Adele's Aerie

Somehow I missed this excellent sysadmin blogging effort last year...

2009-11-19T23:04:23Z

25 fabulous posts about sysadminning, starting December 1, 2008.

I just spotted a call on the lopsa-tech list for contributors for this year. *ponders writing an excerpt of my How To Move A University Data Center document and contributing it*

Sometimes, Things Just Work. Yay!

2009-11-09T06:42:30Z

Dinner tonight turned out quite well, so I want to record the menu here before I forget... all the produce, the bread and quark were bounty from yesterday's farmers market.

- Garlic mashed red taters, made with a splash of milk and a half package of garlic quark.
- Rosemary bread.
- Crock-pot baked pork roast with carrots, onions, apple... simmered six hours on high in one bottle of Buffalo Bill's pumpkin ale, an equal amount of of water, dashes of dried oregano, dried parsley, black pepper and two bay leaves.

Roommate served McWilliams chardonnay with the meal, and it was lovely.

(This is what happens when I forget to buy apple cider or juice to bake the roast in, but have pumpkin ale on hand instead... yum!)

Leaves and Nests

2009-10-30T01:18:24Z

I just uploaded a bunch of autumn photos to my Flickr account... Autumn Leaves and Nests.

Ahhhhh, autumn. Gorgeous.

For future reference...

2009-10-13T15:54:44Z

http://myteachermyhero.com/

http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php

I want to read planning books by Eugenie L. Birch.

I want to read The Creative Habit by Twlya Tharp.

Travel log - Dad's visit

2009-08-11T18:51:17Z

Dad was on the John Muir Trail for a few weeks, and I picked him up at the trailhead afterwards. We've done this sort of thing before, and it dovetails nicely into a short visit for him here with me in the big city before he heads home to Indiana. Some of this year's highlights:

- burgers in Lone Pine
- wandering around in Descanso Garden
- checking out the evening dance party on the sidewalk in downtown Burbank last week
- bagels and ice cream, and checking out the trikkes at the sports store at the mall
- sorting through my stash of camping gear together and decluttering the bits I don't use nowadays, to make better storage room for the gear I do use
- random home improvement projects I needed a tall hand with
- watching some DVDs together, just chillin' with our feet up
- Burbank Farmers Market on Saturday morning
- wine tasting and dipping our toes in the surf at Malibu Rosenthal Winery tasting room
- sushi at Wokano
- dayhiking near Stough Nature Center
- Sunday brunch with the string quartet at Market City Cafe in Burbank
- salmon burgers at Fuddruckers and then shopping for 45rpm vinyl at Backside Records

Recent reading list

2009-07-31T17:02:11Z

Some of these links are new to me, others I've read before, but I found myself needing to locate them again, and rereading them, so I could point various people to them.

If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

Concerning Native Americans in children's literature:
http://www.oyate.org/aboutus.html
http://www.oyate.org/
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/

Concerning women in open source computing:
http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-keynote/
http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/31/debunking-myths-answering-questions/
http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/30/post-oscon-roundup/
http://lwn.net/Articles/343615/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in-the-crow.html (now at 243 comments...)
http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/06/16/the-porny-presentation-bingo-card/
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Flashbelt_slide_show
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/12297_3830651_1/Richard-Stallman-Leadership-and-Sexism.htm
http://webchick.net/presentations/women-in-open-source-owv-09
http://eaves.ca/2009/07/28/remixing-angie-byron-to-create-the-next-million-mozillians/
http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=1774
http://www.linuxchix.org/women-open-source-free-software-bibliography.html

Concerning rape culture:
http://cereta.dreamwidth.org/639712.html?style=mine
http://cereta.livejournal.com/652008.html?style=mine

Concerning feminism:
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/
http://www.feministe.us/blog/
http://www.feministing.com/

Concerning racism:
http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/146697.html?style=mine
http://seeking-avalon.blogspot.com/2009/01/timeline.html
http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/155427.html?style=mine
http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/1025814.htmlstyle=mine
http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/725860.html?style=mine
http://theangryblackwoman.com/required-reading/
http://www.infinitematrix.net/faq/essays/noles.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0920-06.htm
http://www.fuuse.com/article.php?story=20050719163038398
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/02/how-not-to-be-insane-when-accused-of-racism/
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2007/07/24/implicit-associations-stereotypes/
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
http://delicious.com/starkeymonster/forcluelesswhitepeople

It is the fourth annual International Blog Against Racism Week, and there are a lot of links I look forward to reading here:
http://community.livejournal.com/ibarw/8586.html?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/ibarw

Concerning accessibility:
http://mariness.livejournal.com/818969.html?style=mine

Concerning Othering, Transgender Issues, and the Vocabulary of the label "cis":
http://dglenn.dreamwidth.org/1588929.html

Concerning privilege:
http://www.antiracistalliance.com/Unpacking.html and
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~hyrax/personal/files/student_res/straightprivilege.htm

'“Check my what?” On privilege and what we can do about it' http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146

'Men! Feminism needs you! (Not your privilege…)' http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/06/men_feminism_ne

'“Check Your Privilege At The Door” – Entering women-only spaces as a man'
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/06/12/check-your-privilege-at-the-door-entering-women-only-spaces-as-a-man/

The Male Programmer Privilege checklist: http://lafalafu.com/krc/privilege.html

And here's a whole bunch of privilege checklists...
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/09/26/a-list-of-privilege-lists/

And then there's http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

Thanks, Mom.

2009-07-30T00:09:38Z

A reminder from Mom today, via Facebook:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Meade

Transitioning blog content again, and tidying up old cruft

2009-07-28T16:13:35Z

Last night I imported my shakal LJ into my shiny new DW, except for memories. Gosh, that importer tool is fantastic!

I've also figured out how to choose a new style and began customizing by changing some fonts, basic options, and I've fiddled around a bit with the number and placement of modules, but I fell asleep last night with my laptop next to me in bed, visions of fonts dancing across the inside of my eyelids. Whoops. :-)

I have a bunch of large and small things still to do related to decluttering and enhancing my web presence... (Am I the only person who has lists of her To Do lists? This is one of six lists I'm currently tracking, unrelated to my day job...) Most of the web-presence-related items are things that in the long term will simplify upkeep and reduce linkrot and manual duplication of content, but in the near term, it means pesky fiddling to get things the way I want them.

0. Let my LJ Flist and readers at the Wordpress adeleshakal.com site know where I've moved to, and offer them DW codes.

1. Go through my posts here and update any hard-coded links in my content that go to the version of my other posts on LJ. Scour out the linkrot, too. Oh, and update the Profile.

2. Decide to keep up my del.icio.us bookmarks organizing, or shift it to Google Bookmarks which won't make them available publicly, grar. Perhaps some other option?

3. Decide what to do with my LJ memories, and then just do it.

~~4. Revisit my iGoogle homepage tabs and clear out the tabs and gadgets I am no longer interested in or which have gone defunct.~~ - Done

5. Because iGoogle gadgets there are a much easier way to skim news than the old system of filtered feeds in my LJ that I used to use, some of the feeds I set up here last night should be transitioned into being feeds on my iGoogle tabs. Also, add in PMI-related feeds into my Workaday iGoogle tab, since that tab is currently only stuffed with sysadminning, web design/standards/usability and computer security things.

6. Re-categorize my feeds and groups here, and continue to customize the style and modules of this DW.

7. Figure out how I want to host images associated with a custom style here (and possibly a custom style for my iGoogle homepage tabs)... I really like the look of the main page of adeleshakal.com and I will miss that once its gone. Yes, that is my photograph there, but not my theme. I do like the fonts and graphic design of that Wordpress theme from Rob Goodlatte.

8. Transition content out of the wordpress install I put up on adeleshakal.com... blog content goes into this DW, Contact page goes into a Google Profile, and my resume needs a home. Low priority: Learn hresume markup, and figure out where (aside from LinkedIn) my resume should live in that modern format.

9. Don't forget the LOPSA blog I set up... I keep forgetting it's there, so I forget to post to it.

10. ~~Figure out how to back up the stored files directory on shakal.org locally.~~ Retire the content at shakal.org and turn it into a Google Apps domain for the family. Make sure not to break my primary non-gmail email address in the process.

11. Point adeleshakal.com to this DW, and then close down that hosted Joyent Accelerator server, which I wasn't really using for much anyway. If I want a place to develop new Wordpress plugins or themes, I should get a cheaper dedicated place to do so.

12. Tidy up the stupid Facebook, and figure out a way to tie it in with the rest of my web presence, because I need to check it at least every couple of days.

13. ~~Consider learning more about Google Reader and transitioning some of the feeds currently going into iGoogle tabs into it.~~ - Done.

14. Tell the family how to use the Google Apps domain.

15. Learn the DW styles system, get creative, and contribute some new DW styles.

16. Dust off the rust and become a DW babydev, learn the coding system going here, and get patches committed.

17. Finish my application to PMI to take the PMP certification exam. And finally take the darned thing. And then don't forget to update my resume with all my shiny new skills and experiences; it's out of date already as it is. :-)

Useful open source community and development soft-topic links

2009-07-28T02:34:32Z

Kirrily Robert is formidable and inspiring. Her presentation video is online here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brZz_upFG-g

The resulting discussion at http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in-the-crow.html was less than hope-inspiring at times, but apparently, some folks are listening.

Other interesting presentations with implications for open source communities, collaborative coders, human perfectionist urges, and any kind of community-building, actually:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-programmer-insecurity-an.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-building-belonging-in-co.html

And interesting thoughts about living: http://www.thinkfold.com/pub/sterling-talk-Reboot-June-2009-3
Video of that talk is linked here: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/seeing-our-culture-with-fresh.html