February 16, 2007 · 6:01 pm

Getting Ready to Work from India

We will be running a SEED mentoring term application period while I
am working from Bangalore, India 1-14 March. Tanya Jankot has been testing the
web application forms and I am reviewing SEED’s Application FAQ this afternoon.

We have also set up times for two phone-in meetings for Sun applicants from
all four target Engineering sites: Prague, Beijing, St. Petersburg, and Bangalore.

The World Clock Meeting Planner has been of great help. There is no time which
is convenient for everyone and most of the USA is going through a daylight
savings time shift on 11 March, so schedules are particularly complex. I am
thinking of setting up SEED question and answer calls for:

  • 6 March (Tuesday) 10 a.m. Bangalore time

    (=8:30 p.m. California, =12:30 p.m. Beijing, =5:30 a.m. Prague,
    =7:30 a.m. St.Petersburg)

  • 13 March (Tuesday) 9:30 p.m. Bangalore time

    (=9 a.m. California time, =midnight Beijing time, =5 p.m. Prague,
    =7 p.m. St.Petersburg)

My husband, John Plocher, who manages the process and tools for Sun’s
Architectural Review Committees
will also be working from Sun’s India Engineering Center. We got our visas, hotel
reservations and plane tickets, and are both setting up our secondary electronic
accounts, requesting Sun Bangalore building access upgrades, arranging for office
assignments during our stay, and otherwise trying to make the transition to working
in India easier. In addition to work, John and I plan to go
railfanning while in India and
we hope to visit some model train clubs and layouts as well. We are in an interesting
email discussion with IRFCA (Indian Railways Fan
Club) members now.

John and I visited the
Travel Medicine department at our clinic several weeks ago and got punctuated.
That is, we brought our immunizations up to date. Our clinic has a very helpful
online service which provides summaries of visits and tests and lets us request
appointments and renew prescriptions online. I can chart life events by looking at
the dates of my immunizations: Typhoid and Hepatitis B to go to India in 2004,
Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis (Tdap) after the Whooping Cough outbreak at my
son’s school this year, etc.

We are also reading travel and background books. The best train travel web site
we have found is The Man in Seat Sixty-One.
The India page of that site
recommended reading the Lonely Planet guide,
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and Peter Hopkirk’s Quest for Kim. I think
I have read Kim at least a dozen times so I am having a lovely time
reading Quest for Kim (which describes the people, places, and history
of that most famous adventure novel).

I have my little wooden
pillar of Ashoka on my desk to remind me of India itself as I manage my
way through the details of getting there. Soon, we actually start to pack!

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February 15, 2007 · 6:14 pm

Interviewing for College at Starbuck’s

My daughter Jessica is now in the last half of her Senior year in High School.  All of nine college applications are in. She just finished her final vocal audition last week and recently participated in two of the final three alumni interviews. She is still trying to arrange a time for that last interview.

Except for those at the university admissions offices, I think all of Jessica’s interviews have been held at Starbuck’s coffee shops. A friend of ours who does alumni interviews for his alma mater says that Starbuck’s is sufficiently public that both the interviewer and candidate feel safe; also, there are lots of Starbuck’s shops around and they are usually easy to find. (I am currently re-reading Moby Dick in which the moral but pliable first mate is named Starbuck. The coffee shop chain is named for him.)

We are still getting letters from schools saying they are missing information already sent. For one school, she sent in her musical profile three times before they acknowledged getting it. I suspect that some schools are not as organized as they require their applicants to be.

We will be happy to be done with waiting to hear back. All of the schools are supposed to give Jessica their acceptance or denial letters by 1 April. One interviewer told her they would say by 15 March. Another school asked her to apply for a binding early admission (she declined). A third college had a professor write her a personal letter about his new program. I think all of this communication means that at least some of Jessica’s applications are well regarded. But I would still like to know for sure. I hate waiting.

We are sending in our 10th week summer Blue Camp Bear’s Lair reservations without knowing whether Jessica will be able to go or if we will have to cut our camping short to move her into a dorm.

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February 15, 2007 · 2:06 pm

SEED Mentoring Press and Publication History

Here are publications, articles, and announcements in the public
press and on the open web about the SEED program. (I just updated the
internal-to-Sun SEED web pages so I will include the information here too.)
I have included live links where I could find them. There may be more
articles but I don’t know about them…

2007

2006

2005

2004 and earlier

  • “Bit by
    Bit: Mentoring & Practical Approaches to Advancing Women in High Tech”
    Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
    (“GHC 2004”) Moderator: Katy Dickinson, Sun Microsystems, SEED
    Program (Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development)
    7 October 2004


  • Rhonda Holt     (VP of Grid Engineering Program Office) interview,
    DiversitySearch – Up Close & Virtual Interviews,
    2004 (mentions SEED)

  • “SEED: Sun engineering enrichment & development”
    Research Disclosure Database Number 482013, defensive publication
    in Research Disclosure, Published in June 2004, Electronic
    Publication Date : 17 May 2004 10:45,


  • “Nurturing a Culture of Innovation”     Express Computer
    May 2004 article on SEED program and participants in India
    Engineering Center (IEC) in Bangalore

  • “Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development Program Fosters
    Growth New Hires, Experienced Staff Work with Senior
    Staff Mentors” Paragon Pinnacles > Volume 73 > Issue 3 > Sun Features >
    (March 15, 2004, Article #12480, Volume 73, Issue 3)

  • “Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development Program Fosters
    Growth – New Hires, Experienced Staff Work with Senior Staff
    Mentors” Sun System News, March 15, 2004, Article #12480,
    Volume 73, Issue 3


  • “Tapping into the Knowledge Network”     http://www.sun.com article on
    SEED, 18 Feb 2004 [was featured on both the http://www.sun.com and
    research.sun.com home pages]

  • “Sun (SEED) program pairs college recruits with senior
    engineering mentors, 23 Feb 2004 link to

    “Tapping into the Knowledge Network”     http://www.sun.com article
    from LSTN
    (Learning & Teaching Support Network for Engineering section on
    “UK & World Media News”- now
    called The Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre)


  • “Mentoring and Being Mentored on the Technology Track”
    By Carla King, published on “developers.sun.com –
    The Source for Developers”, 2003 [Now called Sun Developer Network or SDN]

  • Bit by Bit: Catalyst’s Guide to Advancing Women in High
    Tech Companies    , SEED is the featured case study in
    the “Use Mentoring and Networks to Win” section (page 106), book
    published by Catalyst, 2003,
    ISBN 0-89584-243-2

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February 14, 2007 · 4:06 pm

Teatro Zinzanni for Valentine’s Day

My husband John and I drove north to San Francisco yesterday to go to
Teatro Zinzanni for Valentine’s Day.
(Yes, I know we were celebrating early but the show is sold out for today.) Teatro
Zinzanni is at Pier 29 on the Embarcadero, under
Coit Tower. Traffic was
surprisingly light so got there early. Although I am a native born San Franciscan, I
had never been inside Coit Tower. The murals around the inside were well worth
seeing but watching the sun set from the top of the tower was even better.

Teatro Zinzanni has locations in Seattle (where they started in 1998) and
San Francisco. They describe themselves as “…a bewitching evening of European
cabaret, cirque, divas and madmen, spectacle and sensuality with live music and a gourmet
five-course dinner—set in the nightclub of your dreams!” It is hard to say
who is a madman in San Francisco but the rest is true enough.

The dinner was very good and the courses were served long enough apart that we could
enjoy both the food and the show. The performances reminded me of an upscale version of
the circus, music, and dance shows offered by
CounterPULSE. Teatro Zinzanni has
the same energy and fun but with food, more expensive costumes, and less edgy or
explicit humor.

Teatro Zinzanni’s serving staff and performers were all in costume and character
all 4 hours of the show. Someone would play a minor role in one skit only to be the
star of the next. My two favorite acts were Andrew & Erika (who performed graceful
and impressively athletic aerial acrobatics and dance) and
Mat Plendl. Mat Plendl had
a regular Teatro Zinzanni character named “Mr. Chou Chou” who was the silly and fussy
Master of Ceremonies for the whole show. At the very end, he stripped off Mr. Chou
Chou’s costume to dance with hula hoops. Mat Plendl calls himself “The World’s
Greatest Hula Hoop Artist.” He had about ten hoops whirling around his arms, legs,
body and neck at one time. The different color lights on the metal hoops made
delightful effects.

Members of the audience were brought into the show from time to time but those
of us at the tables against the wall were thankfully spared the humiliation.
The U-shaped back tables were a trick to slide into in a long dress but we had
a good view. There wasn’t much quiet time to talk so it was only slightly
awkward spending 4 hours eating dinner with two very young couples we just met.
I felt very old when singer
Francine Reed sauntered by our table and said that the
gentleman of the couple on our left looked like
Bobby Sherman. I was the
only one at the table who knew who 1970’s teen idol Bobby Sherman was. (There was
indeed a strong resemblance.)

With the cost of the tickets ($123/each) and ticket fees, and parking ($12 – exact
change required for the ticket machine in the lot behind the theater tent), and
drinks, the evening cost over $300. It is not too much for a very special night out.

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February 13, 2007 · 1:50 pm

Family Photos

I just read Jonathan’s
Blog entry on “My Family Photos – and ODF” and was reminded
of the months of work it took to prepare the family photo video
we made for my father’s 80th birthday last year. After reviewing
thousands of pictures, I picked 586 to include in the final version.
We made DVD copies for family members (and uploaded them to a
photo storage web site) so at least those photos exist
in more than one location but most of the images have never been
copied and are stored in plastic boxes in my basement.

We called the 2006 video “80 Years of Innovation & Entrepreneurship:
Wade Dickinson”. Some of the photos are of historical importance
(like the 3 we have from the one room schoolhouse he attended
in Hickory Township, Pennsylvania, or the hand colored portrait
of him as a West Point graduate) but most are of interest only
to relations:

Wade in 1929:

Wade Dickinson 1929, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson 		One Room Schoolhouse 1931:

Wade Dickinson at the One Room Schoolhouse 1931, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson
Car Fans 1942:

Wade Dickinson 1942, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson 		Wade at West Point 1947:

Wade Dickinson West Point 1947, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson
Our Family in 1964:

Wade Dickinson and Family 1964, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson 		Wade in 1972:

Wade Dickinson 1972, photo: copyright 2006 Katy Dickinson


Images Copyright 2006, Katy Dickinson

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February 12, 2007 · 5:40 pm

Athletics and Disabilities

Today starts my son’s 2nd week participating in track and field as a Freshman in High School. Since Paul has a rich variety of learning disabilities
(social/cognitive, dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.), sports is one of his hardest school subjects. Paul’s disabilities aren’t visible – he is a tall, hefty, and smart – which causes problems when he does not respond as expected. He went out for track and field because one of the coaches is also his Math teacher. They get along well and Math is Paul’s best subject. We hope that having a coach who already understands Paul will help him stay with running.

Paul was on the wrestling team in 8th grade last year. His team mates wrestled to win but Paul wrestled to learn how to be on a regular sports team. He set himself goals for his matches like: 1) don’t quit, 2) don’t bleed. Paul’s approach has much in common with the Athlete Oath for the Special Olympics:

    Let me win. But if I cannot win,
    let me be brave in the attempt.

It has been raining hard all afternoon but the coach told Paul last week that “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor hail…”* will stop training runs. I just talked to Paul on the phone and he said he was “wet, wet, wet, wet, wet,” after running for hours in the rain. But he stuck it out!

* motto used by the U.S. postal service, adapted from Herodotus

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February 12, 2007 · 1:21 pm

SEED Matching Status

The SEED Engineering mentoring program here at Sun is currently matching
two very senior terms: SEED-2 (for alumni SEED participants who wanted
a subsequent mentoring partnership), and the Distinguished Engineer (DE) term.
The DE term is for a group of newly promoted DEs to work with more experienced DEs.

Both are pilots: experimental terms. I have matched five pairs out of the two
terms so far: 3 mentor DEs with 3 mentee DEs, and two Vice Presidents with
SEED-2 participants. I hope to get all 21 participants matched before I
go to Bangalore, India at the end of this month to run the SEED 4-Site Term
(for Bangalore, Beijing, Prague, and St. Petersburg).

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