knowledge is free – bring your own container

One World – One Web, originally uploaded by psd.

I love this poster. There is a high-res PDF version available if you click through, and I recommend it. Lots of wisdom here.

It particularly resonates with me as it pertains to knowledge.

Kids, remember back when….

- you were sitting on the couch, and suddenly had a hankering to know who won the World Series back in Eleventy-Twelve and who was that left-handed hitter anyway?

Barring any in-house encyclopedia, you have to wait til the library opens and search the stacks or get the reference librarian to look it up for you.

-Remember when the vast majority of the planet was far away and shrouded in mystery, and only the most intrepid of explorers braved the wilds and brought us back stories, then pictures of exotic locales.

-Remember when access to historic artifacts was limited to a chosen few in a dusty back room?

If you are “of a certain age”, you know what I’m talking about, and we are probably the last generation that will.

If you aren’t, you have no freaking CLUE what I’m talking about because you are a Child of t’Internets and you are free to know and grow. (cue hippy music).

The internet, if you are lucky enough to have access to it and a way to view it, provides 24/7 access to an unfathomable amount of knowledge, anytime, anywhere.

You can learn to write Chinese (or 224 characters of it, anyway, all of which I’ve promptly forgotten.)

You can spend an entire evening giddily skipping around the 1830s … from The First Opium War to several revolutions, not all of them in France, surprisingly. Who knew there was a Texas Revolution? Or a Belgian one?

You can learn about the relative merits of the mantle, the pardessus, and the paletot.

You can see how the polar ice caps are faring and the sun is flaring.

You can read all the classics of literature, in several languages.

You can view great works of art and learn about the artists.

Better yet, t’internets has led to the democratization of knowledge …. one person, one voice. Or rather, many more voices, many more people contributing to our collective knowledge.

Need the original schematic/wiring diagram for a 1940s desk phone? It’s out there.

Need to know why your bilateral destabilizer keeps shutting down? Someone else has probably experienced it and shared on a forum.

And here’s where I start getting all hippy-dippy, waving daisies, love and sunshine, because to me, this is just the coolest thing EVER.

Ever.

You can’t put this genie back in the bottle.

Knowledge is no longer in the hands of a privileged few to be doled out to the worthy. Knowledge is being openly shared and recorded, so that others may benefit.

Maybe access to the internet, to that vast treasure trove of knowledge, SHOULD be a basic human right.

Maybe THIS is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

Related reading:

The History and Philosophy of Project Guttenberg by Michael Hart

Wikipedia:About

I am hedgehog, hear me roar

Hedgehog, originally uploaded by Kr. B..

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been around lately. And I’ve only just now come to a basic understanding of myself that I have heretofore been oblivious to, and which I now feel obligated to share with you. Feel free to click away now.

When hurt, grieved, anxious, whatever, …. I start curling up. And it’s not like I’m the life of the party at the best of times.

If I curl up in a small enough ball, and stay very very still and quiet for long enough, this too will pass.

What is “this”?

“This” is that tiny, hard, tight little knot of pain/panic deep in my solar plexus.

I take deep breaths.
Sometimes, it helps.
Sometimes, it doesn’t.

Rote chores of my favorite kind (puttering) and housecleaning are useful activities – physical exertion to busy the body to match the mental and emotional gymnastics meet going on in my head.

In the past days/weeks since my brother’s death, I have washed and polished every floor in the house. I have painted several rooms … some more than once.

What I have trouble doing, even now:

- concentrated, prolonged thought
- complex tasks
- talking to people

I’m starting to poke my nose out now. Sniffing the air. I feel brave enough to take a few tentative steps back into (online) society.

Although I’ve not been able yet to truly articulate it, I really REALLY appreciate the support, love, and care from you all.

I truly am blessed with the greatest family, friends, and life, and I’m looking forward to sharing more drivel with you here soon.

Next installment:

Introspective Realization #2: Running Away

where good ideas come from

notes from a move

Stacked boxes, originally uploaded by Allerina & Glen MacLarty.

It’s almost moving day! It’s final days of packing up the Lexington office for the move to the new and very shiny IBM Mass Lab in Littleton, and it’s given me pause to reflect…

Random thoughts on a move below:

• I realize that my work has become very portable over the years. No need for papers and notebooks, or lots of equipment. A laptop is all I really need.
• Where did all these office keys come from? And why isn’t my laptop locking cable key amongst them?
• Books – love ‘em or leave ‘em?
• The strangest thing I found in my cubicle while cleaning it out:
  a bobble-head turtle
  hello kitty valentines

Things I’m Bringing With:

• Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge, my bible.
• Agile Planning Poker cards
• my Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument results – screaming red and yellow, baby. I’m an “expressive and imaginative visual conceptualizer and synthesizer”, whatever THAT means. I’m pretty sure it means “don’t confuse me with facts and figures or expect me to figure out the tip”.
• my Tums and ibuprofen – the bare necessities
• Yes, I’m bringing the rubber chicken and velvet Elvis. Keep your paws off.
• Oh, so THAT’s where my USB lava lamp went!
• the contents of the Cheezy Prize drawer
• my carefully curated stash of power strips. They’re as good as money. .

NOT bringing with me:

• Organizational Change and Development textbook, circa 1990. In keeping with my HBDI, I’ve replaced it with Who Moved My Cheese?
• textbooks and class materials from two jobs ago. Will I ever need to reference Software Quality Predictive Indicators? Or Leadership in a Project Team Environment?
• my new hire folder from Rational, pre-acquisition
• any of the various discarded computer parts littering the bottom drawer of my file cabinet
• Basic Blue training for Managers, circa 2003
• my business cards – NONE of the information on them is correct anymore. I guess I should order new ones.
• The 800 issues of KM World stacked up in my mailbox in the mailroom. I really should check my mail more often.

I’m undecided about my still-shrink-wrapped copy of Rational Rose 98 and Rose 98i, the first releases of Rational products that I ever worked on.

Rose rocked.

The Linchpin Manifesto

I’m not much of a social media celebrity fangirl, but The Linchpin Manifesto from Seth Godin is fantastic. It’s going up in my office.

on “walking it off”

I grew up understanding that there are two kinds of illness: the kind that makes you vomit and the kind that makes you bleed.

If you have a vomity illness, you require ginger ale.

If you have a bleedy injury, you need to walk it off.

Anything else is malingering.

You’ll notice that in this view, there is really only ONE kind of illness – physical.

There IS no mental illness, only mental weakness. And if folks would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and pull themselves together, everyone would be just fine.

FINE.

2WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWF3G (sorry, that was Squiggle. He likes to “help”.)

So imagine my consternation when I took a magazine quiz the other day and discovered that I am THE gold standard of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Come, take it with me. You’re supposed to rate each statement on a scale of 0 to 3, 0 being “not at all like me”, to 3 being “JUST like me”.

I tend to overlook details.
I prefer to think of it as “big-picture” thinking, okay? I’m a visionary, not an actuary. 2.

It’s hard for me to listen for long periods of time in meetings.
You mean there are people who find it EASY to listen for long periods of time in meetings?!? 3.

I wander from one task to the next without completing them.
We call this “multi-tasking”. The tasks get finished, but not in one fell swoop. 2.

I jump from topic to topic in conversation.
This is a bad thing? Then why did they invent the word “non-sequitor”? I can’t help it if you can’t follow my inner monologue which is running at light-speed, while I wait for the rest of you slow people to catch up. 3.

I tend to fidget or doodle.
Um. Yeah. 3.

I interrupt others during conversations, even when I try not to.
Um, I don’t THINK I do this. Do I? 0.

It seems much harder for me compared with others to take care of daily tasks.
Do you mean the mind-numbing minutiae that can eat up every day if you let it, like paying bills, cleaning the house, scooping the kitty litter, feeding the family, etc? 3.

I pick up and drop hobbies and interests.
You have only to follow this blog for the SMALLEST period of time to know THAT. 3.

I have difficulty planning ahead.
I DON’T plan ahead. 3.

I’m forgetful.
What were we saying? 3.

I frequently misplace personal objects.
3.

My home and office are cluttered and messy.
No comment. 3.

I tend to run late.
I HATE arriving late to anything, and am usually the first one to arrive. 0.

I have difficulty developing routines for me or my family.
hahahahahahahaha. 3.

Meal planning is challenging for me.
See this post. 3.

I often start reading books but rarely finish them.
Sadly, this is true these days, more often than not. 3.

If this were elementary school, I’d ace this quiz. Gold stars for me. Yay!

Alas, I’m not sure if I need ginger ale or to “walk it off”.

Please advise.

going places

It’s been a looooong time since I went anywhere.

Being an aspiring agoraphobe, it’s already difficult to pry me out of the house without the assistance of heavy machinery. Unless we’ve run out of gin or chocolate, of course. That constitutes an emergency.

We TALK about going places. A LOT. It’s just every place is so FAR. And out of the house. We’ve even made one or two half-hearted attempts at planning little trips. They never pan out. Not that I’m complaining.

Business travel is different. I WILL leave the house for business, but business travel has been so severely curtailed in these trying economic times, the opportunity rarely presents itself.

The Rational Software Conference has become my one trip each year.

But (and there IS a point to this post SOMEWHERE, I swear) the problem is that I’ve forgotten how to travel.

I let my passport expire for a short time. I have no reason to log onto Dopplr anymore. I no longer know how to navigate the IBM travel site to make my travel arrangements, and I’m not 100% sure I remember how to fill out an expense report. But I’ve got time to figure that out.

And I find myself tickled beyond measure to be going places. Even if that place is Orlando.

Now I have to go pack. I’m going to Orlando, you know. In June.

the Strange family

This picture has nothing to do with the following post. I just LIKE it, ok?

The Girl called tonight.

From the laundromat. She was bored. So we chatted for several minutes about various important topics:

April Fools Day
I have mixed feelings about April Fools Day. On the one hand, some of the pranks are quite amusing. I think my favorite this year was the Guardian’s story about switching from 188 years of print to twitter. But it’s a fairly obvious prank.

On the whole, however, I’m a little too gullible for April Fools Day. To my everlasting shame, NPR caught me one year with a story about (and I kid you not) Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbett announcing that we had just sold Arizona to Mexico so they could have a salt-water port. I don’t remember exactly when the penny dropped and I realized that it was a horrible, miserable April Fools Day joke. Let’s just say it was embarrassingly late, and leave it at that, shall we? So I find myself approaching the entire day with caution. Is this a real email? Or a joke? A real news story? Or a prank?

It’s very tiring. Madame would prefer her April Fools Day jokes with giant banners reading “April Fools!”

kthxbai.

The Ethical Complexities around Stovetop Reflectors
At what point is it ok to throw away your gross old stovetop reflector pans, and purchase new clean ones at Kmart for $1.99? Just how MUCH effort should one expend trying to clean them before throwing in the towel?

We suspect the answer is much different this year than it would have been, oh, say, five years ago.

What the World Needs, in the Worst Way
Laundromats with wifi and coffee. Or wifi and gin & tonics.

Decapod
Our new favorite word in the entire world.

Decapod.

It all started with a text I received from the Girl a couple of evenings ago:

How many legs do lobsters have not including the claws

followed shortly by:

How many legs do lobsters have not including the claws woman!

I guessed 5. I was wrong.

Lobsters are decapods. 10 legs. Actually, 8 legs and those big old claws. The Girl would like it to be known that in HER humble opinion, 10 legs is a little excessive for a crustacean.

We’re changing our name to Decapod.

Kellypuffs Decapod.

Your MOM’s a decapod.

on walruses and feathers

We need new pillows. In the worst way.

We have two sets of pillows currently in rotation. We spent a considerable amount of time yesterday evening in serious discussion of how best to describe them and finally came to consensus.

One is like sleeping on a walrus.

The other is like sleeping on a spit-filled sack of feathers.

Now. Aren’t you glad I chose the picture of the walrus?

simplify, simplify, simplify

Obsessing with organizing, simplicity, minimalism, and lightening up these days.

There’s the usual January bustle of de-cluttering and organizing, but I’ve been unusually ruthless this year.

It started with an obsession with shackitecture, courtesy of Dinosaurs and Robots. Tiny houses with flair.

My favorite these days is Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I must have watched this video 10 times this weekend:

I love it.

Which brings us to The 100 Thing Challenge. Dave is living with 100 things or less this year.

I’m going to engage in my own little 100 Things challenge of the intellectual exercise sort. I’m going to pretend that next year, I’m going to be living in a Tumbleweed House of my very own. What 100 things would be my must-haves in my 100 sq. ft. nest?

I’ll keep you posted on my 100 Things list as it develops. Interesting that the first items on the list are:

1. macbook (all the necessary cables and wires and stuff.)
2. iPhone (ditto)
3. Camera (ditto)
4. sketchbook & pencil case (pens & pencils, erasers, etc)
5. watercolor set
6. one sewing machine (Bernina or the Featherweight? NOT the serger or the treadle machine.)
7. one sewing basket, stuffed with as much sewing stuff as I can get in there (inc. needles, pins, thread, scissors, etc.)
8. Courthouse Steps Quilt
9. Quilt
10. My stuffed cat

Not 100% sure I NEED anything else, but I’ll keep thinking about it. I’ve posted a new page on this blog, where I’ll be updating the list.

Stay tuned.