elainegrey

One of the things i've found in my botany dabbling is that there are names of people i now recognize from just seeing their names associated with observations in databases. It's kinda cool: a different sort of social network.

On iNaturalist, which intentionally has brought social networking to the observation identification practice, i've a plant under the "ID me" page for which i have rejected several suggestions so far. I wonder what sort of impression i'm leaving. Careful? Or quarrelsome?

Yesterday's work was a struggle: i am resenting the onerous process and some of the responsibilities that i need to fill. Basically, i find i need to tell people how to do their job. I write in the install plan that folks need to shut down software. Since we had an issue where that shut down didn't seem to occur, i now need to write a step that says, check to make sure it's off.

So the frustration, resentment (because i don't know how to do their jobs, i have to be told what to tell them to do -- spending time being a puppet is no fun), and the tedious nature of writing these plans is really pushing me into work related depression again. That, on top of the down feelings of my long weekend, have me doubting my coping with depression. I identified yesterday that the drought is probably dimming my sense of hope in the whole botany-web app vision. Not a rational dimming, but the anticipation i've had of flower hikes this spring is falling away to a wonder of whether we will see green hills this year.

Yesterday, pleasant morning with Christine. Hike at Point Pedro with a bit more elevation gain than i am in shape for. The hike up the arroyo trail had filtered sun in the steep canyon, and we stumbled upon this beautiful plant beside the trail.



The walk back on the ridge was highly overcast, few interesting plants in the chaparral, and steep: all making for a cranky descent.

We had an incredible lunch in Half Moon Bay at Miramar. The seafood chowder was rich, and the sherry spiked cream was a wonderful complement to the seafood. The dungeness crab melt was with an abundant serving of the crab. We lingered for desert and i enjoyed their tiramisu.

We could look out and see near the horizon Mavericks breaking. A sailboat passed between us and the break, helping to set the scale.

Home via the hardware store. At home, i added a brace to the couch, and i think i've addressed the sense of instability. I then spent hours trying to sort out the ID of the plant above. Before i left for a committee meeting, i wrote a botanist familiar with the area. By the time i was home, she'd sent the ID. This morning i went through the key to see where i went wrong -- and i can't find the plant. I wrote the editor of the key.

I've published my observation in both iNaturalist and Calflora. Now off to the day job.

iNaturalist is very fun. I added my departing-work observations of egrets, cormorants, and a scaup at the work water feature, and they've been invited to the county's bio-blitz (by a program and not a human, i hope). The thought that my comings and goings from my office can contribute to my growth as a naturalist is very satisfying. The real satisfaction is taking the moments to look.

Christine's meeting with the therapist seemed promising to her. As Christine has extremely few threads of community left connecting her to the world, this last break was of extreme concern to me.

I appreciated the support from you all over the weekend, but feel i teetered on the edge of sharing too much of her story that was not mine to share. I will go back to carrying my concerns quietly.

--== ETA: i wasn't done! ==--

Between Christine's low and my preoccupation with the photos i've recently taken, we've not made much progress on the Lupine project. I took some time to figure out how i could use iNaturalist for my own research ends and have a list of Bay Area species and i've "subscribed" to the genus. I'm stunned to see the last observation was in 2010!? Good heavens. I was worried about being overwhelmed by others observations in the spring.

It's not a forgotten project, and before vacation Christine had various interfaces deployed to our various devices. She was still working on scale issues.

Another thing that slipped by was the deadline for the Yosemite contest. I have, at least, used the contest to learn how to enlarge my prints and use a printer to make prints.

New Manager's savvy and the team of his previous colleagues we are accreting is making work weird and better. I'm certainly feeling respected in some dimensions but in other dimensions shortfalls are very clear. One of the biggest shortfalls seems to be code quality, which leaves me pulling out my hair about the lead developer who left. WTF was happening with conversations we had? He certainly talked as an advocate for quality?

It continues to explain the frustrations my long time senior developer had: he did want quality but the technical leadership wasn't leading that way.

On the whole, no one is holding me responsible for that.

The other dimension is managing up the development priority tree. New Manager is going to start a skunk works project to address an issue that i know has been there for ages. That's great, i ponder, where's the resources going to come from?

Marking the morning. Another night -- or early morning? -- of intense dreaming.

The shortening days are so obvious now. Christine and i chatted on the deck until dark last night. A whistling v of ducks flew over at dusk, and the crescent new moon was lovely to watch in the fading light. Later we watched the ISS pass over, and this morning, when i went out to water, the stars were spangled overhead, Jupter glowing brightly near Castor and Pollox (or so said Google Star Map).

We talked through stories for 2015: i'd taken a break yesterday to go through historical events of 1815, 1865, and 1915 to look for interesting anniversaries. My idea, for both of us, is to develop stories and photographs in advance of an anniversary so we both have stock to sell. It was fun to talk through the ideas.

I've just declared comment bankruptcy and filed all your supportive comments in my received mail, out of my inbox.

Triage.

It was a good weekend, if a bit intense.

It began with getting the archive of my craft blog -- June 2003 to Nov 2010! -- returned to the internet. My other blog also needs to return, which apparently needs to be done carefully as the "just upload it all" method results in many file names but 0 bytes at Amazon.

Christine and i discussed my social presence and i think, for the time being, i will "blog" in evernote and use twitter etc to link to the note. I do these notes as it is, but i use inter-note links, that don't work unless one is in the notebook frame. I might be more intentional about getting that link as time goes on, as well.

I wrapped it up with a bit of weekend botanist and photographer social networking on Google plus, linked in, and twitter, as well as posting a set of photos of the herbarium visit on Sunday morning.

After the furious week at work, an intense weekend thinking about my alter-life is a balm.

--==∞==--

I think i'm having hot flashes. The thought of the herbarium visit brings up the memory of the sudden sense of melting. This seems to have started in the past month.

--==∞==--

Sweet gum aka liquid ambar are beginning to turn. The 101 Rengstroff interchange (i think) has a very red stand; the one at the end of our sidewalk is quite green. Plane trees have that tinge of gold to the green. Ducks fly over at night. It's dark when i wake up.

The equinox here will be Sunday afternoon. I ponder observing.

Not sure why i haven't pushed "submit" over the past day....

--==∞==--

20130901 observations: driving on 101, i note that the honeysuckles and bottlebrush trees still have blooms while the "blue highway flower" has mounds of blossoms. Many crepe myrtle trees have faded, but here and there are trees covered with bright red clusters.

The weather patterns feel a bit different. There have been clouds in the afternoon, sheets of clouds that feel like rain (not yet, surely) passing through. Evening sunsets have had clouds to catch the color and play with the late light.

--==∞==--

I've been looking at lenses for hours on eBay. I've learned that it will be a challenge to get a wide angle lens for my cropped sensor camera, as the cropped sensor makes the width of field more narrow than on a 35 mm camera for the same focal length. The 18mm focal length on my cropped sensor would be a fish-eye, almost. There are converters, which could be interesting to play with: so far i have refrained.

--==∞==--

Monday, my main project was to go photograph the Meetinghouse grounds. This is a bit of a follow up to the class a couple weeks ago. We stopped at the hardware store first as i considered how to create a scale in the images. In the class, the instructor had a pole a couple of meters long with a sharp stake end. This would be cheap but obnoxious to carry around. I had thought of a folding rule, taped up to make the dimensions clear, but i'd seen an inexpensive, lightweight folding rule on Amazon and couldn't quite get past preferring that one. Instead, i bought yellow rope, a plumb bob, and tape, and i hung the taped up rope from our lightweight tripod.

I've written more about the project at http://www.ipernity.com/blog/337691/533311 . I can't remember how i learned about ipernity, but it's an interesting cross between flickr and a blogging platform.

--==∞==--

The weather has seemed more humid than usual, more humid than i am used to. Add sunshine and i suddenly become cranky. I marvel: i think i can move back to the southeast? I'd just have to mark May through September off the first year as "too humid to think" and plan some sort of acclimatizing practice. That might be "sleep days." Of course, since the plan would be to be a self employed naturalist-photographer (in this fantasy where we move back), sleeping days seems conceivable. Dawns and sunsets for photos, a little bit of gardening in the early hours after dawn, then sleep in a dark cave of a room. Spend the night on the front porch doing computer stuff.

It seems possible: i bet Christine would love it. I've been an owl before, working night shifts in Los Alamos and at various labs.

So, there's another layer of reality to add to visualizations.

I received a notice that a Quaker i haven't seen in ... eight? nine? years had endorsed me on Linked In. I find the endorsements all odd: it's some weird game that different people play in different ways. Could this person really endorse some technical skill of mine?

It drew my attention to my Linked In profile, and i realized how much i hate it, as it represents the management skills i felt i ought to highlight. My first thought was to make a new profile, but as Linked In uses all sorts of network analysis, unless i start with EVERYTHING fresh, i fear that my Whale colleagues will be presented with, "Do you know these people?" and see my alter ego sitting there. (Mainly because my alter ego was presented with my boss in the moments after setting up.)

I nuked the alter ego.

I did a little fiddling with the tagging feature offered for connections, and have identified that 1/8th of my connections (even after deleting some) are currently employed by the Whale. The network of people who might comment to my current colleagues is even larger.

Suddenly i saw a way to do what i want: having deleted my "headline" that highlighted my interest in management ("team builder") i replaced it with "Weekend botanist and photographer." I added the photo of myself hiking that i am using across other social media. I reorganized the page so my work experience is at the bottom of the page. The "Organizations" section allows you to call out roles, so i'm noting my stream keeping and work at Meeting. I've linked photos from Flickr. I've listed last weekend's workshop.

So now i see a way to use LinkedIn in a way non-threatening to my current employment: use it to network for "volunteer" positions. When i finish my borage book, i can add that. And as Christine and i develop the apps, i can add those. It will put my interests first as i network around the native plant communities and photography communities.

Fingers crossed.

--==∞==--

Meanwhile, Tuesday the team solved yet another issue in production and spent all their energy tracking down an issue in our testing environment. The issue ran away and it was not witnessed yesterday. I couldn't find the log message that i had thought was a sign of the issue when i looked back at the early reports, and we couldn't find it associated with our last documented observation. In fact, the logs were clean. So yesterday everything was put in debug mode and we pounded the system, trying to get it to scream.

It hasn't.

This is distressingly similar to the issue we had with production that went away with a "fix" that has no reason to fix anything.

On Tuesday, the director of our product division screamed and cursed at my director (engineering division) in the midst of the open plan offices. The new president has been in place just two months now, and i'm sure everyone is wondering what he is thinking about this debacle. Having the festering infection of dysfunction open and obvious will hopefully allow it to be treated. The other president just seemed to plaster it over.

The stress is pretty clear though.

Other than working hard, i've been trying to thank people. Not gratuitously, but honestly. Email to people's managers, thanks to folks on my team directly.

I think i have an idea about how to work with our product analyst to capture more clear details that may help reduce some of the fragility.

Tomorrow is the post mortem, and as our errors were highly visible, i expect that i will need to be grounded for the discussion.

--==∞==--

As part of my consciously acknowledging the good performance going on around me, i noticed some ... respect? that New Director sent my way in some meetings yesterday. The sudden sense that he is working WITH me intentionally is quite welcome. We will see if he can follow up, but i am acknowledging that he is acknowledging that i have a clue to which he should listen.

I have been devoured by my curiosity of how to describe the growth pattern of borage: current resources all describe it as cymose, but when i observe mine, it seems to be the opposite: racemose.

I have also been playing with Apple's iBook Author application and have a chapter in a minibook completed, illustrating my confusion.

All is fair, because i have devoured a number of borage blossoms.

Between rest and research, i think i am relaxing.

If you have an iPad and i can demonstrate that i can distribute an iBook without publishing it to the iBook iStore, would you like to read my iBook?

Yesterday i ended up reclining on the deck for over an hour, listening to PD James' Death Comes to Pemberly. I must confess to a not quite being able to dig into Jane Austen with ease, and am relying on the recent webseries The Lizzy Bennet Diaries for my understanding of the Pride and Predjudice. Many of the discussions in James' novel have the characters very formally discussing plans. I'm not sure if i am aware of this because it is a mystery, and i am hunting for clues, or if this is some counter commentary on witty innuendo.

Nonetheless, the characters all please me more than the dysfunctional brothers in The Baker Street Letters.

Dozing in the sun and listening was quite restorative, and as the evening rolled around i perked up and started in on my personal to do list. I've joined the native grasslands society and native plant society, and signed up for a photographic workshop on environmental photography. That outlay was met with a wonder if i would be able to cover the expense with iPad app sales.

The native plant society chapter was meeting yesterday evening, so Christine and i bestirred ourselves to trundle off to attend. My what a packed room! I wonder if camera trapping is such a popular topic or if the society is just that large. Next month a botanist is speaking on the changing scientific names of some plants. I've been following her name through her plant sightings in the calflora data base.

I don't see any competition in the books the society puts out: they are preaching to the choir, as it were. Perhaps there will be support for our project.

I am mostly aware that this attendance is the beginning of networking, and ,unlike the dread i usually address to that word, i did not dread this.

The speaker's background was physics, and he now builds cameras to help with species surveys. It is the type work that would delight me, and i hope that this "solution" to my career is viable.

--==∞==--

Last Sunday (perhaps the Sunday before?) i had clarity, finally, on the spiritual grounding of this direction. I've not doubted the leading: i can clearly recall the February morning where i felt a surprising and strong convincement that i should seek out and observe California native flowers. I spoke of regrets earlier this week: while i don't have a large collection of regrets, i do have a collection of moments of knowledge. Quakers call them leadings. There are natural and supernatural explanations for the origin: such awareness may arise from subconscious back-brain analysis suddenly cresting into consciousness as insight, or from a communication with the Divine. I have found that for me, the critical issue is not how leadings occur, but what one does in response. Practice is for me the key, and the practice of responding to leadings is what i enthusiastically endorse.

(Indeed, the leading i had to responding to the recent management issue was one i did not follow, much to my regret.)

I've been asking myself what spiritual gifts am i offering in the focus on plants. In as much as our relationship with the larger ecosystem is part of our spiritual life, i understood our current plans as a raising of awareness of diversity in relating to the green part of the natural world. Another leading i have had though, and that is the grounds for my involvement in Meeting, is that my unformed and unnurtured aspects of self are far more in the relationships with other human beings. The place where it is work for me to grow and change is there: so i do work at it.

It has been easy for me to articulate how management is a ministry, but how can i articulate this pedantic observation of plants as a ministry? In Meeting, i understood the work as a parable. Most people look at the green things around them and see tree, grass, shrub. They may be able to distinguish at sight a rose from a hydrangea, but if you asked someone detailed questions -- such as are the edges of the leaf smooth? Do the veins branch symmetrically or alternating? Even someone who lovingly cared for their hydrangea or rose might not be able answer. We see leaf, and stop there, and have just learned the over-all impression.

And i think that is often how we relate (or, i'm sure, i relate without work) to others. That is M, my neighbor. I recognize her walking her dog, i recognize her as she comes home: but do i really see her? So many of us have hurts because we have not been really seen. Admittedly, we want our inner selves to be seen, not so much someone observing whether we are right or left handed, near sighted or farsighted.

My experience of botanical observation has been one of realizing how much i have missed for decades in the details of the identity of plants. How much is there in the identity of other humans i have missed, that we miss? How often do we learn the name, that is our neighbor M, and then stop in observing, in seeing that person?

This may be mostly a spiritual teaching that i need to learn, that others may have learned, but having a frame for this practice of relating to plants that expands to inform my relationship with humans comforts me that i am on the right trail for this moment in my life.

The weekend slipped with a disorienting long twilit evening after watching The Avengers in the heat of the day. I slept incredibly soundly, and had a hard time remembering what day it was on waking. As i look east, i see a golden haze through the eucalyptus, and it reminds me of Florida. Partly, i realize, because we are missing the usual morning marine layer: the familiar summer mornings of this locale is simply grey. The golden haze filtering through the trees seems like a quality of morning light in humid skies, and the reports indicate that is over 70% humidity.

Unlike Florida, as the morning goes on, our humidity will drop away as the heat rises, It's going to be another day in the mid 90s, and we have two more to look forward to. I suppose we won't get the blinds up until the holiday. I did use bungee cords to pull the current blind out, more like an awning or a tent yesterday. I think it kept the deck a little cooler, longer, and the breeze was able to ease the heat as well. When Christine & i went in at 3 pm, the deck seemed to me to be about the same as inside, and then after 6 when we returned to the deck, it was deliciously cool outside.

I haven't ordered the evaporative cooler. ...and now find that Best Buy is sold out of the model i was considering. Christine says she hopes they all went to Caliente, NV (which set record highs yesterday).

--==∞==--

On Saturday I doodled four stylized plants from which i can develop multiple questions about descriptive terms. I worked on our plant quiz questions yesterday. I'll surely need to draw more sketches to show different plant parts as i go, but just working on one of the sketches was productive enough. My first attempt at the questions was not particularly effective: over complex and hyper technical. From the work to make that one question, i'm now in the midst of making single focus questions. Christine says she's made good progress of the software logic.

The first question pulled the experience i have of reading the plant descriptions and looking at my photos. "Inflorescence: umbel or 1–2-flowered, axillary, generally peduncled, often bracted. " I end up keying out the words just as much as the plant itself. Instead of a full description of the inflorescence as the quiz question, i'll focus on single aspects such as whether there are bracts or not.

Slow going, and, again, i feel a sense of hubris: who am i to try and do this? But here we are: i've something that brings me joy, Christine has been reading educational materials theory for a couple of years and learning to build apps. It's a good partnership.

--==∞==--

Off to work, hopefully to find all going well. I so want to take Wednesday off, but i can't tell if i will be able to.