Girls In Tech Los Angeles

I'm sure I've told a few of you but I've recently taken a position as the Mentorship Director at the Girls in Tech Los Angeles organization.  Obviously a volunteer job to occupy me in my ample spare time, but sarcasm aside, mentoring women is something I'm passionate about.  There were no role models for me growing up as a female tech geek in the middle of Canada.  Certainly no female techies of any sort let alone a CEO or CIO of a tech company.  Role models abound nowadays and I want to help women get ahead and get connected in these male dominated technical fields.

To that end for the last week I've spent time connecting women to girls in a number of different ways and I'm pretty stoked about it.  Most of these opportunities have come from our relationship with the Girl Scouts of Los Angeles and we're thankful for their referrals.  I've managed to find two mentors for two girls going for their GS Gold Award.  This is the highest award in Girl Scouts and only 5.4% of girls trying to attain the goal, do.  The mentors are two female rocket scientists from the JPL Mars Rover teams and will be working with the girls on robotics.  I'm also working with a female video game developer to help the Girl Scouts of Los Angeles finish developing their video gaming badge.  And you thought that Girls Scouts was just cookies.  No more - they don't earn badges in cooking, baking and camping, they earn badges in financial planning, robotics, recycling, and the list goes on and on.

My next project is seeing if getting on the GS Gold Award committee would help them in any way and would possibly also be a great way to continue to connect engineers with girls needing mentors.  

Stay tuned for what we have planned next as the train has begun to roll out of the station and is picking up steam!

Patience Constantly Proves The Adage

Once again events prove that patience is truly a virtue.  I cannot believe how much patience I've developed over the years.  I've been waiting since mid April for my new work vehicle - a Ford 2013 Escape - Kodiak Brown with what I think is the Eco Boost/Titanium package.  It's coming directly from the factory.  Of course, when you order something like this through your fleet manager you never really know exactly what you're going to get until you get it.

Today's news however made me thankful that I do not have it yet.  This link has the story of the fires in the Escapes due to the fuel line cracking.  That's pretty serious stuff.  It's so serious that Ford is telling their owners NOT to drive it and to call the dealer who will come out with a flat bed, take it away and give you a loaner.  Here's a shot of my new vehicle....someday soon. Pretty color eh?

Here is the funnest (is that a word?) feature of the vehicle - Intelligent Assist lift gate - . just kick your foot under the bumper and the power liftgate will automatically open, providing easy access to the cargo area. And both this liftgate and the available power liftgate allow you to adjust the liftgate height, which is helpful for lower overhangs.

STEM, Girl Scouts and Girls in Tech LA

Saturday was a big day for me.  I was at Rio Hondo college @ 9am with the rest of the volunteers from Girls in Tech Los Angeles ready to start my day by teaching some girls about electrical engineering that mostly included hands on lab type work.  I was a little apprehensive as I had not practiced any sort of speech/lecture material, I was going to wing it.  After all, I can build a simple circuit in my sleep.

It was a good day.  It was so unexpected to see girl's faces light up when they made a circuit and they got pretty stoked buzzing it for our game show.  My favorite comment of the day?  "I thought this was going to be boring, but it's really fun!"  It turns out that the majority of the attendees were brand new girl scouts and this was their first event.  They received a three month free membership and could pay the $12 a year after that to join.

We were written about in the Whittier Daily news, yes, small little local rag but hey, any publicity is good publicity, isn't that what celebrities say? The San Gabriel tribune also picked up the story.

Geppetto and Agility Training

Geppetto and I are signed up for Agility class.  Here is a picture of him traversing the teeter totter.  I think this is the second hardest trick for a dog to do.  They are not comfortable on unstable ground.  The hardest seems to be the weave poles where dogs weave in and out.  Agility class probably teaches the humans about 75% and dogs about 25%.  It is about human positioning, body language and confidence.  Your dog takes those cues off of you.   I'm hoping that we can enter the Beginning Novice competition on August 4th at WLAOTC

Affordable Health Care Act - aka ObamaCare Part 2

This is Part 2 of my personal discovery of what all the hoopla is over ObamaCare.  If you haven't read part 1 - please do so - scroll down to the next(aka previous) blog post.  The first 5 points below are 2011 changes.

1. Medicare-covered preventative services were exempted from deductibles and the co-pay was eliminated.  - OK, this seems good
2. Insurance companies must prove they spent at least 80% of the premium payments on medical services, rather than on things like advertising and executive salaries. Those that didn't were required to provide rebates to policyholders.  -- Hahahahaha - I bet those insurance companies hated this one!
3. Provided grants to states so they could require health insurance companies to submit justification for all rate hikes. - ok, whatever - I suppose you have to police them since they are liars anyways
4. Additional funding to increase the number of doctors and nurses, and more community health centers -- enough to double the number of patients they can treat in the next five years. -- ok, well, we have an aging population that is living longer - this seems like a good thing.
5. The Senate must still approve higher taxes to pay for the additional benefits. Specifically, the 1 million people who make more than $200,000 and the 4 million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000 would pay 3.8% Medicare taxes on dividends, capital gains, rent and royalties and 2.35% (up from 1.45%) Medicare taxes on income.  <-- ok, well think of this - there is currently a 15% tax on capital gains.  Most capital gains taxes are paid by really rich people who don't really make a traditional salary but get 99% of their money from investments.  This is how rich people get away with paying less taxes than your average middle/lower class American.  Regular people pay around 28% or higher.  So, I have no problem with increasing the tax in this manner. 
6. 2012 changes - this is where it seems to get complicated.
7. Health care exchanges - apparently all states must set up some sort of health care exchange - kind of like a state run health insurance program, which is weird because isn't that what Medical is (in California)?  So I think this is a federally subsidized stop gap insurance for people who don't qualify for MediCal (poor people) and people who don't work for companies that offer insurance.  It seems like the payments to providers will be lower (so that makes doctors very unhappy) and the coverage won't be as stellar as that provided by a big employer.  
8. Fines for people and companies not buying health insurance.  This is a weird one - so if you make ~ $30,000 or less a year (and I'm ballparking here) then you can buy health insurance through these state health care exchanges.  If you don't, the government will send you a bill for $325 as a fine.  I don't know about this.  Wouldn't it be better to just say that if you don't buy insurance then don't go running to the emergency room cause we're going to kick your ass out without treatment?

Basically - the American health care system is set up so that your quality and level of care is directly dependent upon how much money is in your bank account.  The ObamaCare Act tries to remedy that.  Does it do that?  Well, that remains to be seen, probably not but I suppose its a step in a direction and better than nothing.  Can anyone really fix the American health care system anyways?  Doubtful.  It's a big machine moving along, unstoppable, especially by a democratic government that is more worried about entitlements for themselves, re-election, speaking engagements and their bank accounts rather than the people they are supposed to represent.  

Affordable Health Care Act - aka ObamaCare Part 1

Since I'm an American now and the SCOTUS (Supreme court of the US) upheld the constitutionality of this act I figured I should understand it.  In the past year I've listened to nothing but outrage and dissent about it and how it was going to bankrupt America and basically fuck the whole system up. I thought the latter part of that sentence was amusing since the American health care system is generally f'ed up anyways....  I had also heard that as an employed American working for a midsize company with health care as a benefit this Act would not affect me at all.

So what are the actual facts?  Not the Fox News "facts", not the 7 second Republican sound bite "facts" - the actual, for real facts....

In my research I've discovered this:

1. Its called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 - ObamaCare was coined as a way to demonize it.
2. In 2010 as part of the Act - small businesses received tax credits to cover up to 35% of their total employee premium payments. This increases to 50% in 2014 <-- this seems good - health coverage expenses for small businesses is brutal often resulting in those workers not getting any coverage - then going to emergency room for every single thing.
3. 2010 - Children were allowed to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turn 26 - since unemployment is so high especially of recent graduates, this seems like a good idea.
4. 2010 -Insurance companies were prohibited from dropping coverage if someone got really sick. They couldn't create lifetime coverage limits. They could no longer deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. The same will apply to adults in 2014. Until then, adults with pre-existing conditions who have been denied coverage will get access to temporary health insurance coverage until the exchanges are set up.  <-- this seems logical.  It was a terrible thing for some big profit insurance company to drop you because you got sick, terrible and very common.
5. New private plans were required to cover preventive services with no co-payments, and they are exempt from deductibles.   Consumers who applied to new plans have access to an external appeals process if coverage is denied.  - I noticed that we got this benefit on my insurance at work last year.  I didn't realize why, I thought the insurance company was being nice but really, they were required.  Imagine going for a check up and not paying anything!  If you catch a problem early the costs to solve it and the morality rates are way better.  Hmmm another logical point.
   
   
   Ok, wow, there are so many things - tomorrow I'll cover the changes in 2011 that took effect.  To me - so far these are not bad things.  I can't really see anything horrible thus far.  You might say, well, how are we supposed to pay for all this?  Well - if you fix people in a doctors office rather then an emergency room, its cheaper.  If you cure someone of stage 1 cancer its cheaper than curing them of stage 3 cancer - called early detection.
   
   

Social Networking Symbol Primer

I've been asked this a few times lately over the past couple weeks so I thought I would give a short primer on special symbols on Twitter and Facebook.

The @ Sign:
Facebook - Tagging  -->  On Facebook when typing in your status @username where username is someone you know - as you type @, no space and then the first character, your friends names that match will start to populate as a drop down.  As you continue to type and the auto complete finds the friend in question, just mouse down and click the appropriate name.  The "@" symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you've added your tags.  Friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post. They also will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts.

Twitter - Reply -->  The @ sign is for replying to a tweet.  If you receive a tweet from someone you are following you can reply to them by typing @username comment.  No space between @ and username.  An @reply is "heard" by followers of both you and who you replied to.  If you want your reply to be private then that would be a DM (direct message) - from your SMS client - d username - yes, there is a space between the d and the username.

The # Sign:


Twitter

Definition: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.  Here are some general guidelines courtesy of Twitter Help:

• People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords or phrases (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. 
• Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end.
• Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

Facebook - What # sign?  There is none....unless Google+ adds it, then maybe there will be.

I hope that helps!

Expo Line Experience and Roger Waters

This past weekend we were fortunate enough to have tickets to the Roger Waters, The Wall, concert.  It was a perfect storm in and around downtown Los Angeles.  Kings, Clippers, Lakers playoffs, concerts, Dodgers, etc etc. makes for a very busy weekend for our already stressed freeways.  Emails went out from all the ticket providers and venues to take alternative transportation if possible.

Dena and I decided to check out the new Expo line.  It currently goes from Jefferson and La Cienga to the Staples center connecting with the Red, Purple and Blue lines.  It appeared by the terrible Metro map that it stops quite close to the coliseum, the location of the Roger Waters concert.  Saturday night, we parked at the park and ride at La Cienga and were a little taken aback at how many people were in line at the ticket terminals.  It turns out that they have 2 terminals on the East side and 2 on the West side of the street.  There was only one working on the Park and Ride side - East.  So I quickly dashed across the street and bought two one-way tickets.

As an aside - here are some ticketing lessons - a one way ticket is only good for 2 hours therefore, if you're going to a concert or what have you, you need to re-ticket on the way back as buying two one-way tickets at your starting point will mean the 2nd will expire.  You could buy a round trip ticket for $5, giving you all day, however, they expire at midnight - we caught our train home at 10 minutes to midnight.  Buying a round trip ticket would cost you $2 per person but save you from standing in line on your return trip.  Perhaps worth it depending.  Also, currently and stupidly, the Metro system is on the honor system.  So, you could just jump on and not buy a ticket depending on your ethical and  moral compass.

Our trip to the coliseum was a piece of cake - took 10 - 15 minutes and dropped us about one block from our venue.  Very easy and we enjoyed walking by the line of cars waiting to park for $25 in the lots.  On the way back we had to wait 10 minutes for a train as they run less frequently at night.  The first train passed us by as the platform was packed and the train that went by was packed.  We were all quite bummed when low and behold, the Metro people had the foresight to double up and another empty train arrived 3 minutes later.  The entire packed platform got on the four cars and everyone was happy.  We were home in 20 minutes.  Actually home, in our house.  What a wonderful change, less stress, enjoyable.

Information regarding Phase two of the Expo line
Expo Timetables and Maps  <-- and btw, the Trip Planner on the Metro website sucks!

Our Last Day

Here's a picture of us on the way out of Hanalei Bay.  No picture can ever do this place justice for its beauty and lushness but, I try. 

Weird Ride for 7 days

Since I've been here in Kauai I've had 3 migraines, lower back tightness and all muscles are so tight that it is driving me crazy, and restless leg syndrome - the worst I've ever had. I've had no diet anything, nothing with artificial anything in it. We've been to the farmers market and have been eating tons of fruits and vegetables and mostly locally grown or caught sustainable food. My body probably has no idea what to do about all that wholesome goodness. We've even had a Lomi Lomi 90 minute massage.

You would think after 7 days of all that I would feel like a million bucks. I definitely feel better than we got here, for sure. But I am not to where I would like to be. I'm taking a yoga class at noon today in the hopes that some of this muscle tightness will subside. I've been religiously taking magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3's. Ive even been drinking alcohol very little, having multiple alcohol free nights/days. I mean what the fuck else do I need to do??

Do you think this is all from one diet red bull a day? Or is it stress build up? Or is it a combination of stress, burnout and artificial sweeteners?

**Update**  Well duh! I figured this out finally.  I'm supposed to be taking one medication daily.  I packed it in my bag and for some reason when I hit the shores of Kauai I completely forgot to take it again.  I would have to say now, after some internet research on withdrawals from this particular medication, that 90% of my symptons were from that.  So back to the Red Bull and stress!!!  LOL, just kidding....no red bull for me

**Update #2 **

Having a vacation has been so rejuvenating for my mind.  It feels so free, creative and focussed.  I've come up with two business ideas since being back on the mainland and I've only been here for < 8 hours.  Like I need more work....but hey, creativeness comes in many forms

Vacation update - well maybe it started that way

It seems to me that we've probably had what some would term a classic vacation. So unlike us. I slept quite a bit the first few days, probably a result of burnout I'm sure. Dena has read 3 books and counting. We swam at least once a day in the bay here, but usually twice. Dena just made me a detox tea which we've been having twice a day. I'm trying to clean my system out from artificial sweeteners.

It might sound odd but post cancer surgery; after the pain, fear and exhaustion subsided a bonus of the whole affair was coming out the other end of it all completely diet soda pop free and feeling pretty awesome physically. My migraines hadn't shown up in months, my energy level was even keeled, and a host of other things that I didn't know you didn't have to live with we're gone.

At the time I didn't know if these benefits were derived from having no cancer or from the lack of artificial sweeteners or what, but frankly, I didn't dwell on it much. I was just happy to get back to my normal life. After life just sort of chugged along for 6 months I started to get the occasional migraine, feel a little crappy, fatigued, etc. But of course, I thought this was life and the effects of stress. I believe now that some, if not all of these symptoms are the effects of NutraSweet and diet sodas.

I cannot be sure of course if stress aggravates them or visa versa as we all know that stress comes with a physical cost. So much to Dena's dismay I have spent the vacation cleaning my body up.

Vacation - How do I do this again?

It's been a long time since we've been on vacation. I mean a vacation of the type where you are supposed to relax and recharge. This means not an adventure vacation which was 4 years ago - Antarctica. Not a family visit vacation which was just this past Christmas. I mean one of those vacations where you do nothing....like Hawaii.

We've been to Kauai so many times in our 21 years together that it is no longer one of those vacation spots where you need to sight see or explore. It's a recharge, swim, sunbathe, chillaxing type spot for us. It's been so long since we've been here I cannot remember how to do it.

The first full day we were here we slept until 1030 am PST, we're up for an hour, had a papaya and then went back to bed until 230 PST. I mean wow, that's a lot of sleeping. I just have been a little burned out eh? We capped off the day with a swim in the breathtaking Hanalei Bay and then a yummy dinner at Dena's favorite restaurant in the world - The Dolphin.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

What's this month's most common question?

What the hell is the cloud?  Well, it's not those white puffy things in the sky.  Wait, maybe it is.  The cloud, in it's simplest form is a repository of computer stuff that is not sitting at your business or house.  Let me expand - iCloud for example, is Apple's cloud offering and it allows users of Apple products to backup and synchronize their songs, pictures, apps, games to all devices, wirelessly.  Every time you turn on your iPhone, Mac or iPad it send your latest purchases, songs, videos and/or pictures to an Apple datacenter.  So if you turn on your iPhone and buy a new app, the next time you fire up your iPad it will magically be there.  This is all protected in Apple's cloud with your Apple ID for your security.  If you lose your iPhone at least you won't lose that cool video of your dog you took and your custom ring tones and your 10 GB of songs.  They will magically be synchronized back to your new iPhone when you can actually afford to buy one.  As an aside to that - if your Apple ID password is insertpetnamehere1 then CHANGE IT.  It is not secure.  Anyone can figure that out.

Cloud in relation to business is essentially the same concept as Apple's iCloud except with additional options.  Instead of synchronizing my songs in the cloud, as a business, I'm storing my data there.  This is called Cloud Storage or Cloud Backup.  All kinds of companies sell online backup solutions; Jungle Disk, Mozy, and Carbonite just to name a few.  These online backup companies can be used to backup the server of a small business or your home PC.  Doesn't matter.  You pay by the Gigabyte.  That's the beauty of cloud services.  They are mostly a sort of pay-as-you-go or pay by use model.

As we go higher up in business size we get in to even more types of cloud offerings.  There is SaaS, PaaS, IaaS just to name a few.  The acronym is blank as a service, where I is Software, P is platform and I is infrastructure.  You can probably come up with many more blanks but these are the big 3.  The best example of Software as a Service is Microsoft Office 365.  It's all of Microsoft office offerings, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Email but not living on your computer that you or your company loaded on your desktop with a CD, it lives in the cloud.  When you launch a Word document, it's launched from one of Microsoft's humongous datacenters.

Platform as a Service is the ability of a software developer or company to "spin" up a server in minutes in the cloud, test their software over a course of time, then turn it off.  They pay for only that time the server was in use.  Amazon's EC2 is an example of this.  (EC2 = Elastic Compute Cloud)

Infrastructure as a Service is for an IT department of a company to deploy servers (normally virtualized), business applications and other resources to it's users but the actual equipment isn't in a server room in the office, it's in the cloud.  This hot new IT offering is supposed to save money and save on personnel costs.  Just think if companies didn't have server rooms with equipment in them and everything was in the cloud.  You could fire all your IT people and they would be replaced by one bill from the cloud provider where one guy walks around a huge datacenter managing 100's of companies servers.  Concerned about security?  You should be.  Concerned for your job?  You should be.

My favorite cloud computing term - Cloud Washing -- Where a company re-brands their old application or product offering as Cloud something, making it look like its a cloud offering to capitalize on the buzz.

Remodel - the Tile Incident

My contractor had made some deal with the granite fabricator to do the kitchen backsplash tile in the guest house.  I received a call asking about our tile for the backsplash and it came out that the tile guy was only going to put one row of tile up.  Backsplashes don't have one 4" row of tile - they usually go up 1/2 to the cabinets or all the way up.  I raced home from work as Dena was out and laid out a pattern for the guy.  He seemed dazed and confused but I went to lunch with full knowledge that I would be back to check on the guy.  While at lunch I received a call from my contractor telling me that he fired the tile guy and not to go in the back house.  He said that his tile guy was going to re-do the backsplash.  How could I not go into the back house now?

Here is a picture of the shitty ass job that was done first - notice how he's using cardboard for spacers and how the space between the tiles is all over the place.  Also, it's hard to see in the picture but he was putting thinset on just the middle of the tile instead of all over the entire field.  This caused the tiles to bow inward at the corners since there was no thinset there as there was an uneven field.  Good thing the idiot wasn't there when I got back as I would have ripped his face off.  The 2nd picture is Dena and I standing in the completed kitchen with a nice, professionally done backsplash.

Guest House Remodel - Home Stretch

We're so close I can feel it.  I think all in all this has gone off pretty well.  No real snafu's on the cabinets or tile and just a redo of water/gas line to main house, which was partially expected.  So all in all we are lucky.  Here is a picture of the kitchen - just waiting for granite.

Bathroom Tile in the Guest House

It's all a process.  Tomorrow is big day.  HVAC goes in, tile gets finished in the bathroom, maybe some outside painting.  Lots going on. 

Remodel - Serious Plumbing

What I love about my contractor is that I can trust him.  Not too many contractors you can say that about.  While I was at work they worked on the bathroom and discovered some seriously corroded pipes, replaced them all which involved jack hammering up some of the concrete pad in the bathroom AND, the best part, they moved the toilet over a little to conform to code.  Love it!

Back House Remodel Part 3

What a mess!  I cannot believe they are beginning to drywall already and that they've worked all 7 days this week.  Progress is quick.  I'm very worried the cabinets are not going to come in time.  Dena and I spend our Saturdays running around to tile stores, Home Depot, Lowes and Ferguson plumbing.  Yes, every weekend.  You would be amazed at how much there is to buy, and that means decisions have to be made often clouded by the price and availability.  We cannot wait 4 weeks for something to come in!

Back House Remodel 2

The contractor is making amazing progress.  It's only been a week and already 90% of the electrical is done, insulation is started, the new bathroom wall is framed and the windows that are going away are framed in.  Plumbing has started - a new drain has been put in for the kitchen but alas, as any old house there are issues.  A few foundation cracks but fortunately, not as bad as originally thought.  These can easily be fixed.  But the second issue is the gas line.  It's apparently been leaking for G-D knows how long. We've never used the gas line out there - it was run to the fireplace and the old kitchenette thing but we never used it.  I wonder how long we've been paying for gas that was just going up into the atmosphere.  So, I guess the yard will be dug up next week for a new 3/4" water line and gas line from the main house to the back house.  Here's a few pictures for you.  One is of the new kitchen - that is the top picture, the bottom picture is the new bathroom and main area.  The new bathroom is bigger.

Remodel of the Guest House

Thanks to the dropping interest rates we were able to refinance the house and work out a deal to remodel the guest house.  We are going to get renters in there and it will help with the mortgage.  We think this is sound financial planning.  I'll post pictures of our progress.  Here is step one, demolition.  It looks bigger already.