fall is coming, work is interesting.

Ah, gorgeous days, cool and cold nights. In the Berkshires last weekend, I noticed the leaves were starting to change, but it might not be obvious to the casual observer or to those in denial about the end of summer. Last night, when I got up to -er- facilitate, I noticed that my feet were cold, and that was after several hours of snuggling under the down comforter and wool blanket with a cat wrapped around my head. Air's crisp, we're all more comfortable, and I'm back down to one shower a day.

I've been at my job for nearly a year now, a year of this part-time experiment. I'm working on my third boss, and have gone from being a department of less than one to being part of a department of two (spread across three people), with two contractors and a possible new hire in the next few months. It's been a fun ride so far.

Right now, I'm working on infrastructure, in an area that's interested me for years -- information architecture. My former boss encouraged me to go to conferences and learn as much as I could, and now I'm trying to put all that knowledge to use. (A special hiya to KAH.)

My current project goes something like this. Right now, we have developed all sorts of deliverables (in lots of different formats, I might add) -- user manuals, online help, white papers, training materials, and so on. You can imagine that our directory structures are organized by each deliverable, with subdirectories and files underneath. You might also imagine that if we're writing about the same subject over and over again, there might be a fair amount of overlap. Right now, because of different formats and organization, there's no way to reuse the overlapping material.

Well, wouldn't it be cool if we took all the little subjects we talk about and put them into one common directory structure so that when we want to include information about that subject into another deliverable, we could either plagiarize or at least have a darned good starting point?

That's the point of my project -- to figure out how to organize all our topics so that people can find the information in the directory soup.

I started out on my own, and immediately ran into problems -- do you organize by the people doing the work? By area of the product? By subject? There are so many interconnections -- of course there's no one obvious solution.

But there is an obvious path to the solution -- ask other people to help. I wrote down about 100 subjects that we document, each one on its own little card. And I've been asking people to sort them into groups and subgroups. The results have been interesting and are almost all in. I'm hoping to have some preliminary recommendations next week.

At the same time, I've taken a subject (called "locales") and found all extended discussions of it in all our documentation -- about 25 pages worth. I've done an analysis of the types of information, and am now trying to write a set of draft topics related to this one subject. For example, I found nine places where we define "locale". That's a lot of overlap. Of course, some of the descriptions aren't very accurate or are obsolete. I've written a draft of the definitive definition for locales, suitable for inclusion in all nine of these places. Once our structure is in place, when the central definition changes, the text in each deliverable will be automatically updated, too. Next, I'll be working on "how to create a locale," and then "deleting" and "modifying." Pretty straightforward stuff, but an incredibly complicated web to unravel.

Imagine doing that for all 100 or so subjects. The good news is that I've figured out a way to move over to this centralized system in an evolutionary way. This strategy will allow us to continue to write new documentation even as we're switching over to our new centralized system -- we won't have to stop all work, convert, and then resume work.

I of course worry about the responsibility -- once the new structure is in place, it will be hard to change, though not impossible. So it's important to get it right, or "good enough," as we like to say, the first time. I dream about sorting cards, though not obsessively. And in waking life, after each person goes through the card set, I shuffle the cards to get them ready for the next person, and now my colleagues accuse me of playing card games.

This is interesting work, though, and I never dreamed I'd get to work on this kind of project at this company. I'm crossing my fingers that all these good ideas end up in a workable implementation.

P.S. After posting this, I checked work email to find a note sent to the entire company saying that an employee's email is down; to reach him, call his mobile phone, and he'll send email to all employees when he is once again reachable via email. At a larger company, this type of message would be (select one) inappropriate, annoying, worthy of sending a reply asking for more caution when using the email system. At this company, the message is useful to at least half the employees, maybe more. I love working in a small company.

a slice of sharp, please

Strange dream. Apparently, there's a new dream-trend of having a dinner party where you cook a full meal, then put out a bowl of razor blades (double-sided or, er, safety). You either eat the meal or break the blades up into little fragments and eat them. At the end, you're full either way. In the dream, I tried the blades a few times, then decided it was unhealthy and quit (cold turkey, I might add).

I did not wake up with a metallic taste in my mouth, nor do I have a sore throat. I'm sure that the Freudians amongst us can offer more insight than I'm having right now. Back to real life.

what's a person like you doing in a place like this?

Last night, we were invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend who's turning 50. We've been honored to attend several other milestone events for our friend in the last year, including his wedding to the man of his dreams, and a party just before the grand opening of an art exhibit that our friend curated.

The theme of the party last night was the Oscar's -- the party was at a local (and new) arts center downtown. The decorations, including balloons and table coverings, were gold stars on a black background. And the entrance was lined with a red carpet and red and gold ribbons.

Apparently, the happy couple were on their way to an evening of dinner and dancing when my friend's husband said "you know, we're a little early for our dinner reservations and we haven't been into this theater yet. Let's go take a peek. The unsuspecting birthday boy was a little reluctant to go in; he thought there was a party going on and didn't want to crash someone else's celebration.

But in they went and were met at the door by a Joan Rivers impersonator who was interviewing arrivals at the show. Suddenly, from the second floor, a shout of "surprise!" and "happy birthday" rang out. As the true nature of the party occurred to our friend, he broke out into a wide grin and greeted his friends all the way up the staircase.

The Oscars theme continued with pictures of Sophia Loren (photoshopped in next to the birthday boy) on tent cards, and the actual awarding of statuettes to Best Supporting Relative and Snappiest Dresser. The impersonator also did Barbara Streisand and Liza Minelli, lip synching along to greatest hits.

It was hot as blazes last night, but wow, what a good time we all had. And what a wonderful milestone to get to celebrate. Hooray.

glad to be home

Robert and I traveled to Colorado recently; I'm home, and he'll be back in a few more days.

The primary purpose of the trip was to attend a wedding of one of Robert's high school friends. Because R's parents live in the area, we thought it would be fun to have a mini family reunion, too. So Robert's sister and her family (husband, three four-year-olds, and a 1.5 year-old) came from New Jersey.

Highlights for me were the wedding, hanging out with the grownups, seeing some of Robert's friends for dinner. Robert's high school friends (and their friends) are delightful, warm, funny, caring people.

Lowlights were the kids. The little one is very cheerful, but was sick, so I admired him from afar. The four-year olds were, for the most part, whiny. They play a game (and did it for days on end) of peering around a corner, expecting to be chased. When I'd look up, they'd shriek and run away. I found this wearing and less than pleasant. They're also hyper sensitive. So a lot of the time, they were crying, hiding, or sulking. (True, they did cheerfully play by themselves the rest of the time.) We were not a good match.

We were also cooped up in Robert's parent's house -- the entertainment was supposed to be the children. I didn't feel comfortable going for a walk by myself, so I felt quite trapped. (If I go to another of these events, I'll prepare better for going off on my own.) Robert did get us to go swimming one day, at a magnificent new pool (actually, the complex has three pools, each with a different purpose).

Also, despite many months of advance notice, Robert's brother couldn't make it, to my great disappointment. Robert and his sister will see him, but I missed out, alas.

Fortunately, Robert managed to make a connection with the kids and played with them and read to them a fair amount after the first few days. To me, that's what really counts and is meaningful to me. On the other hand, I think he can make that particular connection easily without me, and that's certainly also another option for next time.

We have another summer trip coming out, brief but just the two of us, and I look forward to a happier trip soon.

that special time of year

There's something special about this time of year. Last week, I went for a walk and noticed that the Queen Anne's Lace is in bloom. It has a delicate scent. Once you breathe it in deeply, you notice it among the subtler smells of mid-summer. And this weekend, the crickets started their chorus, picking up where the spring peepers and still-single frogs had long ago left off.

Then, early this week, as I was driving home, I noticed that one of the local farm stands on my route wasn't just advertising pick-your-own flowers and a sale on "Impatien". Yes, it's here -- fresh corn on the cob, not that pale imitation "home grown (yeah, in Florida)" stuff. We've eaten it twice this week already, and the trick of the summer will be to eat as much as we can without getting sick of it, or more accurately, without Robert getting sick of it.

Tonight when I stopped off at the stand, I noticed an older picked-through pile of corn and a small, undisturbed pile laid on top. I sniffed it all the way home. The corn was probably less than two hours old from stalk to plate. And you could taste how close it was to the earth with those first hot bites.

The corn brings back such fond memories. My grandparents lived in Michigan when I was young and we'd spend long summer visits with them. At first, they lived in a big ranch house next to a farm. But then they moved across town to an antique house surrounded by four acres of land. My grandfather put in a huge garden, and we were often privileged to be there when the first ears of corn were sampled. There, the corn was even fresher than it was tonight -- not until the water was boiling did we go to the fields and pick and shuck the corn. We'd sit on the back porch at the picnic table and inhale sweet kernels covered with butter and salt. My grandmother would shut her eyes and say "Wilson, I declare that this corn is scrumptious." Somehow we always also managed to eat the dinner she'd prepared.

Tonight, I raise my chewed cob to Wilson, my grandfather, and to the many farmers still toiling away so that I can eat fresh corn on the cob, just picked.

surviving -- getting by or living life?

I saw two survivors today. While waiting in front of my old workplace for my lunch date, I saw a former co-worker walk up. So I hopped out of my car and went over to talk to him.

As far as I'm concerned, he's survived at least twice. On Sept 11 (yes, that 9/11), he was scheduled to fly out of Boston to San Jose on a non-stop flight. He was to depart mid-morning because, as he puts it, he doesn't like to get up early. By the time his flight was scheduled to depart, air space was shut down. He got to come home that day, unlike his early-bird compatriots on earlier flights. His wife later said that she wanted to frame his boarding pass. And more recently, he had a multi-bypass (triple? quadruple? I'm not sure). He's my age, and in fairly good shape, too. He looked great -- good skin color, moving at a good pace, and so on.

But he also looked lousy. I could tell before we started talking that he's having a tough time. I think he hates his job -- he told me he'd much rather go back to sitting around the house like he did when he was on disability. I know that heart disease brings on depression. I also know that where he works is unhealthy for many, many people; in fact, I've joked in other conversations that they should put prozac in the water fountains there. I lightly asked whether he's considered doing something else, and he resignedly said that he has two kids to put through college.

This is a man who used to love his job, and who used to do a great job. Now all the wind has gone out of his sails, or at least it had by about mid-day today. I hope that some day he'll realize that he has options, that even if he needs to work, there might be other great places to be, places that can inspire and excite him to be the kind of worker he was nearly a decade ago. Alas.


My lunch date is also a survivor, with a pit-bull's attitude toward life. About ten years ago, she was diagnosed with a form of cancer that's difficult to survive. She was down and out for months. Since she came to IBM (actually, a few weeks before the takeover was announced), she's gone from maintaining a dying product to managing a small group to managing a group of 13. She's riding in the Pan-Mass challenge this weekend (a huge fund-raising bike ride to raise money for our local cancer institute), and she's looking forward to her next travel adventure. She is such a hot ticket and I hope I can grow up to be like her.

Good life lessons here, as always.

fun and games -- where i've been

There are some fun exercises out on the web -- one is "which states have I been to." Many of these are courtesy of the round-the-country car trip I took with a friend in 1980.



create your own visited states map
The other is "what countries have I visited." Some of the dots are a little subtle , including the one on French Polynesia and a few around the Caribbean -- I have a lot more to visit, though, I guess! (Within a year, though, I will have added another one to my list, bringing me up to 20.)


create your own visited countries map