You've Got Mail!
Two weeks' worth of unread e-mail welcomes me back from vacation:
The majority of it will be "filed" - auto notifications, digests, etc.
John Duprey is a husband, father, and geek. He makes his living from the latter as a software architect for Thomson Reuters Research and Development. However, he lives for the former two - his wife Abby and their daughter Emma. -- Public Profile
All I know about A/B Testing was learned from a hamster..
Via this blog post: http://blog.asmartbear.com/easy-statistics-for-adwords-ab-testing-and-hamster...Today was the Rochester New York United Way's "Day of Caring". From their web site, "Each year, thousands of people from area businesses, schools and community groups lend their time, talents, and energy to volunteer projects that make a difference in our community."
This year I participated with a number of my team members at Thomson Reuters. We helped the Genesee Land Trust in its development of El Camino Trail. According to the City of Rochester, "The El Camino: Butterhole/Seneca Park Trail is adapting an old railroad line to become a multi-use pedestrian greenway. When completed, the 2.25-mile trail will run from Mill Street in High Falls all the way to the Seneca Park pedestrian bridge. The Trail will provide a safe, continuous pedestrian and bicycle route accessible to citizens from all walks of life, that links key destinations in the city."
The part of the trail we worked on was north of the intersection of Norton Street and Hollenbeck Street. About 60 volunteers joined in the effort coming from local businesses such as Bausch and Lomb and Unity Health System. You couldn't have asked for better weather. It was sunny and warm. We cleared brush and picked up trash along the trail. It was fun to work side by side with my co-workers in a completely different setting and a great day to be AFK.
Today was "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work" day. Emma was very excited to go and surprisingly insisted on staying the whole day with me. I put her to work learning about career choices and later she "interviewed" me using a set of interview questions provided by the daughtersandsonstowork.org web site. She participated in our morning "scrum" where each team member talks about what they did yesterday and what they plan to do today. Later on, I tried to show her how much of my job is spent communicating - via meetings, e-mail, instant messaging, phone, yammer ("facebook for work" as I described it to her), etc. We then looked at how design documents describe in human terms what the software is *supposed* to do, and then we looked at some software we were working on that "made web pages for searching for stuff" ("you know, like google"). That nearly put her to sleep. :)
Emma was well behaved and kept herself busy with other activies so Dad could get *some* work done.
We rushed home to eat dinner. Went to T-Ball practice. Rushed home and wrote up a story based on her interview notes. I helped in this effort. After helping her organize her thoughts, she dictacted the story as I typed and I think it largely captures what she learned today.
I think this was a great experience for her and she is already asking when she can come do it again. I told her, next year. :) I really enjoyed sharing with Emma what I do. I like what I do and am proud of my accomplishments. It was great to share with Emma what I do when I'm not at home with her. I also hope to spark an interest in math, and "the sciences". Those fields could really use more female representation and its really not a bad way to make a living.
Logistically speaking, it isn't easy for a company to have everyone bring in their kids on the same day. A number of people around the office commented that they thought our site had terminated the practice. I don't know what the official policy is at our Rochester site, but I did clear it with my boss before hand. We do allow for a fair amount of disruption for other educational and charitable activities. It would seem that this event could be formatted to minimize disruption in our workplace.
To learn more about the event and its motiviations, visit www.daughtersandsonstowork.org.
This Dilbert cartoon kinda hits home this year.. actually this quote is even closer:
-JWD
EAGAN, Minn. (WCCO) ―Robber Wrestled To The Ground In Eagan
"He went in front of me in the queue and said, 'give me the cash, I'm not kidding you,'" said Liedner. CBS
A colleague from our sister office in MN thwarted a robbery! He's German and clearly one that watches too much Bay Watch / David Hasslehoff. Seriously though, I'm glad he is OK.
