Older blog entries for cinamod (starting at number 124)

I've not been one to have regrets, but of late, I find myself looking back and wishing that I'd done things a little differently.

One of those things was my decision not to run for the GNOME Foundation's board this year. A few board members encouraged me, unsolicited, to run, even going to far as to say that they'd endorse me if I did choose to run.

Why didn't I run? I wasn't afraid that I'd be a bad director - in fact, I'm sure that I'd be a good one. I wasn't afraid that I wouldn't have the time or energy for such a commitment. I was afraid that I'd lose. That I'd come in last place like I did last year. That I wasn't popular enough. And that's an awful reason not to run.

Barring some surprise decision on the part of the Foundation, it's too late to toss my hat into the ring now, and I'm not asking them to make an exception for me. I'd just like to let them know that if they think I could be helpful to them in the coming year (as I like to think I have over the past few months), all they have to do is ask.

Q: What are three words that you don't want to hear from your real estate agent?

So, it turns out that after all our not-so-patient waiting, agonizing and what we thought was a more-than-generous offer, we came up short. Real short.

This wasn't because our offer was bad in any absolute sense - it was approximately 97% of the asking price, which our fair market research showed was a bit better than the regional average. $350k is a lot of money. Nope, three pesky people had to bid above the asking price. One even waived the "I rescind this offer if I can't get a mortgage" clause from his/her bid, in what can only be seen as an act of desperation. This insanity, on a house that's been on the market 17 days (the regional average in this price range is 120+ days and growing), in a landsliding market. Yipes.

You live and you learn. Our agent now has a better idea of what Ruth and I are looking for, so hopefully we'll see fewer duds. I think that it'll be a few weeks before I'm ready to pony-up again, though. It's been a harrowing experience.

It was an interesting weekend. Sometimes, when you feel all depressed (I'd been suffering anxiety attacks these past 3 weeks since I switched jobs. Things are getting better.) and the weather's lousy, all you want to do is sit indoors and watch "Anchorman" and be boring. But then sometimes, a butterfly flaps its wings in China that causes a tornado in Cambridge.

That metaphorical butterfly came in the form of house-hunting with my girlfriend of 8 years, Ruth. We'd left on Sunday morning in order to convince ourselves not to buy a particular condo (we've been house-hunting for about 5 months). And we did - but not by the usual means. Instead, we saw another place in Teele Square that was absolutely amazing. And, gods willing, I think that we have a chance of our offer being accepted if something doesn't frak it up.

In the agonizing over how large a financial and personal commitment the house would be, we realized that we'd already been undertaking the same financial and personal commitments for at least the past 5 years since we moved to the Boston area. That we're deeply committed to one another. And that maybe our mothers were right all these years (mothers are allowed to be correct once per decade. If you're reading this mom, that was your turn).

More to follow.

As per Steven's request, Evince can now view Photoshop files.

I don't remember needing any convincing about SoC. IIRC, Uwog asked "should we do this" and we all said "yes".

A big hello to all the ladies in the crowd, especially to those of you who have applied to GNOME's Women's Summer Outreach Program (WSOP).

For Google's Summer of Code program (GSoC), about 180 candidates applied to have their proposals sponsored. All of the candidates were men. Chris Ball has informed me that the same order of magnitude of women have applied thus far for WSOP, and there's still another week left to accept applications. A lot of the applicants are quite qualified (a large number of CS PhDs applied, for instance) and the general quality of the applications and applicants has been astoundingly good.

So, I have a question for you: why? Why did you apply to WSOP? Why didn't you apply to GSoC?

There seem to be a lot of really qualified women in this group, and it stands to reason that some women candidates would have been accepted in the GSoC pool (perhaps even 50:50, just going by the total number of applicants). The WSOP seems to me to have some major strikes going against it:

• WSOP's payoff is less ($3000 vs. $4500)
• WSOP's number of advertized positions is less (3) than the general SoC allotment (20)
• WSOP was advertized when a lot of North American schools have their summer recess, where SoC was advertized while students were still in class
• On top of that, I have to imagine that GSoC was advertized more broadly than WSOP
• GSoC was open to both men and women, and WSOP is open only to women (AbiWord got some decent female candidates, for instance)

The projects don't differ substantially in terms of size, scope, complexity, or requisite skills.

From these talking points, it stands to reason that there should be fewer applicants (and perhaps even fewer qualified applicants) in WSOP than GSoC. But the evidence hasn't borne out that way. There's probably some "eureka" thing going on here, and I'd like to find out what that is. It's something to understand and act on, unlike Murray's "we're doing so badly, we should try anything just so we don't look like we're doing nothing"[1] proposal. I'm interested in ensuring that GNOME offers equality of opportunity to all, and your answers will help me understand what the community is doing right and what we're doing wrong.

So, if you are a WSOP applicant, would you be so kind as to email domlachowicz <at> gmail dot com with your experience or opinions? I'd love to hear them, and will pass them on to the appropriate people. Better still, if the WSOP program would like to survey their applicants in a more formal way, that would be much more productive.

And for the record, I don't want to hear conjecture from non-applicants. I want this "straight from the horse's mouth", so to speak. Consider this to be a sociological survey.

[1] Citation needed. GNOME's mailing list archives recently got nuked, and part of the May foundation-list "Code of Conduct" thread is missing.

It's not ultimate frisbee until:

• You have a welt on your left forearm that's obscuring 1/2 of it
• You've broken a finger on your left hand
• You've just barely not sprained your left ankle doing so

And your team still loses. Today's lesson learned: leave the left half of your body home before playing a "non-contact" sport. Oh well, I'll be on an I.V. of Gatorade and Ibuprofen on my couch for a little while if anyone needs me...

Google SoC stats:

• AbiWord: 5 projects accepted
• OpenOffice.org: 6 projects accepted

Take that, beotch!

Oh wait, OOo has how many full-time employees working at how many companies?

/me hides his head back in the sand... world domination will have to wait another year, I suppose

I went hiking with Shashank today. We climbed Mount Monadnock at a breakneck pace. I was impressed with our pace, since I hadn't ever really been hiking and it was his first time of the season. The weather was nice and cool for our ascent, but started pouring during our descent, making it really hard to get good footing on the rock faces.

I can't wait to try out some more difficult trails in another few weeks. I've posted pictures on my gallery.