Tag Archives: John

July 31, 2011 · 1:35 pm

Ladies’ Wedding Tea

My daughter Jessica is getting married next week. We are mostly ready for the big event (125 guests). Yesterday, she and I went back to the tailor’s for another sash fitting, bought her two party dresses, and went to the florist. John and Paul went to the grocery store and the bakery. Sinead (the Maid of Honor) and Jessica baked cookies when we got back.

Last night, we held the Ladies’ Tea for the senior women in Jessica’s life to celebrate. The gentlemen of the family were invited to go elsewhere. The younger ladies are getting together for a bachelorette party next week. All of the guests brought their favorite treats. We had cakes and cucumber sandwiches and rosemary bread and cornbread (with honey) and tarts and biscotti and lavender ice tea and hot teas and wine. The table decorations were the wishes tree, wedding favors, and love poems with ribbons to be given out at next week’s big event. My favorite was the almond cake with marzipan frosting in the shape of a gift box with a big bow (from Flower Flour bakery and florist here in Willow Glen, San Jose CA).

Tonight, the families of the Bride and Groom meeting for dinner and board games at our house – to check in and make final plans. We usually play Settlers or Hearts.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Jessica, John, marriage, Matthew, Paul, San Jose

July 16, 2011 · 5:44 pm

Last Harry Potter Movie

I went with family and friends to see the last Harry Potter movie last night. It was dark and sad but with a marvelous battle at the end. My kids love J.K. Rowling’s books and have read each of the seven Harry Potter stories many times. My son listens to recordings of the stories regularly. For the last fourteen years, our whole family has awaited each book and movie eagerly. We have several copies of each book, some in more than one language. In 2003, when we took a family trip by Amtrak train from Chicago home to the San Francisco Bay Area, we had to share just two newly-arrived books among the four of us. I think I achieved a personal best by reading Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (870 pages) in a day and a half. I am sorry to see the end of new stories about our favorite boy wizard.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Jessica, John, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose

July 11, 2011 · 10:01 pm

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.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, John, Mentoring, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

June 26, 2011 · 6:02 pm

TechShop San Jose Opens

Yesterday, John and Paul and I went to the crowded opening of the new TechShop in San Jose, California. We also joined as lifetime family members!

TechShop is a membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a community of creative and supportive people so they can build the things they have always wanted to make.

Location: 300 South 2nd Street San Jose, CA 95113
http://www.techshop.ws/ts_sanjose.html

We heard the opening talk by my former boss, Greg Papadopoulos, on the topic “Think Global, Innovate Local”. There were at least dozen ex-Sun-Microsystems Engineering staff there to cheer for Greg.

Being the owners of WP668 (backyard caboose), our family already has developed a basic workshop but having access to some of the larger TechShop equipment and the classes will help with a variety of home and hobby projects. Some of the equipment I want to learn to use: FlowJet 4′ x 8′ CNC Water Jet Cutter, Epilog Helix 60-Watt Laser Cutters, Tin Lizzie Quilting Machine, Hand-Held Plasma Cutter, and the Computer Controlled Embroidery Sewing Machine. Paul and I plan to take classes together in Autodesk Inventor, and Arduino 101 (Board Soldering) later this summer.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as John, Paul, San Jose, Sun Microsystems, teaching, WP668

June 12, 2011 · 12:33 pm

Why I Blog

Right now, someone is particularly angry at me for not communicating through the means she prefers. She wrote me an email saying that she wants letters on paper and will read email but thinks blogs are impersonal and not worth her time.

So, why write blogs?

I work two jobs (for TechWomen and Huawei), each of which is interesting and worthwhile
I love a distractingly wonderful husband, two remarkable kids in college, two dogs, a cat, and two birds, each of whom would like and deserves more of my attention
Our daughter is getting married in six weeks, with over a hundred guests
I am working with my brothers to advise and support two interesting parents (both over 80) whose health is failing
I am on several volunteer Boards and I teach a group of twenty adorable kids three hours a week in an after-school program, all of whom have justified expectations of my time and nurturing
I have plants that expected better when they came into my garden, and weeds that are much happier than they should be
I have a stack of well-written and highly-recommended books that leak guilt at me when I look in their direction

I am over-committed and over-scheduled doing work I love and do well. When my daughter went to college, she made a wise decision. She could either try to keep in touch with her large circle of friends and relations individually, and do nothing else. Or, she could blog and hope that her admirers would follow her news in a less-direct but more complete way.

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)

When I don’t blog, I find that I drop out of touch and actually spend more time communicating to worse effect. I love writing and taking pictures and I think sharing what I see with my readers benefits both. I am frequently contacted by interesting people who ask to use one of my pictures or want to continue a discussion started on my blog. For example, I was on the local TV news last week because of my blog entries last year about FEMA. I have included recent pictures of strange local cars and old metal signs for you today – just for fun! Publishing here makes me consider more deeply and starts many of my conversations with my family and friends in the middle of current experience, instead of spending half of each meeting catching each other up.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Eleanor, Huawei, Jessica, John, marriage, Matthew, Paul, TechWomen, Wade, writing

June 1, 2011 · 10:54 pm

Arduino vs. Tino

My husband John is spending his free time preparing to give several talks at the National Model Railroad Association convention in Sacramento California early next month. He has been working for months on a demonstration unit to support his presentations – showing what a model railroad would look like of it was designed and wired as a series of control points connected by a codeline instead of in the usual arbitrary, hodgepodge ways. (A codeline delivers indications from the field to the train dispatcher, and sends commands from the dispatcher to the field.) John models in HO Scale when he is not working on our “prototype” caboose WP 668 in the back yard.

John’s project mostly looks like lots of blinky lights – especially when his office is dark. However, he tells me that this is state-of-the-art for model train layout wiring. John is in a running battle with our cat Tino, who likes to chew on little wires and keeps sneaking in to disable the Arduino.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family

Tagged as cats, John, WP668

May 19, 2011 · 11:24 pm

Amazing Women of Vision

I just got home from the inspiring Women of Vision awards event by the Anita Borg Institute. Huawei was a Gold Sponsor of this WOV and I have worked for months to arrange for 30 Huawei guests to attend from all over the world. Our Senior Vice President John Roese spoke during the opening reception. I should not be staying up to blog about this because I am teaching the first TechWomen Mentor Workshop starting early tomorrow morning but WOV is so exciting, I need to share it.

Today’s award winners were

Leadership Award: Chieko Asakawa, Ph.D., IBM Fellow, IBM Research – Tokyo
Innovation Award: Mary Lou Jepsen, Ph.D., CEO, Pixel Qi
Social Impact Award: Karen Panetta, Ph.D., Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tufts University

Each winner was impressive in her own way. Each has overcome much to make an admirable change in the technical world. Wow. Going to an ABI event is always worthwhile, if for no other reason than to talk with the remarkable technical contributors in the audience. The Women of Vision event is particularly excellent because of the powerful story of each award winner. I am glad my husband John Plocher could attend the event this year. He has heard me talk about WOV for years.