Gratitude Monday: Carved pumpkins

As we crank our way toward Halloween, I’m feeling grateful for the holiday, for the opportunity to be a little silly under guise of bowing to societal norms.

Viz.: carving a pumpkin to put in a front window and giving out candy to young persons who might come to my door. I’ve even got a costume in mind for the latter, courtesy of some of the swag from the GHC conference.

For the first time in years, I’m physically located to do that. (Last year I was in a no-kids, secured high-rise, and for the previous five years I was in a third-floor walk-up.)

I bought my pumpkin at a local church—it was somewhat more expensive than, well, anywhere else (except possibly Whole Foods), but all the money is split between local charities and the Navajos who grew them. I also invested in actual pumpkin-carving tools, which turned out to be a lot easier to use than the paring knives and large spoon I’ve deployed in the past.

After printing out a number of potential stencils, and checking the Internet for instructions and videos, I had a go. I don’t do jack o’ lantern faces, either happy or scary. In the past I’ve carved flames and an owl; this year I went for a symbol of transformation. I think I need more practice, but see if you can recognize it.

Nightmares on New York Avenue

As you know, Halloween is just around the corner. Last year those antic wits in IT turned the server room into a bloodbath, so I was rather wondering what would happen this time round.

Looks like we’re on our way.

I caught some of them putting up this wallscape yesterday afternoon:

It was a team effort, being that big. As I wandered off to pick up my print job, I heard the mastermind say that they now had to put up all the bats. “There’s a shedload of bats,” were her actual words.

Well, later on I came by with my mobile to take pix, and there was only one, lone, lorn bat on the wall:

Turns out there were indeed a flock of bats, but they have yet to take flight:

I asked one of the scape hangers about that. He said, with some bitterness, “A lot of people aren’t doing their job.”

In other news, following the contretemps in the ladies loo, didn’t seem like there’d be much more that could cause intake of breath. However, I opened the outer door yesterday morning and was reasonably startled to find this on the inner one:

(BTW: the men's loo is not similarly decorated. See above about some people not doing their jobs.)

Finally, my own contribution to seasonal decorating is this piece of my California heritage:

Boo!

Country roads

In other commuting news, I have what some regional transportation authority is pleased to refer to as an “E-ZPass”; a transponder on my car’s windscreen that allows the Virginia Department of Transportation (and other jurisdictions, were I to choose to travel outside the general confines of NoVa) to suck out enormous sums of money in exchange for the privilege of sitting in traffic on the Dulles Toll Road.

(And let me just say that it burns my bacon the way VDOT has raised the tolls on this road—without any discernable improvement to same—by an order of magnitude in the less-than-ten-years since I left. Used to cost $0.75 to go from Reston to the plaza by Leesburg Pike; now it’s $3.50.)

Anyhow, for some reason the Toll Road Authority decided to give users the illusion that they give a rat’s posterior about our opinions, so they sent out a survey last week. At one point, I think they must have been trying to get a handle on how much more they can raise tolls without risking armed insurrection, and had a series of screens where they presumably intended to give users different combinations of values (money versus time) for us to choose.

Then, of course, they’ll turn around and do whatever the hell it is they intended all along.

However—whoever designed the survey screwed up somehow, since all five of the five permutation screens were identical. I did not twig to this until I fetched up at screen four, and I couldn’t use the back button, so I’ve only got the final two screens:

This only reinforces my sense that they really have no interest at all in our responses; they’re going to raise the tolls yet again.

It also tells me that they’re all pretty much idiots.

Just a girl on the WMATA

The new(ish) series 7000 cars Metro is adding to its antiquated fleet of trains aren’t unalloyed joy. They apparently are heavier than the earlier series 4000 cars, thus causing damage to the tracks, and they’re configured so that seats are two and two, instead of the three and three of the earlier model. (This leaves more room for standing passengers, but given recent ridership stats, this may not be useful.)

However, as evidenced by what I found yesterday morning at 0536, at least we know they can be cleaned:

This is genuinely a major step forward from the older models. Trust me—looking at the stains on those decades-old carpets made me glad for modern antibiotics.

It's beginning to look a lot...

Seeing as to how we’re creeping up on Samhain, Halloween, el Día de los Muertos and like that, it shouldn’t be surprising that we start to notice, well, creepy things around us.

Outside of Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, of course. Those bloodsuckers are a year-round presence.

I’ve written in the past how the Valley They Call Silicon takes this particular holiday to heart; so far I’ve not seen a lot of that sort of thing outside of the big box DIY stores. (Although I noticed that one of the houses in my cluster has about as much Halloween décor as you can get in a townhouse front yard the size of a child’s sandbox, so there may be some interesting stuff out there.)

However—this mobile instance is something that seems the perfect symbol for the District They Call Columbia, being Pentagon-adjacent.

Gratitude Monday: Role models

You know—there are just some times when ya need yer spirit animals and yer totems, and this week is one of them.

So today I’m grateful for these reminders to me that I am more than I often feel I am, sent to me at various times by friends who believe in me.

Colossal PITA

Several decades ago there was a film called Colossus: The Forbin Project. The premise was basically that computers got tired of speaking with humans and dealing with our crap, so they colluded and took over the world.

We’re headed in that direction, as can be witnessed by this ad in my Facebook feed:

So much wrong with this, including Amazon adding me to a list that was somehow transferred to Facebook (I don’t even use the same email address for the two of them), but if I wanted to fend any of this off, I’d have to use different browsers, because the reason I find ads on other websites for products I’ve bought on Amazon is that the browser picks it up and passes it on everywhere I go.

I’ve only got three browsers in use (and one of them, a Microsoft product only gets opened if a site unaccountably won’t work with Chrome or Firefox. So either I clear my web history constantly (which means I have to log back into everything from Amazon to WaPo), or I put up with this kind of peering over my shoulder.

(And even using Firefox in private browser mode doesn’t stop it.)

Second thing is this geolocation crap. If I could figure out a way to turn that off, I’d do it. I’m perfectly happy specifying what area I’m searching in, and in fact I loathe the helpful “looking for a [whatever] in Washington, D.C.?” intrusions. But if it can be done, I don’t know how.

But then there’s the “Manage Your Ad Preferences” link. You can’t manage your ad preferences in Facebook. Here’s their “Manage Ad Preferences” page:

Shifting anything from “yes, bring it” to “no” simply means that you’ll still be buried in ads, but “they won’t be relevant to you”. I do not call this “managing”.

But, finally, that “Tell us what you think” wheeze is as useful as a chocolate teapot. Your choices for “feedback” are binary. I want a text-entry form where I could really tell them what I think.

Light through the night

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re in that fulcrum of the year, as days shorten and nights grow long. It’s therefore a time for drawing the curtains and filling the interior with light.

And as someone who loves any excuse to light candles, I’m looking forward to filling my livingroom with their soft light tonight, which marks the beginning of the Hindu festival of Diwali. Because Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.

A little like Michaelmas, tbh, but with the addition of candles, since it gets dark earlier. I learned about Diwali when I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon. Since I was struggling with driving back the dark, I glommed onto it like limpets on a rock. Tonight I shall again mass candles (thanks, Ikea!) to drive back all manner of dark things. Not only do I like the soft light that groups of candles give off, the very act of lighting them one at a time and nursing along some of the ones at the end of their life slows me down. It calms me down.

Filling a room with candle light takes time; you can’t flip a switch and move on to the next task on your to-do list. And if you’re lighting those floating jobbers, you have to be very focused on not disturbing the water, because then it dowses the flames and you have to wipe them off and start over again.

It’s like the count-breaths-to-21 methodology of meditation: if you lose count because your monkey mind is distracted, you have to begin again from one.

Sigh. There are some days I never make it into double digits.

But there’s something about knowing how happy the moving lights will make me that enables me to persevere with candles. I light them, sit back and watch; and for at least a few minutes the world around me is peaceful and full of hope. Light prevails over darkness, love conquers fear, knowledge overcomes ignorance, and good triumphs over evil.

Last night I also sat before the flickering light of a yahrzeit candle, on the second anniversary of my BFF’s death. Remembering her helps me to consciously focus on filling my life with light. Or, as she might say, walking in the light.

Like lighting many candles in a dark room, this takes time. You don’t flip the switch and fill your life with light; you light one candle at a time, and nurse the weak ones along to give their best. And you try to be a candle in someone else’s life.

Advice to the young 'uns

A few more thoughts about my experience at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing; specifically on the thousands of young women who are students or recent grads:

Universities should have a required course for all engineering and CS majors in basic civility, courtesy and etiquette. Things like: you can’t go to a party unless you’ve been invited and you’ve accepted. Just because you see people going into a hospitality suite doesn’t mean that it’s open house. If you accept an invitation and discover that you can’t go, notify your hosts so someone else can get in. If a sit-down meal is involved, try to show up toward the beginning of the time slot, not 20 minutes before it ends. Someone planned and paid for a specific number of meals to be prepared; this isn’t your campus cafeteria.

Trade show etiquette specifies that you don’t get the swag unless you listen to the pitch—whether it’s a product sales pitch or a recruitment pitch, you can’t reach across the rep to grab [whatever’s on offer]. The swag’s the come-on, honey; play the game or walk on. Do not whine about the fact that “you have to talk to them to get the tee-shirt.” Them’s the rules; there is no exception, even for you.

I concede it’s too much to expect college-age kids to not crowd open bars (and I’m not sure whether their looks of bewilderment at being asked to show ID were genuine or a well-practiced ploy, but all the venues were very careful about whom they served alcohol to), but some kind of moderation around the buffets would be nice. These were lavish spreads, with plenty for all. The polite thing to do is fill your (one) plate and then move away.

Also—and I do understand this is a challenge for the introvert-inclined: these are networking affairs. “Networking” does not happen if you stand alone staring into your mobile phone. Likewise, closely clumped with the besties you walked in with does not constitute networking either. Mingle. Introduce yourself. Conduct conversation. Pro tip: ask a question once in a while and be silent while it’s being answered. (I learned way more about the life of a Carnegie-Mellon University student at a small party, because the chick never drew breath during the 70 minutes we both were there. No matter what the topic, she just blabbed incessantly. The hosting company reps must have wondered what life at the office would be like if she got hired.)

Finally—and you’re not the only offenders, but better to learn this now rather than later: when you click on the LinkedIn link to make a connection, LinkedIn suggests that you add a note to personalize it.

Do. That.

I stopped accepting connection requests from chicks who can’t even be arsed to say so much as “I saw your details on the spreadsheet for GHC mentors, and I’d like to connect with you.” This isn’t a game of Pokémon Go; you don’t get a prize for racking up the most connections. Behave like a professional so as to encourage other professionals to want to connect. Not rocket science.

And, you know, like that.

Here be dragons

We’re heading into Halloween, which means that—among the Christmas decorations—we can also see spooky-scary stuff in the various stores.

Viz: this dragon that I found in Lowe’s a few weeks ago.

Yes, I shot this video in mid-September. I suppose if you’re going to shell out for this sort of ostentation, you want to get your $179 money’s worth. Possibly leave it up all year round.

I haven’t seen a whole lot of it around the ‘ville, but then I haven’t been walking, as I used to do in the Valley They Call Silicon, where I thought they raised the concept of Halloween yard art to Gothic heights. I should really get out more.