Sarah Granger

June 27, 2007

Mercury News on Mommy Wars

Filed under: blogging,business,parenting,women — Sarah Granger @ 10:34 pm
Tags: ,

>I was quoted last week in the San Jose Mercury News about the “mommy wars” hype and some follow-up to the discussion on the Merc blog via a series of articles by Sue Hutchison. I wrote a lot more about it than she printed, of course, but essentially my thoughts on the topic are that yes, we have more options than we’ve had in the past but we still have a long way to go.

Most jobs are full-time in the office and that’s the only option. If you want anything other than that, you won’t be considered for the position. I understand the employer’s perspective, but at the same time, there needs to be a reality check. Jobs are going overseas to people in other countries – why not down the street to someone in his/her home? It’s not like moms are the only ones who want more job flexibility – it’s just that we have a more obvious reason that allows us to be clumped together into one category which may or may not fully describe who we are or what we want to do with our time.

Kudos to Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and author of The Mothernood Manifesto, for starting Moms Rising, an organization focused on getting this issue the attention it needs.

April 28, 2007

>Interesting Nonprofit Concept – donorschoose.org

Filed under: business,education,music,philanthropy,technology — Sarah Granger @ 11:33 pm

>Crate & Barrel sent me a letter about a month ago saying that they wanted to thank me for being a customer and that they were doing a program where customers can select where a $25 donation will go. Thinking the site would be some portal to non profits, I checked it out and also of course figuring if I can get $25 sent to another worthy cause, great. donorschoose.org actually is a very specific site where they have accounts related to education and requests by educators to fund their specific projects. They don’t always tell you where they are, but the options are quite extensive.

I chose the SF Bay Area because I have a sense of local issues here and then I selected arts & music – there were several options for different types of projects – technology based, reading based, by subject, region, etc. but that one interested me since the arts are so generally neglected in schools here. Finding thousands of proposals just for the arts, having a toddler at home who is very musical and going through the preschool selection process where I am seeking a school with a good music program that my daughter will love, I decided to search for ‘preschool music’ and the first one that came up said something about creating an environment for dance and music at a preschool and helping by purchasing a cd player and instruments for the classroom so I put my $25 gift card toward that.

You can fund the whole project yourself, of course, or add to the personal donations. What I didn’t find out is what happens if these programs are only partly funded – do they get any money? do they get some money? do they go through another process? I’ll check that out another time, but I wanted to mention it as an interesting way to be really specific about where your money goes rather than just having a blanket $25 donation going to the Red Cross and not knowing where that money will actually end up. I’m in favor of both kinds of systems, of course. Organizations need to manage their own funds in order to operate properly, but I think this is an interesting business model that provides a more local feel to contributing in the education space.

April 1, 2007

>Help Save Berkeley Landmark Ice Rink!

>If you’re a figure skating fan, could you picture figure skating history without Kristi Yamaguchi, Brian Boitano, Rudy Galindo, and even Sonja Henie? Of course not, that’s absurd! Well, the Berkeley Iceland (in Berkeley, CA) was home to all of these skaters at one time or another – some only on occasion but it has been around for 65 years. It’s now closed – land to be sold to the highest bidder and demolished for whatever purposes they choose.

Berkeley Iceland is one of the largest, most beautiful rinks I’ve ever seen. Tucked in a hidden pocket close to campus, the rink spans Olympic size 200′x100′ and includes grand stands for viewing hockey games and performances. The family who own it ran into financial troubles (rinks are expensive to maintain) after having some cooling equipment issues. So now a nonprofit group has banned together to Save Berkeley Iceland. Let’s hope they can be as successful as saving Kepler’s Bookstore here in Menlo Park has been so far.

Yes, there are rinks in Oakland, San Francisco and Dublin now that aren’t too far away for skaters, but none of them is quite like this one. It truly is a historical building. This Thursday, a group meets in the City of Berkeley to determine whether the building can become an official landmark. Whether that has much bearing on its fate remains to be seen, but if you love figure skating, please consider helping Save Berkeley Iceland turn it into an environmentally sustainable rink that will last another 65+ years.

March 8, 2007

>Lessons in Internet Culture on Tomorrow’s "Good Morning America"

Filed under: business,culture,technology,TV,writing — Sarah Granger @ 3:30 am

>I was interviewed today as an expert on Internet culture for a segment on “Good Morning America” tomorrow morning about Internet defamation. The piece is related to the Washington Post article, “Harsh Words Die Hard on the Web” that broke today about law students who believe that derogatory misinformation online hurt their chances for jobs after law school. I’ll blog more about this issue later after seeing the segment – there’s a lot to be said about the dangers involved, especially for young people. I was told the video would most likely be online later in the day.

February 19, 2007

>Online Account Nonsense

Filed under: business,finance,security,technology — Sarah Granger @ 7:38 pm

>About once a week, I find myself creating a hand full of new accounts for various sites that I may or may not ever use again. And then there are the couple that expired or were purged that I have to renew. Of course also we can’t forget the passwords that need to be changed – which I’ll admit even as a security professional, I’m not as on top of as I should be.

Today, I decided to count all of the accounts I have for sites that I have to date. Not including client accounts or ISP/telephony – just things like containerstore.com and blogger.com – I have over 225. As someone who learned about e-commerce before it existed, I’m still mind-boggled by this. Who can keep track of these things in a secure, organized fashion without being overwhelmed?

Options?
a) Use a site that aggregates passwords that better be damn secure if you have any kind of financial or personal data in it
b) Save passwords in an insecure but easily accessible location
c) Use the same password for multiple accounts
d) Create fake email accounts that are really anonymous or have pseudonyms to use for as many as possible

These still each have their own problems. But what’s the alternative? Don’t read news online, don’t conduct business transactions online, don’t use your own identification for your searching? It’s tiresome…

February 8, 2007

>iPlane, iPlane!

Filed under: business,technology,travel — Sarah Granger @ 8:01 am

>In November, Apple announced partnerships with a number of airlines to provide iPod connectivity. The following day, Air France and KLM denied they were going to offer such service, saying it was only in initial discussions. Delta stuck with it and and now supposdly United and Continental have joined the iPod airmiles club.

Now, according to Budget Travel Online, all three airlines plan to install seat connections in planes by this summer. No more bad, censored movies with pilots cutting in to provide commentary on landmarks you’ve seen a hundred times over gritty, cheap headsets.

Or if you don’t want to wait, depending on the type of plane you’re on and its jacks, you can get the Monster iAirplay. It works with auto cigarette adaptors as well as airplane seat adaptors and has gold contacts for
higher quality.

February 5, 2007

>More Women in Politics; Less in High-Tech

Filed under: business,health,parenting,politics,technology,women — Sarah Granger @ 9:20 am

>It’s great that we have a woman as Speaker of the House and finally a financially viable woman candidate for President, but in another area that has always been male-dominated, technology, women are on the decline again, according to a silicon.com article by Steve Ranger (sounds like he should be a relative).

An organization called Intellect conducted research that shows women now fill 16% of tech jobs vs. 18% two years ago. Ouch. I really thought it was higher than that by now. Supposedly a lot of the attrition is at the executive and upper management level. I don’t doubt that. Supposedly Intellect is working on an action plan to develop better industry practices that foster things women want like a more flexible workplace.

I’ll admit it – I work for myself mostly because I’ve had a difficult time finding a flexible enough workplace to suit my needs. Some of it is because I’ve suffered from repetitive strain injuries (carpal tunnel, tendinitis, etc.), but now that I’m a parent, I have other needs that match those of many other women. And although I enjoy being self-employed and choosing clients myself, I can’t help but wonder what other avenues my career might have taken had there been more flexible opportunities at larger organizations – in or out of high-tech.

December 28, 2006

>Merger Mania

Filed under: business,sfbay area — Sarah Granger @ 9:18 am

>Chuck pointed out something absurd to me the other day – the local newspaper jobs page is now the (I kid you not) “San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com Yahoo! hotjobs Career Section”.

Yeah, that’s right. They merged 4 companies into one and everybody got top billing. Of course this is just down the street from the SBC PacBell park Giants Stadium in South Beach/Mission Bay by SOMA.

What happened to good, old fashioned monopolizers like AT&T gobbling up other companies and dropping their names the next day?

December 24, 2006

>SOMA Twins To Tower Over San Francisco

Filed under: business,real estate,sfbay area — Sarah Granger @ 11:13 pm

>Paul Boutin <a href="http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2006/12/22#a1649
“>reported Friday that two buildings to meet the #3 in height in the US were proposed to the City of San Francisco. The Sears Tower and Empire State building would be the two taller structures. It’s actually 5 buildings in total – “… two 1,200-foot towers, two 900-foot structures and a 600-foot companion.”

Here’s the <a href="
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/21/BAGUNN44C07.DTL”>Chronicle article about it. According to SFGate, the two towers will be 350 ft. taller than the Transamerica building. They are to be built at the corner of First and Mission. From my real estate research in the area, that’s about as seismically stable as you can get in San Francisco – right at the base of Rincon Hill – solid rock as opposed to the sandfill you find a few blocks away in South Beach.

November 22, 2006

>H-1B Visas & Skill Bill Abhored by Programmers

Filed under: business,technology — Sarah Granger @ 7:53 am

>There’s been some talk in computer programmer circles (blogs and Dave Farber’s Interesting People list) about the possible passage of the SKIL Bill (Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership – S.2611, along with its companion, HR5744) and what it will do to the high-tech industry. And what amazes me is that it seems like there aren’t any programmers in favor of this bill. Essentially the idea behind the bill is to gradually increase the number of available H-1b visas and continue with current loopholes that allow these workers to be paid below market wages.

The problems that have been recorded are: a) low pay means companies will seek out h-1b staff rather than pay local citizens fair market value, b) companies don’t go to the trouble to get these people green cards because then they’ll leave and go somewhere they can get higher wages, c) this is reducing the incentive for employers and legal residents to go out and become more skilled themselves so they can get jobs here, and d) the people who work here on the visas then return to their home countries and open up competitive enterprises.

Rather than coming across anti-globalization, suggestions have been positive in favor of more green cards to get skilled workers to come here and stay here rather than go back. I’m not sure how that affects people already here, but it does seem to me from what I’ve heard about companies in Silicon Valley and the immigration process that anyone who has a visa who wants to go through the citizenship process to actually become a citizen is having a more difficult time with it than necessary.

Aren’t these the people we want to come here rather than the unskilled workers who sneak across the border and then work illegally without paying taxes, use medical services that we pay for, etc? This is not a rhetorical question – immigration is one of those sticky issues that I’m not well versed in, so I would like to hear other peoples’ thoughts on this subject.

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