Category Archives: Home & Family

February 4, 2010 · 11:30 pm

Skype from Qatar

A friend of ours dropped by yesterday with a good bottle of wine to cheer us up after my being laid off by Sun-Oracle last week. During lunch, I was very surprised to receive a phone call on my cell phone from my daughter Jessica who is at school at CMU-Q in Qatar until May 2010. I ran out of the restaurant trying to find a quiet place to hear why Jessica had called. I was only slightly hyperventilating, really.

Jessica is having fun in Doha, Qatar. (Qatar is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran.) Our busy girl is in a musical, a choir, and on the basketball team as well as taking classes at CMU-Q and Georgetown University in Doha’s Education City. We have been talking with her by way of Skype on a regular schedule. Doha is 11 hours off Pacific Time, so we need to be organized to stay in contact. Yesterday’s call was the first unexpected communication.

It turned out that all is well. Jessica called to say she had found a cheap ticket and would be visiting her fiance Matt in Washington DC over Spring Break instead of traveling around the Middle East as she had planned. It was good to hear her voice. It always amazes me that I can be standing on the street in Willow Glen, California talking with my daughter who is sitting in her dorm room in Qatar talking to her laptop. I love technology.

Image Copyright Katy Dickinson 2010

Model Train Layouts, Berlin Wall, Koi

Last night, my husband John and our son Paul and I visited three HO-scale model train layouts which are part of this weekend’s National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) Pacific Coast Region (PCR) Layout Tours. One of the layouts was in an office in the Bayshore Business Park, very close to the original Sun Microsystems campus in Mountain View. Before Sun was big enough to have a cafeteria, we used to walk into the Bayshore Business Park to buy sandwiches. In addition to a good Deli, the Bayshore Business Park has a delightful koi pond, and two big pieces of the Berlin Wall in a tiny monument to freedom next to a parking area. The signs say:

A Tribute to American Resolve
Sections of the Berlin Wall

The period after the second World War divided Western Democratic and Eastern Communist ideologies by what was known as the Iron Curtain, which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Within East Germany, part of the communist sphere of influence, West Berlin was an island of freedom surrounded by a sea of oppression. In August, 1961, the East German government, to prevent the flight of its citizens from West Berlin, built a wall dividing the City. For 28 years the Berlin was the Rubicon for East and West until “Glasnost” became the new thinking in the Communist World. Between November 9 and 12, 1989 the Wall was breached; not from without with bombs or bullets, but from within by the sound of freedom and the vision of a better life that had drifted over the Wall.

The World must not forget that it was America’s resolve and its political and economic ideals that made this bloodless revolution and most significant historical event possible.

I enjoyed showing 17-year-old, 6-foot-tall Paul the Berlin Wall monument and nearby fish pond and telling him how he and I used to feed the koi bread from our sandwiches when he was tiny. We chased the fish around with our flashlight. My fish pictures turned out surprisingly clear, considering how very dark it was.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Paul, Sun Microsystems

January 29, 2010 · 1:49 pm

Goodbye Sun – It’s Been a Great Ride!

My last blog post at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/:

I have been laid off by Sun-Oracle. It has been a wonderful 25 years!

I joined a relatively-unknown startup three years before it went public. I enjoyed working with some of the greatest Engineers on Earth and together we made Sun a success which changed the world. I had a splendid ride. I worked for Sun since 1984 in Engineering, Marketing, Quality, Operations, Legal, Standards, Strategy, and finally for the Chief Technologist’s Organization and Sun Labs. I am looking forward to the next adventure.

I hope that the SEED worldwide mentoring program participants, mentors, and managers will create new programs and opportunities in all of the new places they will go. For those who stay with Sun-Oracle: keep contact and support each other. There is nothing like SEED now at Oracle. Consider creating it, locally or globally. It will take too much time and an unreasonable amount of work but it will be worth it. It has been an honor and privilege to create this worldwide Engineering community and to work with such inspiring people. I hope you will continue to work with each other and with me. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and Facebook.

I have two wonderful kids who have grown up running around at Sun. Jessica is now a Junior at CMU (in Qatar for a Semester at CMU-Q) and Paul is in High School. Sun is their lifetime context for work. My husband, John Plocher and I met at Sun and I were lucky enough to work at Sun together for 17 years.

2005-2010 http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/ entries and new additions are now available here at https://katysblog.wordpress.com/.

I welcome your job recommendations. Your support is always appreciated.

How to Find Katy Dickinson After 29 January 2010

http://www.linkedin.com/in/katydickinson Katy’s LinkedIn Profile
http://www.facebook.com/katy.dickinson1 Katy on Facebook
https://katysblog.wordpress.com/ Katy’s Blog

Blog entry by Katy Dickinson

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Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Jessica, John, Mentoring, Paul, Qatar, SEED, Sun Labs, Sun Microsystems

January 27, 2010 · 7:39 pm

Rescued Rocker

Late one night in November 2009, my husband and I found a high backed antique rocking chair during our regular walk around our Willow Glen neighborhood. At 10 pm, we did not expect to find Victorian era furniture abandoned and covered in foggy dew on a street corner. We cycled back to it at the end of our walk and saw that the old chair had a broken rocker and some smaller damage but was generally intact and in good condition. We took it home.

The next day, the rocker went to our favorite fixer of antique furniture, John Gibbs of The Workshop (Campbell, CA). John said that it was about 100 years old, a good piece and worth saving so long as we did not need anything done before Christmas.

We checked up on chair progress from time-to-time and even visited it at The Workshop. This week, we brought the rocker home to WP 668, our backyard caboose. I still need to spend some hours cleaning the wood with Howard Feed-n-Wax and some grade 0000 extra fine steel wool, and we need to have a seat cushion made. I am sitting in the rocker as I write, very glad we saved it!

Blog entry by Katy Dickinson

Goodbye Romeo

Our old dog Romeo died last week and we are missing him. Romeo and Juliet were born in 1996 from a neighborhood stray who crawled under the garage of our old house. There were seven pups of wildly varied ancestry. We found homes for the other five.

Romeo was mostly white with pale yellow patches. He had a curly tail. Romeo’s big bony head and broad chest showed clearly that his father was a pit bill. Romeo was not very smart but was always sweet tempered and gentle. We used to say he had a 30-second-reset on his brain because it took Romeo a long time to learn not to jump on people and to sit on command. However, Romeo was a good watch dog and knew when to bark. He seemed to know the difference between our regular postal carrier and anyone new, even from the back yard.

We have some friends whose daughter loved Romeo. When Beth was 4-years-old, we had to rescue him repeatedly from her shoving balls into his mouth. Romeo never wanted to play fetch but she kept giving him balls. He was very patient about his ball collection.

Juliet was always the smarter of the two dogs. She learned young to climb chain link fences with her toes and to open gates with her nose. Romeo always followed his sister even when his hips and back leg began to hurt him as he got older. Juliet is now getting used to our new 8-month-old puppy, Redda. We have been giving Juliet many special treats and quiet time for resting away from her effervescent new pack mate.

It is hard to say goodbye to a good dog, even when he is old and in pain and the time has clearly come.

Jessica and puppies, 1996

Paul, John, Romeo, Redda

Romeo’s last day

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as Dogs

January 9, 2010 · 12:03 pm

News from Doha, Qatar

My 21-year-old daughter Jessica arrived safely in Doha Qatar yesterday and reports that she is settling into her new apartment before starting classes at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q). She will be studying in the Middle East through April 2010.

This week’s Willow Glen Resident community newspaper published an article on Jessica’s work called “Internships help Willow Glen resident narrow career focus” (8 January 2010, by Mary Gottschalk, p.18). The half-page article describes her summer 2009 internship for the World Organization for Human Rights USA in Washington, D.C. and even mentions WP668, our backyard caboose. Jessica is quoted about her internship: “I expected to be dealing with coffee or filing. A lot of my friends were doing piece work and were not trusted with real responsibility…. I learned so much about human rights and how we litigate in the United States. It’s exactly the kind of work I want to do.”

Jessica, Paul, WP668

Family at San Francisco Airport, SFO

Jessica & Matt, SFO

Jessica at SFO

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as CMU, Jessica, Matthew, Middle East, Qatar

January 6, 2010 · 9:56 pm

Rescue Dog

Today, we brought home our new puppy. Redda (her original name, which we may change) is an 8 month old strawberry blonde collie-pit bull mix. She is smart and sweet and submissive so we think she will make a good addition to our two older dogs, Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet are 14-year-old litter mates. Romeo’s health is failing so we wanted to introduce a new member to our small pack before he died. Redda came to us from Andy’s Pet Shop in San Jose, California. Andy’s is an adoption center for homeless or rescued pets.

We visited Redda at Andy’s several times. We brought Juliet to Andy’s for a visit and we brought Redda to our house to visit Romeo before we decided that the three dogs would get along well. They have had a good day together. Tonight, we take Juliet and Redda for their first neighborhood walk together.

Juliet in John’s lap after her bath

Romeo and Juliet and John

Redda at Andy’s Pet Shop

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as Dogs

Category Archives: Home & Family

Skype from Qatar

Model Train Layouts, Berlin Wall, Koi

Goodbye Sun – It’s Been a Great Ride!

Rescued Rocker

Goodbye Romeo

News from Doha, Qatar

Rescue Dog

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