SwimFinsSF

Couple of Quotes

In replying to a post over here I went digging for a quote that I’ve always loved and found two. I like them enough I had to share:

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny
individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
– Ayn Rand

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
– Pastor Niemoller

AIDS Walk San Francisco

So its that time of year again. Sunday is the San Francisco AIDS Walk and Kevin and I will be walking again this year with his group at Gensler. For those of you who haven’t participated before it is an AMAZING experience. Thousands of people walking in Golden Gate Park on a beautiful day for a really good cause. It may be hard to get up for the walk but the minute you show up you forget all that… There are SO MANY people there and everyone is in a great mood and having fun. All along the walk there are things going on.. interesting people. entertainment. popsicles… And people cheering you on… So if anyone is in the area and wants to join We would LOVE to have people along for the ride.

But, whether you can join us or not, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE become a sponsor – even if all you can spare is a few bucks – thats better than nothing. The cause is every bit as important now as it has ever been. Everyone has their own reasons for sponsoring but here are a few of mine:

– HIV / AIDS Effects us all. Try and go through in your head the people you know in your life who are HIV+. I guarantee you’ll miss some..

– HIV / AIDS is NOT over. We have it under control and people are living with it but it is a LOT of work and we still haven’t found a cure or a vaccine.

– HIV / AIDS is NOT limited to the Gay Community. Some of the fastest growing population segments these days are women, people of color, and others.

– HIV / AIDS drug therapy is limited in scope – you can cycle through the various treatment options but once you’ve developed immunity to one you have to move to another and many people are running out of options.

– There is still work to do even within the Gay community. Far too many people are still seroconverting (becoming HIV+) every day.

So if you can spare anything please try and help… If you would like to sponsor kevin go here. Or you can sponsor someone else… Young Bradford is walking – you can sponsor him here… Or you can just go here and give directly. It doesn’t matter where the money goes – so long as someone who needs it gets it…

Hope to see you all sunday – and regardless I hope everyone can help out in whatever way they can… This effects us all…

😉

Momma needs a VACATION

Ughhhh… Been one of those days where I felt like I was hyper productive yet I walked out the door thinking what the hell did I do with my day… I didn’t spend it playing (aside from the occasional web diversion) or chatting. I spent most of it slogging through bug reports and talking to folks about future product plans. Typical day as a software engineer. (parents – if your kids ever speak of doing this for a living tell them to be a fireman or an astronaut like every other kid on the block)…

Anyway … 6 pm rolled around and I had to head home cuz of my commute from HELL (45 minutes each direction – every day… living in SF rocks… working for apple Rocks.. why the hell Apple isn’t in San Francisco escapes me)… Felt like I should keep going but just didn’t have the energy.

Went to dinner with Kevin at Fuzio… Kind of our regular. they have good cocktails and the caramelized onion fuccia (sp?) is da bomb. On the way there there was a HUGE line at Ben and Jerry’s cuz, as it turns out, it was free scoop night there.. who’da thunk it… On the way home some random homeless freak in the ‘stro called Kevin something strange – Kevin didn’t know who it was so it didn’t need to matter but it kinda bummed him out regardless..

Now, at 9:30 at night, i’m FINALLY decompressing… Reading pickle juice, Madame Fabulous, and of course Matt and Ray’s…

Bis morgen… 😉

Arggggg

Oh my LORD…. I’ve got a degree in Electrical engineering…. 10 years experience in software development and product design. and I can’t manage to get a damn blog template that looks even remotely as cool as I’d like it to be… arggggg…. All I’ve managed to do is get a torqued picture of our stained glass window in.

i’m SURE it has nothing to do with the bottle of Saki I had with dinner and the 2 Gin and Tonics I had with Scott, Larry, JP, and the rest after dinner.

Guess I should give up for now…. I”m sure a stroke of genius will hit me in the morning.. (or I’ll stop caring! ;).)

TTFN

Arggggg….

FUCK… Someone stole an hour of MY TIME… I HATE Daylight savings… Such an old fashioned thing and it only serves to screw up my schedule twice a year.. I’m sittin in this hotel all proud that I got up bright and early.. then I realized that some bastard stole an hour and now I gotta get movin..

ANYWAY…

Compartmentalizing

Driving in to work today I passed one of those cars with a big Bush / Cheney banner in the window and I rolled my eyes and caught up to see who was driving. I guess I expected to see a grey haired old man with an angry look on his face, a redneck with a gun rack in the back window, or a sunday school teacher with a jesus-fish hanging from the mirror. This got me thinking… Is it fair / appropriate to assume that anyone that voted for that jackass (and yes – I think Bush is a jackass) is a right wing, christian, war mongering, rich, homophobic, yadda yadda yadda? Or should I be looking deeper…

Then that got me thinking about the other places in my life where I compartmentalizing people based on past experiences or other reasons rather than listening to the content of what people say and what they believe.. I think we all do it and I think it holds us back from seeing different perspectives and perhaps learning… He’s a war monger (just because he can see justification for war), She’s a racist (just because she has drawn conclusions based on race), He’s homophobic (just because he doesn’t believe the church should marry gays), He’s not super sharp (just because he doesn’t understand a piece of technology), yadda yadda yadda.

For example, there is a person that I’ve worked with over the the years and have let myself come to the conclusion that, while a good engineer by and large, this person is very inclined to jump to the conclusion that the problem they are looking at is caused by a catastrophic failure in the application rather than digging deeper to find that there may just be one small failure in an obscure place. As a result I’ve found myself avoiding dealing with this person because I don’t want to deal with this ‘the sky is falling’ attitude..

However the other day while working with this person I found that much of this has to do with the way they learn a subsystem and this learning process lead to a couple of important things. First, it led them to a more complete understanding of how the app functions rather than a ‘well it just works so we don’t want to touch it’ attitude. It also lead to them finding an issue in the app we didn’t see which had a fairly simple solution.

In the process we both learned from the process. I learned ways to approach a problem which will lead to a deeper understanding of the application and solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had. They learned that the design as it stands supports fairly simple solutions to some tricky problems and, in the process, they gained a more thorough understanding of how the app worked.

So back to the bumper sticker… It occurs to me, that while I may believe that our President is a jackass and is doing a great deal of damage in the world, just because a person has a bumper sticker on their car supporting him doesn’t make them a jackass. It may be that we agree on many points from health care to gay rights to international policy but they may have some perspectives that have led them to believing that Bush could make a positive difference for the country.

I may still think they are a jackass but if I let my instincts stop me from listening and learning then I’m being a bit of a fool myself…

LORD… the weird things I think about while I’m driving.. Guess its the price of a 2 hour commute to work