Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Time Management and What’s Not

Recently I’ve been telling everybody that I am busier than ever. And everybody is asking, why, and what I am doing, and why I can’t delegate stuff to other people.

My friends who followed my previous blog are used to my “timing” posts with a detailed description of my day. It’s time to look at what has changed for the past several months.

Yesterday was a very typical day of mine as they recently are. Got up at my usual 4-45 and went to a gym for a relatively quick (45 min) workout.

Audiobook during a 5 minutes walk to the gym, emails, Instagram and Chicago Tribune on iPad while on elliptical, audiobook on the way back.  

WBEZ morning news on the iPhone while in the shower and putting the makeup on. 

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Let Summer Last!

One of my neighbors, with whom we are mostly on hi-bye terms, addressed me the other day at our parking lot: What a weather! The weather, indeed, is so beautiful, so warm and sunny, and the nights are cool, and humidity is low – I feel like nature is giving back to compensate for the nasty spring we had this year.

And you know what – I am taking it! Taking all of it, not waiting for the “colder days,” not being “tired of the heat.” I didn’t have enough summer, and I will take as much as I will be given!

Food and Architecture of 1893 Tour

Last Saturday I went on the “Food and Architecture of 1893” tour, one of the hundreds of tours offered by the Chicago Architecture Center. I am a member, and I use my member benefits so rarely, it’s not even funny!

I loved a description of this tour and made plans to attend. These plans were challenged by a number of circumstances, but in spite of all of them, at 1-30 PM on Saturday I was in the lobby of the new CAC building.

I love our beautiful city and know quite a bit about its history and architecture. But still, any tour would add some new information. Also – it is always great to have an opportunity to pretend you are a tourist and take more pictures of your favorite places. We started the tour enjoying the famous view of the Wrigley Building. Not because we were nearby, but because at the time of World’s Fair Mr. Wrigley was promoting his chewing gum business at Fair Grounds. Nowadays, we are used to the promotions of new products by giving them away in public places, but it was a novel idea back then. And just think about it – there were over 10 million visitors from all over the world! (At this point all of us has received a pack of Wrigley gum:))

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CityLIGHTS Award Follow-Up

I am still processing the fact that I’ve received this award. I talked to Boris at least five times since 10 PM on Thursday. He said that he still has to internalize the fact that I won. I told him that I am trying to do the same and that I want him to be a part of it. For which he replied that he is trying to process that fact as well :). He effectively is, I’ve already let the world know:).

Also, on Friday I’ve received an email with congratulations from the ITA CEO. The funny thing about it is that I saw it and replied with thanks, but it was only yesterday that I went through over one hundred emails I’ve received, and then I actually read it. She was saying that I am the first female ever receiving this award. Which is super cool, and sad, and exciting – all at the same time.

Attending the University: How We Learned to Program

Back to my years at Leningrad State University. In my last post related to this part of our family history, I described how most of the subjects were taught except for programming.

For a start, programming did exist in 1980, even in the Soviet Union, and I was very interested in it. Since I was enrolled into a specialized high school for mathematics and physics, we even had a computer!  

I believe this school computer was one of the “native” ones developed in the country, not copied from the Western prototypes (my former classmates may remember better). Since it was just one computer for a whole school, and not a super-powerful one, we did most of our programming on paper and didn’t debug our programs. We were only allowed “to touch the keys” a couple of times during a semester.

However, at the University, we had actual programming, and we were supposed to debug our programs and to show some results. 

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Freedom Is a Verb

Same as the blog post author, I hate music videos and rarely view them, but his one is one of few exceptions. The video compliments the music in a great way.

rmichaelroman's avatarYip Abides

I hate music videos. But this item by Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird is just too right on:

Thanks to Hugh Iglarsh for tossing this in my direction.

You can see more work by Daniel Kahn at his YouTube Channel. Some of his older work can be found at the Playgrrround Vimeo Channel.

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More Details About the CityLIGHTS 2019 Award Night

My LinkedIn just went viral yesterday, I had almost two thousand views within the first 24 hours of my post appearance, and a number is still growing. My likes present all my employment history :). I also got a couple of reposts and very warm congratulations. And everybody is asking for “more details.”  

Well… I do not even know where to start! So, as they say, I will start from the beginning :). I did not know whether I will be a winner or not. Two days before the event, I received a reminder email from the organizers which outlined the course of events throughout the night. It said that if I win, I need to give a 2-minute acceptance speech. I didn’t want to think too much about it and didn’t rehearse it, but I thought a little bit about whom I should thank if I won.

The VIP reception for the finalists plus one guest started a half-hour before the event. 

I barely knew a couple of people there, so I socialized somewhat moderately by my standards.

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I am a Winner!!!

In the beginning of August I was named one of the finalists of the Illinois Technology Association “Technologist of the Year” award.

Tonight was an Award Night – and I won it!!! This is all I can say today :), and I will post more in my professional blog :). Below is the video of my “acceptance speech.”

An Interesting Week So Far…

Same as “matter does not disappear” one can say that “time does not appear” from thin air. We all have 24 hours any given day, weekday, or weekend, and nobody gives us more than that.

That’s about my wonderful micro-vacation last weekend.
I had a great time in Ann Arbor, but not being at home for a weekend meant that I didn’t do anything around the house and that I didn’t catch up on work, which I also do on weekends.

So since Monday afternoon when I returned, all this bites back :). I am not even trying to separate work and not work, primarily because lots of my activities do not fit in either of the categories. I had tons of emails to reply related to the conference where I am on the talk selection committee, to the September and October meetups, regarding all my volunteering activities, and what’s not.

I hope it will be better next week!

Day Two in Ann Arbor – History

After lunch, we went to Parker Mill Park. Lena has found information in their local newspaper about the tour which was supposedly starting at 1 PM, so she planned our day accordingly. When we arrived, there was no information about any tours neither in the parking lot nor by the visitors center which was closed. We saw the sign pointing to the mill and headed in that direction.

We entered the mill (although there was no sign on the door), and there was nobody around. We observed lots of tools and mechanisms, all labeled and being in perfect order.

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