Tag Archives: Willow Glen

August 30, 2012 · 10:44 pm

Raising the Neighborhood

Over 150 years ago, our part of San Jose, California, in the neighborhood of Willow Glen, was a marsh – an extension of the Guadalupe River. In the 1860s, Frank Lewis built the Lewis Canal to drain the marsh that gave Willow Glen its name to create rich farmland. Still today, the land shifts season by season under the houses that cover it, often causing wall and foundation damage.

John and I spent a long time in the last few months working with contractors to get our 1930 home more-or-less level, adding several beams to support soft spots. Our house (which was built on what was once a chicken farm) was raised and given a new foundation after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 but it has shifted since. This summer, several other houses near us have been raised entirely so that new foundations could be built under them. Mostly the rebuilders take the opportunity to add new rooms to the home, enlarging it at the expense of the surrounding garden. Modest old bungalows become homes that will sell for much more.

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Tagged as House Work, San Jose, Willow Glen

August 27, 2012 · 11:07 pm

Refinishing Douglas Fir Floor

In my April 2012 blog entry called Douglas Fir Discovered, I presented the first installment of the story of creating my husband’s new office in our 1930 Spanish Mission style home in Willow Glen, California. So far, we have:

Ripped out stinky old pink carpet, pad, nailing strips
Ripped out ugly yellow linoleum under the stinky pink carpet
Leveled the floor and reinforced some soft spots (big project in itself!)
Stripped, filled, stained, sealed the Douglas Fir boards under the ugly linoleum

The work is being well done by the Willow Glen Floor Company. We have also had them address several areas where the oak floors were scratched or there was a board cracked. To finish up, we still need to:

Add baseboards
Touch up paint

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Tagged as House Work, Willow Glen

August 6, 2012 · 9:42 pm

Technology and Cactus Management

A few years ago, when he was Sun Microsystems’ Chief Engineer, Mike Splain gave a talk about his job. (We at Sun often heard from our remarkable technical leaders – see one talk I caught on tape: Ivan Sutherland Speaking On Leadership.) On this occasion, I remember Mike asking us to imagine that he had a spray bottle in each hand: one contained fertilizer, and the other weed killer. His job as Chief Engineer was to know which bottle to use and how much to spray. That is, to know which technical projects to encourage and which to kill.

I was thinking of Mike and his job yesterday when my husband John and I took apart a huge prickly pear cactus (Opuntia). Long ago, there was a prickly pear farm in our area of Willow Glen (San Jose, California). There are still many of these massive spiny plants along the bank of the Guadalupe River where we live. Three had grown up next to John’s workshop and model train room. In fact, they grew so large and heavy that they damaged the roof and threatened anyone walking on that side of the building. John wanted them dead. He generously consented to allow me to save the parts furthest from the walkway.

My cactus management tools are three:

A long serrated bread knife
Barbecue tongs
A bow saw (for big branches)

Add to these good gloves and a big bucket and you too can deconstruct a cactus twice as big and older than you are.

Like a technical project, prickly pears have some tender shoots which can either be left or easily cut off with a bread knife (depending on what direction they are headed). There are also huge fibrous trunks, more than a hand-width wide – like projects that have been growing and gathering resources for years that need a sharp-toothed bow saw to cut them out. The tongs are to keep the cactus manager from being skewered too often by her work.

Taking one section at a time, John and I removed all of the cactus parts headed toward the house. What remains can grow for a few years before needing further attention. Several hundred pounds of prunings went down the bank where they will in time root and build up my cactus fence.

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Tagged as garden, San Jose, Sun Microsystems, teaching, Willow Glen

July 26, 2012 · 10:10 pm

Night Blooming Cereus

On 10 July, I wrote about a flower bud starting on one of the six foot tall Cereus cactus columns in my garden in San Jose, California. Some years, there are many flowers but this year, just two. The buds take two weeks to develop into blooms and then last just a few hours. This flower chose to bloom after dark. By morning, the nine-inch-across bloom will be crumpled in on itself and gone. Imagine me juggling a flashlight and camera while standing on the boulders in my cactus garden at night. Here are pictures showing the growth of this spectacular flower:

June 10:

June 21:

June 26 – Morning:

June 26 – Night:

Aftermath

That particular cactus bloom surprisingly lasted into the next day. It has now started its journey from flower to fruit. More pictures:

27 July:

1 August:

6 August:

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Tagged as garden, San Jose, Willow Glen

July 24, 2012 · 8:51 pm

New Baseboards

Ten years ago, we took out the (horrible pink) wall-to-wall carpet in our 1930 house in Willow Glen and had the floors refinished. Like many home improvement efforts, we got 90% done and then stopped. The carpet came out but the baseboards never got installed. I have heard it said that it is hardest to pay someone else to do work that you know how to do well yourself. Baseboards are not very difficult but they are fussy and take time to get right, so we never got around to them. We finally decided to bring in the professionals.

The upper hall was easy – it is almost empty. However, our bedroom is fully furnished and everything was in the way. Paul and I helped the contractors to move stuff around. It is surprising how much dust settles under an armoire in ten years and how many books had migrated into our room from where they should have been. I am happy with the results and especially happy to be done with that project, finally.

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Tagged as House Work, Paul, Willow Glen

July 21, 2012 · 1:36 pm

Non-Travel Diary 4

While my husband John is in China on business for Huawei, I am keeping a non-travel diary. This has been a relatively quiet week. In addition to working full-time at Huawei:

There was a small amount of progress on our home construction projects. The painter spent a half day painting the wrong color stain on the baseboards. When I pointed out the error, he spent about the same amount of time sanding that color off and re-staining. Nobody was happy.
Thursday, I joined the monthly Board meeting of the Santa Maria Urban Ministry. We said an appreciative goodbye to our summer intern. The SMUM Tech Team (of which John and I are members) was assigned some new projects by the Board.
My newly-assigned 2012 TechWomen mentee from Lebanon and I made first contact. We exchanged introductory emails and are starting to make preparations for her visit to the Silicon Valley in September. Her background is impressive – I very much look forward to working with her in person. TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
I communicated with the 2011 TechWomen mentees with whom I am presenting a panel at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2012 (Baltimore, MD). I am the moderator of the panel called “Technical Women in the Arab Region: Challenges vs. Aspirations”. We have travel funding confirmed for three of the panelists and we are working on support for our fourth. The ladies are traveling from Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon for GHC12. I am very eager to see them again!
Paul and I took our Wood Shop basic safety and equipment introduction at TechShop San Jose last night. We enjoyed learning to use the miter saw, table saw, band saw, electric sander, and drill press. The scroll saw is being repaired so we will learn how to use that later. I made a heart for John and Paul started work on an infinity symbol using the band saw. One of the other students laser-engraved the heart for me. I want to take a TechShop laser class next!
This morning, we had a community yard sale. Despite being on Craigslist and putting signs up on nearby corners, it was very poorly attended. However, it was fun to hang out with the neighbors. Our neighborhood apparently has 7 boys and 1 girl aged between 6 and 12 years old – who spent the morning rocketing from sale to sale comparing stuff and giving updates.
John comes home Tuesday morning!

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

Tagged as China, Geeks, House Work, Huawei, John, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, San Jose, technical women, TechWomen, Willow Glen

July 16, 2012 · 9:39 am

Thanks to Pierluigi Oliverio – Fire Hydrant in Willow Glen

In working with the City of San Jose, California, to arrange for building permits, I have been informed that our neighborhood of Willow Glen not only has very poor water pressure but also relatively few fire hydrants. A fire hydrant helps firefighters tap into the municipal water supply to help extinguish a fire. About a month ago, Willow glen ended up with one fewer hydrants when someone’s car ran over one of only two near our house.

As a native of San Francisco, I know that the destruction of the city in 1906 was started by a major earthquake but that the subsequent fires did most of the damage. Our area of Willow Glen being reliant on just one fire hydrant (located more than 400 feet from our house) made me nervous.

For a while after our local fire hydrant disappeared, I thought that the city would fix it on their own. After a month, I failed to find any information about fire hydrants on the San Jose website. So, I sent email to our local San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio to ask for his support.

I have met the energetic and intelligent Pierluigi at a variety of local and civic events over the years. He has met with our Willow Glen Lions club several times. Whenever I send him email, even very late at night, Pierluigi gets back to me very promptly. He asked his staff member Melrose to look into the missing fire hydrant. Over the course of about week, Melrose called the Fire Department, Transportation Department, and Water Department to try to figure out who was in charge of this. She finally was able to get a fix scheduled by the Water Department and we now have a replacement. Thanks, Pierluigi (and Melrose)!