We have over 3/4 of the SEED Engineering mentoring participants
matched with mentors already (37 out of 49). I hope to match a
few more next week but most will probably be matched after the
new year starts. For those who have next week as a holiday and
end-of-year break week: have a restful time and a Happy New Year!
37 out of 49 SEEDs Matched
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
College Applications Done!
My daughter Jessica has finished all 9 of her college applications:
hooray! She applied for admission to: Brown, Carnegie Mellon (& Conservatory), Lawrence (& Conservatory), MIT, Oberlin (& Conservatory), Princeton, Rice, Rochester, and Smith. This took an astonishing amount of work. We still need
to send audio CDs to the schools which will accept them but those
don’t need to be mailed until after Christmas. Jessica is also still
working with the alumni interviewers to schedule meetings. She
finally had her interview with Smith yesterday.
Next steps: The regional auditions
for Carnegie Mellon and Oberlin will be held early in January 2007.
If they don’t ask her to audition, she has not been accepted to those
conservatories. Most of the rest of the schools will tell us their
decisions in March 2007.
Jessica was under two restrictions until the applications were finished:
her college counsellor at school said no reading novels that weren’t schoolwork, and I said no scheduling holiday events. As soon as part 2 of the Brown application went in, Jessica immediately started reading
2 books and scheduled 5 events:
- A trip to the Dicken’s Christmas Fair
- Christmas carolling on the cable car in San Francisco with her Grandmother
- Baking fruitcake with her Grandmother (with a sleepover)
- Her 18th birthday party (at our house)
- A New Year’s Eve party (at our house)
Our party girl!
Filed under Home & Family
35 out of 49 SEEDs Matched
I am surprised at how many mentor matches I have been able
to make in this week just before Sun’s winter break. So
far, we have 35 or 71% matched out of the 49 participants.
Our mentors matched so far include 17 Distinguished Engineers
and Directors plus 9 Vice Presidents.
I think many of the remaining mentees are going to end
up waiting until the first week of 2007 because
potential mentors will be out of the office and not responding
to my reminders. However, I
was pleasantly surprised today when a potential mentor whose vacation
email had just popped back saying he was out until 8 January sent me
email and asked for more information on the participant. He said he
would let me know his decision by Friday, 22 December. The SEED
mentoring term officially starts on 15 January so I have some matching
time after the winter break.
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
Seasonal Events
Last weekend was very full of seasonal events:
- Friday:
I took a vacation day to go shopping in Chinatown. Two friends and I have gone on
this day trip during each of the last 25 years. We take CalTrain up the San Francisco peninsula then take Muni bus to Chinatown. We walk through the Lion Gate that
separates Chinatown
from Downtown and proceed down Grant. There are shops we always visit plus new
shops each year. We eat lunch at Sam Wo on Washington Street, go to the fortune cookie factory
in Ross Alley, then come back down the other side of Grant before taking the bus and
train home in time for dinner.Friday night, we joined our extended family for Hanukkah dinner, complete with
dreidel games, potato latkes, and lighting menorah candles to prayers in Hebrew. Some of the
toys from Chinatown were much appreciated by the smallest members of the family.
They particularly liked the Froggy Squeeze toys and the Slinky walking coil. - Saturday:
My daughter had a wrestling tournament so we had to get up unreasonably early
to get her there in time for weighing in.
We put up Christmas lights on the house and did household chores most of the day.
Jessica and Paul picked a tree at a local lot and carried it home to soak in a
bucket before we bring it inside.We dropped off 5 bags of used clothes at
Santa Maria Urban Ministry in San Jose. SMUM is an outreach ministry of
the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real. They distribute food and clothes and
provide educational programs to serve those in need within 8 Central San Jose zip codes.That night, we took Jessica and her boyfriend to dinner and the “Frolic” show (San
Francisco’s first CircusDragBurlesque Festival) at the
CounterPULSE performance space south of Market. We have been to several of their
shows this year and always have a wonderful time. We particularly looked for our friend
Susan Voyticky who was in two trapeze dance
pieces by Eat Cake Productions. - Sunday:
Jessica had a college interview with Univ. of Rochester. As usual, she met
the alumni interviewer at Starbucks. I think each of the 5 interviews so far has
been held at one or another Starbucks coffee shop.At 12:30 p.m. we went to service at
Santa Maria Virgen Episcopal church in Milpitas. Santa Maria’s Vicar, Padre Efren
Garza, offers a completely bilingual service in Spanish and English. Yesterday was
the annual visitation by the Rt. Reverend Sylvestre Romero so we got to see our
Bishop confirm about ten young men and women. Two of the girls were dressed like
lovely little brides but everyone looked handsome and well dressed, mostly in white.
There were about 175 people at the service so it was standing room only in the back.After church, we went to a Christmas party at some friends’ house and then came home
to work some more on Jessica’s college applications.
Filed under Home & Family
Caboose Stripping
WP668 is getting stripped of its old paint. We hired Avi Lenchner (whose daughter
and my daughter were in school together and who has painted two houses for us)
of Avi Decorative Painting (Menlo Park, CA)
to strip and paint our caboose. We decided to get the paint done while WP668
is on asphalt before she moves on to the rail line in our backyard.
Avi has been trying out different ways of getting the ancient paint off. At the
moment, the paint is coming cleanly off the wood (probably Douglas Fir) but the steel
bracing is more of a challenge. Avi tried chemical strippers but tapping the steel
with a hammer to shatter the paint seems to work best.
On one of the vertical steel framing pieces Avi found some decorative welding. The
steel script signature says “Illinois” on the part we can see. It was probably
added in 1916 when WP668 was first created as a box car by the
Pullman company.
It will be interesting to see what other mysteries lie under all of that old paint
and dirt.
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains
Over Half SEEDs Matched
I set a personal goal to match more than half of the 49 SEED Engineering mentoring
program participants in our current Established Staff term before the start of
Sun’s winter break next week. (trumpet sounds!) Already today, we have reached 26
out of 49 matched (that’s 53%)!
So far, we have 6 Vice Presidents plus 13 Directors or Distinguished Engineers who
have generously agreed to spend six months mentoring program participants. All of
the senior executives working on Sun’s Beijing campus (the Sun China Engineering
Research Institute in Tsinghua Science Park) have signed up as mentors this
term.
I expect some slow down in the pace of matching as this week progresses and people
take off on vacations. However, I will continue monitoring the conversations in email
to see how many more connections I can make despite the holiday week. Progress is
good for getting everyone matched before the term formally starts on 15 January 2007.
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
9 SEED Mentors Matched So Far, Phone in Meetings
Monday, I sent out 49 emails asking potential mentors, mostly
executives, to consider taking a SEED Engineering mentoring program
participant for their mentee for the six month 15 January-15 June 2007 term.
So far, 9 have accepted that invitation. Our newest SEED mentors (some
of whom have served as mentors in prior SEED terms) include a Vice
President, 2 Distinguished Engineers, and 2 Directors. They are based
in Beijing China, California, Colorado, Hamburg Germany, and New Mexico.
I hope to get at least half of this term’s participants matched before
Sun’s winter break week starts.
SEED just had its regular monthly phone in meeting. Today’s speakers were
a panel from Sales speaking on “The View from the Field”. Tim Van Loan, a
2003-2004 SEED participant and Sun Sales executive based in San Francisco
put together the panel.
The topic was popular, with 52 people calling in from all over the USA plus
Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Texas,
and elsewhere.
Phone in meetings work best when people who are not speaking
put their phones on mute. Today, everyone was good and the sound quality
was excellent. It is worst when someone puts the phone in call on hold and
everyone has to listen to their bad “hold music” until we give up and restart
the call. Second worst phone in behavior is when a caller is not on mute and
has a noisy background. Listening to someone wash dishes or shout at their
dog while trying to hold a business call is miserable.
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
KatysBlog 