Roberta Donovan, 1940 - 2013

I first met Roberta Donovan in 1982.  We had done some business together over the phone, and in one phone conversation discovered we were both going to a trade show in Dallas.  We decided to meet for coffee in Dallas.

At our coffee meeting, Roberta and I had a very unusual conversation. We talked about the lack of spiritual growth and development on the part of the (mostly) men in our industry.  This was not the type of subject matter one usually discussed in the computer industry in the early 1980s.  (Believe me... no one else at the trade show in Dallas had a conversation anything remotely like this  :-)

I discovered Roberta was a big believer in spiritual growth and had read extensively on the subject.  I promised to read Wayne Dyer and eventually read "There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem" and "How to Get What You Really Really Want".  We had long discussions about these books and our own experiences putting the ideas into practice.  Then we were on to "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.  More discussions, more applications of the ideas.   Then Caroline Myss "The Anatomy of the Spirit".   Then, of course, no spiritual journey is complete without M. Scott Peck's "The Road Less Travelled".   These were just some of the books we read together and discussed ... Roberta was extremely well read on this subject.  Roberta was a very "spiritually evolved" human being.   Sometimes I felt like her puppy, running after her, trying to keep up.  It was a challenge.

Roberta and I went on a cruise to Mexico together and had many mini-vacations together.  She was always up for an adventure, meeting new people, and learning about them.  In fact, Roberta was a virtuoso at communication -- in a class far above everyone else.  Roberta could have a conversation with someone and learn so much about them from her questions and her gentle, non-threatening manner, and walk away from that conversation knowing far more about that individual than they knew about themselves.  It was awe inspiring!

Roberta was a big believer in "dealing with your feelings" as she would put it.  She was often disappointed in people who lacked the courage to examine their deepest feelings, identify those feelings, acknowledge the feelings, examine the source, and then take action on the feelings.  Personally, I found this very hard to do, but with her prodding me on, over time, I was able to do it. Painful?  Yes, but the inner peace at the end was always worth it.

I think that Roberta  must have been very good at this herself.  In our 31 year friendship, we never had a fight, she never got mad at me, there was never a problem.  I am sure I must have done things from time to time that would have made her angry with me, but I think she was so good at dealing with her feelings and extending forgiveness that I never even knew about it.  I cannot say this about anyone else.

Finally, I have to say that Roberta was the most unusually expressive person I have known.  When she first moved into her place on Elmhurst Circle, I was completely floored that she had decorated her powder room completely in black with an Egyptian motif.  Then, on one occasion, at a dinner party, she had an elephant as the table centerpiece.  These are just not the kinds of design choices the average person makes.  The elephant was a fitting symbol for Roberta.  The elephant, in its most global and universal meaning, symbolizes strength and power, not only physical but also mental and spiritual.  That was the Roberta I knew.

General Theory of Open Source Software -- So Much is High Quality ... How is this Possible?

There is a lot of open source software available for various tasks -- a shocking, surprising amount.  For example, yesterday I used GIMP -- a graphics image manipulation program.  GIMP runs on Linux and Windows.  I find it easier to use than the equivalent commercial products. How can GIMP exist for free? How can there be so much good quality open source software?

Following is a theory about how open source software comes into existence ...

#1  An experienced software engineer needs a tool to use to help him write code for his day job, where he is working on Project X.
#2  He cannot find a tool that does what he wants.  Or, there is a commercial tool that meets his needs, but his management will not buy it for him.  Therefore, he creates his own tool, during the day, while his EMPLOYER IS PAYING HIM TO WORK ON PROJECT X  (but he could not work on Project X without a tool).  So inadvertently, his employer funds the creation of this tool.
#3 The engineer will implement exactly what he needs and no more to create the tool, and then he is done.  He spends about two months on it, because that's the maximum amount of time he can allocate before his boss asks "where is the code for Project X? Show me your work for Project X!"
#4  That same engineer then uses the tool he just created to accelerate the work on Project X in his day job.  By using the tool, he is finding bugs in the tool, and fixing them, so he is doing his own quality assurance and testing  on the tool.
#5  Other engineers see the tool or ask about the tool, and pretty soon they are using it.  They are helping fix bugs with the tool. Some of them go to other companies and ask if they can use the tool.
#6  The original engineer knows that he cannot give code to others outside the company, so he asks his manager.  He describes this thing he threw together to get Project X done on time and asks his manager if he can contribute it to the open source community.  The distracted manager says "yes".
#7  The original engineer creates an open source project and contributes the tool.  Then he tells other engineers that asked about it where they can get it.
#8  The original engineer still has his day job, but now he has fan base and pride because he is the AUTHOR of the cool open source tool.  So, as a matter of pride, he devotes much of his personal time (and he sneaks time from his day job) to continue updating the tool.

This open source software development model works because:

A)  The funding comes from BigCo
B)  The experienced software engineer developing the tool was motivated by a real need
C)  The project was sufficiently simple so that it could be done in ~300 hours

Contrary to popular belief, a group of altruistic software engineers do not band together for a few years to create an open source software product that they magnanimously provide at no charge to the general public and cheerfully support and update (although I suppose that does happen on occasion).  

RocketTheme Gets an "F" for Technical Support

Our summer intern wrote the following email to tech support at RocketTheme:
(RocketTheme produces templates for Joomla CMS and themes for WordPress CMS):

Subject: [ACCOUNT] Switching from a Joomla to a WordPress subscription
From: our summer intern at InterWorking Labs
To: rockettheme tech support Date: 2012-07-26 18:04:14
-------------------------------------------
Hi, 
Some time ago I signed up for a subscription for your Joomla templates club, intending to find a template for use on a business website.


Unfortunately, the installation and use of the Joomla template we selected proved problematic to use an install, and required a great deal of support even to get working as advertised.


We have recently been looking into WordPress and found it to be a vastly preferable CMS solution for our purposes.


Since we are not intending to use any of your Joomla themes, but are interested in your WordPress club, would it be possible to transfer this account from a Joomla subscription to a WordPress one without buying a new subscription?


Here is the response from RocketTheme to our summer intern:

Subject:  RE: [ACCOUNT] Switching from a Joomla to a WordPress subscription
Date:  Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:27:21 -0600 (MDT)
From:  RocketTheme Support 
To:  our summer intern
References:  


Hello, since you have downloaded a number of our Joomla products, we are

unable to switch your membership. You will need to sign up for a

Wordpress membership to access the products.

The tone of the above paragraph is disturbing.  We paid for a subscription and we were entitled to download as many templates as we wanted.  We downloaded a few, and then realized we could not realistically use any of them!  There is nothing in the agreement that states that one is to be "punished" or "reprimanded" because one did as one was entitled to do under the agreement.

Any decisions you make about which platform to use is solely your
decision. 

Obviously.  Did this need to be said?

Weather you intend to use the Joomla products is not something
we can verify, you are responsible for understanding the terms of
membership upon signing up.

We understood the terms of membership when we paid the money and signed up.  In fact, we have signed up for memberships several times, both directly as InterWorking Labs and through our web site development company.  So, it is not as if this was our first experience with RocketTheme.  However, I guess there is no consideration for having been a loyal customer who recommended RocketTheme to others.

By the way, it is "whether", not "weather".

It appears that the 2 questions you had on the forum were answered and
solved, it also appears the issue you had was an isolated incident and
not related to a flaw in our products. 

We attempted to install one of the RocketTheme templates at our new account at HostGator.  HostGator has 400,000 customers and hosts eight million domains so it is not as if we were attempting to install the RocketTheme template at a small, inexperienced hosting service.  We had a great deal of difficulty and sunk a lot of time into getting this working, only to find that there were going to be many more difficulties ahead.

It's a bit of a stretch to say that should be considered as a factor in giving you a free membership.

My summer intern did not ask for a free membership.

Dealing with websites products is very technical, 

I am not sure what is supposed to be meant by the above phrase.  Is RocketTheme suggesting that our summer intern does not meet the RocketTheme technical standards?  I think if RocketTheme and InterWorking Labs were to have a competition on who has the deepest technical products, InterWorking Labs would win hands-down.  In our world the RocketTheme products, from a technical standpoint, are trivial.

this is the reason we have a forum and moderators to answer questions when problems arise. 

So in other words, you don't have your own staff providing technical support?  So all we get for our money is the template, which did not go through adequate testing, and which is not supported directly by RocketTheme?

Our support team is happy to assist with these matters and did so in your case.

Okay.  So now you do have a support team?   So which is it -- unpaid, third party volunteers in a forum, or qualified engineers providing technical support?

Cheers,

"Cheers"?  Really?  The email accuses InterWorking Labs of :

1-trying to get something for free

2-being insufficiently technical for RocketTheme's standard

3-not understanding the contract

4-downloading templates that it was legally entitled to download!    

What would be "cheery" or "cheerful" about that?  It was a slap in the face!

Here is the type of  technical support email that RocketTheme should have sent us:

I am sorry that you had a bad experience with RocketTheme.  We strive to make good quality products that are easy to install.  Occasionally, we have a problem like the one you encountered.

While we cannot offer you a full refund on the Joomla template subscription, given your experience and your decision to switch, we would be happy to offer you 25% off the WordPress subscription, as a token of our appreciation for your decision to do business with RocketTheme, and as consideration for your experience.

Thank you for working with RocketTheme.

Sincerely,

My evolution as a comedic artist

During the week I run a software company.  In my free time, my own time, I am an artist of comedy.  What does that mean exactly?  I am working that out.

Five years ago I attended a seminar about "creating the life you want" or something like that.  We were supposed to define the goal of who or what we wanted to be.  At first, I was going to write down business goals for the software company.  But then, just for the hell of it, I wrote down that I aspired to the type of career of the performance artist "Laurie Anderson".

Of course once I wrote that down, then I received "career counselling" about the steps needed to get there.  Once of the steps was improv training.  My response was "what is improv training?"  After the explanation, I was intrigued.  At the time there were no classes locally, so I signed up for one in Hollywood.  I blogged about that before.  See:

http://cwellens.blogspot.com/2007/08/total-immersion-improv-class-second.html

So I have been working on improv for the last few years, practicing with friends and family and  developing characters.

This past weekend I took an advanced training class.  In the middle of the class I hit a wall.

The teacher  emphasized the importance of the actors focussing on and responding to the human behaviors.  In other words, he wanted the actors in a scene to focus on the core emotional issues, and not concern themselves with the context -- the who, what and where.  For example, the grown son who stands up to his father and leaves home, or the wife who tells her husband that she is in love with another man and wants a divorce.  

Maybe that's what audiences want, but I found myself bored out of mind!   Watching the other actors do this was like watching the Hallmark channel -- saccharine, shmaltzy.   I just didn't buy it.

Plus, it wasn't funny.

Theoretically, in improv, the humor is supposed to come from the interaction of the characters, being present in the moment, and just blurting out whatever pops into their heads. 

But honestly, that only seems to result in something funny about 5% of the time.   So, as a member of the audience, the chance of you being entertained at an improv show is pretty low -- 95% of the time you will be bored.

No doubt it is excellent training for actors for lots of reasons that I won't go into.  However, if you don't want to be an actor, if you want to be an artist of comedy like me, well, you can't get there from here.

To me, the thing that is really funny, is the who, the what, and the where.   For example, the accountant who thinks she is the third coming of Christ -- that's funny.  Or the Greek tour guide who has no concept of geography or history but has a huge ego and immense self-confidence about her abilities -- that's funny.  The way these characters interact with other characters and their environment -- that's funny.

What is funny?  Well I'm working on that, but it seems clear I need to get off the performer on the stage path, and get onto the comedy writing path.  I think really good comedy is more premeditated.

Dental Hygienists --- I cannot take them anymore

Pretty much everyone has something that is suboptimal with the biochemistry of their bodies.  It could be something terrible, like lung cancer.   Or it could be something ordinary, but serious and treatable, like diabetes.   Or it could be something really mundane and not very important at all.

Having a body that produces too much dental plaque means you have to go see a dental hygienist three times a year, instead of twice a year. That is my particular issue --  in the mundane category.  Or maybe, the "extremely lucky" category, because there are so many other possibilities -- cancer, heart disease, drug resistant syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, etc. -- that are so much worse.

When I visit the dentist for my tri-annual teeth cleaning, I get one of two reactions from the dental hygienist:

Reaction One:  A complete dressing down and scolding!  

Hygienist: You need to brush your teeth ever morning and every evening.
Me:  I DO!

Hygienist: Well... you are NOT doing a very good job of it.  You should use an electric toothbrush.
Me:  I DO!

Hygienist:  You need to spend six seconds with the electric toothbrush on each tooth.
Me:  I spend ten seconds on each tooth!

Hygienist:  Well... you need to change the brush head every three months.
Me:  I change it every month!

Hygienist:  You need to floss every time you brush!
Me:  I do!

Hygienist:  You need to floss up and down three times between each set of teeth.
Me:  I go up and down six times!

Hygienist:  You need to use a better floss then.
Me:  I use Butler Weave Dental Floss that was recommended to me years ago, when I was first diagnosed with excessive plaque.

Hygienist:  I do not believe anything you say!
Me:  Could you just accept the fact that my body produces excessive dental plaque?

Hygienist:  Humpff (and walks away muttering under her breath).

Reaction Two:  Hygienist talks to me like I am a hospice patient. 

Hygienist:  The amount of plaque you have is quite dreadful!  You were here just four months ago.
Me:  I know!  Believe me, I have excellent dental hygiene practices; my body just produces a lot of plaque.

Hygienist:  This is so dreadful; I don't know how you will be able to cope.
Me:  I think I am doing okay.

Hygienist:  I am so sorry that you are having to live your life this way.
Me:  Well it is better than having Ebola, I guess.

Hygienist:  I cannot imagine anything more tragic.
Me:  I think you need to work on your imaginative capabilities, in that case.

My Dream:  Find a dental hygienist who does her job and says "Good Day" when she begins, and "Good Bye Now" when she finishes, and nothing more.

Playing World of Warcraft on a Treadmill

I had a pretty simple workout routine.  The treadmill in my bedroom faces the television.  I put on stereo headphones and watch a  pre-recorded television program.  While I am watching television, the treadmill makes me run up and down simulated hills for half an hour at the equivalent pace of a 15 minute mile.  About the time the television program is over, my workout is over.  I did not notice I was working out.   I lost a lot of weight doing this every day this past year.

Then three weeks ago, the treadmill broke.  This was not expected.  I was thrown off my schedule.  I had to get things organized to have the old one removed, and now I am working on getting a new one installed.  In the meantime, I've been using the treadmill at a health club.

I hate going to the health club.  It requires getting dressed, driving eight miles round trip, and walking through a room with lots of beautiful people.  Then, I arrive in the humongous industrial factory where I am faced with row after row after row of treadmills and elliptical machines (most occupied with a beautiful person).  It always seems that  the people next to me are running four minute miles up hills. (That's right, almost four times faster than me.) It is intimidating.  I can overcome the intimidation, but then, in front of me is a tiny television with a football game on it, or worse yet, Fox News.  There's no sound.  There are no headphones.  It is extremely dull.

Today I thought of a solution.  I like World of Warcraft, but I rarely play it because I don't have time, and I already spend too much of my life in front of a computer (like right now, for example).  But, what if World of Warcraft were physical?  In other words, if your character is fighting a wizard for example, maybe you have to do certain physical boxing moves on the treadmill with your arms.  Maybe someone is chasing you over hills, so you have to run as fast as you can over hills for a couple of minutes.  It could be a very entertaining distraction, and after 30 minutes, your workout would be done.  Perhaps you would even be motivated to extend the workout based on the narrative in the World of Warcraft story.

the one breasted woman

Last week I was in the ladies locker room getting ready to take a shower, and looked up to see a woman in her sixties, across the room from me.  I had a full frontal view of the lady, and a  feeling that something was askew with the picture.  The lady was putting her clothes back on after her shower and I realized that she had one tight and buff looking horizontal, flat muscle next to one large and sagging breast. 

It took me a while to figure out that the tight, buff, horizontal flat muscle was the aftermath of a mastectomy.  She had a breast removed!

My first thought was how trim, fit, and buff the horizontal part looked -- the side without the breast.  It actually looked much better than the large and sagging breast on the other side.  My second thought was how completely comfortable she appeared to be.  She was not trying to hide her frontal view at all.  She was obviously very accepting of her body in its current configuration.

Prior to seeing this lady at the health club, I had always thought that should I face the prospect of a mastectomy, I would take a pass, get my affairs in order, and check into some hospice program and prepare to die from cancer.  I believed that death would be preferable to having certain body parts lopped off.

In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and take a big risk here and flatly admit that I do not like all the talk about breast cancer.  I wish people would just shut up about it.  I do not like hearing about "One in Nine", "Susan G. Komen", the pink ribbons, and the "Race for the Cure".  In fact, breast cancer is not the number one cause of death from cancer, although it seems to be advertised as if it were number one.   According to the World Health Organization, (February 2006), the lineup looks like this:

lung cancer (1.3 million deaths)
stomach cancer (803,000 deaths)
colorectal cancer (639,000 deaths)
liver cancer (610,000 deaths)
breast cancer (519,000 deaths)

So why does it seem like breast cancer is marketed and promoted much more extensively than other types of cancers?  Don't we want to find a solution for all forms of cancer and not just breast cancer?  I don't see the men running around with all types of marketing programs to raise awareness and funds to address prostate cancer.   What is going on here?  Are the women just better at marketing?

Having seen this lady at the health club, I now have a new view.  If I became one of the extremely unlucky "one woman in nine" who is diagnosed with breast cancer, and if the oncologists recommended a mastectomy, I think I would go for it.  I think life without a breast or both breasts  would not be the end of the world as I know it.  Yet, I would not have decided this without seeing the lady across from me in the ladies locker room.