Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

26 Apr 2008, 22:08 p.m.

Acting As If

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2008 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

As a matter of course I wish to direct you to http://del.icio.us/leonardr/sumana for random links I run across while dallying on the Web. Example: the hilarious "I consume, but then analyze!" which is by the alternate universe Sumana who got into makeup as a teen. A few additional notes:

Leonard and I and everyone else I know who's gone have superlatively enjoyed MoMA's "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibit, which closes in two weeks. Go if you can! I especially liked the phone handset, the oxygen generators and air purifiers, and the paper alarm clock, and the instant furniture video and artifact blew me away.

Yesterday I put on the new suit and visited the client for the first time as their project manager. The cubicles, corridors, and cafeteria sent me back to Silicon Valley during the first boom, specifically my tech writing internships at Exodus. After I got home, when I was changing into sleep attire and folding my business pants over a chair, I remembered folding my dad's gray and navy pants over hangers in Mom & Dad's tiny walk-in closet in Stockton, all those years that he worked at Caltrans on PERT analyses. For once bumping into the past was comforting. This isn't new. My dad did it and I can too.

I'm thinking of adding myself to this list of women who welcome invitations to speak at conferences. I'm ruminating on an eminently conference-y IT analogy right now: software development is more like agriculture than it is like manufacturing.

Now, to work on cost-benefit analysis, then watch the original Bedazzled for free on Hulu.