life

Bharat's recommendation

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 16:27 on 20 July 2004

I think the older one gets the more aware of one's abilities, strengths and shortcomings. I also think there's a higher level of acceptance of each of these.

In applying for a UPA position, I needed two references. I asked Bharat and Mark. Bharat's seems pretty right on in my opinion:

Bharat Mediratta: ok, here's what I've written
Bharat Mediratta: To whom it may concern, 
Bharat Mediratta: I've known Kitt socially since about 1995 
  and have collaborated with her on ultimate and technology 
  related projects since about 1998.  I worked with her in a 
  profesional capacity from around June of 2000 to around June 
  of 2004.  During this time, I found her to be smart, talented 
  and generally a pleasure to work with.
Bharat Mediratta: Kitt's strengths are intelligence and 
  creativity.  She is quick to learn new technologies and has 
  no shortage of good ideas.  She is a very capable and 
  prolific software engineer when she is working on projects
  that interest her.  I've typically found her to be highly 
  motivated when working on web based software projects and 
  ultimate frisbee related activities.  Doing software 
  engineering at the UPA seems like it would be a good 
  conjunction of the two.  She has strong math and analytical 
  abilities and a solid grounding in the fundamentals of web 
  based software development.
Bharat Mediratta: Kitt's weakness is that she is put off by 
  complexity unless it's associated with something that she is 
  very motivated to solve.  The only times when she has failed 
  during our professional career together have been times when 
  she was required to work on difficult and uninteresting 
  problems.  During the times when she was engaged on 
  interesting problems she consistently worked diligently to 
  complete her tasks as quickly as possible.
Bharat Mediratta: -----
Bharat Mediratta: it's an unfinished masterpiece.  pretty fair, 
  though I think.
Kitt Hodsden: Got me pegged.

What if, if only.

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 21:29 on 8 July 2004

What if I had sent the thank you card on Monday?

If only I had called to tell you how much I love the artwork you gave us for our wedding gift.

What if I had called to share my garden vegetables?

What if you hadn't chose to come off your medicine? Would the pain you endured on it be more than the pain your family is going through now?

If only I had known.

Feast & Famine

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 18:27 on 7 July 2004

Mike warned me.

Yesterday, I was having serious doubts about quitting my job. I had miscalculated the balance in my checking account by, oh, about $4000. That's an awful lot to be off by. I slept not so well last night and woke up once or twice a little (more than a little) stressed.

New food philosophy

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 07:41 on 5 July 2004

Kris and I buy a lot of food that we don't eat. It could be I buy more of that food than Kris. Suffice it to say, too much food is thrown out in this house.

Since we just returned home from our honeymoon, and cleaned out our fridge when we arrived, now is a good time to start a new food philosophy. Let's try this:

All food gets eaten.

I'm pretty sure we won't be able to eat all the food before it spoils, but this translates into several specific actions that we can do to minimize the amount of food we throw out. These are:

Eat leftovers as quickly as possible.
Purchase food that will be consumed in the next few days.
This means more trips to the grocery store, but I don't believe is is problematic at the moment.
Plan meals weekly, to minimize overbuying of food.
Eat in more frequently.
We were fixing less than I'd guess 2 of our non-cereal, non-breakfast meals a week. We can do much better than that, using meals out as special occasions instead of the norm.

We could also try things like buy a freezer for storing foods. For now, we'll try the action items listed above and see how well we do.

On our way!

Blog kitt decided around 06:41 on 15 June 2004 to publish this:

After a night of completely no sleep, we're on our way! The plan is 2+ weeks in Europe (specifically Norway and Scotland), then a stop over in Virginia on the way back for an East Coast wedding reception.

Kyle will be here taking care of the dogs, the house and the grounds (read: gardens). The big reason I was up all night was that I was trying to get him a good task list to keep him busy while we were gone. Not sure if the list is long enough (or the tasks described well enough), but taking care of the house and the dogs is plenty lots to do.

So, we're on our way!

Last day at VA.

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 00:06 on 12 June 2004

Today was my last day at VA. Part of me is incredibly sad. Everytime I think about the VA crowd, and that I won't be seeing them just about every day, I become saddened.

The group of people at VA is an incredible group of people. They are intelligent, entertaining, honest, delightful people who are a joy to be with.

One of the amazing qualities of the group is the complete lack of politics within the group. I've never experienced such openness and honesty in a work environment before. One example is, when we were nearing the end of a cycle, when one person finished his tasks, he immediately checked in on the rest of the group, and took tasks from the most heavily burdened coworker. There was never any "us vs. them", or "what can I get away with?", it was always, "Let's get this task done as well as we can, as quickly as we can."

I'm going to miss the Engineering group a lot.

But, it was time to move on.