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I’m sorry

I did something ridiculously awful. I inconvenienced my neighbors in a way that would shock you. I was uncaring, invasive, and I just kept going. If my neighbors wrote to an advice column about how awful I had been, readers would gleefully jump in and pass judgement on me. They would feel righteously indignant. They would express sympathy for my neighbors who were most decidedly the victims of of some pretty bad neighboring. They would say about me: how could I not know how rude I was being? I must have known and I did it anyway, they would say. And it is so obvious. After all she kept saying she was sorry, but then kept doing the offending thing. She knew. She had to have known.

Well I did know. And yet I didn’t. In fact, I was utterly clueless. I am speechless as to why I was so clueless. It was so obvious. But it wasn’t. How can that happen? How do you apologize for something that you know you did but you couldn’t fathom how on earth you did it? It’s a lame excuse to be unaware and yet until I was told what I had done, I was completely. Unaware.

My husband tried to tell me early on. I brushed him off. He felt security in the fact that I was so secure and so he didn’t think of it again.

I cried when they told me. I was in shock. I felt so ashamed.

I confess I don’t want to be friends with them anymore. Even if they forgive me. I’m too embarrassed to be friends. I don’t want to be that friend that did that awful thing. All of their friends no doubt will think of me as that friend that did that awful thing. There is really no escaping the fact that I will always be that friend that did that thing.

If anything, this experience has made me realize what folly it is to pass judgement on other people. You just can’t know what is inside another person’s head. Even when things seem so clear, they really aren’t. It is truly impossible that I didn’t know, and yet I am proof that it isn’t impossible. I didn’t know.

The internet is full of opportunities to pass judgement on people. I think in a small way I know how that woman felt who tweeted about going to Africa and not getting AIDS because she was white. So many people jumped at the opportunity to call her racist, and yet she really was that clueless. Unaware. Just like me.

Dr. Phil is about passing judgement on people. You see persons who must know how screwed up they are, but you see they don’t. They don’t know and so they need help from Dr. Phil to get back on track. It doesn’t matter if he helps them though. All that matters is that we are watching and we are thinking to ourselves how functional we are because we’re not like those people. They are really screwed up.

I’ll never pass judgement on those folks again now that I know I am one of them.

In case you are wondering, I did apologize to my neighbors.

Lean In

I’m coming out of retirement for a short review of Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In.

As a newly working mom (a couple years now), I was looking forward to reading this book. I had read an article about Sandberg in the New Yorker, and I liked the fact that she championed finding your career first before having children.

The career advice in this book is beneficial to both men and woman. Make sure your voice is heard. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Make sure you have a seat at the table. Be an advocate for yourself. Don’t be your worst critic. According to Sandberg these things are essential for a woman to advance their career. The short answer is of course this is sound advice.

On the other hand, there are huge things to consider before embarking on this approach. I myself have struggled from making $12 an hour to a good job as a Senior Software Engineer. I can’t stress enough that this was not an easy trajectory. And here is what I think needs to be emphasized. You can do everything that Sandberg recommends, and you can be an extremely talented person, but if you are in the wrong place it will fail spectacularly.

I have worked at least two places where being frank, bold, talented, smart, and outspoken worked against me rather than for me. At least one of these places was like this due to sexism. There are some work places that will resent you more for your talent. It seems bizarre. You would think most work places would want talented good employees, but some dysfunctional places would prefer a subservient employee who knows their place than a bold super performer.  Odd, but true. So here’s my advice. When you discover yourself to be in one of these places, get out. Don’t try to change them. Find a new place and hope to find one that is more amenable to your success. There are a lot of bad places out there. Don’t burn bridges but keep moving until you find a place that appreciates your talents. That is the best place to grow.

It’s been written already, but Sandberg focuses a bit too much on what women are doing wrong rather than the deficiencies of the system. I have known timid men who don’t get ahead. It’s not about characteristics of women that prevent them from getting ahead. I have known both men and women who have failed to get ahead due to being too afraid to lean in. So failure to “lean in” can’t be the only problem. I think Sandberg gives men an easy way to say, see we don’t need to change. It’s women who need to be bolder. That fails to take into account women who are bold but still experience the glass ceiling.

Not everyone can be a leader. Note to readers I am not a leader. This book is no secret formula. Some people just don’t have it in them to push ahead (lean in). They expect their talents to be noticed but don’t go out of their way to get themselves noticed. I think this usually happens due to some people being raised to be humble. Humility does little in the workplace.

I always use the Keanu Reeves example. I read somewhere that he dissed Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet to Branaugh’s face. Think about the character of Reeves. He’s one of the worst actors ever but he sincerely doesn’t know it. Think of all the people along the way that have noticed his extreme lack of talent. High school counselors, agents, directors, fellow actors, parents, friends. Many helpful people probably told him that he should pursue another interest. He didn’t listen. He became a successful actor. With no talent. Humility will prevent a good actor from getting ahead. Lack of humility can create a Keanu Reeves.

Sandberg’s chapters on men sharing more of the household work are spot on. Many of the couples I know now including myself are pretty equitable, so the good news is that this is a realizable goal for women.

A lot has been written about Sheryl Sandberg’s privileged and why this book fails to acknowledge that her experience is hardly transferable. True. She doesn’t exactly help herself by telling us Larry Summers approached her about being her adviser at Harvard. Then there was the treasury job with Summers. Then there was the job at Google and then an offer from LinkedIn. It’s a little tone-deaf because how many of us are going to even get in for an interview at Google or LinkedIn the startups with no experience. She had no experience.

And yet that is not the most tone-deaf part of the book. It comes when she talks about how important it was for her and her husband to stay in the same city so that they could raise their children and how her husband was struggling with flying from L.A. to the Bay Area on the weekends to be with the kids. Well readers when such a thing happens, don’t despair. All you need do is find a job at a new company and move that company’s headquarters to the Bay Area. Hear that? Work for Boeing and live in Bakersfield? Have Boeing move their company headquarters. Problem solved.

But wait there’s more. Sandberg’s husband’s company was SurveyMonkey in Portland. They are now based in Northern California. I live in Seattle. I like the Pacific Northwest. I don’t want to live in California. Maybe some SurveyMonkey employees felt the same way. So moving to NoCal might have helped Sandberg’s family, but possibly at the cost of some pretty decent Portland families. Yeah, life sucks sometimes.

Finally, Sandberg says you can continue the discussion by finding the Facebook Lean In page. Well guys, guess what? I’m not on Facebook and I’m not going on Facebook. So there you go. My review stays here.

Awesome

This cartoon is found many places, but I found it on Huffingtonpost.

Interesting things I read (past tense)

An anti-abortion rights organization is withdrawing an award it planned to present Rep. Bart Stupak, after the Michigan Democrat announced Sunday he would support health care reform legislation.

The Susan B. Anthony List had chosen Stupak to receive the “Defender of Life” award at the “Campaign for Life Gala” Wednesday here in the nation’s capital.

Because we all know Susan B. Anthony was pro-life.

From Yglesias. Emphasis mine.

We should also, however, spare a thought for the unsung hero of comprehensive reform, McConnell and his GOP colleagues, who pushed their “no compromise” strategy to the breaking point and beyond. The theory was that non-cooperation would stress the Democratic coalition and cause the public to begin to question the enterprise. And it largely worked. But at crucial times when wavering Democrats were eager for a lifeline, the Republicans absolutely refused to throw one. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and other key players at various points wanted to scale aspirations down to a few regulatory tweaks and some expansion of health care for children. This idea had a lot of appeal to many in the party. But it always suffered from a fatal flaw—the Republicans’ attitude made it seem that a smaller bill was no more feasible than a big bill. Consequently, even though Scott Brown’s victory blew the Democrats off track, the basic logic of the situation pushed them back on course to universal health care.

Today, conservative anger at the Democrats is running higher than ever, and for the first time in years the GOP leadership’s blanket opposition has won them the esteem of their fanatics. But in more sober moments in the weeks and months to come, my guess is that the brighter minds on the right will recognize that their determination to turn health reform into Obama’s Waterloo sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Universal health care has been attempted many times in the past and always failed. The prospects for success were never all that bright. Many of us, myself included, at one point or another wanted to try something more moderate. But the right wing, by invariably indicating that it would settle for nothing less than total victory, inspired progressive forces to march on and win their greatest legislative victory in decades.

Paul Krugman

Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

And a word of my own on “death panels.” Now that healthcare reform has passed (barring something catastrophic in the Senate), I predict the same people who whipped their followers into a froth over the government using death panels to put granny down, I predict that these same people will start to talk about the burden of keeping the poor and illegal immigrants alive. They are costing us money in insurance. Why should they get a life-saving transplant, they will say. I’ve done everything right all my life so why should I be punished.

Predators. I predict they’ll say child predators can get health insurance and it will cost insurance money to keep them alive. Those costs will be  passed on to us. In short, that they very people who fear mongered are now going to be the ones who want to go back to the old system where they can choose who is worthy of life-saving treatment.

The German Church abuse scandal

I haven’t read anything before about it, because quite frankly one does get tired of reading about sexual abuse and the Catholic Church. But this article is well worth a read as it describes just how fucked up the church is, and the existing pope.

And when you think about the Church’s ridiculous obsession with homosexuality and abortion, articles like these just make you scratch your head.

I have a hard time respecting any of the benefits such a church could possibly have when I read something like this.

The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.

Don’t mess with Toshiro Mifune

I’m a big fan of Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa movies. This clip from the movie Red Sun, while enjoyable, just doesn’t get close to the charisma of Mifune in The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Rashoman. What is it about him? I think it’s that he intimidates you and he laughs at you at the same time. Anyone seen this movie?

It’s real

And you can buy it at Etsy.

Spring is here

What a difference a week makes. It was really heartbreaking to see the U.S. lose to Canada in the Men’s Hockey Final, but at least it was a great game. You can’t say we didn’t try.

Yesterday was a brilliant day in Seattle though. The sun was shining. The temp was surely in the 60’s, and despite being depressed over the hockey I decided to get back into my exercise regime and go for a run. With getting sick and then traveling to Vancouver, I haven’t had much opportunity to exercise. Boy I was looking forward to it.

Then 2 blocks into my run, I tripped on some protruding cement in the pavement and landed very hard on my knee caps completing skinning one of them. It reminds me of being a kid really. Remember all of those cement playgrounds? I was always skinning my knees as kid, and I wasn’t the only one.

So I might have to delay running for another couple of days while the bruises heal. Another sign of spring was a big fat gray squirrel tearing up my newly planted garden. At first I thought he was eating my chard or spinach. But no. Must have been looking for a nut he may have planted last fall. He was persistent. After I chased him away, he came back. Who knows what I’ll find upon returning home today after work.

Here’s a pic from Major Changer on flickr.

Just back from the Olympics

Sorry for not posting in a while. Work has been busy. Extremely so.

Just got back from the Olympics on Sunday. I’ll try posting some pictures later on.

This image I got from the Slog. My friend witnessed similar behavior in Vancouver. She told me she saw a Canadian heckling Joe Biden about health care. This seems odd. No doubt a fan getting a little too enthusiastic about the US/Canada hockey game, which by the way was fabulous, we won.

But again this sign is in very poor taste. Would I point a cardboard sign at a television camera for a station in Saudi Arabia that says “At least I can drive.” Very poor sportsmanship displayed here, but I suppose tempers can get flared in these sorts of situations. Especially when you LOSE. Not that I care about WINNING. No, not at all.

Update: Okay, here’s some funny links I found via Ron Judd’s Olympic blog in the Seattle Times.

Piss off America. Oh and you lost the war of 1812.

Canada should just cheat.

Watch Mens Short Track 1500m

Here’s what I love about the internet. Remember those days when you watched 3 hours of the Olympics on TV when the event you wanted to see was just a few minutes? Remember how before every single commercial they would announce that your event was just about to come up? And then it wouldn’t?

Well now I can watch one short commercial and I get to see the Mens Short Track 1500m speed skating. It’s brilliant. Although I did have to install Silverlight. Click here to watch.

Quote for the day

We assume that those who crash will stay on the track and we don’t pay too much attention to the structures outside the track.

Spoken by the luge track designer for the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

It’s really quite an assumption to make isn’t it? It reminds me of a somewhat recent story about a drag race in America where spectators were separated from the course by orange cones. One of the cars got out of control and crashed into the audience killing people.

The organizers of the race could probably have said that they assumed the cars would not stray into the crowd. However, when you have a high speed vehicle in an uncontrolled environment you have to think about these things.

With the luge it’s the same.

What have I done lately?

The answer is sadly: not much. I think having a cat makes me more of a homebody. Danton seems to be so excited when we come home and so upset when we leave that we seem to be staying in a lot more. On the other hand, it’s really nice to get a proper weekend break from work. Work has been very exciting and very busy. I’m really enjoying programming full time.

Some random thoughts on recent news pieces.

10 Americans Arrested in Haiti for Child Abduction

This story fascinates me probably because I used to be a member of the Southern Baptist church and my dad still is. If you’ve been following the story, a group of Christians with no experience in child adoption, and most remarkably with no agency or legal mechanism to handle adoption — a process that is known to be fraught with difficulty, well, this group went to Haiti and tried to take 33 children out of the country with no papers.

I guess what fascinates me is how stupid this was. Did they really think that they could get away with it? I guess it shows what experience they had with the world at large.

If your religion encourages you to trust in God and not to worry about worldly complications like passports and adoption papers, then all of this seems to make sense.

It makes me think back to a great This American Life episode about a Baptist Minister who raised a baby who was switched at birth. Even though his wife alerted him to the switch, he said nothing until 20 years later. When he was talking to the biological mother of the girl he raised, he told her that this was a test that God gave them and to not question it. The woman who happened to be Methodist told him no. It may have been a test that God put you in that position to make the choice to do right or wrong, but it was not part of God’s plan that you said nothing.

Well anyway if you’re going to be religious for heaven’s sake have a little common sense. I suppose if you believe that thought then there isn’t really any point in having faith.

The “Retard” Debate

When I took a cross-cultural communications class years ago, we were advised to not say things that were known to be offensive people. Whether or not your intentions are good, you shouldn’t be saying something that another person will find hurtful. Basically, even if Quentin Tarantino doesn’t mean the n-word in a bad way, and even if he is surrounded by black people who don’t seem to mind, he should still know that to a lot of people the n-word means terrible things and he therefore shouldn’t say it.

So about the word retarded. Upon reflection, whenever I use that word I’m never actually referring to people who have a disability. Does that mean I should be able to continue to say it since I’m really referring to people I think are dumb and not to people who have a problem? According to my class, no.

Furries

Saw the below picture on Fail Blog.

see more Epic Fails

I thought it was funny without even knowing what a furry was, but some co-workers tipped me off. Read about the fascinating cultural phenomenom that is furries. I noticed a Superbowl advert with furries by the way.

Populism: Just like racism!

Matt Taibbi gets it. How many times in the last few weeks have you heard the word populism used by the mainstream media to describe the desire to reform our financial system? It takes a completely valid argument and uses that word to make it trite.

I also like how Taibbi calls bullshit — and actually uses the word bullshit. Favorite quote:

That’s basically Brooks’s entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of “excesses” — but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat.

Quote for the day

I can’t even grasp how wrong it is that a man who murders and feels no remorse for it can say without hesitation:

“It isn’t our duty to take life, it’s our heavenly father’s.”

Complete self-delusion.

Pictures from my commute

Sometimes I commute via running on the Burke Gilman Trail in Seattle. My commute is roughly six miles. With my new camera, I can pictures during my run since the camera fits easily in my running pants. These aren’t the greatest photos, but I think they give you a window into my day. I’ve been super busy programming of late, so I haven’t had too much time to post. That’s a good thing I think.

The trail goes underneath the Aurora bridge which is where these three photos are taken.

Then next we go into my evening commute home. I wished you could see this traffic caravan of bicycles fit with red lights. It was pretty cool, but this is all I got.

The Guy Has Got Class

Wish I could be as optimistic.

Nine to Five

This is a really fabulous trailer. Piques your interest but doesn’t give too much away.

Happily, my job is nothing like this and I have been super busy of late hence the spotty posts. I’m doing a lot of web programming and learning javascript. All my web programming in the past has involved posting back to the server to get to the code, so this is new to me.

While times have definitely improved for women workers since Nine to Five came out, I’m always bemused by the fact that administrative assistants don’t work 9 to 5 anymore. They don’t get paid for their lunch hour, so they work 8 to 5. So I supposes admins can in some way look back to the fond days where they got an extra hour’s sleep.

Ever hear of the Lingerie Football League?

Me neither. Seems akin to the Rat City Roller Girls. Read all about it here.

He steals the show

As recent comments would suggest, Danton somehow manages to steal the spotlight on this blog. I got the idea of Obamacon-ing him from Balloon-Juice where resident cat Tunch rules the roost.

British Scones * with a hint of America

Making scones is a weekend tradition for us. I’m a big fan of the British scone. Cooks Illustrated has the nerve to say this:

The British original is lean, dry, and barely sweetened. Spoonfuls of jam and clotted cream are a must.

Bollocks! I know I’ve mentioned before how Cooks Illustrated recipes annoy me with their ridiculous obsessive compulsive details. Here they ask us to freeze the butter then grate it. Screw that!

And the Cooks Illustrated recipe has blueberries. Blueberries (insert shocked reaction). What is it with Americans and their fear of raisins? I know so many people who don’t like raisins. Or if they do they only like them alone but not cooked in stuff. I remember being a kid in kindergarten and having little boxes of Sun Maid raisins as a treat. When did everyone develop a complex about raisins?

We pulled out Jake’s British Good Housekeeping cookbook and here is my slight modification to the recipe.

1. First we make our own cultured butter. The culture is added to some heavy whipping cream (double cream) then sits in a dark cabinet for a few days. We then take a sample to freeze and shake the jar until butter forms. Afterwards you get cultured buttermilk and cultured butter. Making your own butter is obviously not part of either recipe but this is part of our weekend tradition.

2. Thank god for my John Lewis scale. It weighs grams and ounces and the top part doubles as a liquid measurer with millilitres. So I put 225 grams of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a bowl and mix it up. I’m adding a half teaspoon of baking powder than in the British recipe because they use self-raising flour. And the two tablespoons of sugar is my addition too. I do light a slightly sweeter scone.

3. I cut in 40 grams of my newly made cultured butter with a pastry blender. Then I add about a 1/2 to 3/4 cups of raisins to that.

Next is 150ml plus of the newly created cultured buttermilk even though the British recipe asks for just plain milk. Stir it into the flour mixture until it starts to pull together. Add more buttermilk if needed.

4. Here’s where Cooks Illustrated has me. I drop the scones onto a baking sheet into amorphous blobs. I just don’t care enough to roll them into pretty uniform circles. And another American touch is to top them with a little sprinkle of raw sugar.

Finally bake at 425 degrees(220 C) for 12-15 minutes.

5. Cut open and eat with the newly made butter, which ahem, Cooks Illustrated, is the whole point. And cultured butter is the best. Yum.

The Party of Assholes

I am loath to blog about the worst of the worst wingnuts like Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Lynn Cheney and Glenn Beck. I mean what’s the point? Their assholeishness is hardly something so subtle that it needs a blogger (let alone thousands of them) to point out.

Nonetheless what is truly disgusting lately is the glee with which these assholes seem to treat human tragedy. Can there be any doubt after the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day how much these jerks want a terrorist attack to happen? They treated the attempt as a Christmas Day present to themselves and their ideology. They jumped right away with how Obama couldn’t keep us safe and launched a coordinated effort of historical revision regarding attacks during the Bush presidency. One wonders how much more excited they would be if this guy succeeded?

And now we have a human tragedy of catestrophic proportions. A poor country that has suffered for so many years gets kicked while it is already down with a natural disaster. And how do these guys react? What compassion do these “saviors of family values” give us? You have to know that Pat Robertson woke up to the news excited that God had finally put the nail in the coffin of this heretic country. And how about Limbaugh? Don’t give any money in aid to Haiti because we already do that through income tax. It’s not enough that you are an asshole Limbaugh, you have to try to influence others to behave like you.

What is there to say to all this? I apologize for this rant but these guys are truly evil. How else to explain their utter joy at so much tragedy around us.

The beginning of the end for Belltown

This is a neighborhood in Seattle that once was industrial and once was called Denny Regrade. Then in the 90’s it got all hip with high rise condos, boutiques, restaurants and bars. One of those great restaurants was The Flying Fish which is now moving to the South Lake Union neighborhood — which Jake likes to call Allentown. I think that pretty much puts the nail in the coffin for Belltown. It was fun while it lasted.

Vulcan, she says, has a very specific vision for South Lake Union. That vision includes “four or five restaurants of my caliber: very local, very Seattle restaurants. It’s really `hometown’ to them. They have a clear idea of who they want in there, and the wherewithal to make it happen.”

That’s a far cry from what’s been happening in Belltown, Keff insists, where the bar scene has overtaken the dining scene and movement and closures continue unabated. (Recent deaths include Belltown Bistro and Cucina De-Ra, and several high-profile restaurant spaces remain on the market.) In Belltown, Keff says, “You’ve got a lot of small landlords who never get together to have any say in what happens around them. And before you know it, things have gone to hell.

Quick thought of the day

Every day it’s these teabaggers complaining about fiscal responsibility and the money that our children and their children will be paying for our actions. I just have one question: where were they when Bill Clinton was paying off the national debt?

Fail Blog

Had me rolling on the floor.