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I need Mom lessons.December 22 2008

Anyone who knows me well understands that I’m not um, a natural at the whole mom thing. I’ve got the food/shelter/clothing/snuggle/kiss-the-boo-boo thing down, yes, but beyond that, I’m at a loss. My mother blames it on my father’s side of the family.

Anyway.

Kirsten, my four-year-old, is staying home with me this short week. She just returned from Grandma Lyons House of Fabulous Toys, Non-Stop Attention and Cheetoes for eight days. I asked my husband - who has this whole mom thing down like you wouldn’t believe - to please make us a list of things to do. He even used holiday colors. See? I wouldn’t have thought of that.

(Just so you don’t think my hubs is a sissy boy, you should know he worked as a bouncer in college and can bench press like 800 pounds or something.)

Generalissimo Kirsten’s first act today was to impose a Forced Dance (see #1 on the list). Laurie Berkner rocks, by the way. This was quickly followed by the construction of a mermaid garden, performance of an ad hoc play (”Mommmm, just make it up as you go!”), and about two hours of cookie baking. Then it was lunch time. The rest of th

Give a little bit of my love to youDecember 19 2008

My grandma always said, “It’s always a good idea to use Supertramp lyrics in a blog post title.”

Anyway.

I have enough stuff, so I’ve asked my family to give to Epic Change instead of me this year for the holidays. Sanjay and Stacey over at Epic Change kindly posted my donation badge on their site, mainly because I have no idea how to put it on my own site.

Thanks, guys!

When you donate, you get to help out Shepherds Junior School in Tanzania, among other projects. Here’s what some of the volunteers over there sent me as a thank-you:

This is Junior. Awwwww!

If you’d rather just buy stuff, try the Epic Change Gift Shop.

There’s so much that we need to share. So send a smile and show you care. Supertramp said so.

Wrecking your car sucks.December 17 2008

It’s friggin’ cold, snowy, and sunny here in lovely St. Paul, MN. And when the sun melts stuff and freezes it into black ice, well, now we’re talkin’ about something much more interesting.

When I fishtailed into the I-35 median this morning, then shot across to the snowbank on the other side, I swear to god my first thought was, “wheeee!” but then I did the obligatory “holy shit!” and checked that I was ok. I was alone, and I didn’t hit anyone else, so whew. The lady who knocked on my window to see if I was ok scared the crap out of me, but I smiled and mouthed “I’m fine!” while dialing my husband to come get my shaken ass off the side of the highway.

Then I called State Farm and then immediately text-messaged Angela to tell her I was in an accident. This is because she is one of my closest friends, and she lives in my timezone, so I knew she was awake and would give me the proper amount of solace and sympathy. I love Angela!! My other close peeps were there for me, too. You know who you are. I heart you!!

It’s a Hoopty!

After dr

The Trust SpectrumDecember 10 2008

My daughter loves to share. In fact, I have to teach her that it’s ok not to share at times. Eventually though, she’ll learn to share selectively, once some fifth-grade jerk steals her awesome idea for the science fair, or that jackass three cubes over throws her under the bus to take the blame for some farked up project.

Thus is the nature of humans.

We don’t really share at work

You’ve probably heard me say this before: We don’t really share, or more precisely, we don’t really collaborate. Instead, we assign tasks. “You go do this, and you over there, go do that. Upload your stuff in the Collaboration Thingy when you’re done.”

This is what real collaboration looks like: “I have an idea/problem/task. Here’s my rough draft of it - can you help me finish it?” Now, we only do real collaboration with - you guessed it - people we trust. I’ve diatribed about this before, but I’ve noticed something very interesting happening with my customers who have a non-collaborating culture.

Respect the trust

My take on IBM Research’s Beehive findingsNovember 11 2008

I learned about IBM Research’s findings from their internal Beehive project from one of our customers’ posts.

In his post, Ted says that “they have their own corporate intranet, called Beehive.” Actually, Beehive is not IBM’s intranet. W3, or the “On Demand Workplace” is, which is built on IBM WebSphere Portal, IBM Lotus Domino, and lots of other IBM and non-IBM software. Beehive is a research project out of the Lotus software division.

I loved using Beehive at IBM

As an IBMer, I used Beehive extensively. It really reminded me of Facebook (except it was yellow), and was a great way to share more about yourself beyond IBM BlogCentral. I had a blast using it. I actually felt close to a stratosphere-senior VP because he posted a pic of his days as a college athlete in the ’70s. I was able to poke fun at his hairdo without risking my career. ;)

Joan, Werner, Casey, and the rest of the research team did a w