Michigan and Indiana Recap

Check out this short slideshow of my trip to Indiana and Michigan. I always love visiting the Midwest and being reminded that there is sooo much green in this world. But, of course, I'm ever so happy to be back home!

Knitting in Michigan

This purple blog of yarn is my latest traveling knitting project. It's a little shrug/sweater that I'm creating as I go. I got the basic measurements from Peony Knits and threw some yarn in my luggage just before hopping on the plane to Indiana/Michigan.

I'll be back in a little while after I finish my presentation for this conference I'm at.

Meanwhile in this corner

Let's take a quick break from our normal scheduling of craftiness and Midwestern oddities to explore this interesting idea.

Joel Spolsky from Joel on Software has lately been describing the business processes of getting an innovative software created and to the market. Today he was describing the software developer's frame of mind in the final debugging phase where they attempt to find and fix every single. tiny. detail.

And as you fix more and more of these little details, as you polish and shape and shine and craft the little corners of your product, something magical happens. The inches add up to feet, the feet add up to yards, and the yards add up to miles. And you ship a truly great product. The kind of product that feels great, that works intuitively, that blows people away. The kind of product where that one-in-a-million user doing that one-in-a-million unusual thing finds that not only does it work, but it's beautiful: even the janitor's closets of your software have marble floors and solid core oak doors and polished mahogany wainscoting.

This has nothing to do with knitting or sewing but everything to do with my work and my dissertation. I've always loved how Joel talks about searching for and conquering all the details of a project to create that final masterpiece and it seems to apply so perfecting to my dissertation. I can't wait to get to the phase where I'm dissecting the raw data and putting it all in an order that makes sense to non-librarians and wows my advisers. But, before I get to that wonderful phase Joel is talking about, I believe that there's a different and darker phase: the stuck in the middle of the forest feeling lost phase.

See, I think I'm in that forest at work and at my dissertation. I hope know that what I'm studying will be valuable to someone someday, but right now I'm surrounded by large abstract ideas, like "change management" and "library assessment" that mean too many different things. Before I can get to the fun tasks of saying that, "My library is successful because we teach students to research and here is the proof," I need to figure out how to measure that students are actually learning.

Argh, I heard a long time ago that people tend be promoted to the level of their incompetence, and maybe this is mine right now. Joel's post is like a pep talk to me that eventually I'll figure out how to understand and measure terms such as "transformational change" and that I'll eventually even have my masterpiece of a dissertation. Until then, if you hear me whining about this process some more, please remind me of that quote above.

The Crossroads of America

Can you tell that I'm in the Bible Belt? You usually don't see cards like this one in Sunny California. At least, not at the local Kmart.



In case I haven't talked to you in person, I'm in Indiana right now. I'm visiting friends at Purdue University for the next few days and then driving up to Grand Rapids, MI (Road Trip!) for a conference.

I've got mobile blogging all set up and who knows what Midwestern peculiarities I'll stumble upon. Stay tuned for more fun pictures of tractors, hand-painted signs and fields of wheat.

By the way, if anyone knows of cool knitting groups in Grand Rapids, please share with me. I have much procrastinating of my dissertation to accomplish.

My Excuse

Dear Interwebs,

Please excuse Erica from posting on her blog today. She had such an amazing birthday yesterday (the big 30!) that she is still loopy in the brain. She also cannot post today since she is expected at lunch soon with her gal pal and then later tonight must meet the person responsible for her loopiness for Movies in the Hollywood Cemetery. She promises to come back to the blog soon when her brain gets out of the clouds.

Until she returns, please also wish her sweet twin sister an equally Happy Birthday!