# (0) 19 Mar 2010, 05:47PM: Careful What You Wish For: Suddenly the daytime temperatures here have jumped to 75F and plateaued there. My body isn't adjusting well. I got a haircut from the barber on Crescent (and buzzed Leonard's hair myself), so at least I don't have that sweaty, brain-fritzing perma-hat feeling. But I'm still grumpy and look pale. Let me just add to the whining to fill up this whineglass: computer problems, communication problems with Leonard, procrastination, WOW health insurance companies hate us. I'm sure I could go on, but perhaps it would be more productive to drink some seltzer water and watch The Rotten Tomatoes Show and try to get into a more agreeable mood.

# (3) 18 Mar 2010, 11:12AM: In My Dreams, I Know Everyone: "I was friends with Jerry Seinfeld. We were just hanging out. He had a plot in a community garden so we went over and worked on that for a while...as he dropped me off at the train station, I told him I was worried that I didn't treat him enough like a regular person, because sometimes it was hard to get around how famous he was. He said, 'I think you do a pretty good job.'"

"Sumana's ultimate celebrity fantasy."

"And then I remember being worried about how to talk with my other friends about this. I mean, I don't want to be name dropping, but if it comes up in conversation, 'Oh when I was hanging out with Jerry the other day --,' and the other person asks, and I say 'Jerry Seinfeld,' then it's just coy. Like, either I'm name-dropping, or I'm pretentiously not name-dropping..."

"This sounds like a Seinfeld episode."

# (0) 18 Mar 2010, 10:10AM: Predictions Come True: A French reality/game TV show has reproduced the Milgram experiment. You know, the one about giving a stranger electric shocks, even when he begs you to stop. (Why couldn't they redo the other Milgram experiment?)

About eight years ago, I was thinking of reality shows as psychology experiments that the Human Subjects Committee wouldn't let you do. Turns out I was really right.

# (3) 17 Mar 2010, 10:11AM: In Which I Offer To Do Research For You: So far, no one has suggested things for me to look up at the NYC TV/radio archive. Leonard and I added two items to my list. Frank's Place is a well-regarded eighties dramedy that used a bunch of great music and thus is unlikely to ever come out on DVD due to licensing issues. And the "Persistence of Memory" episode of Cosmos is up on Hulu, and has an anachronistic computing-related montage near the end. Specifically, although Cosmos dates from 1980, the montage includes a Shoemaker-Levy 9 webpage as viewed in Netscape. So Leonard is interested in learning what the original montage featured.

Any other suggestions?

# (2) 14 Mar 2010, 10:18PM: Web: About eleven years ago, I saw a link from Slashdot to a geek humor site called Segfault. I started reading it, then started reading the homepage of one of the editors. Leonard Richardson. He posted something new nearly every day, like a diary. (I didn't know the word "blog" in 1999.) He shared funny lines from his friends, his mom, his colleagues. I kept reading.

About ten years ago, I started reading Joel on Software. Just a few years previous I'd discovered Gerald Weinberg, specifically his The Psychology of Computer Programming, and loved it. So this Joel guy was talking about things I found interesting, and was introducing lenses, metaphors, models that immediately spoke to me. Fire And Motion. Ben & Jerry's vs. Amazon. The Law of Leaky Abstractions. Managers as the developer's abstraction layer (I later heard the synonym "windshield"). Smart and Gets Things Done. The iceberg problem in software development. Five Worlds. Architecture astronauts. I could go on.

Almost exactly nine years ago, I saw a funny line ("Those guys are gods of applied physics!") in an article on SFGate, decided that Leonard guy would appreciate it, and sent it to him. He and I started corresponding, and then hanging out. I went down to Bakersfield with him one weekend to help his mom move. Eventually we started dating.

About four years ago, I saw another pivotal blog post. I was living in San Francisco, in my third year working for Salon, and realizing that I'd like to go into management, and this Joel guy announced that his company was looking for me. Well, for someone who wanted to lead geeks, not necessarily a programmer. I saw that post, then woke up at 3am the next day, thinking, "I have to apply."

I applied, thinking I hadn't a chance in hell. Joel phone-screened me. I'd been told to prepare a short lesson ahead of time, on a topic of my choosing. So I came up with my stand-up comedy lesson plan, which I still use today. He asked whether, if accepted, I could move out to New York the next month. I hesitated a second or two, then said sure. They flew me out for an interview. I got an offer and said yes. Fog Creek paid handsomely to relocate my household. Leonard, who had left Collabnet to work on Ruby Cookbook, came with me. He'd never seen New York before we arrived in January of 2006.

Leonard and I were unhappy that we were moving so far from his mom. Frances had been fighting HIV for more than a decade, and had lived far longer than the doctors had ever predicted, but her health was still perceptibly declining. So I told him he should fly back once a month to see her. But he didn't get much of a chance to do that, because her health started getting much, much worse a few months after we moved. Leonard flew back and spent several weeks with her as she died. I took some time off to go be with her; later I discovered that Fog Creek had quietly, kindly given me those days for free, and not counted them against my paid time off.

Of all the job perks I ever got at Fog Creek -- relocation, half a Columbia Master's paid for, lunches, Broadway tickets, unlimited sickleave, Metrocard, a great library -- that one sticks with me most.

Oh man, this thing is getting long. Anyway. I learned a lot from Joel, before, during, and after my time at Fog Creek. I appreciate his decisiveness, his straightforwardness, his species of eloquence and encouragement, his financial generosity, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his insight. Sure, it wasn't all roses and sunshine, but he changed my life, mostly for the better.

A few days from now, Joel Spolsky will retire from active blogging, ten years after he started. Leonard and I are married, and still live in New York, and will for the next year at least. We still miss Frances terribly. Segfault's been gone for nine years. My Fog Creek salary subsidized Leonard's work on Ruby Cookbook, then RESTful Web Services. I have a master's degree in tech management and am looking for my next job in that field. Fog Creek was 6 or 7 people when I arrived, and now it's thirty or more. All those articles of Joel's are up on the web, ready for us to reread or brandish or rip to ribbons.

And so are my archives, and Leonard's, and Frances's.

It really is a web, isn't it.

# (0) 14 Mar 2010, 03:20PM: QuahogCon and Open Source Bridge: In the US style, the date is now 3/14, which makes it Pi Day. Happy Pi Day! (I'll have to remember to celebrate Mole Day on 23 October; I always forget, despite Mr. Marson's success in making me love chemistry.)

More calendrical news: I'm going to QuahogCon in Providence, Rhode Island, April 23rd-25th. They have infosecurity and DIY/maker tracks. I'm especially interested in a few talks:

• Joan Pepin's Gender Hacking
• Jason Scott's TBD ("Jason gave us a blank slate to work with. We're going to come up with a crazy topic and have him speak on it.")
• Dan Kaminsky's New Research TBA
• Beginner Lock Picking

but of course there's way more advanced stuff about SQL injection and WiFi vulnerabilities and bone-chilling madness, &c., &c. Let me know if you're going; I'm interested in splitting a hotel room with another woman. WILL YOU BE HER?

I've also nearly decided to go to Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon, at the beginning of June (right after WisCon, which may be a bad idea). I've submitted a proposal for one talk ("The Second Step: HOWTO encourage open source work at for-profits"), and plan on submitting one or two more.

# (0) 12 Mar 2010, 12:51PM: Huzzah: I offer my congratulations to Dr. Danielle Lee on her successful dissertation defense. It got streamed live on the web which would have given me pause at my oral defenses (for my master's)! Her blog, "Urban Science Adventures!", seems really cool too. (via BoingBoing)