interviewed by rani23

[cellio]

1. What do you love best about the SCA now?

I'd say it's the people. While I don't know "everyone" the way some people do (hi Ts'vee'a :-) ), I've met a lot of people and made a lot of friends in the SCA. While I enjoy my participation, if I were finding it fresh at this point in my life I probably wouldn't join. But I'm already here and I've known some of my friends for more than 20 years, and the SCA provides a venue and a shared context. (And it's not as if I'm not having fun in that venue.)

I enjoy Pennsic a lot -- partly for the people and partly for the concentrated dose of fun activities. I get a lot of joy out of our camp; we have good people and cool construction projects. (Why yes, I am solidly in the "create a temporary city" camp, not the "do medieval camping" camp. Could you tell? :-) )

If I ever moved to a different SCA group where I didn't know anyone, one of two things would happen. One possibility is that the local group would be rich in the activities I enjoy, such as music, and I'd dive in without having to be responsible for anything (at least right away). The other possibility is that Pennsic would be my only significant contact with the SCA. Fortunately, I do not expect to have to conduct this experiment. :-)

2. What was the last great book you've read and why was it great?

I've been trying to figure out how to answer this for a few days. Y'see, there are Great Books, which are pretty rare, and there are great books -- books to which I've had a very positive reaction (which can happen several times per year) and that might or might not work for others. It's hard for me to evaluate Great Books, so I'll talk about the most recent great book I've read.

I really enjoyed RealLivePreacher.com, a compilation of essays from the weblog of the same name. And even though I'd read most of the essays online, I enjoyed reading them again in dead-tree edition.

Despite that small matter of religion, a lot of what the preacher writes rings true for me. He's a real person telling real stories from his life, not some guy who gets up on the pulpit and makes pronouncements about how you should live. He tells those stories well, and the lessons (sometimes there are lessons, sometimes not) usually transcend religion. Sure, he's a Christian, but he doesn't make this all about Jesus. It's about people and how they behave.

The preacher has doubts, and he certainly has rough edges. I get the impression that this makes some in his congregation uncomfortable, but real people are like that. I've never met the man, but I think I would very much enjoy chatting with him for an extended period.

3. What's the most difficult thing about your job?

Two things, but they're related.

The first is getting information in a timely manner. Some of our people are very good about this; some don't realize that I (and others) need the information they're not sharing (so they're trying to do the right thing and failing), and a few are just too focused on their own work to think about anyone else, but are apparently good enough technically that not being good team players doesn't hinder their careers.

The second is getting my project to play the role it's supposed to play. We have a large body of code, and we have defined a subset of that as our SDK -- software developer's kit. This is the subset that is available to customers, and similarly it is the subset that internally-developed projects should use. However, the code base wasn't designed for this in the first place, so we can't prevent people from bypassing the SDK, and some people (but not as many as will make the claim) were here and writing applications long before we had a functional SDK, so they learned a different view of the code base and are unable or unwilling to learn about the SDK. It can be hard to change world-views.

These are related because so long as people are able to get away with bypassing the SDK, no one will consider it important enough to keep up to date on what's in it. People will check in changes that break exposed functionality without noticing, let alone saying anything or working with me on it, because -- if they think about it at all -- they say "it's only the SDK, not a paying project". We claim to be a product company, but it's been a long slow uphill struggle to get there, and we're pretty far away yet.

The product as a whole -- not just the SDK aspect -- has suffered from resource starvation and outright raiding for too long. Given a choice between doing consulting work for a paying customer and improving the product that will make that easier in the future, we have almost always chosen the former. There are signs that this is getting better now (due to some recent hiring, including a full-time project manager for the product) so I'm optimistic, but at the moment it's frustrating.

4. Is there anything you wanted to try and haven't? If so, what's stopping you?

Nothing comes to mind that isn't of the form "if I had everything to do over again". I'm generally pretty willing to try the things that appeal to me. The biggest limiting factor in any of them is likely to be time.

Ok, in thinking about this a little more, a small thing comes to mind: I would have liked to have gotten into DDR when it was popular, but was held back by the lack of an off-the-shelf implementation of the home game. If I had been able to buy everything I needed from one source and it was ready to go out of the box, I probably would have done so.

5. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Professionally, still writing software documentation and playing a non-management leadership role in whatever company I'm working for then. Physically, in Pittsburgh and in this same house with my husband and cats. (I suppose in ten years there will probably be some changes in the feline population.) Religiously, still at my current congregation, still in a leadership role (particularly with respect to worship), and -- I hope -- still working with my rabbi.

In ten years I expect to still be close to most of my current friends. There are always fluctuations -- people drift away and others appear on one's radar -- but this tends to be a slow process, and the people I'm closest to don't seem to be making plans to go anywhere. :-)

Comments

[jducoeur]

Hmm; maybe we're talking past each other. The mat is still third-party; nearly all Playstation games are. But there are at least a couple of different brands available from the same sources as the Playstations (eg, Electronic Boutique), and I've informally heard fairly good reviews of them. I could probably put you in touch with friends who have sets, if you want more details about stability.

Anyway, it's about as "off the shelf" as any console game. You go to EB, buy the PS2 and the game, and plug it together. I *think* that's all there is to it...

[cellio]

I don't know the PlayStation world at all; I've never played console games. I assumed I would have to buy (separately) the console and the game, but back when I was looking at it you also had to comparison-shop for the mats, and make modifications so that you could actually use them (like stapling them to a sheet of plywood), and not all versions of the game worked with all PS versions, and it was just way too much hassle. If someone could make a set of recommendations ("buy the following items and they will work together"), I'd appreciate it. Thanks.