elainegrey

Note to twitter fans. ( Read more... )

If there are news, questions, polls in your blogs from the past week that you would like me to know about, please point it my way.

Catching up isn't happening.

Definition quickies. If you can think of something you'd like me to define that begins with an unused letter, let me know!

A - android: the operating system on the phone i bought in June
B
C - Christine: my spouse of 18 years
D - dooced: [via Urban Dictionary] to lose one’s job because of one’s website.
E
F - Friends: how Quakers refer to themselves, short for the Religious Society of Friends
G - grey cat blogs: one blog on more information science related stuff, one on more creative stuff, at a domain name i've owned since 1996
H
I
J - J: first initial of my first given name
K
L
M Meeting: how Quakers/Friends refer to the local community of practice; Minnow: how i refer to the company i worked for from 2001-2006, name established in the merger to avoid being dooced
N
O
P
Q - Quaker: i belong to a Yearly Meeting (qv) which is Unprogrammed (qv) and certainly supports Universalist (qv) members
R
S
T
U - Unprogrammed meetings: also called silent meetings. There are no clergy to shape the experience in advance, although there are strong practices and expectations. Universalist: a way that folks in traditional Christian culture express that there are many valid routes to the experience of the Divine (or knowing God, or of being saved, or participating in the Beloved community....)
V
W - whale: how i refer to the company i work for now, which swallowed the minnow in 2006. Name established in the merger to avoid being dooced.
X
Y - Yearly Meeting: the largest hierarchical witnessing body in the society of Friends. Although there are groups that are made up of Yearly Meetings, these larger groups don't have the formal ties of responsibility in Yearly-Quarterly-Monthly meetings -- now that FUM has dropped their claim at the insistance of Maryland's Yearly Meeting ....
Z

On the dreamwidth dysfunctional modesty/impostor syndrome thread [i began with firecat's post and have not gone deep]:
( rambling noodling that takes me into sorrow about grad school experiences, but mainly just rambles. )

--==∞==--

One way Dreamwidth seems different from LJ is the social theory memes. Perhaps it's just a shift in my reading, but i've found less writing that makes me feel like someone's sharing their day to day life and personal journey, and more writing that feels like discussion group sharing. This seems to matter to me because i worry about the cost of participation: investing the time to be a voice in conversations to be heard. I'm pretty sure i don't have the time to participate at the level that one becomes noticed as a regular, so i lurk.

And when I hear that a primary solution to the problem of people underestimating women is to retrain women to behave differently in public, it kind of bothers me.

--==∞==--

Another thread from this morning's reading is with respect to the general meme of people hosting threads (or creating communities) so other people can put their name in them and then other people leave notes saying nice things. I rarely put my name out there, for the two fold reason of fear (how will i feel if no one responds, how i will feel if someone responds "too much" on the "Valentine" themed posts) and a certain sense that if i wanted to be more engaged and involved with people, people would welcome it.

However, i am aware how difficult it is to gauge connection in the absence of comments, and i'm aware my writing style doesn't invite comments. (I'm not sure why that is, but i'm aware of it.) I'm not going to cross post this to LJ, in order to ask this: could you leave a comment if you read this journal regularly/semiregularly? Those of who who comment regularly, even if in odd time sequence, already let me now you are reading.

Thanks.

Happily drinking tea yesterday and today, with an oatmeal buffer. Also, Dr C spoke with me yesterday and said the particular reaction on Tuesday was likely too fast to be related.

I'm looking forward to the fresh bread to challenge with wheat on Saturday. Argh, i just realized i probably cannot have a croissant. BUTTER.... But the thought of fresh French bread is delightful.

Today wraps up the fourth day of continuous meetings all day. I am feeling very good. Part of it is tea, tea, tea (caffeine) i suspect, but part of it is feeling competent. I've taken advantage of the visit by this technical manager to turn it into an indoctrination session. While i don't believe he'll go away knowing everything we're teaching him, he'll know that it isn't nearly as trivial or simple as it seems. My sense of competency arises from being able to describe the technical details in a systematic way, and also in being able to run the meetings effectively. Indeed, i've yet to sit in a project meeting with the Whale that was facilitated effectively, unless it was me doing it.

The management training meetings were a NIGHTMARE, with the head of the HR training department spending the first day on the first hour or so's material, rambling and story-telling, and then panicking when she realized how behind we were and becoming a snapping, abusive instructor as we were plowed through the rest of the material. This pattern repeated several times before the negative feedback finally brought about change.

Anyhow, our team, which is not getting up to speed quickly on some of the complex enterprise architecture issues, is going to be on time fine-just-fine. My local colleague, the recently hired identity management expert, has been great with his blunt, "Look, we deliver on time and no one recognizes our work." I sense, again, that i have a certain ... gravitas?... leadership presence? ... projected confidence? ... that allows me to both center the conversation and propel it.* I certainly feel i've shifted my relationship with the visiting manager: is it that i feel he is listening to me now?

Meanwhile, in LJ land, my last twenty-five comments to others have been within the past week. The last twenty-five comments i've received have been over the three weeks. I know i still don't quite enter into LJ conversations, and i know the writing i do is not very inviting. I'm happy to see that i am commenting outward more, even though my impression has been that i have been completely preoccupied with work for the last seven days. (The comments all seem pretty short.)

I haven't written comments or reflections on joedecker's link to this horror or the_ogre's comments about some protesters. Both upsetting, in particular the Florida story as i plan to rent a car and get a hotel room in that state in early December. Last night i felt i had to cancel the trip, but it is to see my very frail grandfather and my less frail but equally elderly grandmother**. I know i will not likely attend a funeral: seeing them both now for a meal is the connection i need to have with them before they die. But, ...!!!!!

Must continue with work, argh, too much time journalling this morning.

*despite being an overweight, middle-aged woman in a pink tank top with flyaway dishwater long hair -- that is, i'm not "presenting" as "business leader."

** who i imagine could be as frail and ready to leave this world, but she would not dare give evidence of that.

δreamwidth seems to be logging me out every time i turn around these days. *sigh*

At the moment, i'm moving folks who seem to have made the complete move from LJ to δW off my reading LJ filter.

I appear to have discovered how to provide the right credentials to see about posting via flickr to δreamwidth. I referenced this documentation and found the XML-RPC URI (Wordpress) and Blogger APIs. From the Flickr "add a blog" page i selected "MetaWeblog API" and used the XML-RPC URI and kept getting a "The username and password you entered were not valid."

However, the Blogger API *did* work. It appears to post just fine to δreamwidth; cross-posting is not automatic.

I recall that i always had to go to the LJ edit pane to change my Flickr posts to "Friends only" in order to keep the link of public self to Flickr to LJ identity out of the crawler's eye. In making the change to "Access list" in δreamwidth, the cross-post to LJ immediately follows.

***

I'm not up to importing all my posts on LJ to δW, but it would be lovely to import all my tags, especially now that the tag edit box autocompletes.