Category Archives: News & Reviews

April 26, 2010 · 9:58 am

After Being Stranded in Egypt

John and Paul and I flew home safely yesterday after being stranded in Egypt by Iceland’s volcano eruption. We were in Doha, Qatar to visit Jessica during Paul’s Spring Break. All went well until flights through Europe were canceled due to volcanic ash. Here are some of John’s and my notes home to our wonderful neighbors, friends, and family who took care of our home and pets while we were gone:

  • 18 April:
    John and Paul and I are stuck in Cairo. All of the airports in Europe are closed by the volcano in Iceland and all USA flights from Egypt go through Europe. Paul loves the pyramids and seems determined to take photos of every hieroglyph he sees on every tomb wall. We have two people watching our house and pets in San Jose so all should be well at home. … There are now 6.8 million stranded passengers and as budget travelers, we are at the end of a long queue. It will probably take several days to get home. I appreciate your help! Cairo is wonderful. We are going back to see the Sakkara tombs and also to see Dahshur today.
  • 19 April:
    We have climbed inside of 3 pyramids – which are stinky and hot but very interesting. They don’t tell you in the guide books that people pee inside the pyramids – nasty! …Lufthansa’s regular flights start today but no word yet on how they will get those of us in the canceled flight backlog home. We are on the 17th floor of the Ramses Hilton with a Nile river view, 3 blocks from the Egyptian Museum.
  • 20 April:
    We just got back from the Lufthansa – United office here in Cairo Egypt. The first flight possibility goes out of Cairo on Saturday 4/25 (standby – not confirmed). John and Paul and I have confirmed seats on Tuesday 4/28. There does not seem to be any other way out of Cairo except through Germany, according to Lufthansa. We will keep checking back with them. Kat Carpenter and Felix Quintero are taking care of our house and pets in San Jose….It rained briefly this afternoon in Cairo – with lots of wind. We are set to take the Nile river trip and will be back in time for the first possible standby flight on Saturday. Everything is cash only – we had to call to extend our daily cash limit to pay for the cruise. We have been out collecting additional medicines – since we only brought enough for our original stay. Egyptian drugs have different names and dosages but we found a friendly English-speaking pharmacist who is helping us. There is an amazing 180 degree Nile view from our 17th floor room – lots of pollution haze but still exhilarating to stand on either of the two balconies.John and I just had a snack of Golash (like baklava) and Konafa (like a firm custard with filo on the bottom and shaved onto the top). Very tasty! Paul is happily watching Arabic TV.  All Saints Cathedral (Episcopal/Anglican) here in Cairo also sponsors a group of Sudanese refugees and they have their own shop – feels like home.
  • 24 April:
    We are now confirmed to fly Lufthansa early tomorrow morning – arriving on Sunday 4/25 around noon at SFO. Hooray – we are finally coming home!We went on a Nile river cruise – visited temples and tombs in Aswan and Luxor and just returned to Cairo. Paul has happily climbed inside of 3 pyramids (Giza, Sakkara, Dhashur) and visited 3 royal burial sites in the Valley of the Kings (Queen Tawosert in KV14, Thutmosis III in KV34, and Ramses III in KV11) . We have been to the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the Coptic Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, and the Mohammad Ali (Alabaster Mosque) in the Citadel of Salah al-Din. We visited the Coptic Museum and saw the Nag Hammadi Library. We have visited the Egyptian Museum, Imhotep Museum, Memphis Rahina Museum, Nubian Museum, and Luxor Museum.Paul has missed a week of school but is working on a paper for Geology and a paper for English about his trip to Egypt – illustrated with photos. He has rocks to show his Geology teacher.
  • 25 April:
    We’re home! After 48 hours on the go, from Luxor to Cairo to Frankfurt to California, we landed at SFO just after noon, and got back to the house an hour ago!Everything and everyone looks fine – Tino the cat says that nobody loves him, but he is willing to shed on us anyways; Redda and Juliet (the dogs) are glad to see us – and the birds were singing their hearts out when we walked in the door! Not to mention the happy flowers and roses! Thanks again for watching over everyone!More later after we get unpacked and unjetlagged :-)Egypt was a blast, but it is good to be back home!

Things I missed about California while in Egypt:

  • Drinkable tap water
  • Crosswalks and gaps between cars on the street, street signs and lights that are not just decorative
  • Being able to enter a building or historic site without a bag scan and questions by heavily armed guards
  • A telephone system I understand
  • Fresh fish
  • A wide variety of national and ethnic foods
  • Not having to pay tips (baksheesh) for everything
  • Peet’s coffee

Things I learned to love in Egypt:

  • Fresh dates
  • Tomb wall carvings and paintings of animals and daily life in ancient times
  • Donkeys and Camels and Horses on city streets
  • Om Ali and other Egyptian deserts
  • Bargaining in markets and shops
  • Hearing the Islamic call to prayer singing out across the city and knowing what time it is

John and Paul and Jessica and I took about 6,000 photos – check back to see them soon…

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April 8, 2010 · 10:00 pm

Book and Pizza Party

Last week, we had a wonderful visit at Santa Maria Urban Ministry’s Studio after-school program for inner city San Jose kids. Vicki Gochnauer’s Redwood Middle School class presented the Studio program with twenty or so of their favorite books (along with written book reviews now posted on the wall under the book shelf), then we had a pizza party. The big and little kids enjoyed hanging out and learning from each other. They did homework and played with computers and ran around together in the play yard. The Redwood Middle School class were also generous enough to raise $155 for a SMUM donation through bake sales. Much appreciated!

Some of Studio’s new books are:

The Calder Game, Blue Balliett
Stanley Flat Again, Jeff Brown
Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo
George’s Marvelous Medicine, Roald Dahl
Shiloh, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Redwall – Mossflower Brain Jacques
Lily B on the Brink of Cool, Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
Esperanza Rising, Pam Munoz
Zia, Scott O’Dell
Dinosaurs Before Dark – Magic Treehouse, Mary Pope Osborne
The Case of the Missing Hamster – Jigsaw Jones Mystery, James Preller
Holes, Louis Sachar
Bone, Jeff Smith
The Boxcar Children – Special #12, Gertrude Chandler Warner
Sabrina the Teenage Witch – Salem on Trial, Bobbi J.G. Weiss

Photos from our party:

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Images Copyright by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher 2010

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April 7, 2010 · 11:15 pm

Easter Egg Hunt

We held our family Easter Egg hunt last Sunday. This year, we had about twenty guests, nine of them children ages 2 to 17. All were experienced egg hunters. We followed our annual ritual:

  1. All hunters line up in order of age in the living room for the briefing.  Rule #1 is always “There are no eggs in the flower beds.”  Other rules address the sharpness of cactuses, the muddiness and egg-free condition of the riverbank, and indeed the general lack of eggs in any location except the back yard.
  2. Starting with the youngest child, each hunter in turn gets to pick a basket and an “advisor”.  Advisors are toy bunnies or birds who go on the hunt with the child instead of their parents.  Advisors serve to restrain parents from getting competitive and helping too much.
  3. We proceed to the kitchen door from which the children get to go into the yard, starting with the youngest then followed at one minute intervals by the rest of the kids.
  4. The hint poems for the gold and silver eggs are available for all kids and adults to consider.

This was my son Paul’s first year as Associate Bunny but even the Associate Bunny did not know where the gold and silver eggs were hidden.  The hint poems were:

Silver Egg

I see flowers purple and white
Though I am shaded from the light.
Please don’t eat me by mistake
When breakfast you come to take.

Gold Egg

I was here to show the way
Until Redda came to stay.
Chewed and broken, piled away
One last use I have today.

The two prize eggs were eventually found by adults: Susan found the gold egg (in a broken light fixture chewed up by our puppy, Redda), and David found the silver egg (tied in the branches of a blossoming orange tree). All of the regular eggs were plastic with candies inside. The kids particularly enjoyed finding eggs on and around WP 668, our backyard caboose.

After the hunt, the kids watched a video and played with computers and ate candy while the adults talked. When our guests left, John and I held our annual melting of the Peeps when we dispose of any of the vibrantly colored marshmallow candies which are left over from the party. (If you want to see a very odd website, check out The Lord of the Peeps.)

Pictures from our big day:

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Images Copyright 2010 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

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April 7, 2010 · 10:05 pm

Four More San Jose Metblog Entries

I have recently posted four more San Jose Metblogs entries:

You can see the index to all of my San Jose Metblogs postings on: Authors – Katy Dickinson.

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March 24, 2010 · 11:15 pm

OpenSolaris Governing Board Elections

My husband, John Plocher was just re-elected to his third term on the OpenSolaris Governing Board or OGB. Interestingly, only one elected member of the new OGB works for Oracle, which owns OpenSolaris as a software product (that’s also OGB’s only female member, Teresa Giacomini). The OGB is the managing body of the OpenSolaris Community, which “…is a world wide open source community dedicated to fostering collaborative development, innovation and adoption of the OpenSolaris operating system and related applications and distributions.” (quoted from the Preamble to the newly-approved and revised OpenSolaris Constitution).

The new OGB members are:

Dennis Clarke

Blastwave

Moinak Ghosh

Goldman Sachs

Teresa Giacomini

Oracle

Simon Phipps

None

John Plocher

None

Joerg Schilling

Project BerliOS

Peter Tribble

ProQuest

 .

The OGB election itself was a magnificent example of extreme Geek in Action.  From 25 February through 22 March, the nominations and voting went on.  The Meek Single Transferable Vote system was used, managed with OpenSTV open-source software. It took 31 rounds for all seven members to be elected from among the 16 candidates even though four of them (including John and Teresa) were elected on the first round.  305 ballots were submitted. You can see all of the details on Poll 5: Board Election 2010/Change Constitution.

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March 18, 2010 · 5:56 pm

Children’s Voices from the Studio

These are stories about Santa Maria Urban Ministry from the children of the SMUM Studio after school program.  SMUM is sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real. I interviewed the kids for SMUM’s Canticles monthly newsletter.

First is Belen who is 8 years old. Belen was born in San Jose, California and still lives here with her family. She has two sisters and two brothers. Her oldest sister is 22; Belen is the youngest. She started coming to Studio when she was 6. Belen comes back every Tuesday and Thursday for homework help because she wants to learn more. When she does not come to Studio, she stays home where it is boring and there is nothing to do. When asked what she would tell another kid about why to go to Studio, Belen said: “This is a cool place where you can do exciting things like math, computers, drawing, and much more.” Belen likes to play outside in the sand box and castle. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

Next is Abigail who is 10 years old and in 4th grade.  Abigail was born in San Jose, California and still lives here with her family.  She has two younger brothers.  Abigail started coming to SMUM when she was in 3rd grade.  She comes on Thursdays for homework help to help her understand her assignments.  Other days, she stays at home and does homework or watches movies or TV.  When asked what she would tell another kid about why to go to Studio, Abigail said: “It is fun because you can have help with homework, use the computers, do math and go on trips at the end of the year. You can play with people and play different games on the computer.  The people are friendly.”  Abigail most likes to do homework, play boardgames, and play outside.  When she grows up, she wants to teach math, science, and literacy.

One of the mentor-teachers is George who is 18 years old.  He is a Senior in High School.  George lives with his parents in San Jose where he was born.  He has a little brother who is 3 and an older brother who is 22.  George needs 40 community service hours for school.  He comes to SMUM because it is close to his house and his friends told him about it.  If George was asked why someone should do community service hours at SMUM, he would say: “It’s a good place to come help because you get to mentor young children.  You can set a good example for them that hard work can help you do good in school.”  George likes to help the kids out – being like a little teacher.  He wants to be an Architect when he grows up.

Jose is Abigail’s younger brother.  He is 7 and a half years old, in the 2nd grade.  Jose was born in San Jose but his family is from Zacatecas, Mexico.  He is the middle child, his younger brother is 2 and a half and Abigail is his 9-year-old sister.  Jose started coming to SMUM last year because his friend told him about the homework program and his Mom said they could go.  “It is a good place to do homework and it is pretty fun.  There are computers and you can play on them and the Internet.”  He likes best to do his homework and use the computers.  Jose wants to be a doctor or policeman when he grows up.

The next is by Samantha who is 8 years old and in the 3rd grade.  She was born in San Jose and still lives there with her little sister and little brother and her big brother and sister.  Samantha started coming to SMUM when she was in Preschool when she was 3 years old.  She comes Tuesdays and Thursdays to do her homework, play with computers, draw, play outside and eat snacks.  She likes best to play with the computer.  “Someone can come here to do a lot of things, to have some fun.  It is not boring.”  Samantha wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

The last story is from Robert who is a mentor-teacher on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Robert is 15 and in 8th grade.  He was born in San Jose; he has one younger  sister.  He started coming to SMUM last year.  He helps with the warehouse and after school programs.  Robert knows Rev. Lawrence Robles and goes to Trinity church where Father Lawrence works.  SMUM is close to Robert’s house.  Robert likes to work in the warehouse filling boxes with  cans and fresh food for the hungry.  He likes to play handball with the other mentor-teachers, play Uno, and use the computers.  “Come to SMUM Studio to catch up with your homework if your parents don’t know how to speak English.  It’s hard to do homework without parents or brothers to help, to support you. ”  Robert wants to be a cop or secret agent when he grows up.

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Images Copyright 2010 Katy Dickinson

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March 16, 2010 · 10:54 pm

1,001 Post, Diabetes Society Camp Registration

This is my 1,001 blog post since 2005!

Last week, I started working as the Camp Registrar for the Diabetes Society in Willow Glen, California.  My friend Kat Carpenter (who at 20-ish is also an officer of the newly-chartered Willow Glen Lions Club) is the Camp Director.  I decided to take this position as a contractor not because of the glamor or great pay but because it is a job that needs doing and it will help get me thinking new thoughts and making new contacts.  After 26 years working for Sun Microsystems, I think a change in perspective will help me in transitioning to a new regular job.

The Diabetes Society has been through some serious financial troubles recently.  However, they are now reorganized and offering their summer camps for kids and teens with Type 1 Diabetes. Three of the camps are already full with waiting lists.  Usually camp registration starts in January but this year it opened in March. I have been getting the records set up, sorting out the checks and credit card payments, updating web pages, answering the Camp Department phone, and generally helping out. John has been supporting me and helping with the Diabetes Society’s IT infrastructure. My knowledge of Microsoft Excel and Word Mail Merge is increasing daily!

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