During our recent trip to Loon Lake, Wisconsin, I collected photos of
a local expression of individuality: character mailboxes. Some of
these are store-bought but many are individual creations. All reflect
the local passions: football, fishing, farming…
Green Bay Packers
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Fish
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Tractor
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John Deere Tractor
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Sitting Guy
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Loon
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Red Barn
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Air Mail (on tall pole)
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Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
We vacationed at Loon Lake, Wisconsin, last week, as I
just wrote. One of my favorite activities there is taking photos
of the local flowers. Unfortunately, I don’t know most of their names
but here is what they look like. As you will see, I am particularly
fond of water lilies…
Nightshade
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Hare Bells
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(yellow blooms 1)
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(yellow blooms 2)
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(yellow and red blooms)
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(white blooms 1)
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Wild Pink Rose
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Columbine
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Daisy 1
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(pink blooms)
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(white bells 1)
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(white blooms 2)
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Solomon’s Seal
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Yellow Waterlily
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White Waterlily
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Yellow and White Waterlilies
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Yellow Waterlily
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Yellow Waterlily
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(white bells 2)
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Daisy 2
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(white blooms 3)
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Lupines
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Field of Lupines
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(orange blooms)
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Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
We flew home yesterday from a ten day vacation in Loon Lake, Wisconsin and
Washington D.C. John’s family has a 75-year-old lakeside cottage with
more boats than bedrooms where 17 of us gathered. There
would have been a count of 18 but Jessica was singing in a music festival, which
is why we traveled to Washington. We started our trip on 20 June by flying
from San Francisco to Cleveland, Ohio, to Green Bay, Wisconsin (SFO-CLE-GRB).
I love airport art, such as the delightful huge “paper” airplanes
hanging over a CLE walkway or my favorite SFO sculpture, Deborah
Butterfield’s “Pohina” (cast bronze horse seemingly made from driftwood).
At Loon Lake, we went tubing (riding floats behind a speedboat), fishing, canoeing, paddle boating, and just riding around the lake in the pontoon boat
to see the loons
and ospreys which nest on
half drowned and buggy Osprey Island.
We even took the pontoon boat to dinner at Sigrid’s restaurant at the other
end of the lake. We also spent a day riding the rapids in inner tubes on the
Red River.
This was a big year for wildlife at Loon Lake, including a big
snapping turtle,
a surprising and large toothy
gar (caught in the speed boat’s propeller), deer, herons, cranes,
golden eagles, five loons and five nests of ospreys, plus crawdads,
a toad and a leopard frog, dragonflies and way too many bugs of all sizes.
My mother-in-law Naomi Plocher
has been coming to Loon Lake all of her life. She told us that when she was
very young, there were loons but they went away for over sixty years and did
not start coming back until about four years ago. We did not see any baby
loons this year but the five adults danced in a circle at dusk and then
cried hauntingly all night. We have only ever seen one bear at Loon Lake – the young adult
black bear of two years ago – but the other wildlife seems to
be increasing in number and variety.
On Friday, John and Paul and I flew to Washington D.C. (GRB-CLE-DCA)
to hear Jessica sing as one of the three genii (or
three boys) in Mozart’s opera
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote), at
Saltnote Stageworks. Yesterday, we flew home (DCA-MSP-SFO).
Photos follow…
CLE airplanes
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Deborah Butterfield’s “Pohina” at SFO
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Deborah Butterfield’s “Pohina”
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Paul fishing
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Caught a Small Sunfish
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Grandpa Dave and Marty Fishing
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Tubing with a loon
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Paul tubing
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Paul – no hands!
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Four loons at dusk
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Solo loon
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Osprey in nest
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Osprey Island sign
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On Osprey Island
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On Osprey Island
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Black dragonfly
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Green and black dragonfly
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Green dragonfly
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Marty and the Gar
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Snapping turtle
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Red River Crawdad
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Sunset
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Sunset
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Loon Lake Cottage
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Loon Lake Cottage
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Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher
Filed under Home & Family
Late yesterday, I announced the selection of the 86 participants in
the Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development (SEED) mentoring program
for the 2008-2009 terms. The worldwide Sun-Engineering-wide selection
took months of work in preparation by the SEED program staff and our
partners in Sun Human Resources, plus the essential contributions of
the applicants, their managers, and the recommenders.
We very much appreciate the time and trouble that
everyone put into developing their SEED materials. Whether or not the
applicant got into SEED this time, I know it takes a great deal of work to
apply and the work is much appreciated! Thanks also to the SEED
Selection Committees for their time in reviewing and picking the new
participants!
Participants in the SEED program for the two terms which start in
September 2008 were chosen based on professional performance and
manager’s recommendation, with consideration given to the other
factors included in their applications. We picked two distinct groups
yesterday:
The next steps for new participants is to
create their 15-name Mentor Wish Lists and their personalized SEED
web pages (for potential mentor review). Here are some general
metrics on the new SEEDs:
Location of Participants 1 Australia, 1% 1 Canada, 1% 3 China, 3% 7 Czech Republic, 8% 1 Finland, 1% 1 France, 1% 2 Germany, 2% 5 India, 6% 2 Ireland, 2% 1 Israel, 1% 4 Italy, 5% 2 Japan, 2% 1 New Zealand, 1% 1 Russia, 1% 3 Spain, 3% 1 Sweden, 1% 2 Switzerland, 2% 4 UK, 5% 42 USA, 49% 7 Central USA, 8% 7 Eastern USA, 8% 28 Western USA, 33% Division of Participants 4 CTO/Sun Labs, 5% 1 Marketing, 1% 10 Microelectronics, 12% 20 Sales & Services, 23% 34 Software Group, 40% 5 Storage Group, 6% 4 Systems Group, 5% 5 Worldwide Operations, 5%
Tanya Jankot and I have been answering happy emails (“I’m so happy to be a SEED participant. Thanks for your kind advice and great help!”),
frustrated emails (“Need answers please!”), and requests for more
information (“How come xxxxx didn’t make it into the SEED program?
Can you give me a call?”), or all three (“I am ecstatic that two of
my direct reports, xxxxx (new hire) and xxxxx (established staff), made
it through. However, I’m very disappointed that xxxxx, a star performer
in my group, did not make it. I would definitely like to talk to you to understand the rationale for his not making it so that we can keep that
in mind for future applications.”) from applicants, managers, and
recommenders. Lots and lots of emails…
More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
I usually write about my work here at Sun for the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program. Another of my programs is Sun’s Technology Advisory Board or TAB, which I manage for Greg Papadopoulos (Sun’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development).
What does TAB Do?
Since 2005, TAB has met several times a year to discuss key technical topics and trends, partnering to shape Sun’s technological vision for future development and product plans. The role of a TAB member is to support Sun’s Chief Technologist’s Organization in making recommendations to the CTO and Chief Executive Officer, as well as to the Chairman of the Board and Sun’s Board of Directors. Here they are at yesterday’s meeting:
TAB in June 2008
L to R Standing: Greg Papadopoulos, Steve Ward
L to R Seated: Ivan Sutherland, Danny Hillis, Dave Patterson, Mike Splain
Who are They?
Image Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson
Links updated 11 January 2017
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
We held my son Paul’s IEP today and I thought it might help other parents going through this annual special education ritual to read about it. Paul just finished his Sophomore (grade 10) year in High School here in the San Francisco Bay Area. An IEP or Individualized Education Program is a meeting and set of documents describing the interventions or accomodations which will support the unique educational needs of a particular disabled child. The IEP is essentially the record of what has happened during the prior year and what the school, teachers, parents, and child agree will help that child learn best within the school. (There are much more precise and complex ways to define an IEP, of course.) IEPs can be used in public or private schools. Paul attends public school.
Paul has had an IEP since about 2nd grade. When he was younger, the IEP focussed more on understanding and evaluating his disabilities and what services might help him. Now that Paul is almost 16, the IEP is more focussed on the resources and program needed to support Paul’s more-or-less understood educational, social, and cognitive challenges.
Once, when Paul was worried that his IEP accomodations were not fair and that taking advantage of them was like cheating, one of the school administrators explained to him that he had to work so much harder and longer hours than most students because of his disabilities, the accomodations were to level the playing field so that he could compete in the mainstream school. This made good sense to Paul.
This morning, after weeks of preliminary discussions, nine of us met for the IEP. As he has matured, Paul himself has been increasingly consulted during his IEPs and he spoke at length several times during this meeting. We all left an hour and a half later with a twenty-ish page stack of papers but a short list of accomodations and course work for Paul’s 2008-2009 (Junior) year in High School. Here is what we signed off on:
This year (2007-2008), Paul took one more solid subject (Biology) along with Math, Art, English, History, and P.E. but he had only one Study Skills period. We all decided that since Paul recently passed his High School exit exam and has almost completed his required courses for graduation, the stress of a 4th solid wasn’t worth it. We will find out in August which teachers are assigned to these classes and how Paul’s schedule works out in detail.
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
My 19-year-old daughter
Jessica is in Washington D.C. (Indian Head, Maryland anyway)
preparing to sing in her first professional opera on Tuesday night, as
part of the
Saltnote Stageworks festival this month. I think the first of the
five shows in which she appears is
Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) by Giacomo Puccini. The roles keep
shifting around but as of today Jessica is scheduled to play a combined role of
The Mistress of Novices and the Abess in Suor Angelica. She is also in the
chorus for Carmina Burana,
Porgy & Bess (Concert Version), Mozart/Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, and she plays a Genii in Mozart’s
The Magic Flute. I am happy that Jessica is keeping up
her blog so I know what
is happening. It is very interesting reading about her working to develop
her music and roles. Some of the video clips are amazing.
When Jessica called tonight, she sounded excited but very tired. We will talk
more tomorrow night. Jessica talked about how hot is was and how big the
bugs are. As she says, when rehearsing in an outdoor theater at night, the stage
lights attract big bugs, and who is on the stage? The chorus! She liked
bugs until they started flying into her face while she was singing Carmina Burana
and could not get away.
We will be in Washington D.C. to hear Jessica sing later this month.
Filed under Home & Family
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