Think Pink

It is February and it is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Over the past few years, there has been a growing movement for the NCAA basketball teams to support this awareness. Even the mens teams have been seen with coaches wearing ribbons and a few players with pink shoelaces. In the women's game there have been pink warmup suits and pink shoelaces and for a couple of years now, pink uniforms [from Nike as far as I know] used for at least one game during February by many teams. [These would be the pink uniforms that UNC wore at the MD game the weekend that NCSU's Coush Yow died.] According to ESPN, more than 1000 teams will participate in this years WBCA Pink Zone initiative.

Today, while I am wearing pink and cheering on the Tar Heel women's basketball team in hopes that they will bounce back from a road loss and beat Georgia Tech today in Chapel Hill, an even bigger game will be going on down the road... Virginia at NC State for the 4th annual Hoops for Hope game which is sold out. The "the first advance sell-out in the history of the Wolfpack women’s basketball program" and something Coach Yow always hoped would happen - especially for a Hoops for Hope game.

Go Wolfpack.
Go Heels.

Update:
Pack wins 60-54
Heels win 73-50

FUDcon

I have not been training as much lately but I have been getting more involved in the Fedora Project. I attended FUDcon F11 and had a wonderful time meeting new people. I learned a lot about how the project is run and suddenly I find myself with plenty of tasks to keep me busy.

• I was already helping the docs project with general wiki maintainance (renaming, categorization, and now also patrolling) and learning about MediaWiki.
• I hope to do more with the updates to the various guides, especially the Users Guide and the Installation Guide, which will update my DocBook skills and teach me Publican.
  
• After FUDcon I found I had volunteered to herd cats - er - assist the Packaging Guide folks from a docs standpoint and that has evolved into helping with some other packaging related pages and documents as well.
• I will be helping with the transition of some content to a CMS and so am learning about Zikula and also have been invited to assist the infrastructure team (now there is a lot of opportunity to keep busy!)

It is all interesting and lot of fun. It is also a group of international people so the hours are bit interesting. I seem to find myself asleep when many of the interesting conversations occur. Or I end up staying up too late and finding that morning comes too early.

Great Museums

I have know for years that the Boston Museum of Science was a great place. Here are some things I learned this year.

• The dinosaur is "big, big, big". It also has a name I can't remember and wears a red and white scarf in the winter.
• It takes the opportunity to touch the fur of New England animals to get one glove off a small child
• Getting the other glove and the coat takes even more interactive activities - like creating dragons on the computer and "releasing" them to fly on the animated big screen. [This was VERY cool.] (Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids (Temporary Exhibit)
• Looking at X-rays is fun and apparently, so is listening to the stories of people who had X-rays taken.
• Baby chickens are cute but it is more fun to play the computer game to find the cancer in the mouse. (Human Body Connection)
• Swings in the winter are even better when no coat is required. (Science in the Park)
• The Discovery Center (between the cafe and the IMAX) is a great place for young children to take a break from the stimulation of the museum and do regular preschool like things. The staff is wonderful. We learned about rocks that start fires, are used to make toothpaste, and are heavy or light. We held the bones of a big bird that does not fly (ostrich). We learned the dance of the honey bee. We read books. And yes, the price is part of the exhibit hall ticket.
  
• The virtual fish tank is even more fun than the flying dragons.
• Even with the help of a child it is not always possible to find Waldo.
• The Discovery Center also has a great list of "exhibits that are enjoyed by children 8 years of age and younger" which was very helpful and very accurate.
• Mondays in mid January (just after school resumes) is a nice quiet time to go the museum.
• It will take more visits to see all the spectacular things.
  

A Legacy

Coach Kay Yow 1942-2009

First head coach of the NC State Wolfpack Women's basketball program.
Pioneer for women's basketball.
Competitor. Cancer survivor. Inspiration. Always a teacher.

And respected by many a rival.

Many teams across the country and probably all of the conference teams wore pink uniforms or at least pink shoelaces this week. The ones they have for Feb and Hoops for Hope. My Tar Heels wore pink with blue numbers at Maryland.

Articles that say more than I ever knew:
The announcement from NSCU: Yow passes peacefully Saturday morning
Another story from NCSU: Yow's last gift to her team
From an ESPN analyst: Yow's considerable efforts will live on
and a Year by year career from ESPN

ESPN did a nice job with the video tributes over the weekend.

All three of the major tv network local affiliates carried the on campus tribute live tonight.

-SML

flashback

I had a flashback today - to my undergrad years and the brief time I spent with the campus radio station WMFO.

Here's how it happened:
UNC Women's Basketball team is away at Georgia Tech.
The local radio coverage is an AM station that I cannot get at home after dark because I live too far away.
The local internet broadcast requires SilverLight 2.0 which is not available for my Linux boxes.
The Georgia Tech radio station - WREK - is broadcasting the game and has free online streaming.

So I am listening to the GT announcers. But it is the ads that remind me that it is a campus radio station which in turn takes me down memory lane. There are several ads for regular WREK programming. It was the ad for the program "Coffee and Sushi" that made think if college and also think that I should post.

[note: we were ahead by 15, now it is tied. I better "Go where I go, do what I do" as Woody would say.]

-SML

A Historic Day

Today was a snow day. Even if it wasn't, I planned to watch the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. So I spent much of the day caught up watching all the coverage. Even through the TV, I could feel the energy, the excitement, and the pure emotion of the people who traveled to our capitol.

The sea of people was amazing. I was remembering times that I have been to Washington D.C. and particularly when I sang with my church youth choir on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The stories told by people who participated in the civil rights movement were moving. It reminded me of when I was in junior high and we had a visitor come and tell of surviving the Holocaust. I listened to the stories that are hard to remember and the pride in the changes that have occurred and the hope that the past will not be repeated in the future, knowing that the stories must be told for change to occur.

I enjoyed listening to the history of past Presidents and past Inaugurations. I particularly enjoyed listening to Luci Johnson talk about being a teenager in the White House and of her father's contributions to the history made today.

There were cameras everywhere and I look forward to seeing many photos. It will be interesting to see which ones are famous 4 and 40 years from now. One of my favorite sites is BBC News In Pictures. Of course they did not disappoint for this historic day.

-SML

Fridays before holidays

I like working the weeks between the Thanksgiving and New Year breaks. I do not like going to the mall, especially locally. The family that I spend holidays with is all local and we see each other all the time so I am not doing an special entertaining or extra travel. I do not have kids concerts, recitals, or exam study sessions to attend. Other instructors like to take time off so work is usually available and it is a good time to pad the bank account for the slower months at the beginning of each year. If I am traveling, I can go check out the decorations of some other city - one year I was even lucky enough to be sent to NYC where I made sure to go see the show at Radio City Music Hall and the windows at Macy's.

That said, for the past few years I have been on the road not just near the holidays, but specifically the week before Christmas and trying to get home on one of the busiest Friday's of the year. I have even flown home on Christmas Eve morning to avoid the worst of a Friday night. This year I was working locally which involves a bit of a commute. It was damp, drizzly, and foggy all week making for horrible traffic and lots of accidents. It was just plain ugly. I was driving home - no sitting in traffic on the Interstate - one evening thinking that I would rather be traveling. If I was traveling I would be staying at a hotel much closer to the office. I also wouldn't know if the traffic was normal or a holiday special. And I probably wouldn't be as interested in getting back to the hotel or to dinner alone at any specific time. I was just thinking I should try harder to be traveling the week before the holiday next year...

Then I saw the weather report - snow in the mid west and north east. Flights canceled in the New York City area and Chicago. I am very glad to be at home.

Merry Christmas.

-sml