As I approach my tenth year at Red Hat this coming October, I’m currently focusing on helping wherever I can with our new and existing cloud community efforts, from Red Hat OpenShift to the Fedora Cloud SIG. I’m also working more deeply on The Open Source Way, externally as the canonical upstream location for how-to and why-to do projects within community, and internally as a community consultant across Red Hat. More activity coming on The Open Source Way mailing list, if I have anything to say about it.

I had a talk to give, “Decentralized Collaboration with Open Source Tools: Technical and Cultural Implementation“, which thankfully Robyn Bergeron is giving on Sunday, and I’m sure it will be at least three times more interesting than if I did it. (This was one I inherited from Mel and Sebastian when they couldn’t attend.)

This year I planned to give two workshops … and scrapping those is a big disappointment, but I will re-imagine them for next year.

The first workshop was a half-day mini-Professors Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE) focused on Sugar and the XO laptop. Save that one for next year!

The second was a half-day workshop, “How to teach the open source way“. I have a new idea for all my talk proposals this year, and for SCALE I wanted to try it as a workshop. The goal is to turn a round-table discussion about the open source way (including an introduction to the handbook) in to something more. For a 3+ hour workshop, the first hour is sharing experiences, learning about different viewpoints in the room, and capturing information. The second and following hours are hands-on the wiki and mailing list, adding content from the session (video segments shot live, stories written, chapters edited), creating new threads on the mailing list, etc.

Anyway, that’s my rocking idea – I proposed something like that for OSCON, for the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, and I’m going to propose something like that for everything this year. Even with 40 minutes or an hour, if I come in with an active plan I bet I can get people doing stuff in that timeframe that benefits everyone’s knowledge while benefiting the project.

*sigh* See you all next time.

Unfortunately, the wonderful woman I’m lucky enough to be married to got hit with the effects of a bout with Crohn’s disease. Over all my years travelling for Red Hat, I have worked really hard to not let that travel overly affect my family, nor let problems here overly affect my showing up for where the work is.

Sometimes, though, that balance doesn’t hold together, as with this week. If you’d like to read more about the other side of that balance, you can catch up on Debbie’s blog, Waiting for the Cure. She’s doing OK, me and the girls are hanging in there, we’re hoping she’s out of the hospital on Monday.

Meanwhile, I’ve done some work to setup BigBlueButton so I can run a remote session at FUDCon about ‘The Open Source Way‘. So, there’s a fair chance that I’ll have a chance to participate after all!

I KNOW the girls can see the build up, as I move, sometimes over the course of _days_ from reasonable, nice, conciliatory, consensus seeking to upset, sad, frustrated, and vocally angry.  Temper still as short as when I was a shortie.

Just as I can see when each of them is getting upset at something.  Yet these build-ups that we should know in each other, it’s like they won’t watch out for each other, for all of us.  It’s all about watching out for self, making sure that “I” get enough cookies, the best job in the chore, a fair number of turns on the swing.  It’s never about “let’s all watch out for each other” and in that way we make sure everyone is taken care of.

Same thing that frustrated me and made me sad and mad as a kid — people can perceive that something is wrong with another person, and don’t do very much to figure out what is up and help make everything a bit better.  People could spend their energy making sure that everyone gets enough cookies, instead of keeping score and making sure that, at least, “my pocket” is full.  Acting as if there is a scarcity of love and compassion.

So, I vocalize (over minutes, hours, days) that I am getting frustrated, that I am sad at being left with all the work while they play, and all that.  Finally I get to the point where I am mad, shouty, and calling out behavior as unacceptable, bad, bratty, whiny, etc.  Only then do I actually get some change in behaviour that is sufficient to get done what needs to be done.  Being punishment based, it is not long lasting and the backlash is painful.

Then each time, the cycle starts over again.  I remind, “We don’t want to get to where we’re mad at each other, right?  So let’s just do these chores when we are supposed to and not have them hanging over our heads.”  Then I roll up my sleeves and pitch right in, no matter what other top priority thing I have in hands, I pitch in to show them that we just need to start working and then soon the work will be done.

And most of the time, we go through the cycle again and again.  The whole time I point out, “We’re doing that thing again, don’t we want to stop?  Can’t we stop?”

Except for the times where my emotions get ahead of me, but it doesn’t seem to matter.  Whether my temper seems to come out of left field or whether I’ve carefully laid the tracks in advance and pointed out the trouble junctions, it always seems to end with my rushing at them like an express train, them staring at me like deer caught on the tracks in the headlight of my engine.

*Sigh*
*Cry*
*Sob*
*Sigh*

Life: equal parts bitter, sweet, sour, salty, spicy, rich, and the pungency of the umami.

Who knew it all lies on the bed of our tongue?  Blah.

http://www.planetary.org/special/fromearth/bradbury

The greetings are limited to 250 characters, and I took advantage of a return character costing the same as a space or punctuation to write him this poem:

From first rocket to last pricking of thumbs,
your words and ideas carried our minds
out
past asteroid belts &
in
to the light and dark parts of the soul
Helping make the 20th century
using a mirror as a tool to
reflect the future in the past
Thanks

Presentation

Today’s plan

• 1950s to the present.
• Work on timelines.
• Build a circuit with a lightbulb.
• Break
• Construct electronic-parts art & play Dr. Frankenstein with components.

Videos

We’ll watch these to start:

• How a CRT works (~1 min) – a catch up answer from last week.
• 1946 ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computing (~2 min) – first digital computer
• The Computer History Museum (~4 min) – a short tour
• UNIVAC – Then and Now (~13 min) – perhaps while we work on timelines

These are videos that were interesting but were too long for class time:

• History of computers video collection on YouTube.
• A humorous history of computing and UNIVAC from 1960.
• Computer History Museum YouTube page.
• A visit to the Computer History Museum (~4 min)
• What is a Theramin and how to make one (series) – an fascinating early 20th century electronic instrument.
• Clara Rockmore plays “The Swan” on a Theramin.

Links

• Computer History Museum.
• Wikipedia electronics article.

Notes and timeline

Timeline drawn from The Silicon Engine – A Timeline of Semiconductors in Computers.

The 1950s and 1960s were the birthplace and time for modern electronics.  Much of what we use today is directly built on ideas and technologies developed in those decades.  In some cases, all we have
done is make them smaller and more powerful.

• 1946 – ENIAC Vacuum tube or valve computer – first digital computer.
• 1947 – first solid-state semiconductor transistor
  • Because the material can be built with precise control of just how conductive, you can design many types of gates.  Precise flow of electrons is at the heart of computer calculations.
• 1950s – Age of the Transistor
• 1952 – first portable electronics were hearing aids and pocket radios that could run on a battery and were relatively small +  expensive.
• 1953 – first transistorized computers.
• 1956 – RAMAC first disk drive
• 1960s – Age of the Integrated Circuit
• 1961 – silicon beats germanium; most circuits are silicon based since then, leading to integrated circuits (IC) in 1962.  ICs put many small transistors in one chip, which makes it easier to produce lots of them at large scale.
• 1964 – Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS), which is the dominate manufacturing technology.
• 1965 – Moore’s law
  • “Transistor density on integrated circuits doubles about every two years.”
  • Translation — every few years, computers get twice as small and twice as powerful.
  • Visual of this in action on Computer History Museum website.
• 1965, 1966 – First ROM and RAM.
  • Read-Only Memory (ROM) chips let you store programs and special data in a permanent (non-volatile) way that remains after the power is turned off.  This information is burned (written) to the ROM during manufacturing, although there are tools that can reflash a special kind called EPROM, invented in 1971.
  • Random Access Memory (RAM) chips store information that must be used accessed quickly and change often.  They are made to be read and written by a computer during usage, but the data they store is not-permanent – when the power goes off, it goes away.
• 1970s+ – Modern Electronics Iterates on 50s and 60s technologies
• 1974 – first system on a chip (digital watch)

(Updated with more links, videos, and notes.)

Each day telecommuting presents challenges for all the people involved. Some challenges are common to working region-to-region with other people, collaborating between office work centers, regardless of where you are physically located. Functionally, that is what I am doing. It’s not much different from working in an office and doing 100% of my work with people I do not share an office with. But still … there is something different about telecommuting from home. It is different than if I were at a client’s site, at a business center, datacenter, a shared work space, or even a cafe.

It is those differences I reckon are worth talking about. I’ve worked in all those conditions, and have done so regularly enough. Working with a global reach from your actual home is very different than the other situations. It has very little to do with stereotypes. (Although I do like my fuzzy slippers, I’d probably wear those in an office anyway.)

When I start this post, I am taking a mental break from work, with a stop in the kitchen to cook up some lunch. Drag the laptop along, never know when you need it. While in there, I get my lunch of beans and tortilla heating, and take the moment to bottle up the rest of the beans (three liters of fresh homemade black beans.)

Looking at the time, I realize it is a good chance to start my family’s lunch so it is ready when they come home in a few minutes from classes at our community homeschool. In the fridge is a sizeable salmon tail, which I throw on the counter for a seasoning bath. A wander in the kitchen garden later, with some stops for chopping, and the salmon is covered in lemon thyme, thyme, oregano, a pinch of rosemary, garlic, salt, and white pepper. Carrots and onions are cooking in a Thai inspired sauce (white pepper, fish sauce, garlic, and ginger … admittedly I sauteed the ginger and garlic in a Sichuan style because I like the body better.)

While all this is happening, how is my mental break going? As it happens, I need a break not from work but instead from the distractions of the keyboard. I have a relationship management situation to contemplate; you know, thinking about how to work something out with people I collaborate with. Pondering a consensus. Mulling and chewing. Perfect thing to do with my brain while my hands and heart cook, something I can do nearly asleep or in any number of mental or emotional states. While this is all happening, a good plan arrives in my head; a solution that should please everyone. I know I’m happy with it.

For good measure, while lunch is cooking, I start making yogurt, which means bringing two liters of whole milk to a boil, letting it sit for five minutes, then dropping the pan in a water path that acts as a heat sink. It could cool down within a half hour, but I’ll probably let it sit in the water bath for a few more hours before I add the culture, pour the mix into a clean jar, and throw it into the yogurt maker-cum-crockpot.

What is happening here is probably not that different from what happens in other work situations. I take a physical break from my active workspace to ponder. While out there I am interrupted by things not related to day-to-day work role, but integral to where I work. Making coffee, changing toner, helping carry boxes in from someone’s car, you may have done some of these things. For me, the beans, soup, and yogurt I make today feeds my family for several days, saving all of us time. The advantage is getting a chance to advance my personal agenda woven around my professional agenda.

This is all the daily challenge of balancing personal and family priorities, being taught simultaneously as learning it. Here are my kids, playing with string instead of serving the greater good. But they stop soon enough, maybe just in time, to do their chores with a tear or a smile.

Finishing this post out in the back yard, I have to pause because my hands are being requested. Saskia wants to use my hands to see if I can do a string trick. But these hands will be right back, as always.

We returned to the 21st century on Wednesday 28 December, driving back with both girls and their good friend Mikaela. We stayed overnight on Monday at a homeschoolmate’s brother-in-law’s house in Sacramento. Thanks, Dylan! With you and your three, we made 21 souls in the house that night; 22 if you count the dog, and some there certainly would have.

Got up extra early that day and while all slept, I posted one Dev Fu entry (Develop in the cloud – what Red Hat and Amazon team-up means for developers) and readied another (Developer version of Fedora 8), then helped the house get up, into costume, and out the door.

We found the crew waiting for the wagon, and before we knew it they were off through the streets of Sacramento. Actually, I dropped off my daughters and zipped to Sutter’s Fort, all the while listening in on a Fedora Project Board meeting. We quickly stowed our camping and other gear, to have it all hidden before the pioneers arrived.

The day was long and wonderful and tiring (bad boots!) We did get a dose of real Fort life, working and relaxing, writing in journals, cooking dinner in the authentic kitchen and over the fire, music around the campfire, and people sacked out all throughout the fort wherever a bed roll looked good to lay. Kids stayed up for a while to lead night watches with broomstick rifles. Next day we scrambled to clean up, make a good impression, and be out the Fort gate’s by 9 am.

I could write on and on, and I may come back and post some more when I see other pictures I want to highlight. All agreed it was a unique, enriching, and fun experience.

• http://www.krampf.com/ Robert Krampf’s really cool science videos
• Warriors of the .Net a/k/a The Packet Movie
• Pack of pics from Matt Stuart
• … and maybe Robert Benchley’s “How to Sleep” for a good night giggle

The entire class are dressing in period costumes and acting as docents for the various exhibits all throughout the day on Tuesday. I’ll be playing “Owen Sumner”, who came to Sutter’s Fort in 1843 with his wife, daughter Lizzie, and other children as part of the Hasting’s party. Malakai is portraying Lizzie Sumner, and Saskia is playing a made-up sister of Lizzie’s. Our main revision of the history of this family is removing a few possible years from Lizzie’s age to be more comfortable to Malakai, who also doesn’t want to be too near to Lizzie’s marriage to George Davis.

After we close the fort to the public tomorrow afternoon, the class is staying for an old fashioned overnight in the fort. I’ll be taking a little bit of watch duty and helping keep the fire going all night, just as was done 164 years ago.