brag

OK, my blog entries aren't exactly regular. It's been a busy, unsettled week. Minor surgery (removed a cyst in my ear lobe, and it isn't healing as well as I'd like). Conference stuff is running behind, and I got to get moving on it, as well as pushing others to move also. Got to get ready for a trip to the frozen north next week (Minneapolis, then Ottawa, leaving Friday).

But hey, we got a new kitten! Her name is Snazzy, and she has her own web page! (She's not ready to blog yet. Give her time.)

More to come, sooner or later.

Diane

insomnia

Yeah, it's 3:57 in the morning. Blogging does not much resemble sleep.

What's up? Had to pee, and one of the cats (Sylvia) decided it was a good time for getting attention. Stress; conference stuff is on my mind, and it's schedule compression time as we are on the deadline for selecting sessions and putting together the conference schedule. A bit of indigestion; we had an Indian dinner last night at a wonderful southern Indian (Hyderabadi) restaurant just around the corner from home. The Malai Kafta, no doubt; heavy cream sauce, lots of spices. (A side effect of aging seems to be that I can't handle spices like I used to, but I'm mostly still in denial.) If you're local in the Raleigh area, go try the restaurant, Suchi. It's a treat.

And it's time for Marvin (the first NASA Mars rover) to roll off its lander platform. Exciting stuff, even at this absurd hour.

OK, blogging has been light lately. It's been busy, and the news has been interesting.

Slate is running a great discussion on the war in Iraq this week. A bunch of liberal hawks are discussing their positions on the war, a year after they advocated going to war. Great stuff, and well worth reading no matter what your position is. And such things do matter, even at 4:12 in the morning.

I've been meaning to write a blog entry on becoming a Pointy Haired Boss. Maybe this weekend I'll get to it.

I'm having a week of being frustrated and obsessed by jewelry. (Isn't everyone?) I managed to irritate one of my earring holes enough that it's abcessed; I'm having it drained on Friday, but it means even more time for healing and then probably having the ear re-pierced. Earrings have been my major vanity for years, and all my nice earrings have been sitting neglected for weeks now, and will continue to be neglected for another couple of months. Makes me think of the scene in Mulholland Drive where the director takes revenge on his girlfriend by ruining her earrings. (Good David Lynch movie; see it.)

Also, I've started beading, and over the past couple of weeks have picked up a shitload of great beads--but with work and the conference, I have to keep ignoring them. I may have to take time to make something from them this weekend. One of the downsides of having a creative personality is that you have to create once in a while, or your whole life starts feeing stuffed up like a bad head cold. I'm pretty much there.

Time to post this, and see if the Ambien still has enough influence to get me back to sleep. Hope so.

Diane

lonely days, lonely nights

Well, not totally lonely; I do have a wonderful partner.

But I telecommute, I organize a conference completely through virtual teamwork, and my best friend lives across the country. Neighborhoods have less and less to do with geography.

Most of the morning and most of the evening were on the phone. Like most days. But tonight was one of the rough ones, with conference-related calls from 8:30 to nearly 11. Supervising tutorial and presentation selections for the conference, and working with the incoming president of the board of directors. The next month is just full up with stuff like this.

All to get my 15 minutes of fame. Andy Warhol, did you find that it was worth it?

Diane

line up, sign up

Busy days, slow blogging. Back to a routine of 8:00 a.m. phone calls, and work into the evening. Yeah, us old farts can do the hours; we just don't like it!

Conference stuff is going insane, but that's not news any more. Still in the middle of selections and dragging people back to work.

Why did I ever think my life was interesting enough to blog? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I can't tell; other people get to choose. When you're in the middle of things, you're not the best judge.

Last night was a church meeting. (All right, all right, we're Unitarians, and it is officially not a church.) I rebuilt their web site last year, and they're all very pleased. Still.

And the point of all this blogging (or rather one point, anyway) is to get comfortable with Movable Type so I can set up multiple blogs on the church web site. The more that other people can put their stuff directly online, the better for me! Anyway, MT is starting to make some sense.

The meeting last night ended up being an open-ended discussion about volunteerism. It's a tough issue, and one that I get to deal with on the conference, too. (We project 400 people will attend this year. It takes about that many people volunteering in one aspect or another to make it happen. A big part of my job on the conference is dealing with that, one way or another.) The church is having trouble dealing with it, too, which everyone finds very frustrating -- and our Unitarian tendencies to talk everything to death and to organize everything into consensus doesn't exactly help. A consultant tells us that this phase of church growth lasts about 6 years. The minister says that we're 5 years into it, and she's getting impatient!

At one point, the minister said that she wanted to talk to me later about setting up volunteer recruiting on the web site. I made a note to call her, and 10 seconds later I couldn't remember what we were supposed to talk about. Bad sign.

On another front, Carol's finally ready for a new cat, after her beloved Russian Blue, Micky, died about 18 months ago. She's found a 6 month old Abyssinian, which is exactly what she wants. I think we're in trouble!

Diane

re-boot

The holidays are definitely over.

Light work day; we had a conference call on the project to "shake the cobwebs out" as Dan put it. Things are going to pick up quickly, though; a draft of the next major design document is due in a week. It's a good thing Jay and Gary have started, but it's time for me to catch up.

Heavy day on the conference. It's time to start settling the conference content. Reviews on submitted material have been going on over the past two months; now it's time to select all the presentations, tutorials, workshops, and such, put the schedules together, get the contracts out to the invited speakers, finalize the speaker guidelines and acceptance letters, get work started on registration updates, and a whole lot of other details to be taken care of. Caryn (my co-chair) and I will need to review each teams' acceptance lists; that worked out to two conference calls Wednesday night for the most critical issues. Acceptance letters need to go out a week from Friday. One team is running very late. We have a new event ("Idea Markets") and we don't have any idea how many applications we'll have for it, or how many sessions to schedule. We have another new event planned to help newcomers in the profession, but planning for that has to follow on the selection process. The advance program and registration have to be ready by mid Februrary. What do we do about printed proceedings versus proceedings on CD? And my co-chair is traveling this week, and won't be available to help for several key days. Yikes!

So for the next 6 weeks, I have no life. Well, it won't be the first time I've given up having a life for this conference, and it likely won't be the last.

Oh yes, I own our church web site, too, and that needs to get moved to a new server while leaving their email services on the old server. Once it gets moved, I need to set up multiple blogs so various groups can maintain their own pages, and also set up Macromedia Contribute for other parts of the site so that office and committee members can maintain other parts of the site.

One thing that will not happen in the next few months. I am not going to get bored. I may get a little testy, though.

My partner Carol isn't going to be happy about any of this. She's never happy when I get overworked, and she's even less happy when multiple overwork periods start to collide, like they're doing now. Extra credit assignment: maintain domestic tranquility through it all. Wish me luck.

Diane

happy new year

In media res:

Today is the last day of vacation. Tomorrow starts the storm again. I have a coneference to organize, and it's selection time for presenters. I have a day job where I am lead developer and need to coordinate work on a design document. I have asorted health and personal issue to attend to.

The conference is the make-or-break event; it's decision time for who is going to present. It's cavalary charge time on getting the web site up, and registration. It's PR time to get all the advertising out and make sure we have registration working.

Other than that, light day. I don't have to add any church stuff until tomorrow. Blessed be!

And I have to plan a trip to Minneapolis and Ottawa for Jan 30 to Feb 6; oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse silver sleigh. Oh!

Fremont will be heartbroken, but he'll recover.

On the good side, Daffy (or is it Marvin?) landed well this weekend, and NASA has another rover on Mars.

And Howard Dean is an idiot. But we know that.

Diane