Tag Archives: John

August 7, 2014 · 10:18 pm

Moby Dick, or, the card game

This week my family has been playing “Moby Dick, or, the card game” almost daily at the University of California at Berkeley’s Lair of the Golden Bear Camp Blue. This game was a Kickstarter project by King Post that I invested in last year. I gave it to my son-in-law Matthew, who loves games of all kinds. “Moby Dick” is great fun – we plan to buy more copies! The card graphics are interesting and well-executed. The game play is fast and dependent on both luck and strategy. An added benefit is that the classic 1851 whaling story Moby Dick by Herman Melville is one of my favorite novels.

Matthew, Jessica, Paul and I made some rule changes to improve play:

You cannot progress past the first chapter until a whale has been fought (this allows players to get some oil – so that more sailors can be hired).

Any time there is an uneven number to be distributed, we roll a die to see which player got more.
We designated any sailor without a specific name as a forecastle sailor.

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Tagged as Jessica, John, Lair of the Bear, Matthew, Melville, Paul, University of California

June 30, 2014 · 7:27 pm

Drawings vs. Cartoons vs. Caricatures

My mother, Eleanor Dickinson, sketched my husband John Plocher during Sunday brunch last week. I have been thinking how different even a quick fine art sketch is from a cartoon or caricature. John had a caricature drawn at a conference last year by Jon Casey and has been using that image for his web thumbnail image. I experimented with the Avachara self-portrait website. While the Dickinson portrait and Casey caricature both show recognizable aspects of John, the Avachara image somehow manages to include all characteristics without being a likeness.

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Tagged as Eleanor, John

June 29, 2014 · 9:59 pm

Paul’s Graduation

My son Paul has graduated from Foothill College! Hooray! We are so proud!

On Friday evening, he walked with his fellow Studio Art graduates, then we celebrated with a wonderful late dinner at Sienna Bistro in Willow Glen. On Saturday, Paul enjoyed a day of video and board games and BarBQ with friends and family at home. Paul starts his studies again in August at San Jose State University where he wants to earn a degree in studio art with a teaching credential.

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Tagged as Eleanor, Foothill College, Jessica, John, Matthew, Paul, San Jose, San Jose State University

June 22, 2014 · 6:06 pm

Tartan and Pipes for Baptism

Last year, my friend Laura and I bought tartan sashes at the Scottish Games. I discovered then that my Dickinson family may be historically associated with the Paisley district tartan. Laura’s family has connections to the Boyd tartan.

Today, in honor of the baptism of our Rector’s daughter Olivia, Laura and I wore our tartans to service. Rev. Channing Smith and his wife Mary were delighted to be baptizing their baby, so the Stewart Tartan Pipes and Drums marching bagpipe band were on hand to lead us out of church. Two of the drummers in the band were women!

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Filed under Church, Home & Family

Tagged as Episcopal church, John, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

June 22, 2014 · 5:33 pm

Re-Learning the San Francisco Mission

I am enjoying working at Everwise in San Francisco as their new Vice President – Mentoring. It is particularly fun to get re-acquainted with my hometown. I worked for years in our family business – in a building that does not exist any more. It was on Steuart Street at the base of Mission, across from what is now the Rincon Center but used to be the Rincon Annex US Post Office. I used to love looking at the WPA murals while waiting in line to refill our postal meter.

In the last two weeks, I have discovered an inexpensive place to park ($10/day instead of the $28/day I paid at first), and delightful places to eat closeby:

Fang Chinese restaurant – for dinner.
Fresh Roll Vietnamese restaurant – for a quick lunch
Westfield – San Francisco Centre – Restaurants – very high end food court
‘wichcraft soup and sandwiches – for lunch

I have also admired the newly refurbished LeRoy King carousel and plan to ride it soon!

I am still working out how best to manage the San Jose – SF – San Jose commute. This takes between 1 hour 30 minutes, and 2 hours each way – depending on when I start. My husband John and I have both driven and taken the train. When he works from home, I have driven alone. Caltrain is less expensive ($18/day round trip) but I need to walk a mile from the station – so I arrive later and have to leave earlier. There are very few express (“Baby Bullet”) trains. If I ride a milk train, the trip is 50 minutes longer. Driving costs about $38/day ($.55/mile x 50 miles + $10 parking) but allows a flexible work schedule.

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Tagged as John, Mentoring, San Francisco, San Jose

June 8, 2014 · 5:28 pm

New Job: Everwise Vice President – Mentoring

Last week, I started as the new Vice President – Mentoring at Everwise in San Francisco. I am delighted to join a team helping progressive, successful corporations and non-profits to create world-class mentoring programs. My first big project will be with InovAtiva and entrepreneurs in Brazil!

Here is some of what drew me to Everwise:

Everwise connects professionals with the people and insights that can help them succeed at every stage of their career.
Everwise has re-engineered workplace mentoring using best practices culled from industry’s most effective mentoring programs and real-world experience guiding more than 60,000 successful mentoring partnerships over the course of 20 years.
The Everwise platform is built on the unified view that data, technology and workforce science can dramatically improve the way organizations develop their people.
Everwise has offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.

My new position at Everwise coordinates well with my ongoing activities. I will continue as the Chief Operating Officer for People to People (pro bono), as a volunteer for the TechWomen mentoring program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, as an accredited EfM Mentor, and as a member of the Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board.

My husband John and I will be commuting to work together from San Jose to SF, where he is the Principle Architect, Open Storage at EVault (Seagate). Since our son Paul is graduating this month from Foothill College and transferring to San Jose State University in September, he can get to class more easily on public transit.

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Filed under Church, Home & Family, Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Episcopal church, Foothill College, John, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose, San Jose State University, technical women, TechWomen

June 3, 2014 · 2:54 pm

Ethiopian Icons

My Episcopal home church in Saratoga, California, is spare in design – with most of the color coming from huge stained glass windows by Mark Adams. Visiting Ethiopian Orthodox churches and the Ethiopian Ethnological Museum last month presented me with the new world of brightly colored Ethiopian icons. Some were new and others were ancient but the color palette, style, and topics were similar regardless of age.

The icon topic that was very surprising to me was the Trinity (as seen in the last photo below). In my Protestant Christian faith tradition, Jesus is commonly represented in art but only rarely are God and the Holy Spirit shown, except symbolically (such as when the Holy Spirit is shown as a dove). Ethiopian icons showing the Trinity as three mature, identical, kingly men with haloes sitting in a row were disturbing.