Judy's Turn

I'm a PC and Steve Jobs Could Have Cared Less

Over the years, particularly the last 10, I've been ridiculed for my choice in internet browsing appliances (which is what a computer has become for me). It's been implied that I'm uncool or conservative - I've had to explain my choice to workmates, friends, and my kids. But, here's the deal - Steve didn't care. Because he knew better than anyone that eventually a device from Apple would make sense and I would purchase it.

As I look around my house filled with iPods and review my ATT phone bill that now has three iPhones on it, or check my email on my iPad in the morning, or trip over the MacBook that my daughter left on the floor in her room last night, it's pretty obvious that the genius of Steve's vision did indeed enter my sphere. He just focused on his vision and kept creating products that provided solutions for my life. Before I knew it, I was right where he knew I should be.

Don't get me wrong - from my earliest days in the tech business, Steve was my tech hero. So much so that after the birth of my first child in 1988, while job hunting, I didn't think about sending a resume to Apple. I wanted to work for Steve, so tried to get into NeXT. I wasn't successful and went to work for a bank (my job was to help bring down one system and bring in the IBM PC) and eventually dropped out of the workforce for several years while I raised our three kids. A PC has been all right for the contract jobs I've landed in the last 7 years, so I haven't bothered to switch. Yet.

I lost a very good friend to pancreatic cancer several years ago. The time between diagnosis and death was less than three months. As I saw pictures of Steve over the last few years, I couldn't help but feel that he was going to lose his battle soon. When my daughter's text announcing his death came to my iPhone yesterday, guess what I was doing? Waiting in my car for my other daughter to finish up school. And downloading an app.

Thank you Steve, for elegant design, for helping others create, for making my life easier. For caring about the big things. For your vision.

 

 

Thanks for the Giving

 Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that you grow to love more as you experience life. Although a lot of food is involved, it's also a time to look around the table and appreciate each member sitting at it. This Thanksgiving was extra special for us. Sam had arrived safely in Taipei for his 6 month studies, Leah was home from Humboldt, our niece and nephew were with us from Los Angeles and Becky seemed to finally be kicking the Mono (as in Nucleosis) that had beaten her down for over a month. 

Our table consisted of 14 people. Just two were not immediate family - Laurie and Dan. Laurie had been with us for Thanksgiving a few times, but this was the first time that Dan joined us. Dan has a PhD in Organic Chemistry and is a scientist at Gilead. He spent a lot of time talking to Becky at dinner and offered to help her with her backlog in Physics and Algebra. She came home from her first day back at school yesterday overwhelmed with the amount of work that she had missed (Junior year of high school) and said that she would indeed need to take Dan up on his offer. I told her to contact him, but to be aware that he had an important job and might not be able to come over this week. 

Dan is sitting at our table tonight (one day later) talking about acceleration and friction with Becky. This is after a 10 hour work day and the only payment he'll take is the knowledge that he helped Becky catch up with her studies. It is truly wonderful to hear them talking and I know back there in West Virginia where Dan grew up, there was someone special in his life raising him to be a good man.

I am constantly impressed by the goodness in the people that I meet and know that many Dans are working tonight helping others without any expectations in return. And, as an older "early adopter" of social communication products, I'm glad that I have the ability to let you know about this little slice of life. Let me know if you have a story to tell.

OKAY NOW FOR THE BIG DEALS I GOT TODAY WHILE HANGING OUT ON THE PENINSULA:

Fleur de sel Caramels from Trader Jacques (for those of you who need a translation - caramels with salt from Trader Joe's) -- $6.99 (really taste good - up front at the Hillsdale TJs)

Really beautiful boxed soaps from France and Italy at Tuesday Morning in San Mateo for $7.99 - I think they'll go fast. At the front of the San Mateo store just to the left of the cashier.

 

What is Really Real?

We just finished a really nice vacation in London and Paris. We went to some museums, tried to find local hangouts and ate good food. I was excited to take our youngest daughter with us, since she had never traveled out of the country. I was really looking forward to her reactions when she saw the magnificent old cathedrals and buildings. My first trip to Europe was in the 1980s and the first morning in Paris is a memory that stays with me still. Back then there was no Eurostar. From London, I took a mixture of bus, train and ferry to get to Paris. It was very early in the morning as I walked towards the old Opera House. I had never seen anything more beautiful.

My daughter did love Paris, but commented as we stood in the bright sunlight under the Eiffel Tower that she felt like she had been there before. It was familiar to her because she'd seen it in movies or videos so many times. I understood her thoughts. While researching this trip, I had watched countless YouTube travel videos highlighting neighborhoods and special places in Paris. When I saw them in real life, a bit of the wonder was diminished. I tried to have her imagine what it must have been like many years ago for visitors who had never seen any videos or images until they arrived. I could see her eyes begin to glaze as she anticipated a lecture on "the way things were in my day." For her, the 1980s are in the same league as the 1880s - really, really, long ago.

On our last evening, we said good-bye to our friends who live in Paris. We were sort of tired and sad and ready to go home. We decided to just ask our hotel for a recommendation for a restaurant and to take a long walk to it. As we rounded a corner onto a side street that was very pretty, a man was running towards us with a stick or cane, being followed by two other guys. There was a lot of screaming between them as they chased and ran. Things calmed down for a while and then the man with the stick decided to turn around and go after the other two guys. People on the street were starting to get worried that they might be struck or pushed by the three men as they ran arguing through the street. We kept walking and I said I felt that I was in the middle of a movie. Possibly The French Connection. But I didn't even mention to my daughter how this moment would be changed if I'd never seen a movie before. She'd never understand if I told her that the guy carrying the stick is now looking a lot like a young Gene Hackman in my memory.

A Maker's Mark Moment

Twenty years ago tomorrow, the great Loma Prieta Earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay Area. Those of us who were here and experienced the earthquake told stories about it to each other for many months. We comforted our worried, far away family members who were horrified when they heard the Bay Bridge had collapsed (early reports were not quite accurate). Some of us were in boats on the Bay, in cars on the highways or sitting in the stands at the warm-up to the 3rd game of the World Series. The quake started at 5:04 pm local time and rumbled on for 15 seconds.

My family's story ended at about 3 am the next morning, with shots of Maker's Mark being shared between myself, my husband, and Dan - his coworker. We had started out the morning in a fairly typical way. I walked our 13 month old son up the street to his babysitter's house and drove my car into San Francisco, where I was working. My husband, an employee of Lotus Development Corporation at the time, was bound for a District off-site meeting. The group was going to enjoy a tremendous day on a boat on the San Francisco Bay and then several of them were going to catch the World Series game at Candlestick. The October weather was perfect - sunny and warm, almost still and quiet. What those of us who experienced Loma Prieta now call "earthquake weather." 

I left San Francisco that afternoon at about 3:30 pm and arrived home on the Peninsula around 4:15. When I got home, I received a call from a friend who needed to be picked up from her post operative knee surgery appointment at her physical therapist. After that I walked up the street to retrieve my son from his babysitter. She (Julie) was out shopping and had left her husband (Mike) in charge of the three kids - my son and their two daughters. They were out front in the yard playing when I arrived. I said hello to Mike and picked up my son. It must have been 5:04 pm because just as I said "what a beautiful day" everything started to shake. The street was literally moving up and down. Mike scooped up his little girls and we crowded together with our babies. I can remember Mike asking "what should we do?" as we watched the street undulate. As soon as the quake was over, Mike, who was a sheet metal contractor at the time, knew exactly what to do. He walked from house to house on the street, making sure that we all knew how to turn off our gas and helped us check for leaks. I returned home to find that some things had fallen over in the house, but everything else seemed o.k. Since this was pre internet, the phone lines were immediately overwhelmed. My family members in Kentucky knew more about what was happening 10 miles from me because they were tuned in to the World Series and watched the announcements about fires in the Marina and the collapse of the Bay Bridge. They were incredibly worried about us. Knowing that my husband was at the game, I waited for him to arrive home.

Meanwhile, at Candlestick Park, my husband and his coworkers were watching the warmups. He said that they didn't really know that an earthquake had happened until they saw the players on the field running over to their families. Thousands of fans exiting "the Stick" that night is another story altogether. The 15 minute drive took 6 hours to accomplish. Traffic was diverted through a pretty dangerous section of San Francisco. My husband, a high strung native New Yorker, stuck as a passenger in the back seat of a bright red BMW driven by a laid back Californian, was losing his mind. You'll have to hear the story from him. It's gotten better over the years. Finally, he and Dan made it back home. Our power was off, the baby was asleep and we pulled out the Maker's Mark. Dan wouldn't be able to get a flight home to Seattle until the next day. The early morning was still warm. It was quiet outside. A little bit of Kentucky whiskey was just perfect.

As I think about that day and night again, I wonder about the long lasting effect that earthquake had on many people. At 5:05 pm on October 17, my brother-in-law stepped out of his apartment at one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco and began to direct traffic. A few years later, he was a San Francisco cop. Our friends, Jim and Millie, never returned to their sweet apartment in the Marina. Instead they moved to Oakland and then on to Paris. Did those 15 seconds propel all of them into making  life changes?

I vowed that day that my husband and I would try as hard as we could not to work in San Francisco at the same time. I couldn't imagine one of us not being able to get to our kids in the event of another earthquake. It didn't make much sense, but it made me feel better. So did the shot of Maker's.

An Erkjay in our Midst

 Some jerk exploded a bomb in the local high school in our town today. We know many of the students and their families and as the helicopters buzzed around all morning and police barricades were set up surrounding the school, I thought of all of our friends and hoped that there were no injuries. Thankfully, all the students and faculty are safe and I'm hearing that the former student who exploded the bomb was apprehended immediately. So, first and foremost, this is a post that is expressing thanks for the safety of everyone and compassion for the fears that some students will have to overcome as they enter school tomorrow. This school has an involved and intelligent parent community that will no doubt step up to help the students heal and return to normal.

The second part of this post is much more random and may imply that I'm going crazy. Really, it's just the way my brain works. When we were kids, my brothers and sisters liked to talk in Pig Latin. We were amused endlessly when we would speak entire sentences in our foreign tongue and thought that we were psyching out our parents big time. Because I spent so much time speaking Pig Latin, I still tend to think in Pig Latin for certain words. And jerk is one of them.

I was thinking about posting something on Facebook saying an erkjay bombed the school. But as I thought about it, I realized that Pig Latin might not be the foreign tongue of all my friends on Facebook. Plus, my husband's name is Jay. What if people quickly scanned my status message and misunderstood it? Could they possibly think that Jay was responsible for the crime? That Jay was the erkjay? And this, my friends, is why the longer and more detailed blog will survive in the world of hastily written updates. Otay akemay orrectionscay enwhay ouyay essmay up.

Hillsdale Knights - we're proud of you! Have a great year!

Staying Ahead of the Recession

I've been trying to piece together a post about the recession and incoming college students, because I have a few thoughts about sending a child off to a California state school this fall. The budget cuts are just now coming in to play for the state school system and my daughter is going to have a college experience that is far different from the one we anticipated, I fear.

In the fall of '08, while one of the Presidential candidates was saying that the fundamentals of our economy were sound, I realized that some things were going to change very quickly. And one of those things was that parents who were thinking that they would be sending their children off to a private college would be rethinking that very soon as their bank accounts dwindled. A whole batch of very qualified kids would be applying to the state and UC system. The financially challenged schools would have real problems now. So on October 1, I told my daughter to get her applications in as close to the first day that she could and get some acceptances. She had 10 applications to the state schools in by October 3 and had three acceptances within the month. Whew! I bragged about my brilliant foresight to all who would listen and read the headlines in the next few months that showed it had been a good idea to move fast with the applications.

When she made her choice of schools, we put the deposit for dorm rooms in immediately so that she was guaranteed a space. We signed up for the very first orientation, so that she would have the best chance to get most of the classes that she needed. We were running as fast as we could to beat that recession until it nearly caught up with us.

My daughter's school put together a fabulous Ning network for the parents. It was embraced and soon people were talking about dorm room decor, setting up carpools, the best places to stay when visiting and all other kinds of parenty stuff. I did notice that the school kept a budget information post on the site at all times, but I thought we were safe. She had been admitted, had a dorm room and had a roommate and classes schedule. Then last week the discussions on the network changed - there was talk of registered students having classes cancelled. When my daughter heard that because of furloughs and budget cuts one of her classes was cancelled, I took it in stride. Maybe it would take her 5 years to graduate - and anyway, it's hard to get used to freshman year. A light load the first semester would be o.k. My daughter kept complaining that she was not a full time student anymore and I was just happy she had a bed to sleep in.

Around this same time, our employer based insurance changed. As I was reading the details, I suddenly remembered that she will be 19 in October. Most insurance policies will take a child off at that age if they're not a full time student. This was the case with our last carrier and was indeed the case with our new carrier. All of a sudden, it became important that she pick up a class and get full time status. I couldn't even imagine what would happen if she became ill or had an accident and she wasn't insured. We'd be broke, that's what. So, there I was again, trying to beat the recession. She is going to a small state school that is incredibly responsive and just got off the phone with a counselor who helped her choose a class that will again put her into full time student status.

I don't really mean to complain. We're lucky that we (or one of us) have jobs and insurance and enough money set aside to help pay for our daughter's state school education. There are far worse stories in households across the country. But I've learned my lesson - I've got my running shoes on and I'm not taking them off any time soon.

Helicopter Parenting in 2009

In case you haven't tried doing it lately, I'll fill you in on a secret. It's not easy parenting these days. At all levels of motherhood/fatherhood the information comes flying at you and you need to have an incredibly strong character to process it, yet forge ahead using your instinct and past experience that is essential to good parenting.

The term "helicopter parent" has been used to describe some of today's parents who hover over their children and are involved in every aspect of their lives. There are stories out there about parents who fill out college applications, contact teachers to make excuses for a bad grade received by their child or are too involved in the social lives of their children. I say that if you've had the responsibility of parenting in these last 20 years, most likely you could be categorized as a helicopter parent at least once. Hovering over your children becomes dangerous and ineffective when they lose the ability (or never get it in the first place) to manage their own lives independently.

Lately, I've been hovering over my two oldest children in a more unusual way than most parents. They are in transitional points in their lives - one heading off to college next year and one heading into his senior year of college. I discovered that the college that my daughter is entering is actively using twitter to give information about the school. I started following them and would send the links that were tweeted to my daughter. Then I began encouraging her to sign up and follow them herself. She says twitter is for "old people" and refuses to do it, so I continue to send her links when I think they might interest her. It's amazing how much you can find out about a college from their presence on twitter. Hers does an incredible job and I'm hoping to meet my friend who tweets when I drive her up for orientation. I even participated in a tweetup with the school last week and learned where the best pizza place is. At this point in time, I'm more involved in her college than she is. I also learned that my son's career services department is tweeting. He too thinks that twitter is for another generation and won't sign up and follow them. I get frustrated because of course, given the job prospects that will be available next year, I know he needs to take advantage of all opportunities. It took me about six months to convince him to to create a profile on Linkedin. He did finally, and is catching on that the contacts he's making there might be as relevant to his first job out of college as the friends he has on Facebook.

These methods of networking are not the only skills they'll need as their future comes into focus. They need to make sure that first they can interact with people in group settings, in one to one discussions, in information gathering and to enjoy being in interpersonal situations where diverse conversations are happening. That's what going to college gives them. Linkedin and twitter come after they've learned what real networking is. But a good helicopter parent is always there - hovering and waiting to help.

From Shattered Glass and Lost Delights Comes a Spotless Kitchen

This post reminds me that I need a June Cleaver category. Because I just had an experience where I ended up feeling a lot like June. Except for the shirtwaist dress and the pearls. And the perfect makeup.

This afternoon I decided to bake a package of brownies that I found in our pantry. They were a good brand, with real fudge icing to spread on them while they were still warm. They looked and smelled great and I put them off to the side of the counter to serve as dessert tonight. Good June Cleaver moment.

A few hours later, my daughter was in the kitchen getting a glass bowl from a high cabinet. I heard something drop on the granite counter and then the sickening sound of glass shattering everywhere. I walked in the kitchen and saw first that many shards of glass had embedded themselves in the brownies that had been cooling right under the cabinet. Then I looked around and saw that small pieces of glass were everywhere in sight. The brownies were thrown out, along with a pot of soup that had been sitting on the stove without a lid. I didn't know if glass had gotten into it, but wasn't going to take chances. After I freaked out (not very June Cleaver-like), I decided to use this opportunity to teach my daughter how to be very thorough when cleaning up glass that had broken around food. We got out the hand broom and the dust pan after picking up all the big pieces of glass and throwing them out. We swept up any other pieces that were left on the counter and then the vacuum with a crevice tool came out of the closet. While I carefully sucked up every last tiny shard that was in that area of the kitchen, I began to calm down and decided to use the crevice tool to clean all corners of the kitchen, including all the drawers and shelves of the pantry. Now we're talking June Cleaver. Meanwhile, my daughter slid out of the kitchen quietly - happy that a Mom meldown had been avoided.

Soon I was noticing spots on the kitchen floor and got down on my knees and scrubbed them off. And hey, what about these cool granite counter wipes that I bought 10 years ago and had never used? I carefully wiped down all the counters until they gleamed. Note to self - buy more granite counter wipes in case glass breaks and I get the urge again. My my, the white cabinets sure needed scrubbing. And you couldn't forget the inside of the refrigerator. Before I knew it, the kitchen was spotless and we were sitting down to tuna melts and no brownies at 9:50 pm.

What an accomplishment! June would have been proud.

Sorry, I've been on Facebook

While I'm waiting to have an interesting idea come into my head, I've been spending some of my online moments getting sucked into facebook. I've had an account for quite some time, but haven't really done anything with it. Now, family members are starting to use it so I've decided to learn more about it and try to find a way for us all to join a group. This will be the third time I've tried to get our family group to use the internet as a spot to visit with each other and stay informed on family progress. In 1997, I tried to use a free intranet service (WAY too early on that one) and in 2004, I started a blog for our family. That was too hard to manage. This time, in 2009, most of the 40 and under crowd in the family are already facebook users, so to get them to move over to a group within  the application should be pretty easy. We'll see.

In other news, I finally replaced my modern halogen light fixture with a new one that takes 60 watt bulbs. Progress sometimes goes sideways.

Traditions!

Happy Hanukkah! As our kids opened their first gift of the 8 nights of Hanukkah and promptly hung their Christmas ornament (the gift) on the tree, I reflected that our traditions are a bit different from others. But in our Christian/Jewish household, it works. It's just important to have some, so go grab a few of your own and have a wonderful holiday season!