Entries in Life

So, I arrive in Kampala and find a little love note from the TSA: “We rifled through your things.   Carry on, citizen!” In fact, I could tell they had before I even saw the note.  Everything had was shuffled around.  Not the “settles during travel” sort of shuffling but “you pack like an idiot, let me show you better” sort of shuffling.  Well, thank you very much.  I suppose I can be glad that not only am I learning better ways to pack my things, but I’m also being protected from bombs and such being smuggled aboard planes. I mean, at least they’re successful at that, right? (If you don’t click the link, it points to a news article from earlier this year about TSA failing to spot explosives.) No, I could tell they had searched my bags even without the note.  Whoever searched them decided to pocket my camera and bluetooth headset.  I suppose this is just another perk of working at the TSA and I shouldn’t begrudge them this small compensation for their wonderful work in protecting us from terrorist shoe bombers. (At least these things are easily replaced.  Unlike this guy’s experience with custom-made equipment, I can go to the mall to replace them.) (Update: I found my camera and apologized.)

We arrived in Uganda last night.  I’m here to finish installing the Knowledge Management Portal (Knowledge Tree + Joomla) that I put together over the past few weeks and help train the local staff. Following are my first impressions of Uganda.  Keep in mind that I arrived after sunset and am staying at a nice hotel so my first impressions are especially limited.   Still, using my time in Rwanda as a frame of reference, I do have a little insight. During the drive from the airport in Entebbe to Kampala, I kept thinking of how I could describe what I’ve seen so far here in Africa.  My first thought was that much of it is like many rural areas of the U.S. during the early 20th century.  But there are a lot more cars and more electricity. Then I thought about the government in Africa.  The “Wild West” seems to work a little better, then.  The West with electricity and cars.  And paved roads. Of course, I wasn’t yet in Kampala when I was thinking about all this.  What I saw of Kampala last night, and from what I can see today, Kampala is fairly modern.  Short, modern office buildings, plenty of paved roads.  We’ll see if my impression changes once I actually get a chance to drive around today. Speaking of roads: In Uganda, they drive on the left.  In Rwanda (the other land-locked country just south of Uganda), they drive on the right.  I wonder what happens at a border crossing.  Oh, and they use yet-another-power-connection.  I had to pay 15,000 UG Shillings for a new adaptor today.  Highway Robbery, I tell you! I suppose you can tell exactly which European country colonized which African nation by looking at their power plugs and on which side of the road they drive.  Uganda is clearly a former British colony — left side driving and British power plugs — wheras Rwanda, with its power plugs and right side driving is clearly a former Belgium colony. One more thing before I start work.  International flights are about the most fun you can have (if you don’t sense sarcasm there, let me point it out for you here). Take Amsterdam, for instance.  I hopped off my flight from Philadelphia, went through customs once to enter then country and then again to hop on a flight to Uganda.  Hurrah!  At least this was better than transiting the U.S. where they make you grab your luggage even if you’re just catching the next flight out of the country. Customs (long lines, lots of waiting) and switching flights (long layovers, long lines, lots of waiting) mean that I left Philly at 6:30pm Tuesday and, after hours in airports and whatnot, arrived in my hotel in Uganda at 9:00pm Wednesday.  Not much jet lag, though.  I seem to have a knack for sleeping on planes — even in the cramped economy class conditions.

Re: Google Tech Talk:

This sounds nice. Vim can not do this ;(

Four years ago, under the influence of dcm, I purchased winkyfrown.com/. We were hoping to promote the newly discovered side-smiley: the winkyfrown:

;(

It has taken a while, but it looks like it is finally starting to catch on.

One of the never-ending subjects of Free Software is “Where are the Women?” While I see it as mostly a non-problem — that is, there are some obvious problems that need to be fixed with time, but no one is going to rectify them right now — I’m doing what I can to encourage my daughters and son in the field. In the meantime, The Decline of Women in Computer Science from 1940-1982 has some fascinating anecdotes:

Computing was unique, however, in the sense that the fledgling profession was still in its infancy and had no strong pre-war gender socialization.  This fact must have helped the women in that the returning men lacked programming expertise, and clearly had no expectation of “returning” to a programming job.  The lack of structure in the industry was also a boon to women programmers who wanted to continue working even after they became pregnant and had children.  Most notably, “Computations, Inc., of Harvard, Massachusetts (outside Route 128), formed in 1958 by Elsie Shutt and several other programmer-mothers who worked part-time and largely at home on problems contracted out to them by their former employers, such as Minneapolis-Honeywell and Raytheon”.  These women, widely known as the “Pregnant Programmers” were mentioned by speaker Richard H. Bolt at the M.I.T Symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering in 1964.  Bolt, who was a lecturer in Political Science at M.I.T and also a former Associate Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1960-1963, also mentioned the following:

“I asked one of the unmarried women, a computer programmer in industry, if she thought a woman’s activities as a mother and homemaker would interfere with her opportunities in a career.  ‘One good thing about programming,’ she said, ‘is that you can work part time.’”

The Modern Stealth Depression:

Yes, it’s here. Welcome to the Depression. No, don’t drop whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t get up. It’s not going anywhere. It will wait. It’s just going to sit over here in the corner and read a magazine while you do whatever it is you need to do.

Despite planning for it quite some time I won’t be at the last few days of RAGBRAI this year. I originally had to cancel because I thought I would be out of the country this week.  And now I’m not, but plans changed too late to re-schedule. I’m a little bummed about it since this year, I’ve really been riding — 450 miles so far this month –  and I’d like to test myself with a longer ride.  Maybe a Metric Century…

As Nathan said, I’ve been putting down a lot of miles.  Today, I rode 40 miles, bringing my total for the week to 180 miles (and, for what its worth, 9600 calories).  I’ve got just over 1000 miles on this bike, 500 miles a month. (In other news, I need to write about my work on open source soon.)

As I told my tweeps, I did 50 miles today. This brings me to a total of 140 miles for the week — closer to where I want to be, but not quite there yet. I hope to get 40 miles in tomorrow and then settle back down to 30 miles/day for the rest of the week. And, at this point, I can tell you that I probably won’t make that goal.  I know 20 miles/day is reasonable for me, but adding another 10 miles is pushing the envelope.  At least right now it is.  We’ll see how I do tomorrow. Since I’ve been riding more and talking about it, I have encouraged several other people to consider taking it up.  A friend of mine is a manager at the Panera Bread about 10 miles from here.  He has seen me in there enough times (a little more than once a week for the past couple of months) that, combined with rising gas prices, he was seriously considering getting a bike and riding. Another acquaintance (at the Thursday morning study group (I leave at 5:45 to get there for the 6:30 start) was impressed that I was riding in the city.  “Oh, you just have to have confidence and act like you belong,” I said.  “Cars are like dogs, they can sense fear.”  She seemed to be considering expanding her riding options on the half recumbent she shares with her husband. Its amazing, really, how doing something you love can affect other people.  I love to ride and, while I’m not going to convert anyone who is dead-set against getting on a bike, some more ambivalent cyclists are thinking “Hey, I could do a little bit more.”  People who are absolutely terrified of riding will begin to think about some of the statistics I cite for them.