? But, your "professional profile" and contacts are in Linkedin and you have some hefty reviews of your ah-so-glamorous professional accomplishments. How about your Flickr buddies and your groups and your interests? Did you post your latest and greatest photos that show what an artistic one you are on flickr? Maybe picassa?

Of course, you discovered twitter, haven't you? Aren't some of your contacts on twitter? Do you retweet snippets of wisdoms from famous people in twitter?

How about FriendFeed? Maybe you prefer laconi.ca, or thinking how grouping functionality may benefit for those secret and private conversations on yammer? Yes, you think you are probably popular, right?. Ah, wait. Since you are so so glamorous, there are new social networking tools and their product managers are so eager to talk to you. They start sending you email messages and reports so often with the diminishing hope that their companies tool may be the next "enterprise 2.0 solution"? In the meantime, did you get a your dopplr account? Did you broadcast in your next trip just to make your budget-cut-grounded friends at other companies envy? But, they want to see you anyway, since you are coming their way. Is someone broadcasting your twitter statistics to your colleagues?

Is there a nagging feeling in your stomach that "big brother is watching you" and probably someone is creating a "stalker 2.0" or "housethief 2.0" app based on your online and so public activity?

Do you know how to link your facebook, dopplr, flickr, twitter, .... accounts all together so people can see everywhere how intelligent, artistic, wonderfully connected and smart you are?

Do you broadcast to the world where you are using your coordinates and utter a smart thought for the day?

Are you beginning to get connection requests from people with whom you have nothing in common and they look awfully suspicious to you?

Has your company installed an internal social networking tool and "encouraging" you to use it? Are you one of the early adapters? Do you feel compelled to participate because your companies executives started to appear in the chats? Do you see all your contacts who were silent all of a sudden become extraverted?

Does your company experiment with several of these beasts internally? Do you participate in more than one? Are they fighing among themselves to be the next "enterprise 2.0" breakthrough product?

Are you part of a community in your company which is externally visible? Does your company have multiple communities? Do you belong to all of them? Do you have a separate profile for each? Do you feel you are out of touch when you do not post to these communities at least twice a week?

Do you feel compelled to microblog every day? Every hour? Do you tweet during the family vacation while you are taking a boat ride on the ocean?

Do you wish that just like the good old emacs days, someone will come up with a universal interface to all this "activity" and allow you to look at only a subset of them instead of opening up all these tools, multiple twhirl windows, web pages, etc? Don't you wish Facebook and the next "Enterprise 2.0 wanna be" thingy merged to be the single interface to save you some time?

Do you wish you can share a single profile with all these environments? Surely, one can import your social graph from one another, but anyone who knows about unsynced replication will tell you that one of them will get stale. Of course, it is in each products benefit to be the owner of your social network, or portion of it. However don't you feel that you own the entire social graph as a user and you are just lending a piece to one of these tools, not the other way around?

Until a single integration interface which allows you to "export" (not import from one another) and expand subsets of your social network based on utility/function comes along, are you afraid that you will have to continue to replicate your data, who you are, and also your so called profile from one place to another? In the meantime, do you wonder why you are not getting any real work done? Aren't you sick of typing where you went to school for the nth time? Or who your favorite rock band is? Or where you live? Or your supposed birthday? Don't you wish someone could also replicate it, but you do not have to import it from one environment to the other?

Are you developing another networking tool because all of the others just suck or you feel they are just crap? Are you in a team that develops such a tool to change the world?

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind...

Now, count the number of positive, "yes", answers to the questions. You belong to one of these categories:

Social Butterfly: 80-100% yes answers

Congratulations. You are a social networking butterfly. You are probably the reason why Right Said Fred wrote a song, because you are absolutely too-sexy for your keyboard. You can not keep up with your social life and it is making you absolutely crazy, but you will never admit it to your friends. You have 200+ contacts in linkedin and facebook. You are trying to make it grown even larger every day. You appear to do work, but you worry how you will brand and portray yourself in this distributed network of yourself and wonder everyday whether you left something inconsistent. You appear to do work, but it is getting harder everyday as your colleagues and your boss has just connected to you in Facebook.

Desperately-Seeking-Meaningful-Connection 60%-80% yes answers

You are using social networking tools but still have the hope that they will fill a void in your life by not making you question why you do not know your next door neighbors, or why you have not really seen your best friend for a week (online chatting does not count, of course). You have a sense that this is all useful, but afraid that it may be getting out of hand. It is nice that you discovered your college friend Mike online, who knows you may be better friends now. Organizing all these photos and posting them online is becoming a chore. Further, you really do not like other people know what you think that much, but have a deep suspicion that you may actually like being recognized as an expert if you were to tweet more. You really wonder how Guy Kawasaki does it and finds all this time. Your best friends are on all the social networking sites you subscribe too. However, getting on their calender to go out to a simple dinner is a daunting task since everyone is so sooo busy these days. You secretly wish for more time.

Naively-Optimistic: 40% -60% yes answers

You discovered the online communities and tools! Wow. Aren't you excited that technology can be used this way. You are connected in a very new way. You spend more and more time to increase your friends and connections. You just discovered your old friend Fred is now in Alaska. Wouldn't be fun to go and visit him? You started a new community for reverse-knitting practices with the hope that you may find and meet new people. You are watching many people and your connections online, but your activity is not upto par yet. You are happy to expand your horizons and think that by being in a community, somehow your life is going to become more meaningful and you will finally connect with people like you. You are out to change yourself and the world. Here you come!

Too-Private-or-Suspicious-for-good: 0-20% yes answers

You are deeply suspicious that people are out to get you and collect information about you. You may be a hermit, but do not want to admit it. After all, you do not know who is reading what you are doing. You do not like to let others know what you think. That wiki thing came along and required you put words and publish them online, but you only like to write carefully crafted messages to those you want to impress. Let alone, being recorded from here to eternity gives you a chill. You would not want your colleagues to see that you were a zombie commander in Facebook, or your fishing buddies know that you have a red latex nightgown fetish. No sir. You have an account on some of the tools, but everything is set not to reveal who you are or your "friends". You follow what people are doing at twitter, but never ever post anything so that it will be related to you later in life. You hate the fact that your old classmate Stan found you online and now insists on connecting in Facebook. You never liked him, why now. After all, he may show up at your door in Alaska. That would not be good!

Umit means Hope, hence the new picture

2009-01-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

Today, I was sent this photo of me. Since my name means Hope, thought that it was very apt to use it here. I am posting it here with the hope that the new regime, the new year would be kind...

Some Facelift was needed

2008-11-30T21:10:00.001-08:00

I finally upgraded my online CV. I am happy about the font (for the first time in 15 years). More confident that I got the big picture right this time instead of the bits and bytes.

I also realized that I have forgotten about some of the member contributions to various submissions to W3C. All those MTOM stuff, position papers, presentations, etc. Well, they are in the additional publications list. One can download and have a look at the stuff where my name appears, sometimes indicating my sincere participation with body and soul, sometimes just as a simple contribution. You decide. My friend Dirk did a good job in listing our collaborations well, so I did not miss these.

I did not include my patent/patent applications either. They are in the pubs list that one can download. When one's life partner has more than 500+ issued patents, some of our accomplishments appear miniscule in respect. Yep, you read the number right...

Art Exhibit in SF Art Institute Diego Rivera Gallery

2008-08-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

Those who wonder what I do in my spare time, please note the following.

I am participating in an art show which concludes this week with a reception at the Diego Rivera gallery in SF Art Institute.

The reception is on August 22nd, between 5:30-7:00pm at SFAI.

Probably I should also broadcast this in facebook in some fashion, too :-)

How not to Blame Sally

2008-07-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes good things happen accidentally. Attending the Kate Wolf festival was one of these things. Just spur of the moment, we head to some small town, Laytonville, north of Ukiah on a Friday afternoon, packed camping gear and grabbed some dusty spot in the field next to some other folk who travelled in an RV and plunked ourselves somewhat too close for comfort next to another tent. Among many.

I always wanted to do this festival. After all, folk music was my first passion learning how to play guitar and imitating Joan and Bob on stage at the age of 14 and continuing afterwards on and off. Kate Wolf was not that known where I came from at the time, but one learns quickly later.

Those of you who know me are probably chuckling as porter potties and fake camping is not my kind of thing. This was necessary for attending the festival. For a long time, I will probably associate the smell of cinnamon with freshly emptied toilets on that field of scurcing heat. But, such is life. As they say, the one who loves the rose bears the thorns. One of the vendors quipped "This is one the most mellow crowds that I have seen. I love it here!". That was true. I met many interesting people who are just friendly and willing to share tidbits about their lives just waiting to get food or coffee on line or just holding their hand on the Mr. Music Community choir project. Ok, ok. It is not that sappy. Further, there were conveniences like a portable ATM Machine (eww. techology!) if you feel like you were stranded without money or hot water showers.

There were two gigs I wanted to see in the festival. Greg Brown whom I admired for a while and my new discovery, the Greencards. Unfortunately, Ani DiFranco was scheduled in a godawful time (late Sunday) which made returning to SF somewhat a very dreadful and next-week-killer endeauvor.

One of the cool things about the set up was that there were several activities going on parallelly. The main stage had the major line up, but the smaller stage with bails of hay provided the more intimate, small club experience that made the whole experience completely worthy. Further, the same acts that would appear on Saturday played also on Saturday. In this manner, one could schedule to see the gigs on Saturday and could potentially return back home on a reasonable time on Sunday.

I saw both Greg Brown and the Greencards on that smaller stage. It made my attendence to the festival really memorable. Although Greg did not play one of my favorite tunes, "'Cept and me babe", i really enjoyed seeing him up close and personal.

Greencards did something exceptional. Since they were scheduled to play at the same time with Los Lobos, their gig was delayed by the festival organizers for sometime as Los Lobos took the stage late. It was way after 12:00am on Sunday they started playing and no one was sorry that they waited that long as they started to play. As the name applies, the band members are all foreigners in US and make a killer Bluegrass sound which also reminded me some of Solas. They have the energy to keep you moving and smiling. Do not miss them if you have a chance to attend one of their shows.

Having said all this, the highlight of the festival for me was probably "Blame Sally". Just like children, I like to discover new things. When they took the main stage on Saturday, I was thinking to myself as they are playing the first tunes "those women are really exceptional". My appreciation grew as they moved on from one crafted song to another, singing in English and Spanish with harmonies to match and very nice poetry in their lyrics that should not be missed. (As a matter of fact, I used one of the lines in my art class writing exercises and got quite a response last week). Each of them can play several instruments, have very artful arrangements and it is hard to classify them. Is it rock, folk, pop or something in between? If you like Indigo Girls would you like them? One thing I know is that their recent album "Severland" is fantastic and my favorite of all their albums with its creative, catchy tunes. Do run, but not walk to get it. And, they ARE from San Francisco.

Discovering Blame Sally brought interesting coincidences and discovering other cool people to our lives. On our way back, we accidentally met a folk music singer in the bay area, Amy Meyers at a winery while we were talking about the group. She has her new nice album out, Lucky which I got recently. The first song, "I hate to cry", in that album speaks to me. Just the way it feels at the end of each summer. Check it out. She frequently performs in the bay area which I am looking forward to attending.

We followed Blame Sally to Big Sur this weekend for a more intimate setting in the Henry Miller library. I have not been there before. As it is written in the description of the library, it is hard to classify that too. It is not definitely a place where you buy your touristy gizmos pf Big Sur or the best-seller-du-jour. It provides however memorabilia of Henry Miller, his writings/books, other interesting books and a nice intimate setting to listen to an outdoors concert on a summer California night. A perfect way to end a wonderful day in Big Sur.

Blame Sally gave us the glimpse of what may be coming down in the new album. Can not wait. What was cool about the whole thing is to be able to meet them during the break. Yes, my dear friends. Now i have become a Blame Sally groupie. Hope you can join me/us in the next trip. Further, i think Jeri was playing a Santa Cruz guitar which looked and sounded just like mine. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask. And unfortunately, I can not play the guitar like her, either.

One rumor is that the name of the group is about the imaginary friend that one of the group members used as an excuse for being late to rehearsals. I do not know. However, if they are blaming the results to this Sally person, I sure want to be friends with her! It sure works.

Know thyself

2008-04-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

"I am the shit with the least number of flies. Of course, my parents love me. "
A Man describing his relationship with his parents in comparison to his siblings.

Public Eavesdropping

2008-04-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

Public Eavesdropping @ SF Chronicle's Leah Garchik's column always crack me up. See http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/garchik/. Today's made me laugh even harder:

"You don't have to go all seagull on me. ... 'Mine, mine, mine.' "
Bartender discussing tips with another bartender, overheard at a bar in the Castro by Kevin Dunn

LOL!

For granted

2008-04-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

We take things for granted all the time. Even little comforts, little pleasures. Friends, family, loved ones, pets. Health, money, lifestyle. Jobs, positions. Countries.

The tea house on the corner; the favorite treat from the bakery; the meatballs you grew up with; the house you always rented on vacation; the singer or rock band you follow; the house you grew up in; the tree in your backyard; your friendly manager; your hubby who comfortably snores next to you, whose warm skin you can touch, who gives you a backrub to soothe your worries; the corner cube you secured and escape to; your crooked but functional nose; your big fuzzy cat who sleeps on your lap everynight; the comforting emails you get from your sister, your loving parent who is not near but you know safely tucked where; the favorite girl friend whom you think you can all at any time of the night; your ability to walk, sleep well, breathe, see, go to bathroom without pain, not waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air....

Then something happens. While you are negotiating on the phone, chewing your nails on some stupid argument, some paragraph in a silly spec, some chapter, worrying about the next big thing, some meaningless title, little gain... One thing dissappears from your granted list. Sometimes one another. Sometimes you think you like the change. At times you initiate it even. For example, on the last days of all of my jobs, i sadly realize, all the time, what I was taking for granted at every one of them. My big room at Oracle, my friends that I would slowly lose touch, seeing the birds diving for fish from my room in the pond, my coffee breaks with Eric gossiping about the next big thing, my discussions with Anish, meeting with people in the dive-pub in Belmont, driving only 10 minutes to home. When changes happen, we do not realize what we are replacing those we take for granted with. At times, it is for the better we say. We bear long commutes, meet new people, rewear the new versions of the old clothers, talk about EJBs for the god zillion time, get used to another set of politics, replace the knowledge of some dynamic language with another, enlighten the youth about everyold thing is new... Life goes on. If we try hard, we acumulate our favorite people and file them, neurish them with occasionally, and hope that life brings us back together again. Just to keep that thing we took for granted.

Unfortunately, clock only moves forward. However many sci-fi novels you read, Borges stories you consume, people get old, move, get sick, die. Houses get sold, demolished. Jobs get boring, lost, stupid, positions stagnant. The worst of all you take your body for granted, as if there is always a new thing, a new hope. You can change this one too, /fix/debug/recompile/redeploy, right? The first acute realization of taking things for granted occur when you reach the age of 40! Sadly, but for mysterious reasons, you tend to lose or realize you are losing couple of things that were for granted at the same time at that mark. Your body does not obey anymore, you grow a belly, some asthma, some nagging pain here and there, can not climb the steps the same way anymore, those late nighters you were able to pull off are not possible while you are snoozing off on the couch.. Bad things happen to your relationships, too. It is all the timing baby. No one tells you though, turning the big four-o is about realizing you can not keep taking things granted anymore. That is just a warning. The worse things are yet to come.

Mostly it is your body. If it works, it is great. Use it or lose it. You do not mentally realize this though, it is just incomprehensible before. To appreciate what may happen and ignore the constant irrelevant noise in life, everyone should be taken to a hospital and be stuck with an IV waiting for a surgery to come. Unfortunately, people tend to forget these mistakes and several days/months later turn back to the old habits. I did. Several years ago, when i returned back from a leave of absence in one of my old jobs, I found out that my name was deliberately removed from a specification and proposal I worked hard to materialize before my absence. The head/chief architect probably did not think I was going to come back. I needed a break and was sorting out health checkups. I was so relieved not to have cancer before my return that I could deal with that supposedly very important thing. I was ok. I would be ok. It cost me tremendously and made me leave a company which i loved dearly, but I could endure stupid work stuff while thinking of the needles poken in my throat during the time of biopsy. I decided that i could not work at a place which allowed such things happen to their senior engineers. Moved on. I was being taken for granted. It was clear what was important, I was well, I was alive. Did not forget what happened, though, but learned what not to take for granted. My health. For a while at least.

I sometimes think that deaths are like this, too. These periodic reminders to make sure not to take our loved ones for granted. Unfortunately, this, also, lasts only for a limited time. Nagging daily worries expand to take up our entire concience as time goes on. We forget the promises. Start not calling the relative or the friend just because we have some important report to write, phone call to make. Sometimes other reminders come along and let us know what we slipped by our fingers. Recently, looking at my old high school pictures at Facebook (a very fine example of community colloboration), it became clear how many of these folks I did not appreciate at the time but would love to keep in my daily life today. But, taking things for granted, these photos are a concrete reminder of those days, passed and friendships preserved like dried roses in an old book.

One thing I know is hospital visits get more frequent as you get older. Perhaps this is why old folks are either grumpy or very wise. They, too, have learned not to take things for granted in due time...

Not Quite Tuscany...

2007-09-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, I initiated the organization of a wine tasting/dinner for a German colleague who was recently visiting the labs. Incidentally, I also happened to sit within his close proximity. My colleague was eager to return back to his country after a long trip in California and the conversation got an interesting turn in the course of the evening.

We, northern Californians, native or not tend to think that Bay Area is one of the best places to live in the world. Who could argue, we think. We are told that we have the leading culinary city in the US, San Francisco, where wasabi potatoes are ah so many years old news. It also elected to be the best city for singles (I am not one but I can understand why after an evening in Supperclub); we have gorgeous sorroundings and rolling hills of Napa and Sonomawhere we flock to drink gobs of wine and enjoy good life, or rather whatever we can sneak in a weekend or two to escape our busy lives related to the silicon valley where worlds greatest minds and many people from all over the world convene. We are sorrounded by the best, the brightest, wonderful weather (not so hot, but not so cold) and ah the non-stop action. Further, this is cosmopolitan open minded place is one of the remaining places in the US for liberal, progressive thinking that promotes creativity, arts and innovation. That is what we tend to think.

Not according to my colleague, though. He dismissed the beauty that we are so proud of while gazing out with ave in our convertibles driving on 280. For him, nothing can compare to Italy and the beauty of Tuscany. He also went as far to say that he could understand why imigrants from India and other parts of the world can look for a better life by coming to California but he could not envision the necessity of doing so. After all, after being sorrounded by great minds and access to Italy, why would one think of the advantage of living here? Oh, by the way, San Francisco is so darn cold that who wants to go there.

When one is confronted by strong opinions, it tends to bring usually not the best or the mildest of responses in people. I have noticed this in my long standards career, and I must admit I was getting slightly disturbed with the way this conversation was going. ("irritiert" would probably be a better choice that my German colleagues use frequently). I do not know what bothered me the most, being one of those immigrants who happened to move to Northern California or just because I like it here (despite its problems) and I needed to need to defend it. However, some people have made up their minds and they need to convince themselves that you are simply wrong. Besides, I had the disadvantage of being an immigrant from one of these supposedly underprevileged places, it would take me a long time to prove to my colleague that my parents probably have a better life than I had achieved and thus I want to live here, etc. I thought of it though. Did he have some truth to his criticism at least? Is Italy at least more beautiful than Northern California? Is this not that great here?

Beauty is a funny thing. It can change. It can capture you in fleeting moments. I know I may be biased, Istanbul in places is more beautiful than San Francisco but the reverse is also true. While you can not sit outside on a hot summer evening in a restaurant on the Bhosphorus or arrive your destination on a boat, one would not bear to be stuck in a traffic in Kadikoy in public transport during rush hour either. A stroll in a SF neighborhood with Victorians may beat Istanbul as old houses are quietly dissappearing (if not turning into restaurants or hotels). I do not know whether I prefer Paris over Rome, or Barcelona for that matter if I were to compare notes for notes. All places have the best and worst, the trainstations and prostitutes. They are beautiful nevertheless, but could I say it is not quite Tuscany?

As I was looking out to Napa Valley in the weekend celebrating an anniversary at Auberge, I was still thinking of my colleague. The green valley was expanding on the horizon, the sun was setting on the west. The harvest was hinting to arrive sometime near soon. Sipping bubbly and thinking of a drive to Pride Mountain vineyards, I was thinking that I was quite lucky for that moment enjoying a warm summer evening on the restaurants porch.

My German colleague was tired. He was away from home for a month. He probably missed his bed and he was grumpy. I recalled how I was eager to get back from my trip several weeks in Italy after not being able to find the products that I am used to in the grocery store or the corner Wallgreens. He probably did not have dinner at Auberge and probably had to haggle with sweatshirt sellers in order to keep warm in San Francisco. He could not love the fog that most likely ruined his short vacation. He did not have my view or the private trip to Pride, Ridge, whatever. I could not fathom living near Walldorf and have a second house in Italy. He could not think of living in SF and have a second house in Napa valley.

We probably knew something the other one did not know about. However, I know one thing is sure. Home is where the heart is.

Too many policies, too little time...

2007-03-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

By nature, I do not like rules and regulations much. It may seem ironic then how come I have got involved with existing policy specification developments out there, both WS-Policy and SCA Policy.

Anyway, you may have noticed, the first version of SCA Specifications got released to the public with the intent of being submitted to OASIS. Here are my thoughts on why SCA Policy and WS-Policy can happily co-exist by design as one is used to abstract over the other [1] .

I claim that it is possible to use WS-Policy framework itself to define and compose profiles by using the referencing mechanisms in a clever way. However, WS-Policy is not the only framework out there for expressing constraints and capabilities. SCA Policy's delegating model suits nicely to utilize profiling on top of other frameworks that are used to express policies.

I do hope participants in the standardization process do not forget my wish list. I will certainly not be present in that process going forward.

[1]
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/6144

Note: I am tempted to write a new tool to allow me to post a blog to different repositories given the past couple of experiences, including this one. Posting a blog to here and to SAP's SDN at the same time is time consuming, but the pain has not reached the treshold so I can be lazy for a while.

A Question of Ethics

2007-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

Recently, I came across an interesting dilemma and wondered about how others, especially those folk like me who are deeply engrained in standards activities would feel about a particular situation. So, I decided to state a hypothetical problem and ask my questions loud.

Say you are involved in a spec development activity. It is in a private consortium run with its own business rules. It is not yet developed in an open consortium, but the IP rules are somewhat clear. Specs are not published without getting approval first. You have been involved for a long time, spent a lot of energy in this effort. Your company even put people to help with writing the specification, put editorial efforts into this.

One day, you find out that some, but not all, of the companies who have been involved in this effort has submitted a paper to a software conference and even presented the work. They have taken the spec verbatim in most cases, including questionable sections; they neither included any of the contributors from the other companies nor acknowledged all the contributors. You notice that there are additional names added from one of the companies as well. Some of the authors are also authors of the original specs. To add to it, the authors also placed a copy of the paper onto the consortiums website without getting approval or notifying anyone.

Which of the following describes your reaction?

1) You feel very much appalled. It looks very unethical to you. You look at those colleagues with new glasses and decide to be careful with them in the future.

2) You resent your name not being on the paper. You wonder why you were singled out and not being asked to be included.

3) You think it is ok. There is no bylaws/rules that require review of paper submissions and procedures, so this behavior is permissable. What is the big deal.

4) You beat yourself up. You believe in "publish first, ask forgiveness later". You could have submitted a paper, too, if you acted earlier.

4) Who cares. Your name is on the spec. You slapped it there anyway. There is going to be a lot of publications of this material and you will get another one.

5) Neither of the above. (Would like to know if that was your choice).

The obnoxious chain letter lives on

2007-02-23T17:48:00.001-08:00

I forgot to tag the next set of victims for the "5 things you don't know about me" meme. As Eve points out, this is a virus. I had to move my stuff to the public domain just to comply. (Roberto, hear hear)

I now tag Martin, Charleton, David, Eric and Norm. Sorry guys.

5 Things

2007-02-20T15:56:00.000-08:00

I have been avoiding fullfilling this commitment for a while now. Just before the end of the year, dear Roberto tagged me with the 5 things meme. After a long contemplation, I realized that perhaps using SAP's sdn is probably not appropriate to talk about these 5 things. After all, they have nothing to do with it and these are somewhat personal in nature.

Let's get to 5 things.

1. My favorite Computer books are probably "The Psychology of Computer Programming" by Weinberg and "The elements of Programming Style" by Kernighan and Plauger. Yep, the copy of the first one that I own was published in 1975. Gasp, these books are probably published before a lot of my colleagues were born, but the wisdom they contain is universal. If one can get over the Algol and Fortran 77 examples, etc. the issues that still need addressing in development teams, managing projects, programming environments, after 30 years is still dead on target.

The term "egoless programming" was coined by Weinberg. I frequently wish that some of my standards colleagues have heard the term.

2. Given that the books are ancient, this does not mean that my computing experience (or implicitly my age :-)) is. After all, I am a product of a country where computing knowledge, teaching and resources got developed in the 80s. One good (or bad) habit that I have learned from structured programming days though is to be critical about the designs on the paper first before you commit them into action. In order to optimize batch jobs in the mainframe days, I would mentally trace all my programs before I loaded them during my freshman years. As a result, I had a tendency to try to get things right in the design first. This aspect made me a human debugger for other people's code and assignments early on in my undergrad years. Perhaps this is why I became overly critical as an architect...

3. My grandmother had a very profound impression on me growing up. She lived with us in my formative years. She was one of the first women judges and prosecutors in Turkey. I always knew that she was behind me and my accomplishments. She was also the kindest person, providing free help to other people in our neighborhood from street vendors to shop owners on legal matters. As a result, she was called "mother" by all.

I wonder now whether I would have made her proud knowing that her shoes would be impossible to fill and my trials are nothing in comparison.

4. I love to sing and play the guitar (somewhat). When I first started singing, I was very nervous and did not want my mother to know. (she is a great soprano). Therefore, I never practiced at home. When I told my family that I was singing Bob Dylan on stage when I was 15 for my first concert, she was choking hard on her food. Well, she had never heard me. Later on I was the lead singer in our school rock band and sang to a stadium full of people during the band competition finals in my native land. Perhaps this is why giving talks today does not frighten me as much. After all, what can be worse than a stadium full of rowdy teenagers? Rowdy EJB or WS developers? Naah.

5. I really don't like Country music, although I love folk. Interestingly enough, I am very much in the mood of singing "Not ready to make nice" these days despite the way the song is categorized. The song recently got a grammy and now everyone knows it. However, it is the ultimate pissed off song to sing. Love it.