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Books Career Education inspiration WISE

Blood, Bones and Butter

I read about Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton (Amazon) on the Eloquent Woman blog, which discussed a section of the book in which the author writes about a panel she was on, and things she wanted to say, but didn’t. It was a panel about female chefs. Initially she has an attitude of “why are […]

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Career Education Programming WISE women in computer science

Friends Don’t Let Friends… Become PMs

Recently, I heard about a school that has a mandatory “technology” class that students have to take in order to take CS classes in later years. It features: wood-working, circuit building, and Excel. This is horrifying. I want to go there with picket signs and stage a protest. Dress up as robots and chant things. […]

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Books Career Education Networking Organization

Rise: How to Be Really Successful and Like Your Life

Rise (Amazon) is focused on helping you become CEO. As a result I found some of it a bit overly-ambitious for me. But – it contained some really great advice. 1. Ruthless Priorities. You have too much to do, but hey – don’t we all. The trick is to decide what’s critical and do an outstanding […]

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Career life Post-Grad Rehab Reflections

Post-Grad Rehab: August/September

August was about change. I switched projects. We are buying a new car and will hopefully start taking more local trips. I’m trying a new trainer – with the amount of travel I’m doing, I need more flexibility. I’ve been changing the way we do women in CS stuff, and trying to decentralize and delegate […]

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Career life

Dealing With More Travel

I really enjoyed my 6 weeks of going nowhere. I know, I don’t get to complain because my life sounds so glamorous – but reality is different. Oh New York! You’re so lucky. I know, the hotel was wonderful, the office fantastic, and the three blocks in between? Just fabulous. This was the trip I struggled […]

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Books Career Organization

Leadership =/= Control

Currently, I’m reading Tim Harford’s Adapt (Amazon). It’s a fascinating book, quite different from the Undercover Economist (Amazon) – which is also excellent. He writes about the importance of experimentation and feedback, and the insanity of centralized military planning – where an individual soldier can shoot to kill, but the General running the base can’t approve […]

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Career inspiration life Organization Reflections

Happiness is… A List

For a long time, I’ve been doing this thing where I GO GO GO like a crazy person and then crash. And I always come up with a plan, like “take on less”, or “be more organized” or some other strategy. And these are helpful, absolutely, but at best they seem to result in a different […]

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Career life Post-Grad Rehab Reflections

Post-Grad Rehab: July/August

My goal for July was to deal with bureaucracy and explore more. My success was so-so. I got my work-permit sorted, and found out how to get my tax form from IBM (still do to – ask for it). And my boyfriend and I took a trip to Paris… Ontario. But, a lot of my organizational energy […]

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Career Organization

Decisions

Last week, in California, I met the amazing Meggin who leaves such astute and beautiful comments here. It was great – or terrible timing – depending on how you look at it. Terrible timing, because, one of the first things I said to her was: In a while I’ll spin this into a really positive […]

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Career life Relocating

Time For Change

At the end of last week, I wrote that it had been “a mixed week“. And then on Monday, things went and got crazier. I’m still waiting for the dust to settle so that I can figure out what is actually going on. A friend is in town for a while. Last time I saw him, he […]