encrypt command will suddenly no longer be annoying!

Thanks to a fix from Dina Nimeh's latest push of changeset 27f403fbf8ca, the next OpenSolaris release will now prompt you twice for the passphrase it uses to generate the key to encrypt your data with. This is a long overdue change, one that I can't believe we didn't do sooner. The way we implemented it before, it was too easy to lose your data if you made a mistake the first time you put in your passphrase. Yay!

Rough Cut of Solaris Security book published!

I'm about to become a published author! Okay, currently I'm just credited as "Sun Microsystems Security Engineers", but it is a step in the right direction.  Our organization found that a lot of papers and books out there on Solaris security were out of date, just plain wrong or missing coverage of cool features, so we thought what better way of setting the record straight then writing our own book?

Management got behind this, and many of the members from our organization set to writing an outline for the book and for each chapter and found an interested publisher.  Next came the hard part - writing the actual chapters! Okay, it wasn't that hard, because we all wrote about the technology areas we know and love, but we had to make tough calls on what to leave out and make sure we didn't miss any critical information.  Once we got all of our drafts together, Sharon Veach edited our work and wrote the introduction for the book, Solaris Security Essentials. The book is on Safari right now for review before we publish - please leave comments on the Safari site so nothing gets lost. The external link only shows excerpts, so if you are internal to Sun, please create a login using your Sun email address and look at the Sun Internal link.

I worked with Jan Pechanec and Darren Moffat on the Solaris Cryptographic Framework chapter, which is all based on Solaris 10 Update 4.  We leveraged work from my previous white paper and an updated paper by Wolfgang Ley. Some chapters appear to be missing still, but I'm sure they'll appear on the site over the next few days.

During this process I was told I use too many exclamation points in my writing, which (apparently) makes readers tired. How strange is that?

Here we come a caroling...

Okay, actually there we went.  Today was the annual Sun Caroling day.  We went from building to building in Menlo Park spreading holiday cheer, including a few lesser known Hanuka songs. Carol of the Bells, Psallite and 12 Bugs of Christmas seemed to be the favorites this year. I know I've been so busy rehearsing for Babes in Hollywood that I had a hard time keeping some of the harmonies for the classic holiday songs in my head. Too used to singing melody on those, I suppose.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 officially released!

Seems like ages ago when I was testing the first release candidate on my laptop, but I guess it was really less than a month ago. I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly we are turning around these releases and getting them out the door.  I am pleased that NWAM works so much better on 2008.11 than on 2008.05, it's good to know the team took all of the feedback they got from the previous release and incorporated a lot of good changes. For example, I now have the ability to bring up the NWAM GUI and request to change networks when the one I'm on is no longer desirable (or I've found that I chose poorly when given the initial selection).  I can't wait to try this out in a conference environment, where access points change every time you go into a different room.

I'm still running Nevada development bits on my desktop, though, as it's SPARC based and we don't have OpenSolaris for SPARC yet.  It's still the same base kernel & most of the same utilities and applications, so I am still doing valuable testing on the latest & greatest... but, let's face it, not nearly as cool. :-)

What on earth are the credit card companies up to?

I've heard a lot of cautionary advice over the last few weeks about watching the mail for updates to credit card agreements and that the credit card companies were doing a lot of sneaky tricks to attempt to get more money from the consumers, so I was surprised when a letter from my Chase United Airlines credit card came and informed me that my fixed rate would be lowered from %14.99 to %7.99.  Then more surprised when an innocuous "update" to my card holder agreement arrived saying that as of January 2009, the card would switch to a variable rate of up to %29.99 APR.  No indication of what the initial rate would be or of any controls on when or how often the rate would change.  The first letter looked like a regular personal letter, the "update" was a small piece of seeming junk mail. Now, I don't carry a balance on this card, so it doesn't really matter to me, but this really seems like a bait-and-switch type activity. Tell folks loud & clear how low their new fixed APR is, right before the holidays to encourage spending - then slip in a large rate increase in January. It was very clear that the new rate would apply to existing balances.

Isn't this the type of thing that is now known as predatory lending? Of course, neither piece of mail came with a phone number or contact for questions...

Neil Young and the Linc Volt in Menlo Park!

Neil Young brought his Linc Volt, reconditioned classic 1959 Lincoln Continental Mk IV, to Sun's Menlo Park campus today to give employees a chance to see the car and the singer up close. The car is now a hybrid, powered by natural gas and lots of batteries. I was surprised at how well it was done - hiding the batteries where the convertible top normally folds down, the engine under the back seat and the generator in the front. Why did Neil drive it to Sun's campus today? Because the car uses Java to monitor performance. I'm not huge car nut, but do like Neil Young and appreciate cool technology so I definitely enjoyed myself.

Voting

I got myself to my polling place around 9AM this morning, finding it a bustle of activity, but no real lines.  California is trying to really push voting-by-mail and if your polling place does not have enough in-person voters, it will be shut down and anyone in that precinct will be required to vote-by-mail.  There are many concerns about voting by mail: ease of coercing a vote, stolen ballots, undelivered ballots, ballots returned with insufficient postage after the deadline to vote, etc. There are provisions for people who did not receive their ballot to go & vote by person in their polling place, but then they only get a provisional ballot - one with a complicated procedure for determining whether or not it will be counted.  For those reasons I show up in person, but the thing I found odd is that there are three polling places in the one building where I go to vote. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these polling places rather than get rid of them all together? Really, it wouldn't effect my voting at all - two of the polling places are in the same room, but I have not heard of any cases of combining polling places.  If my polling place ever goes extinct, I guess I'll have to go line up at the registrars office.

All the same, I believe this is a very important election for our country and for the state of California, where we seem to love ballot initiatives. If you haven't done so yet, please get out there and vote!

Voting

I got myself to my polling place around 9AM this morning, finding it a bustle of activity, but no real lines.  California is trying to really push voting-by-mail and if your polling place does not have enough in-person voters, it will be shut down and anyone in that precinct will be required to vote-by-mail.  There are many concerns about voting by mail: ease of coercing a vote, stolen ballots, undelivered ballots, ballots returned with insufficient postage after the deadline to vote, etc. There are provisions for people who did not receive their ballot to go & vote by person in their polling place, but then they only get a provisional ballot - one with a complicated procedure for determining whether or not it will be counted.  For those reasons I show up in person, but the thing I found odd is that there are three polling places in the one building where I go to vote. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these polling places rather than get rid of them all together? Really, it wouldn't effect my voting at all - two of the polling places are in the same room, but I have not heard of any cases of combining polling places.  If my polling place ever goes extinct, I guess I'll have to go line up at the registrars office.

All the same, I believe this is a very important election for our country and for the state of California, where we seem to love ballot initiatives. If you haven't done so yet, please get out there and vote!

One more reason to be paranoid...

As if I wasn't paranoid enough, researchers at University of California in San Diego have given me one more reason: they've developed software that can duplicate physical keys from photographs. Taken at a distance. Or with a cell phone camera. From any angle. This is really scary stuff. I mean, those 80s made for television movies scared me enough - whenever I leave one of my cars for service, or send it through a car wash, I always remove my house keys. Now doing that may not be enough.  Yes, it seems unlikely that everyone will be at risk for this type of attack, but certainly if you are targeted it will be worth someone's effort to observe you and your keys.

Bridge School Benefit fantastic again!

My hubby and I walked to the Shoreline Amphitheater on Saturday afternoon to check out this year's Bridge School Benefit concert. Other than being irked by being required to pay for parking, even though we walked, we had a great time.  The lawn was packed when we arrived, and just got more so after the opening acts started. An odd character in front of me kept insisting on spreading out her blanket over my feet. This was strange, because we were there long before she was and she was actually looking at my feet as she did this (repeatedly, as I pushed it off each time).  After about 20 minutes of this, she seemed to realize that I was not going to move further back (which was actually not possible) and we could then enjoy the show.

Neil Young actually kicked the concert off with a couple of his classic tunes, which was a pleasant start of the evening. The opening bands were pretty good, though I did find Wilco a bit... boring. Death Cab for Cutie really got things going, bringing back sweet memories of watching The O.C. I could not possibly say enough good things about Sarah McLachlan's set, switching back and forth between the guitar and the piano, testing out some new material and playing all of my favorites as well. Nora Jones surprised me with her three woman band and the distinct country tone of her set, which ended up being quite enjoyable! She actually did a Hank Williams song that he wrote the lyrics to, but had never written music for - so she had composed a delightful melody to back it up. It's really amazing how those old lyrics still hold up.

We missed the last two sets, as the smoke from the cigarettes, cigars, pipes and ... pipes was getting to me, so we walked home. Still, had a great time and will be sure to make it again next year!

[I wrote most of this on Sunday but forgot to post! oops!]

Women more likely to give up passwords for chocolate

As always, the user is the weakest link in the security of the system. It is generally much easier to get a password and user name directly from someone with secure or privileged access than it is to hack/crack the system. This is pretty basic social engineering, and something we all need to constantly be on the lookout for. I have been recently cleaning up my email inbox, when I came across this article from April in The Register where their research showed that women are four times as likely to give out a password if chocolate is offered in exchange than men. Four times.  I could never have imagined how something so delicious could so easily be put to such a sinister purpose. *sigh*

Women more likely to give up passwords for chocolate

As always, the user is the weakest link in the security of the system. It is generally much easier to get a password and user name directly from someone with secure or privileged access than it is to hack/crack the system. This is pretty basic social engineering, and something we all need to constantly be on the lookout for. I have been recently cleaning up my email inbox, when I came across this article from April in The Register where their research showed that women are four times as likely to give out a password if chocolate is offered in exchange than men. Four times.  I could never have imagined how something so delicious could so easily be put to such a sinister purpose. *sigh*

Welcome to Avany Llyse

I now have an third niece, bringing my total nieces and nephews to 11.  I've now seen a bunch of pictures of her, and all 8 pounds 3 ounces are as cute as can be! I can't wait to meet her in person. :-)

Look for me in Babes of Hollywood!

So, I got an email (well, several, actually) from my friend Doug this week about a fund raising show he is producing at his daughter's high school, Presentation High School. They are doing Babes in Hollywood: The Music of Garland and Rooney.  I was taking a break from performing, but, as always, after a couple months off, I start reading the audition announcements again... I saw a lot of great shows, but they either conflicted too much with ski season, or my grandmother's birthday, or upcoming friend's wedding, etc. Then I looked at this show - we get a break from rehearsal for Thanksgiving and Winter break, and perform in early January. So, I decided on Tuesday that I'd audition on Wednesday.

That didn't give me much time to prepare, but I quickly updated my resume, grabbed a head shot, listened to the few Garland tracks I have on my iPod a few times, and ran through my traditional audition song, "Turn Back O' Man" (Godspell), a few times. The ending was rusty, I haven't been making it to the Sun Singers rehearsals or my voice lessons, so I just sang it on the way down in the car and hoped the notes would be there...

It was quite a comfortable audition environment, with the director & producer on stage with me and the piano player, making it a bit easier to focus and not think about all the other auditioners sitting in the house. I was nervous, but I have sung "Turn Back O' Man" hundreds of times (it was my "go-to" audition piece long before I ever played the role of Sonia in Godspell, even though I didn't use it as an audition piece for Godspell, so it was just luck I got that part).  It all came back and I hit the high ending note - all in my chest/belt voice!

Then the director asked me, just like he'd asked everyone else, to sing Garland's "Over the Rainbow", that's when I got really nervous! What key would it be in? Where will my break be in this song? Will this stupid cold I just can't seem to get rid of screw this up?  Do I sing it hopefully like in Wizard of OZ or despondently like the tracks of Garland on my iPod? I did have to bounce between my head & chest voice, but I think it went okay. I went for the despondent ending.

The dance audition was all simple things, like pivot-turns and grapevines, so I actually did well.  As I was leaving, I asked the director when we would hear about casting decisions, and he simply told me I was cast and he'd see me at the first rehearsal. I can't wait!

Fall harvest

This has been my first year trying my hand at gardening, and I've learned quite a lot! First, dwarf basil is a pain to harvest - it takes forever to pull off enough leaves for pasta!  I also discovered that I love fresh tomatoes and green beans, and fresh herbs are delightful.  For my first year I planted Better Boy tomatoes, carrots, beats, okra, broccoli, grean beans, red and yellow bell peppers, Serrano  chilies, jalapeño chillies, Anaheim peppers, "spring" onions, sage, basil, cilantro, rosemary, and thyme. Oh, and mint, but that is growing itself from the neighbors yard. :-)  The beans did fantastically well on the side of the house, and the carrots and beets thrived in a semi-shaded corner of the back yard (I'm thinking about doing a second planting this fall).  The tomatoes did well in the back, as did the Serrano chillies, but the other chillies and peppers suffered a bit - for two reasons I think, not enough afternoon sun and I didn't realize that I was supposed to fertilize them until after they were in the ground a couple of months.  I have *one* okra pod. One. Too much shade and planted a bit too late, I suspect. I'll try that again next year up front.

The broccoli... dear broccoli. One of my favorite vegetables, alas I've been disappointed by my home grown. After combating  a pesky caterpillar/moth with organic pesticide, I finally have florets, but they are flimsy and not firm at all. And they don't taste like what I'm used to getting from the store. They took so long to grow, planted in May in a semi-shaded spot, it's really disappointing.  I got the seed packet for free as a give-a-way at a conference, though, so maybe next year I should do some actual research into what seeds I choose. I didn't realize last spring that there were actual websites with seed reviews on them, but of course, though, there is a website for everything now.

Next year the peppers and chillies will get a sunnier spot. The tomatoes will probably go in the same place, I seem to recall it's not good to plant other things where tomatoes were, except maybe beets. Perhaps that's where I'll do my winter planting of beets (well, after the tomatoes have stopped producing). It is very nice living in a relatively mild climate, though I am hoping we will get a lot more rain this year.

Additionally, I grew my marigolds from seed this year. They are like giant marigold bushes now, getting a bit rangy so I'm not sure how much longer they'll get to stay. Oh, yeah, grew poppies, too. Now I think we'll always have poppies, as they had self seeded before I pulled them up.

My "spring" onions are well on their way to becoming full onions, I think. I was not expecting them to do that well! The chives I planted at the same time never even sprouted, but I have spring onions coming out my ears! 

There is something very rewarding about eating our own vegetables, fresh picked/pulled moments before cooking. Now, have I saved any money with all these home grown things? Once I take into account water, fertilizer and time, certainly not. I'll do it again next year all the same. :-)

GHC08: Final Night

What a fantastic conference this has been. Unlike many other conferences I've attended, I seem to have no downtime. I'm constantly networking, attending sessions, blogging... and this year, fighting an uncooperative dying laptop. The energy here is fantastic, the balance of technical talks with "soft skills" is perfect. I only wish we all had more time together, that the sessions were longer, and the breaks were longer (for more networking). Of course, that would only be possible if the conference itself were longer... but a woman can dream, can't she?

I staffed the Sun booth yesterday morning, fielding all sorts of questions on OpenSolaris, Solaris Security, types of jobs we do at Sun, opportunities for students and just general questions about what Sun does. I enjoy what I do here, so getting an opportunity to talk about it was a true pleasure. If I missed any of you at the booth, please send me an email or drop me a comment here.

While here, I got to meet so many students, I think I even met all of the students and faculty from Purdue as well. I really enjoy hearing about the new research and areas of focus.  The conference is only 50% students, though, so I also met so many inspiring career women.

Tonight Sun hosted a small private reception for the Sun employees and some outstanding women we all met throughout the conference. It was great to talk more in depth with these women, but again it seemed we just did not have enough time as we all rushed off for dinner provided by Google and Microsoft. Yum!

In addition to healthy, delicious food and cute t-shirts (Microsoft's t-shirts being made from bamboo and organic cotton - yay, Microsoft!) we again had DANCING! Imagine hundreds of women (and about 5 men) line dancing. Truly a site to behold. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the cable for my camera, but hopefully photos will be uploaded soon. It was quite a site to see!

Now I'm tired and need to start sorting through my stuff to see what I can fit in my suitcase. All the giveaways in the bag this year were really good, and anything folks didn't want someone has been collecting to give to charity.

Until next year :-)

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Keynote: Mary Lou Jepsen: unofficial blog

Sleeping has been difficult here, I think it's the altitude (and staying up too late trying to get this laptop to cooperate....), but I was very glad I drug myself out of bed this morning to make the Keynote.

I wasn't the official blogger for this session, but got so much out of it I wanted to add more to Kate's entry.  Ms. Jepsen was such an inspiring speaker - describing how she started a completely different adventure (it's hard to describe One Laptop Per Child as just a career) based on her strong desire to make a difference.  She leveraged her expertise in optics to come up with an amazing new monitor for the OLPCs - one that uses low power, is normally just black & white (with a higher power consumption mode that uses a backlight and color as an option), and has the CPU behind it (so your lap doesn't get hot!).

I just love seeing when someone just follows their dream and finds success. It's inspiration for all of us!

GHC08: Unofficial blog: The Imposter Panel

I'm sitting in the Imposter Panel, though not an official blogger for this particular session, I am just overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in here. It's great to know thta I'm clearly not the only one that often feels like an imposter in various technical situations. These women on the panel, in addition to all being very funny, are all very insightful.  They are all so very accomplished, yet they al feel like (or have felt like) imposters at one time or another.

Dr. Williams made a great comment: "I am the creator of my own experience."

Essentially, nobody ever told her she was an imposter, she was telling herself she was. So, she decided to stop telling herself that, and her confidence gets better & better every day.

The entire panel was wonderful - I just wish there were more hours in the day to attend sessions at Grace Hopper. They all seem to end too soon.

My computer woes have gotten worse and worse - now my networking driver is failing to attach, the wired connection is working, so I assume this is an additional hardware issue. Oh, and the CPU is throwing errors now, too. So, that brand new laptop has become a very expensive, slow to boot, word processor (does "vi" count as word processing  software?).  One of the fanstastic Sun recruiters lent me her laptop, and I ran off to the imposter session, desperate to upload my last blog from my thumb drive.  Alas, this session was so crowded, I couldn't obtain an IP address! But, small wonders keep happening at this converence - a wonderful woman sitting next to me offered me her laptop, where I'm blogging from right now.

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Women in the Brave New World of Open Source

This was my first time speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and it was so exciting! I had just met most of the other panelists yesterday (didn't meet Stormy Peters until lunch today), and found it was so cool to find all the things we had in common and just as interestingly, all the differences we had in experiences, opinions and careers. The panel went really well - the more we talked, the more ideas we all had that we wanted to share. It was great sharing my eperiences with working on OpenSolaris with others, particularly the students. I hope between the OpenSolaris bite-sized bugs, the Linux "janitorial" work and the Google Summer of Code that we will gain many new women in the world of open source after this conference.  I wish we'd had more time, and do hope to hear more from the students that were there as well as the other women in industry. Together we can learn and discover more in the world of computing. More later...

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Women in the Brave New World of Open Source

This was my first time speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and it was so exciting! I had just met most of the other panelists yesterday (didn't meet Stormy Peters until lunch today), and found it was so cool to find all the things we had in common and just as interestingly, all the differences we had in experiences, opinions and careers. The panel went really well - the more we talked, the more ideas we all had that we wanted to share. It was great sharing my eperiences with working on OpenSolaris with others, particularly the students. I hope between the OpenSolaris bite-sized bugs, the Linux "janitorial" work and the Google Summer of Code that we will gain many new women in the world of open source after this conference.  I wish we'd had more time, and do hope to hear more from the students that were there as well as the other women in industry. Together we can learn and discover more in the world of computing. More later...

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Technical Women

Caroline Simard (Anita Borg Institute of Technology) and Andrea Henderson (CalState Northridge) presented a new study done by ABI and the Clayman Institute at Stanford University on men and women in the high tech industry in the Silicon Valley at 7 hight tech companies.

Ms. Simard started off the presentation with the broad statement that diversity is good for business and social tasks, which has been backed up by research study after research study.  And while it has been shown that women control 80% of the consumer spending, men are still designing 90% of technical products.  More frighteningly, women only make up 13% of the board of directors of Fortune 500 companies and less than 5% of the executives.

The research study they did found that men are more likely to be in a senior postion than women (24% vs 10%), even though men and women surveyed had nearly the same distribution of higher level degrees.

Ms. Henderson then continued the talk to let us know that women are more likely to make decisions like delaying having children (30% of women vs 18% of men) in order to advance their careers, or forgo having children all together (9% of women vs 3.5% of men).  Another odd statistic out of this study was that the majority of women in high tech careers also have a partner in high tech (68.5%).

The presentation then went on to perceptions of success, covering what men and women considered to be the top attributes of success and then self assessment of how many of those attributes they think they have. One big noted attribute is that women believe you must work long hours in order to be successful (a belief that the men in the survey did not agree with), but don't believe they can meet those needs. Such self discrepencies can actually be a big barrier to success all on its own.

Women in high tech companies really want to see more investment by the company in corporate development on the job (as opposed to relying on the employee to do it in their "spare time"), make mentoring a part of the corporate culture and fix the wage gap.  Ms. Simard notes that it is just not true that women don't care about financial rewards and being paid fairly for their work. Their survey showed that women care just as much about health benefits, financial rewards and salary as their male counterparts.

The survey showed that some of the most important things to high tech women was for the company to invest in professional development on the job, mentoring to be a part of the corporate culture and to see the wage gap corrected.

Discussion came around one of my favorite books, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Apparently the authors did a follow up study and discovered that women who negotiated were more likely to be seen in a negative light by both men and women. Ms. Henderson & Ms. Simard noted that there was a lot of research finding that gender bias is very ingraned in both men and women, so as women we actually need to work at this ourselves and make sure we are aware when we are making such judgements.  Ms. Simard noted that women who are most successful are able to "tune" their assertiveness depending on the situation and whom they are talking to.

Valerie Fenwick
 

GHC08: Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Technical Women

Caroline Simard (Anita Borg Institute of Technology) and Andrea Henderson (CalState Northridge) presented a new study done by ABI and the Clayman Institute at Stanford University on men and women in the high tech industry in the Silicon Valley at 7 hight tech companies.

Ms. Simard started off the presentation with the broad statement that diversity is good for business and social tasks, which has been backed up by research study after research study.  And while it has been shown that women control 80% of the consumer spending, men are still designing 90% of technical products.  More frighteningly, women only make up 13% of the board of directors of Fortune 500 companies and less than 5% of the executives.

The research study they did found that men are more likely to be in a senior postion than women (24% vs 10%), even though men and women surveyed had nearly the same distribution of higher level degrees.

Ms. Henderson then continued the talk to let us know that women are more likely to make decisions like delaying having children (30% of women vs 18% of men) in order to advance their careers, or forgo having children all together (9% of women vs 3.5% of men).  Another odd statistic out of this study was that the majority of women in high tech careers also have a partner in high tech (68.5%).

The presentation then went on to perceptions of success, covering what men and women considered to be the top attributes of success and then self assessment of how many of those attributes they think they have. One big noted attribute is that women believe you must work long hours in order to be successful (a belief that the men in the survey did not agree with), but don't believe they can meet those needs. Such self discrepencies can actually be a big barrier to success all on its own.

Women in high tech companies really want to see more investment by the company in corporate development on the job (as opposed to relying on the employee to do it in their "spare time"), make mentoring a part of the corporate culture and fix the wage gap.  Ms. Simard notes that it is just not true that women don't care about financial rewards and being paid fairly for their work. Their survey showed that women care just as much about health benefits, financial rewards and salary as their male counterparts.

The survey showed that some of the most important things to high tech women was for the company to invest in professional development on the job, mentoring to be a part of the corporate culture and to see the wage gap corrected.

Discussion came around one of my favorite books, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Apparently the authors did a follow up study and discovered that women who negotiated were more likely to be seen in a negative light by both men and women. Ms. Henderson & Ms. Simard noted that there was a lot of research finding that gender bias is very ingraned in both men and women, so as women we actually need to work at this ourselves and make sure we are aware when we are making such judgements.  Ms. Simard noted that women who are most successful are able to "tune" their assertiveness depending on the situation and whom they are talking to.

Valerie Fenwick
 

GHC08: Experiences with OLPC Technology in Ghana, West Africa

Suzanne Buchele, from Southwestern University, spoke to us about her experience in Ghana, West Africa with the One Laptop Per Child program.

She started with the background of the pros  for having OLPC in countries where many children don't have electricity or even anything better than a dirt floor in their house.  One of the big pros for this program is to help provide education for young girls, as families can't often afford to educate all of their children - so they tend to only educate boy children.  She also believes this helps bridge the digital divide for incredibly impoverished children.

Ms Buchele then asks, is it really the best use of money for these incredibly poor people, when the laptops, while cheap compared to standard laptops, are far from free - especially when you consider what it takes to deploy them and secure them.  She seems to think that it is, because it's just not possible to train the teachers appropriately in a country where the median age is 25 - and not all of the existing teachers even want to go into those very rural areas. These laptops help to put education directly in the hands of the students, giving them a unique perspective of ownership and pride of taking care of the laptop themselves.

She talked extensively about the current educational realities in Ghana. For example, that students there learn by rote, which means they may know that 9 by 9 is 81, but would have no idea what that means. Same as they may know how to copy a sentence, but they won't be able to tell you what the words mean.  Also, the teachers are grossly under educated or just not available, or there are just not enough classrooms or no classrooms at all.

So, there seem to be real benefits to providing these laptops directly to the children at no cost to their family, which gives the children more direct learning opportunities on their own timeline.

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Awards ceremony and DANCING!

There was no awards banquet this year, as the Grace Hopper conference took a more casual approach to the awards reception. Dinner was served buffet style in advance, which nice as we all got a chance to actually pay attention as awards were given out, instead of attempting to balance between eating & listening to the presenters. I really enjoyed the switch!

I have never seen an awards ceremony with so many heart fealt hugs and ear to ear grins. The wonderful stories told about Grace Hopper and Anita Borg were fascinating to listen to.  It was cool to see a fellow Gaslighter Alum, Elisa Camahort Page, and her colleagues win the Anita Borg Social Impact Award for their work with BlogHer.  I especially liked the acceptance speech from Elaine Weyuker for the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award.

I was lucky enough to be entertained again by David Garibaldi, who dazzled us as he did 6 foot portraits of both Grace Hopper and Anita Borg in less than 10 minutes each (perfectly coordinated to music).  I saw him last time at the Professinal Business Women of California conference in April.

The evening then turned to dessert and dancing - what a fantastic combination! Though, I will admit, dancing is challenging at altitude! :-)

Valerie Fenwick

GHC08: Getting it Together: Empowering People through Information (Integration)

Laura Haas, from IBM, talked about how we have lots of information - but the problem is it is in lots of places.  There is a big challenge of integrating data so the right data is available to the correct people at the right time - and most importantly in a format they can understand.

This research has been going on for decades, but advances in technology are making easier to find the right information that needs to be collated together. 

She went on to describe how to use search, as well as "was this what you were looking for" type queries to better aggregate the data, and noted the problems with dirty data sets.

There are still a lot of problems to tackle - it still needs human input, and too much expertise to run.

Ms. Haas is very passionate about this subject and has a list as long as her arm of followon work. Definitely seems like there are a lot of opportunities in this area!

Valerie Fenwick

neat workaround for broken harddrive

So, I'm anofficial blogger for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing ... and my laptop hard drive dies. Read errors. Sense errors. Oh, joy. It is a brand new laptop - this being my first real use of it (other than installing Solaris on it, configuring VPN and verifying the system worked).  Jim Hughes, a chief technologist at Sun, had the brilliant suggestion of using the OpenSolaris Live CD we included in all of the bags for everyone here at the Grace Hopper conference. Lo and behold, after an extended boot time, it worked! I'm online again. I can't access my Sun account, since my VPN keys are on the dead hard drive, but I can blog... it's something.  The extended boot time is caused by the Live CD attempting to mount all devices, which includes a dodgey hard drive...

I guess I can facebook too... ;-)

Laptop died!!!!!!

OH NOOOOOO! My harddrive in my brand new laptop just died... disk read error. Awesome. This entry is coming from the cyber cafe - I'll have to see if I can find a laptop to borrow for the other sessions I'm blogging, but I won't be logging into work anymore!

GH08: Future Mobile Technology Empowering Users: Understands, Guides, Decides

This session from Mary Smiley, from Intel's Emerging Technology group, was presenting on new micro technologies that enable all of us to "live large".

Some of the technology she covered were sensors, like the one in the iPhone or iPod Touch that can tell when you tip or shake the device. Some more advanced sensors that seem to be in the pipeline would be able to judge your mood from your body temperature, recognize your voice to determine more quickly if your phone might be stolen, and just check how healthy you are.

Some of their research leverage the Polar heart rate monitor straps and the mobile devices that measure activity to get an overall picture of their health. Clearly their are privacy implications for this, where you would not necessarily want to share all of this information with just anyone, and apparently those are being addressed.

Valerie Fenwick 

GHC08: Fighting Crime using Gunshot Location Systems

This is a very interesting talk on the ShotSpotter technology by Elecia White and Sarah Newman. This technology has been installed in several major cities, helping to solve crimes when the shooter can be pinpointed quickly.  In one example, a sniper shot someone from a roof, and actually stayed on the roof, relaxing and smoking a cigarette - thinking he was out of the expected shooting area.  But, the ShotSpotter technology had pinpointed him and the police were able to make an arrest.

Of course, this technology needs to attempt to differentiate between firecrackers, hammers, backfiring cars and gunshots. The technology takes a first pass at guessing what it was hearing (and gives a level of confidence), but then asks the police dispatcher to make a judgment call on whether police action is required or not.

They find this gets faster and better reporting than actually relying on people calling 911 (as there is a longer delay before they call and only about 50% of gun crimes are called in).  The system isn't perfect, but seems that it can definitely help!

Valerie Fenwick

A great start!

What an adventure getting here to the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference, with busy shuttles and lots of hustling around.  I'm glad I'm here and have been able to reconnect with women I met last year at the conference, mostly from Sun and from Purdue.

The  poster session was outstanding, as usual, though they seemed closer together or something, so it was sometimes difficult to move down the aisle.  I saw a lot of interesting research on learning techniques and new ways to get students inspired to explore computer science as a career.  I was happy to see a few posters from Purdue's CERIAS lab as well.

Travel is exhausting, though, so I'm off to bed now! Busy day ahead tomorrow!

Valerie Fenwick 

a few more days....

Wow, it's just a few more days until this years Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference in Denver, CO! I am so excited!  Now just have to get my schedule straight for the week!

Cell phone insecurity....

Phone hacking (aka Phreaking) is no longer just in the domain of the highly skilled and technically motivated that it was in the early 1990s. No longer do you need to get components from Radio Shack and modify them to do nefarious tasks.  You can simply buy a Cellular Seizure Investigation Stick (aka CSI Stick), and learn everything you could ever want to know from someones cell phone.  This type of stuff has been possible for a long time, and it's why my general security talk I give to high school students involves telling them to NEVER leave a cell phone unattended and unsecured, unless they don't mind someone eavesdropping on their future calls, getting access to all text messages and photos, etc.  This just makes it easier.

With Great Anticipation!

I am on the edge of my seat with excitement about this year's Grace
Hopper conference.  The first time I went was in 1997 in San Jose. I
was a recent graduate from Purdue University and enjoying my plunge
into the  tech market place. I'd always been involved in college with
groups like Women in Computer Science and Women in the School of
Science, but wasn't sure where to find the support that I was used to
in the "real world".  My mentor from Purdue, Barbara Clark, recommended
I go to the 1997 conference - and wow, it was an eye opener!  For
reasons I cannot begin to even fathom, I somehow managed to miss all
the next Grace Hopper conferences until last year's in Orlando FL. I
have been missing out! I love the camaraderie, getting updates on
fascinating technical topics, and learning about new job skills and job
markets.  This year I'll be a panelist on women in Open Source, as well
as blogging.  I'm a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, currently still
heavily involved with computer security and in particular the Solaris
Cryptographic Framework project.  You'll see me a lot on the
opensolaris.org mailing aliases, and often making updates to the
documentation for external (and internal) contributors.

(a copy of this blog appeared on  the official Grace Hopper blog)

Valerie Fenwick

Pat Mitchell talks to Sun Women!

I was so lucky to get to attend in person the talk by Pat Mitchell, a Sun board member, given to women at Sun a few weeks back. Ms Mitchell, an energetic and intelligent speaker, captivated the "in studio" audience as she regaled us with tales of starting her own production company for women, starting her own talk show, Woman to Woman, and acting as an anchor on the Today show. Now, you have to wonder how a woman so involved in television came to be involved witht he Sun board of directors. Her career path is a staggered one, starting out just trying to do something she enjoyed - teaching! She then moved into writing articles for Look magazine and others, finding a new path for her to release her creative juices!

Ms. Mitchell talked quite extensively about how the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) actually helped her and other women to get jobs in the 1970s - and helped her get a myriad of experience. When the EEOC first went into effect, each TV station only had to have one woman in some job, but they liked to put their token hire in a position of prominent position so that everyone could see they were compliant. This is how she was able to hit the ground running and get real experience - though she did note that having such visible jobs that she didn't necessarily have all the training up front for did lead to extra scrutiny and occasional negative attention.

Ms. Mitchell found that women in media in the 1970s and early 1980s were expected to dress like men (we all remember those power-suits, right?), lower their voices to sound more like men, and to never discuss women's issues - but she decided to follow her own voice, which led her in very different directions! She soon discovered, though, that "talent"didn't get to make decisions on what stories were covered, who got hired or who got promoted. Feeling the frustration, she started her own production company to do things her way and to get all the experience associated with the business. Doing this led her to her first real executive position at Turner Broadcasting - a job she held for 10 years. Mitchell found Turner to be a fantastic mentor and only laments that her mentors were few & far between, and that she never had a woman mentor (as she seemed to always be breaking ground!).

When she found she no longer had a place after Turner merged with Time Warner (she notes that many women seemed to have lost their grounding), she nearly went back to teaching - only to get a call from PBS out of the blue. Mitchell loves her job at PBS, but found the pay was not quite the equal of a company like Turner. That is when she began taking jobs on corporate boards to make up the pay gap, and found she really enjoyed being able to contribute to companies she otherwise would've found unapproachable. She finds many boards appreciate her communication skills, knowledge of the entertainment business and her general business acumen.

Mitchell gave some fantastic advice for us all as well. She stated that women need to be comfortable with their own power - not only is it okay to have power, but you should use it and be able to redefine it, to have it work for you in a way that is not intimidating. Do all that and still be authentic.

She notes that you should also not be afraid of taking risks and that she's never seen anyone win anything through patience.

Related to that, Mitchell shared some of her grandmother's wisdom with us all: "Falling on your face is at least a forward movement."

Whatever happened to NRM Music?

I was just completing my LinkedIn profile (finally), and was saddened to find that one of my favorite companies seems to have disappeared off of the face of the earth - NRM Music (aka National Record Mart).  It was retail, but I loved working there. The No Risk Music guarantees alone - I mean, who lets you return open CDs for a different title anymore? (to be fair, the No Risk Music was limited to specific selections every month that we knew did not suck).  The last article I can find on the store is on potential expansions in 1999. I can only guess this place was a victim of the MP3 (aka "let's not pay for music anymore") revolution.  I was able to grow from a lowly annoying teenage salesperson into a manager all before turning 17. I learned respect for merchandise, for myself, for others and for corporate America.  I also learned about how Federal tax incentive programs (like automatically reducing withholding but not reducing your tax bill) really impacted minimum wage earners. I also got to see first hand what happened when the Federal minimum wage was raised.  I gained an understanding for how the big picture works, and how every individual can impact the environment around them.  I could see first hand how being a helpful and courteous employee raised our sales by the double digit percentiles.  I also learned that several of our employees could not alphabetize merchandise with much accuracy, which led to my strange obsession with alphabetizing my own CDs, DVDs and books.

I've seen my favorite music stores disappear out here. It's a shame, I always find new things to listen to by just browsing or getting recommendations from a real human that has an actual interest in music.

Through my job at NRM, I was eligible for and received a college scholarship from the National Association for Recording Merchandisers.  It wasn't a full ride, but definitely made a difference, helped me focus on my studies to maintain the gift and made sure I kept my credit hours up to par.  Anyways, I'll miss you NRM, wherever you have gone.

And a hush fell over the crowd....

I experienced something new this weekend - I was in the Opal Ultra Lounge in the MontBleu in Lake Tahoe.  Every TV in the casino and club was tuned into the Olympics, which people had been idly watching while waiting for drinks to be made. Then the men's 400m medley relay came on.  Suddenly, the crowd quieted. Bartenders stopped making drinks. People stopped talking. Dancers stopped moving on the dance floor. We all just stopped and watched, many holding their breath while others softly chanted "U S A. U S A."  Everyone was totally riveted until the race completed, America taking another gold - Michael Phelps receiving his 8th.  It was surreal.

I'm not a huge sports fan, but I do love watching the Olympics. These sports are just not normally aired, and this is my first time watching them in HD - an awesome experience  (I do love my TiVo!).

We've switched!

Things are starting to settle down now that mercurial is up and working for ON's Solaris development. I've yet to have done a push myself, but have approved several RTIs, updated the RTI nits documentation, and am preparing more updates to other sites as well.   I'll be returning my focus to FIPS and US Governement export regulations on cryptography shortly, and hopefully doing a few more blog updates.

Mercurial or bust!

Things are so crazy for me right now, getting ready for ON's switch to Mercurial next week. To get ready as ON CRT chair, I had to update the RTI nit documentation, so folks would know what they were expected to do.  Thank goodness for all the great help from the SCM migration team! Now that that's done, I'll try to get back to my "real" work and all my missing blog entries... :-)

American Idol Live

I'm embarrassed to say that I went to the American Idol Live concert in San Jose last night, but pleased that it was a good show. We were in the nosebleed section, which always takes me awhile to relax in (since I am terrified of heights).  I was disappointed that the organizers decided against using the arena's jumbotron and instead used screens over the stage which was VERY far from where we were sitting.  The main screen was also partially obscured with these electrical shims that were neat ... but so obscured the view that they became annoying.  Unfortunately for most of the singers, the sound guy did not properly balance or adjust the system - we heard a lot of bass and drums, but not much of the singers except for Michael Johns, Syesha Mercado and David Cook.  David A. was obscured by all the SCREECHING girls. yow.  It was a good mix of repeats from the show, some folks like Carly Smithson reworked some of the numbers significantly, while others like Michael Johns did them as we remember.  Everyone got three songs, except for David Cook. Syesha and David A were given more time and had longer numbers than the others, though.  Syesha really shined last night - showing a range I never saw on the show (though she again demonstrated that hip hop may not really be her thing). Kristy Lee Cook got such a cool reception, but showed that she's been practicing - her voice sounded much better. (I  always liked her, but still appreciated the improvement!) Vocal coaches must've been going around, as David A was actually singing very well last night (I was so tired of his nasaly drone!)

It was great to see all of the performers again - they all did very well. The group numbers were MUCh better than the live group numbers during the show. The band did a great job keeping up as well! I appreciated the intermission (though am confused by the number of women that kept standing in line for the restroom, even though there were many open stalls) and was glad that the concert started nearly on time. The problems with the show were not due to any of the performers and hopefully can be corrected for other dates.

The Shark Tank is a great place to see a show, with plenty of vendors open and nice wide halls and easily walkable from downtown.

Fireworks spoiled by nincompoops

We had a pretty great Fourth of July BBQ with friends, when we decided to walk to a nearby park and enjoy the fireworks being put on at the Shoreline Amphitheater. We thought we'd save ourselves some effort and watch from a nearby park (Whisman Sport's Complex) instead of walking all the way to the park (which would be much too crowded for driving) ... well, there was a group of idiots that thought the professional display was not enough, and they were letting off fireworks about 20 feet from a large group of people. Several of their fireworks misfired and exploded on the ground. Children were screaming and crying... yet they did not relent. They continued to let them off right near the main entrance of the park.  Some of our group had to leave early due how scared they were being so close - out of a nearly hidden back exit.  As far as I know, you're not supposed to let off fireworks in a park like that.  Who knows - but next year, we'll do the full walk to Shoreline, which is nicely policed, and enjoy the professional show without fear of injury from the amateurs. [Note: according to the Mountain View Voice, all fireworks are illegal in Mountain View]

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!!!!

We did the American Lung Association's Breathe Easy Lung Ride in San Luis Obispo last weekend, and it was WONDERFUL! Even though it was a very hot weekend, most of the ride was along the coast - which was beautiful and cool. I didn't really get hot til the last 10-15 miles, particularly when I ran out of water (my fault for not filling up at the last rest stop! I totally forgot!) Mark stopped often so I could have some water from his camel back, but the sun and the heat did get to me - I got a pounding headache behind my eyes and dizzy. Nothing an air conditioned lobby, lots of cold water & some food couldn't fix. I did finish the ride, but after the dizzy spell I did get a SAG wagon back to my hotel (3 miles from the ride start). All the same, thank you all for your very generous donations! Your gifts, plus the very generous matching gifts from the Sun Microsystems Foundation, helped me raise $6884.02! WOW!

Thank you so much - the generosity of all of you is so humbling to me. Thank you.

Biking to work & biking to save lives

This is a big week for bicycling and me, with Bike to Work Day coming up tomorrow (May 15) and my 65 mile ride for the American Lung Association on Saturday (May 17). I'm excited about Bike to Work Day, as I think this will be the first time I can actually ride in. It's always funny - I ride in all the time, but something like a doctors appointment will come up and I'll miss this one day. Well, I already rescheduled my dentist appointment so I can make it this year! I expect to see the trails pretty packed, even though my route doesn't take me along any of the "power stations", because tomorrow is also a Spare The Air Day and my last day to train for the ALA ride on Saturday.

Unfortunately, my show schedule and cold I got after we opened kept me from biking for essentially all of April - so, training didn't start until April 30. I've done this ride a few years in a row, now, so I know I can do it - I just know that my lack of training will result in being VERY tired and sore, but I will do it. I do this ride for my mother, a lung cancer survivor and asthma sufferer and for all of the family friends and family members we have lost to lung disease. If you can support me, I'd appreciate it. If not, please do something friendly for the environment on Saturday to help support clean air - like combine any trips by car, or see if you can walk or ride a bicycle to do your errands, or just make sure your car is passing its smog requirements. There's a lot of us in the Bay Area - small things we do can add up.

Last Chance: Valerie in Best Little W****house in Texas!

Hi everyone!

We're down to our last three performances for Best
Little W****house in Texas with Actor's Theatre Center in th Historic
Hoover Theater in San Jose. Reviews have been great, but audiences have
been small. Thank you so much for all of you who have already come out
to support us! Tonight, tomorrow & Saturday night (all 8PM curtain)

This
is the toughest acting role I've ever had - my character, Shy, is not
your typical happy-go-lucky musical role, but a woman with a shattered
past that was so tragic and difficult that life as a "working girl" was
seen as a big step up. This show is so much more dynamic that most
other ones I've seen - there are sad and touching moments, right along
with amazingly hilarious ones and upbeat dance numbers!

This is
based on a true story, right down to the wig-wearing, over the top,
"consumer activist" television star - that will have you rolling in the
aisles.

I am so proud to be working with everyone of the actors
on this stage - everyone is top notch (many of whom you've seen before
with me or in shows we've gone to see together).

The Palo Alto Daily quite liked us:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2008-5-2-brothel-musical
(actresses are mislabeled - I haven't gone blond! :-)

Folks on Artsopolis enjoyed it, too:
http://www.artsopolis.com/event/detail/29869

Theater info:
http://theatrecenter.biz/id126.html

You can buy tickets online or at the door.

C'mon down! A good time to be had by all!

Professional Business Women of California Conference

I was so fortunate last week to get to attend the Professional
Business Women of California's conference in San Francisco. This was my
first time attending the event, and I was overwhelmed with everything
that went on. Every speaker was top notch, even at the sessions, and
the booths in the expo were filled with many interesting things - some
career oriented, others more personal - like jewelry or health care.
My only complaint is that with 6000 women in the Moscone Center, the 30
minute breaks were not really long enough.

The opening keynote from Martha Beck was surprisingly inspirational, as I don't normally find myself going for "feel good mumbo jumbo" - but I guess that's why her talk worked for me, she had substance behind her stories. Dr. Beck was talking about her own life and how she learned to "follow her joy" to find a career that both inspired her and that she was successful in. She noted that many people come to her, in her role as a life coach, and tell her they just don't know what to do with themselves. She found that they actually do know, but either think they can't do what they love or don't know how to get started. This gave me a moment to reflect in the joy I find in the work I do. True, there are days that aren't so "joyful", but having a rewarding job that I generally enjoy makes me a very lucky person, I think!

David Garibaldi, "Rhythm & Hue", was an amazing performance artist who made 6 foot portraits of both Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Madeleine Albright live, to perfect rhythm of the music, right before our eyes. It was very impressive!

I spent my morning in "Going Green: How Women's Economic Power and Counterintuitive Business Practices Can Make a Difference" where Diane Maceachern, Big Green Purse LLC, and Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm, spoke about green practices in our every day lives and in businesses and how they can actually save money in the bottom line. Diane, who also authored Big Green Purse, noted that women are responsible for spending of 85 cents of every consumer dollar spent - making an excellent point that if we all make wise consumer choices, we can shift the market. As an example, she noted that in 1999 there were no hybrid cars being sold commercially. Suddenly in 2004, there were 88,000. Car makers took note. In 2004 there were not enough hybrids to meet demand and by 2007 more than 315,000 hybrids were sold. Automakers went from pushing back on legislators demanding more fuel efficiency, saying there was no demand, to coming up with more options on their own. A perfect example of how consumer demand can shift the marketplace faster than legislation.

She strongly recommends everyone to install water filters in their own house and use refillable bottles for water on the go - it's cheaper, and much more environmentally friendly.

Gary Hirshberg was also very interesting, talking about how sometimes searching for a more environmentally procedure for your business, you will find something that is also cheaper. As an example, he noted how UPS had changed many of its routes to eliminate left hand in town turns - saving millions of dollars of fuel costs/year.

My highlight came at lunch time when I got to hear a very fascinating Cokie Roberts talk about the founding mothers of our country and all of the work they contributed to the US in our early years, and Madelein Albright talk about women's issues in general.

Albright spoke so eloquently, really giving me pause to think about everything that is going on in the world. She noted that it is impossible to have a true democracy in a society where women are treated as second class citizens, and that anyone who abuses the dignity of one group, whether it be women or a specific race or class, is a security threat to us all. In that vein, she urged all women to be willing to help each other, stand up for each other, and fight for education of women around the world. When the issue of the Queen Bee Syndrome was brought up, Albright noted that it is indeed an actual problem, but she felt "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other."

The day wound up with an energizing talk from Meagen Johnson on the four different generations in the workplace right now, Traditional, Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials. She talked extensively about how baby boomers are really team oriented, whereas Gen X folks are more self motivated and generally prefer working independently. A neat technology point she made is that most boomers did not work with a computer until they had a full time job after graduating college. Folks from the Gen X generation on the other hand grew up with computers in the schools (I still remember my schools Apple IIe and playing Oregon Trail!). Millenials, though, grew up with a computer always around. It was a fun talk that made light of many multi-generational issues, yet at the same time got me to thinking.

Overall, the conference was amazing and I could not recommend it enough!

ATC's Best Little W'house in Texas is honkey tonkin' along!

So we had a fantastic opening weekend for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, even though I was sick.  I'm just now starting to feel a bit better, so I'm really excited about this weekend.  The show is really great, if I do say so myself :-)  Everyone who has come has had nothing but nice things to say.  I can't get the music out of my head, which is probably a good thing - it will help me keep the harmonies straight.  This show is never done, which is odd, because it has such a touching story, fantastic songs and so much more depth than a normal cheesy musical.

Y'all come back now, ya hear! 

Security Ambassadors

I'm sitting here in one of the last sessions of the Sun Security Ambassadors conference, and thinking how lucky I was to be able to attend - getting the opportunity to learn what we are doing wrt to security in all our different GEOs, get in depth information into emerging security technologies, and I got to hear from some excellent luminaries in this field: Matt Bishop, Radia Perlman, Susan Landau & Michelle Dennedy.  We've had a great agenda and I feel like my team and I will have a lot to take away from this.

With Sun Security Ambassadors this week, and RSA last week (more on that later), I've been away from my email and "day job". That means a lot of catchup for next week!  

first rehearsal on stage....

Last night we got to use the actual stage for the first time for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In some places, the stage is MUCH bigger ...in others, smaller than what we practiced with. That's what adding props and set pieces does to a little theater group ;)  The stage is much wider, and now we have access to the stage and the platforms that are between the orchestra pit and the rest of the audience.  Spacing was an interesting challenge last night, so we spent a lot of time last night fixing the big dance numbers. I only whacked one person with my tamborine last night... unfortunately I got poor Heidi more than once. I promise I'll be much more careful tonight!

Tonight we should have a few more of our costumes - I'll get a chance to try out my velcro tear off denim overalls (how else do you take off overalls over cowboy boots when you have 15 seconds to change?!?!)  I never thought I'd be wearing tear off clothing for a show... :-)

Band sounds great!

We had our Sitzprobe (sit and sing) last night with the band for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and they sounded fantastic! The slide guitar and violin add depth we just weren't getting with the piano fill in rehearsal, and the bass and drums will definitely help us feel the beat as we dance and sing (at the same time ;).  Yesterday morning and afternoon, we got most of the set put together, so tonight we'll actually be on stage! and with the band! I'm very excited! We won't be running with costumes until at least Wednesday, which I'm a bit nervous about, as I have a few very fast changes (including one that occurs onstage!).  I'm sure it will be fine. Linda has reminded me several times that we often didn't have our costumes until opening night at the Gaslighter, and we somehow survived and still put on outstanding shows.  This will be no exception! This is one of the most challenging roles I've ever had - I'm not used to musicals having such great depth, and I've certainly never covered so many emotions in one show.

[VABF: Oops! I wrote this yesterday, but didn't post it! oops!]
 

ATC Last Rehearsal before moving to the theater!

We had an interesting landmark in our evolution towards opening night of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas - we did a full run through, choreographed the bows (because, yes, there is more dancing! yay!) and completed our very last rehearsal in the rehearsal space. Sunday we load into the theater, do our sit-sing, then we'll just have to run, run, run the show from top to bottom til we're ready to open.  I'm really happy with where we all are. Most of our costumes and hair pieces are in, everything is choreographed and blocked, and everyone is off book.  Sure, there were a few forgotten lines here and there last night, but that's the beauty of live theater. :-)  I'm so excited about getting into the actual theater so we can really understand where our entrances and exists are, and we'll have so much more space!  I helped base paint some of the sets last week, and I have a feeling that Stephen Watham is going to outdo himself again!

We're opening April 19. Make sure you get your tickets now! Actors Theatre Center performs in the historic Hoover Middle School theater in San Jose (right across from the Egyptian museum). It's a short run, and you definitely don't wan to miss out.

Loudness war and perfect pitch

So, it's not my imagination - music is getting worse. I found this article from IEEE on how the amplitude of music is going up on one of my friend's blogs and found it truly fascinating. I had heard that this was getting worse, due to the way MP3 compression worked - but this article was enlightening! It seems that MP3 compression has improved enough where loss of quality is no longer as necessary, but that "louder" music attracts more attention - so that's what the sound engineers are going for.  What this really means is that my wacky friends that insist music sounds better on vinyl are right.

There was a follow on article that blew my mind - it covers pitch correcting software used in more than 90% of recordings today. I find this shocking, because I consider part of being a good singer to have a good sense of pitch. It's hard, I know - I've heard some recordings of myself where I'm learning a new song where clearly my sense of pitch at that moment was... a little off. This just seems to me too much like cheating.  How do we really know what we are listening to?  Clearly, I'll have to continue to go  see live theater if I want to see the real thing.  The second article is "multi-media" so you can actually hear the pitch corrections as they are applied.

Speaking of live theater, rehearsals for ATC's Best Little W****house in Texas are going exceedingly well. We did our first run through this week. Yes, still lots to polish, but we're really getting there!

Absentee ballot voter fraud

I've long had my suspicions about the potential for fraud with absentee ballots, and this article out of the UK shows just how easy it is to abuse the absentee ballot situation. Someone actually used this to rig an election! This is a tricky issue, because obviously we do not want to disenfranchise folks who cannot make it to the polls, whether due to travel, work or disability, but a lot of states, including California, are trying to move as many people to vote absentee as possible.  We've already seen problems with stolen ballots in the state of Oregon, which votes 100% absentee. I wonder what it will take to get the powers that be to seriously look into the implications of all of this.  Not that voting in person is much better. I reregistered with my new name this year, but my polling place still had me under my old name. They let me vote with a normal ballot (vs a provisional one) anyways.  Also, my parents said that for years after I left Indiana my name was still listed at the polling place by their house. 

ATC needs a few good men...

So rehearsals for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas are going quite well. I'm finally starting to "get" some of the harmonies and we're really diving into the choreography.  I love how Nancy choreographs - she breaks things down so simply, even a non dancer like me can follow along.  This weekend, we're going to start working on the bigger group numbers, which means we need some more men! We need guys that can "move" and sing as Texas Aggie football players coming to visit the "Chicken Ranch" and two leading men as well: CJ Scrubs and Mayor Rufus Poindexter.  Let me know if you're interested!

Bike accident

I was so sad today to read about the fatal bike accident that occurred on Steven's Creek Canyon yesterday morning. We do that ride all the time, only missing yesterday because we were skiing. I love riding that road because I find that the cyclists and motorists are generally very courteous, with the exception of occasional yahoos in sports cars. It's a nice, quiet road with a good steady climb. My heart goes out to the families of Matt Peterson and Kristy Gough, and I'm sending as many good thoughts as possible toward Christopher Knapp - I hope he is able to recover from his injuries.

Strong crypto in base Solaris 11!

My Friday night integration of 6498066 PSARC/2006/610 Data Encryption Kit (SUNWcry) Removal now means that strong crypto is available in a base Nevada system, starting with build 85 and forward. What does this mean for you? Mostly it means that you no longer have to get special packages to get longer key lengths for arcfour, aes or blowfish and that things like OpenSSL will work out of the box.

Earlier posts to this blog explained how I took a different approach with strong crypto with Solaris 10 Update 4. This work I just completed in Nevada, which was originally started by darrenm, is not appropriate for an update release since it removes packages and modules from the system.

Also, earlier this project was tied in with libsoftcrypto. I worked closely with the crypto team on this, and we decided that the removal of the Data Encryption Kit was more important and needed to be integrated as soon as possible, so libsoftcrypto was pulled out of this project gate in order to speed up delivery of PSARC/2006/610.

One really cool thing about this integration? It removes tons of now pointless Sun specific modifications from the OpenSSL source. Hurray!

This should make it easier for folks to use Nevada and OpenSolaris builds, as well as make it easier to do development in the affected areas. Let me know if you have any questions!

Sun Headlines debut!

I just made my debut as an anchor for Sun Headlines. In this latest edition of the program, I'm talking about how cool Project Blackbox is. It's weird watching a video of myself, but it was such a cool experience making it and I love talking about Sun technology. I hope I get another opportunity to film one again! Check out my segment and let me know what you think!

Yay! Audition paid off!

I'm so excited! I just found out I was cast as Shy in the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with the Actor's Theatre Center. And the icing on the cake? Two of my very good friends were also cast, one of which I haven't done a show with since midway through my career at the Gaslighter.  The auditions were fun because my two friends came with me, "Mom" Reynolds was on the piano and Nancy Kwong was our choreographer.  "Mom" is always a reliable player, and the fact that she gives you a hug before you sing really helps calm the nerves (yes, one of the many reasons we all just call her "Mom").  Nancy teaches by calling out names of steps, which makes it so much easier for me to follow & learn.

Anyways, I'd better cancel my appointment at the Dragon Theatre, since these two shows conflict with each other.

Audition fun!

It must be that time of year, because I've been auditioning like crazy.  Last week, I had my auditions for Fame at SCP and the TheatreWorks general auditions.  The Fame auditions started out well, but for some reason, the pianist did not play the last line of my song (my first time using Stormy Weather). The piano playing stopped a bit unexpectedly, but she played very well, so I can't possibly blame her for my lack of callbacks.  Perhaps it was my bad dancing. *sigh* I'm actually not a bad dancer, but I'm not a true dancer, so I take longer to learn the steps.  I've actually done some very complicated dancing in many of the shows I've been in (and friends say they've been impressed), but I did not do so well in the Fame audition. For me, the instruction was a bit too quick, and only the count was called out when we were on our own (as opposed to "what step is next").  The other two women I danced with seemed to pick up the steps much faster, so it must've just been me.

My TheaterWorks general audition went better, starting with the familiar face of long time Stanford Savoyard Jonathan Erman behind the piano.  I did my "standard" audition piece of Turn Back O' Man from Godspell (for which I got to practice a lot when I played the role of Sonia with STOC's production a couple years back), and performed my first monologue since I was in high school.

Tonight I'm auditioning for ATC's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I'll do my standard piece again, and try to really focus on the dance portion of the audition. I really can dance - I'm just need practice, practice, practice!

Saturday, I'll be auditioning for Dragon Production Theatre Company's The Country Club in Palo Alto & Saratoga Drama Group for their fall production of Ragtime (which I'm not even sure I can do, with all the events I already have planned for the fall).  I have to learn another monologue for the Dragon audition, since the souther accent one I used for TheatreWorks will not be at all appropriate.

In more interesting news, I filmed my first Sun Headlines segment last week. It was so cool working with a crew - even a makeup guy to powder my nose!  The teleprompter was fascinating!  Look for my web TV debut on sun.com on February 1 as I tell you all about Project Blackbox!

Northstar skiing!

Finally made it skiing this weekend, up to Northstar, and it was AMAZING! Okay, my legs were not in the best shape, but on Saturday the sun was shining, the lift lines were short to non-existent, and the snow was perfect!  Nice and soft. Northstar left some of their runs partially ungroomed, which was a lot of fun - I could ski in the deep, cut up snow for awhile, and as I got tired - bail out to the nice, even groomed bits.  We decided to drive straight home on Sunday, after getting a look at the wind & snow starting to fall - which seems like a good decision, since the resorts got between 18" and 36" yesterday! It would've been fun to ski in, but not for long, and the drive home would've been a nightmare. I just hope we get more good snow like this - both for the skiing and to help stave off the drought!