KatysBlog

July 14, 2011 · 9:28 pm

2 Words with Friends Problems

I like playing the Words with Friends online Scrabble game knockoff. Words with Friends is an offering of the San Francisco company Zynga. Trying to fit new words into existing patterns with randomly assigned letter tiles is fun and challenging. Playing online with my kids and work friends is like having brief playdates throughout the day.

Two aspects which make the phone application game almost as frustrating as it is fun are the ridiculous dictionary and cheaters. The Words with Friends dictionary tries to be politically correct using a strange version of inoffensiveness that ends up being as bizzare as it is ineffective. Standard words such as “Jew” and “Arab” are both banned but also rejected are words such as moa which are life savers in Scrabble. Is someone offended by extinct flightless birds? Maybe “moa” is a curse word somewhere?

Then there are the cheaters. When playing the Scrabble game in our family, it is OK to use a dictionary to check the spelling of a word after the tiles are placed on the board and the player’s turn is over. However, using a dictionary in advance to look up which word to play is unacceptable. Playing Words with Friends, it soon becomes clear when your opponent is cheating. An Internet search for the phrase “‘words with friends’ cheat” yields 911,000 hits, including web sites called “Words with Friends Cheat” and “Lexical Word Finder” and “Scrabulizer – Scrabble Solver” and “Scrabble Word Finder”. I am currently losing a game in which my opponent has played the acceptable-but-improbable words voicer, regrate, rawin, duded, aulder, lieus, and exon to his great advantage in scoring. My recourse is never to play with him again and to think poorly of his sportsmanship hereafter. Where’s the fun in that?

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Tagged as San Francisco

July 13, 2011 · 7:24 pm

Van Gilder Glass – 3rd Home

My Great Grandfather was Walter Van Gilder, a glass maker. You can read my 2009 blog entry about his home at 1007 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville Tennessee. I own several engraved and picture mirrors made by him but I think Walter Van Gilder’s best work is a stained glass panel (about five feet wide) which until this morning was over the door of my parents’ house in San Francisco. The panel is lovely but in deteriorating condition, so I asked Architectural Art Glass expert Vince Taylor to remove and fix it. Vince has created three stained glass panels for our house in San Jose and he does beautiful work. Once the lead has been replaced and the frame restored or replaced (depending on what is possible), the Van Gilder panel will be ready for its next hundred years. Ours will be the third house it has graced and we look forward to welcoming it home later this year.

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Tagged as Eleanor, San Francisco, San Jose

July 12, 2011 · 11:43 pm

Guadalupe River, Canada Geese

Living on the Guadalupe River in San Jose, California, is always interesting. A few days ago, I saw more than a dozen of our noisy local Canada geese walking under the bridge intermingled with a smaller flock of Mallard ducks. The birds had to open their great wings to balance as they climbed up the bank to nibble on dry weeds. This is the same bridge that four months ago spanned a river full bank-to-bank with a rushing brown flood waters. The bank that the geese climbed up was far under water last Spring.

Geeky Model Trains

While I was in Washington DC with the TechWomen mentoring program, my husband John was giving technical presentations at the National Model Railroad Association convention in Sacramento, California. He talked about state-of-the-art for model train layout wiring and the use of Arduino electronics in model trains. John also went on a Yolo Short Line train ride in Sacramento, a tour of the Lehigh Permanente Cement Plant in Cupertino, Sacramento area model railroad layout tours, a visit to the excellent California State Railroad Museum, and a generally had fun with the boys while I was off hanging out with the girls.

Swimming Alcatraz

Last weekend, my brother Pete swam around Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in the Swim Around the Rock open water competition. He said it was a tough 3.25 mile course (from Aquatic Park around Alcatraz and back) but that the calm water on the far side of the island gave him a rest from the current. The water was a relatively-warm 60 degrees F. Only 40 swimmers were allowed to enter. The course was monitored by kayakers, lifeguards, and support boats. Pete was met at the finish with family hugs and tea.

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Tagged as San Francisco

July 9, 2011 · 1:33 pm

TechWomen – Last Day

7 July was the last day for the TechWomen visiting Washington DC. The day before, the program was honored by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her remarks in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department. This extraordinary honor was followed by lunch, then a night tour of Washington DC by bus, then a party at our hotel. We took turns standing up to share words of affection and encouragement. There were tears, followed by two cakes secretly bought by the Mentees, followed by group hugs and much talk. Some of the Mentees were up until 4 am talking since we don’t know when we will all be back together again.

7 July was full of departures, last tours, final shopping, packing, more hugs, kisses goodbye, exchanging cards and little presents, and talk. A group went to visit the National Museum of Women in the Arts, followed by a tour of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The National Museum of Women in the Arts was fascinating, particularly the centuries old paintings, and the Guerrilla Girls exhibit (“Fighting discrimination with facts, humor and fake fur!”). Growing up with an artist and CCA Professor for my mother (Eleanor Dickinson), I felt quite at home. We had a pleasant ladies’ lunch at the museum restaurant. The group went on to see the International Spy Museum but I had to leave to catch my flight home to the San Francisco Bay Area.

My flight was uneventful other than seeing remarkably lovely cloud formations. Since we were flying west in the evening, we were treated to a very long sunset.

Guerrilla Girls at National Museum of Women in the Arts

Adelaide Labille-Guiard 1790 oil portrait of an unknown woman

TechWomen and Secretary Hillary Rodam Clinton

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodam Clinton

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodam Clinton, Katy Dickinson

From the US State Department blog:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored 37 women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in TechWomen, an initiative that harnesses the power of technology and international exchanges as a means to empower women and girls worldwide, on July 6, 2011.

This story was carried in the news as well, including CNN’s “U.S. helps tech-savvy Mideastern women experience Silicon Valley” by Jill Dougherty.

The 37 TechWomen Mentees from 6 North African and Middle Eastern countries and their Silicon Valley Mentors and the program staff from the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) and the Institute of International Education (IIE) were in the State Department building again for meetings, a photo with Secretary Clinton, plus lunch in the Benjamin Franklin Room. Two of the Huawei Mentors (Kyna Sah and Att Athsani) plus Huawei Senior Vice President John Roese and I watched with pride as three TechWomen Mentees formed a panel which capably and charmingly answered questions in front of an audience of technical and political leaders.

Before and after the lunch, the TechWomen group was in the huge Henderson Conference Room downstairs where the US State Department honored the countries of the TechWomen by flying the flags of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Palestine. The Mentees took turns having their photos taken with their flags. The Mentees who had given the most impressive talks at the final workshop were asked to form the lunch panel and give their talks again at the US State Department. Two of the Mentors joined the Mentees in the afternoon presentations. Huawei is proud that two of our TechWomen Mentees were asked to speak at the US State Department!