Flora writes:

found your blog googling ’27” washer dryer 26″ hallway’ and am in
awe of your story about disassembling and reassembling your LG washer
and dryer. We’re currently dealing with a similar situation. I won’t
bore you with the details but basically, we decided to buy a Samsung
laundry pair because, in the store, both machines measured 26 3/4
inches and our staircase is 26 3/4 inches at most. We tried getting
them delivered and met some very rude and condescending delivery
people who were not cooperative at all. They wouldn’t even try getting
the machines through the first door which was 27 1/4 inches wide. They
took the machines back and now we’re faced with the decision to get
them redelivered or returning them and beating our dirty clothes on
rocks (or something). I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more
about your experiences with disassembling your machines. Was it really
difficult? Do you know if there are professional technicians who would
do that kind of work for people like me? Did you find the service
manuals really helpful? I imagine that this isn’t the first time this
has happened to people so I wish there was more of a support system
out there for those of us with horizontally challenged hallways and
stairways.

From Appliance adventures

Oh dear. Yes, that is a challenge. As you can imagine, disassembling a machine and squeezing it down a narrow hallway will void your warranty and rough up the hallway, so it can be a tough decision to make. We decided to go for it because we had the budget for an experiment like that and we preferred to take the risk instead of spending time and money on either coin laundry or plumbing renovations, but your mileage may vary. This is not professional advice, so always exercise your judgment.

When we were thinking of doing this, we didn’t know any appliance repairers, but you might want to call around. Surely there must be people who are happy to do this for a fee. =) If you need to do it yourself:

Look for the service manuals for the washer and dryer you want to get or you want to buy. This may take some digging around because there are plenty of sites that will charge you a fee for the service manual, but you may be able to get it for free. If you don’t find the one for your exact model, you might find one for a similar model. Make sure you get a service manual that shows disassembly, not just a user’s manual that describes how to operate the machine. Also make sure you have a pair of work gloves with good grip, lots of things you can label and put screws into, and all the tools you’ll need, such as screwdrivers, clamps, and wrenches.

Take care when lifting the machines. A dolly can be very helpful. Lift it with another person. Gloves can help, too. You may need to take it out of the box in order to get it through the door. If so, look at your doors and corridors for anything that might get in the way, and remove them if possible. (We scratched the front of our washing machine with the door closer we’d forgotten to remove.) Think about the more scratchable sides when planning how to carry the machines in, and make sure that the path to your intermediate disassembly area is clear.

Confirm the machine turns on before you disassemble it. If your machine is dead on arrival, you want to know before you void the warranty.

Follow the instructions for disassembling. Read and understand all the instructions before you start. Make sure the machine is unplugged. Take lots of pictures. Label all the containers you use for storing screws. Label any wires you unplug. We used plastic containers for screws and masking tape for wires, writing down positions with a black marker. Wear the gloves whenever possible. There can be lots of sharp edges inside a machine, where they don’t expect anyone but trained technicians to poke around. You can bring parts down separately. This also makes it easier to move the machine down.

You may need to squeeze the chassis in order to get it through your narrow hallways. Remove trim that might get in the way. Consider taking out drywall. Expect that the paint will be scraped, and that the machine will also get a bit scratched. If it’s no longer square once it gets to the laundry room, hammer or nudge it into being square again.

Reverse the instructions in order to assemble the machine again. Hook everything up. Plug in the machine and see if it starts up. If it doesn’t, you may have an expensive paperweight. Sorry.

Run a small load or run through the test cycle in order to confirm that things work. Look for signs of leaks or missed connections, and be ready to turn the machine off just in case.

From Appliance adventures

W- says that it really helped that he disassembled the broken washing machine in order to get it out of the laundry room. The service manuals I found online were fantastic, too, with clear, step-by-step instructions and diagrams. Sometimes it was hard to find the part they were referring to because we didn’t know what it looked like, but going back and forth between close-up diagrams and the exploded parts list solved the problem.

Plan for this taking at least a weekend, and keep kids and pets away.

The good news is that if you successfully manage to get your laundry pair through your hallway and down your stairs, laundry becomes a whole new experience. We laugh about the laundry adventure whenever we do a load, and I still can’t get over how quiet the new machines are compared to the ones we had before. Is it weird that laundry is one of my favourite parts of the weekend?

Good luck!

Related:

• The great washing machine adventure
• Ten lessons learned from disassembling and rebuilding our washing machine

2011-02-14 Mon 08:28

People often tell me they’re worried about finding enough material for their blogs. The truth is, there’s so much you can write about. Here are four questions that can help you think of things to share.

What do you want to learn more about? When you write about something – whether it’s completely new to you or something you’re puzzling out – you can understand it more deeply. Write about what you’re figuring out. Write about how you’re figuring it out. Write about what you’re learning along the way. (Sharing is an excellent way to learn even more – people often comment with better ways to do things!)

What do you want to change? This is like writing in order to learn more, but with commitment and action. Do you want to change the way you spend your time? Think about what you do, why you do it, and how you’re going to change. Want to save more? Write about your goals and your progress. Writing helps you understand more, identify ways to improve, and publicly commit to growing. It also gives you a record of progress, which can be useful for motivating yourself.

What do you want to share with other people? Have you solved a problem that other people will probably run into? Save people time by sharing your solutions. Do you have a tip that will make it easier for people to do things? Share that. Do you have a passion you’d like to teach others? Share that.

What do you want to remember? Write about the memories you want to be able to revisit. Write about the feelings and reasons you may want to review. Write about tips and solutions you’re likely to need again. Write for yourself. It’s okay.

I tend to write posts that combine these questions. For example, my reflections on what I do for fun help me learn more, change, and remember why I want to change. If sharing the process inspires others, that’s a neat bonus.

How about you? What do you want to learn more about? What do you want to change? What do you want to share? What do you want to remember?

More tips on how to have tons of topics

2011-02-09 Wed 06:01

I’m glad whenever I find myself disagreeing with someone. Sometimes I change my mind, learning more in the process. Sometimes I understand my own reasons better, and learn more about why I think what I think. As long as I disagree well – in an argument instead of a fight, clearly presenting reasons and understanding alternatives – then I grow in the process.

Henry Will sent me a link to this Harvard Business Review blog post on teaching yourself to trust yourself.

…take the time, and the quiet, to decide what you think. That is how
we find the part of ourselves we gave up. That is how we become
powerful, clever, creative, and insightful. That is how we gain our
sight.

It reminds me of this slim book I tucked into my library haul: Anna Quindlen’s Being Perfect. Here are some excerpts:

p.12: Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and
ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion. But at
one level it’s too hard, and at another, it’s too cheap and easy.
Because all it really requires of you, mainly, is to read the
zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be and to assume the
masks necessary to be the best at whatever the zeitgeist dictates or
requires.

… But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or
interesting, or great, ever came out of imitations. What is relaly
hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning
the work of becoming yourself.

Connect that with this excerpt from Everyday Ethics by Joshua Halberstam:

p109: We live our lives within a changing moral climate, and the
temptation to adapt can be overwhelming. … The moral nonconformist,
however, pays little attention to the popularity or unpopularity of
his moral positions. He is–it’s embarrassing to talk this way in our
cynical world–after truth, not applause. Genuine moral nonconformity
is difficult to achieve and difficult to maintain. Don’t be too quick
to assume you’re already there.

It isn’t easy to figure out what one thinks.

For me, writing and drawing are the best ways to sneak up on myself. In conversation, I’m sometimes too malleable. I catch myself listening for approval. Even when blogging, I catch myself refreshing the pages, looking for comments, looking for validation. Because the feedback for writing tends to be slower and more in-depth than the reactive cues of conversation, though, I have more time to think about my reflections and develop them. I can also slow down and untangle the feedback on my message from the feedback on my way of delivering it.

When I can form a tentative understanding of a topic, then test it in discussion with other people or in contrast with other positions I read, then I gain a little more confidence that my reasons are rooted in more than the urge to agree or disagree. Running into the imperfections of my understanding is part of the adventure of becoming myself.

Tying it all together into tips for myself and for other people this might help: Feedback might be about your message or about your delivery. Be clear about what kind of feedback you’d find the most helpful – usually feedback on delivery, if you want to keep your message authentically you, although content-related feedback can also help you recognize what you resonate with. Don’t be limited by the idea of perfection or the need for agreement. Test yourself and learn how to trust your thoughts.

—

How are you teaching yourself to trust yourself?

2011-02-06 Sun 21:16

One of the topics of great interest during the Nerd Girls panel at Lotusphere 2011 was that of appearance. How important is grooming? What about first impressions?

People shared the usual advice: Dress appropriately. Be yourself. Neatness counts.

Like the way I skip fluffy guest posts full of cliches, I try to avoid sharing the same thoughts you’ll find everywhere else. So I found myself thinking about one of the points raised, which you don’t encounter that often.

One of the participants had observed that “booth babes” at a tech convention can drive people away. My take-away from that is that *you should make sure that what you communicate with your appearance supports what you want to communicate.* Too much attention to appearance can conflict with your goals. You can dress to blend in or you can dress to stand out. Suits help you build rapport with people who are more comfortable with suits. Jeans and a geek T-shirt help you build more rapport with people who are more comfortable in jeans and T-shirts.

Tweaking convention can support your goals, too. I’ve turned up at technical get-togethers in brightly-coloured ethnic clothing to make several points along the way: a. it’s okay to bring personal interests into the tech world, b. it’s okay to be a girl, c. there are people here from different cultures, and d. it’s good to have fun. That this made me easier to spot in a crowd was an excellent bonus, and it worked really well.

Know what you want to say, and make sure your appearance supports it. Re-think what you want to say, too. For example, if the path towards becoming an executive requires expensive suits and other status symbols, it might not be for a person who disagrees with dry-cleaning, at least until people create better washable suits. (Or you can pick a different uniform: black mock turtlenecks and jeans totally works for Steve Jobs.)

I dress for minimal thought during most days, for either blending in or standing out during get-togethers, and for practicality when travelling. Slacks, blouse, sweater/blazer, and scarf give me a good uniform for the workweek. If I’m speaking at a conference, I might dig out my cream suit. If I’m attending a crowded event, I might wear a red top or bring a hat. If I’m travelling, I pack my Tilley’s Endurables businesswear: hand-washable slacks, blazers, and blouses that will dry overnight in a pinch. I wear flat shoes for comfort and boots for warmth. These routines mean that I need to spend very little time thinking about what to wear.

There’s a limit to how much time, money, and energy I want to spend on appearance. I’m not going to spend on make-up, cosmetic surgery, or designer items. I suppose going to a dermatologist or having frequent facials could help my face clear up, but it’s no big deal. I won’t experiment with body ink, piercings, or hair colour. The gradual onset of gray hair won’t be dyed away, and the wrinkles will be welcomed. (I do invest energy into making sure I get the kind of wrinkles I want: more smile lines than frowns! =) ) This is partly because I have other priorities, and partly because I want to help build a society where these things matter less, where we don’t shame people for appearance or age or lifestyle choice.

—

Thinking about this further, I realized that I’m not really interested in the conventional approach to thinking about appearance. This topic usually focuses on: “How can I get other people to think better of me? How can I increase my chances for a raise or a promotion? How can I project more status and confidence?”

For that part, my questions are more along the lines of “How can I stay true to my values? Are my goals in line with those values and priorities?” And there’s another, much more interesting question for me: *”How can I correct my biases?”*

Our biases around attractiveness reduce the quality of our decisions. People get dinged for being too fat, being too old, being too plain, and even being too attractive. Women are more harshly judged than men, and are the target of much body-policing from advertising, media, coworkers, friends, and even themselves.

I’ve received plenty of privileges. I’m young, female, enthusiastic, and easy to get along with, and that has almost certainly helped me do what I do. I have plenty of mentors while other people (perhaps less cheerful, perhaps less “cute”) It sometimes works to my disadvantage. There are areas of consulting that I probably won’t focus on until I have more gravitas, if ever.

I also carry biases. There’s that preference for people who are cheerful; people with symmetric, angular features; people who are trim; people who carry themselves with confidence. I work against these preferences, pull my attention away from that so that I can focus on other factors, try to separate seeing from thinking. (I indulge this bias with my husband, though, whom I think is very handsome, and with whom I have the license to look at as much as I’d like; but I always make it clear that I love him for much greater reasons.)

Likewise, there’s dealing with that reactive judging of people who frown a lot, people with weaker postures, people who are overweight, people who dress inappropriately… I work to separate negative perceptions and reality so that I can make better decisions. There’s ableism, sexism, ageism, racism, and a million unnamed stories we tell ourselves without examining them closely.

You can eliminate the visual aspect through teleconferences, but that doesn’t solve the problem. We joke about everything sounding smarter when said in a British accent, but accent stereotypes do influence judgment. I’m glad that accents are getting more mixed up now, what with people mixing cultures and people getting cross-trained in different accents. It helps challenge that bias. Then there’s confidence and pitch and vocabulary and fluency…

Paying attention to and adjusting for all these biases is partly why I like the move towards virtual connections, particularly during the beginning. If I can’t see or hear people, I can more easily focus on what they say. However, the Internet replaces one set of biases with another. Instead of being influenced by appearance, I’m biased by how articulate someone is – and that’s tangled up in class and education and culture and the availability of leisure time and the ability of people to access this technology.

It isn’t easy to separate all these factors, and I may never be able to do it completely. There’s a bit of shame in it too, when I realize how many of society’s messages I’ve internalized into these quick impressions of other people.

I want to make better decisions. I want to be able to see the best in people, unclouded by the preconceptions I carry. I might never be able to eliminate my biases, but I can recognize them and slow down when they might be in play. If I slow down and understand, for example, how my first impressions colour my decisions, then I can clarify my reasons and reject invalid ones.

You’ll find plenty of books about how to groom yourself for particular kinds of success. Wouldn’t it be interesting to build a society where this matters less?

Colander photo (c) 2010 Ben Hosking – Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

2011-02-05 Sat 08:40

This was my first Lotusphere, and it was a blast. Lotus has such an active, passionate, experienced community around it. Heading to the conference, my goals were:

• [X] Learn more about Lotus Connections adoption and APIs
• [X] Learn about IBM’s strategy and innovations
• [X] Get a sense of the ecosystem around Lotus (partners, clients, etc.)
• [X] Meet people and make personal connections
• [X] Brainstorm and share insights
• [X] Show my appreciation for the cool work people do
• [X] Learn more about conferences and presentations
• [X] Fulfill my room monitor responsibilities

Here’s what I took away from the sessions and BoFs I attended:

Clients are interested in collaboration and have lots of adoption insights. We’re starting to see interesting case studies from clients. In addition to reporting excellent returns on their investments, clients shared qualitative feedback, such as stories of pilot groups who couldn’t imagine giving up the tools. Successful clients used executive support, communication plans, mentoring, metrics, incentives, role models, and other techniques to help people make new forms of collaboration part of the way people worked. sketchnotes from the birds-of-a-feather session on adoption

LotusLive is awesome. LotusLive currently includes web conferencing and parts of Lotus Connections. LotusLive Labs includes a technical preview of LotusLive Symphony (collaborative document/spreadsheet editing), Slide Library, and Event Maps. (I wish I’d seen Event Maps when I was planning my Lotusphere attendance!) Granted, Google Docs has been around for longer than LotusLive Symphony, but I’m curious about the ability to assign sections for editing or review.

Activity streams and embedded experiences are going to change the inbox. I don’t know when this is going to go into people’s everyday lives, but the idea of being able to act on items right from the notifications will be pretty cool – whether it’s in an enriched mail client like Lotus Notes or a web-based activity stream that might be filtered by different attention management algorithms. It’ll be interesting to figure out the security implications of this, though. It’s already a bad practice to click on links in e-mail right now, so full embedded transactions might encounter resistance or might open up new phishing holes. Project Vulcan is worth watching.

People are already doing interesting things with the Lotus Connections API. Embedding Lotus Connections content / interactions into other websites, adding more information to Lotus Connections, using different authentication mechanisms… people are rocking the API. The compliance API that’s coming soon will help people do even more with Lotus Connections interactions, too.

The next version of Lotus Connections will be even cooler. I’m particularly excited about the idea blogs and the forum improvements, which seem tailor-made for the kind of collective virtual brainstorming we’ve been doing in Idea Labs. Idea blogs are straightforward – a blog post or question with comments that can be voted up or down – but they’ll go a long way to enabling new use cases. Forums will also have question/answer/best answer support.

Sametime Unified Telephony rocks. I need to find out how to get into that. I like click-to-call ringing everyone’s preferred devices, easy teleconferences, and rules for determining phone forwarding.

Lotus Notes and Domino are getting even more powerful. XPages looks pretty cool. I’ll leave the rest of the commentary on this to other bloggers, as my work doesn’t focus enough on Lotus Notes and Domino for me to be able to give justice to the improvements.

The Lotus ecosystem is doing well. Lots of activity and investment from partners and clients.

Analytics + research = opportunity. Interesting research into attention management, activity streams, social network analysis.

Lotus geeks are a world of their own. It’s amazing to spend time with people who have immersed themselves deeply in a technology platform for almost two decades. There’s a depth and richness here that I don’t often find at technology conferences. There’s also a lot of tough love – people like IBM, and they’re not afraid to call us out if we’re not clear or if we seem to be making mistakes. =)

Notes from conversations

The hallway track (those informal encounters and chance connections) resulted in great conversations. For me, the highlights were:

• Being adopted by various groups – so helpful for this Lotusphere newbie! Special thanks to @alex_zzz>, @belgort, @billmachisky, @branderson3, @ericmack, and @notesgoddess for bringing me into fascinating conversations.
• Andy Schirmer walking me through his task spreadsheet with eight years of task data summarized in some very cool graphs. I want to have data like that.
• Talking to Hiro about crowdsourcing and sharing the cool things we’ve been doing with Idea Labs.
• Seeing all these people I met online. Finally getting to meet Tessa Lau, Bruce Elgort, Julian Robichaux, Mitch Cohen, and other folks, too! It’s great to be able to connect with people on a personal level, thanks to blog posts and Twitter. (How do people manage to keep up to date and remember all of this stuff? I felt all warm and fuzzy when people congratulated me on the recent wedding, and I wished I remembered more tidbits about them. Working on that!)
• Being reminded by David Brooks and other early adopters that I’ve been around from the beginning of Lotus Connections. (Okay, David did that in a BoF.) It seems Lotus Connections has always been around. <laugh>
• Joining the geek trivia challenge. The questions about television and comics went way over my head, but it was good to spend time with other folks, and I had so much fun. Well worth needing to figure out how to get back to the Port Orleans hotel after the conference shuttle service ended.
• Talking to Jeanne Murray and Rawn Shah about a personal maturity model for social business. Some ideas: control of recipients, trust, transparency, conflict resolution techniques, asymmetric knowledge of others, persona separation/integration, acceptance of change; overlap with leadership maturity models; context dependency of decisions…
• Talking to Bonnie John about the politics of writing about process improvement. Interesting thing to untangle. More thinking needed.
• Swapping tips on Gen Y life with Julie Brown, Alexander Noble (@alex_zzz>), Brandon Anderson (@branderson3), and others

If I get to attend Lotusphere again, I’d love to be able to stay at the conference hotel. It would be much more convenient and I’d be able to go to more of the evening get-togethers. The chances of my being able to attend again probably depend on how much of the Social Business adoption consulting we’ll get to do over the next year, and I hope we do a lot. I’d also make time to check out the showcase. I missed it this year, thanks to all that chatting.

Next actions for me

For work, I’ll probably focus on external Web 2.0 / social media site development while other groups figure out the structure for social business adoption consulting. I’m looking forward to learning from the case studies, insights, and questions that people have shared, though, and I’d love to do more work in this section.

Here’s what I need to do for post-conference wrap-up:

• [X] Go through my index cards and write additional notes
• [X] Contact people I met and follow up on conversations
• [X] Catch up with work mail
• [X] Catch up with personal mail
• [X] Write further reflections
  • [X] Time analysis
  • [X] Appearance and bias
  • [X] IBM and women in technology
  • [X] Reflections on careers, loyalty, story, and alternatives
  • [X] Presentation reflections (time for questions, presentation style, rapport, morning sessions?)
• [X] Plan my next steps

Other Lotusphere 2011 wrap-ups you might like: Chris Connor, David Greenstein, Luis Benitez (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5), Andy Donaldson, Marc Champoux (… where are the female bloggers’ writeups?)

See also: Lotusphere social aggregator, Planet Lotus, Twitter search for #ls11, Twitter/blog archive

2011-02-04 Fri 16:04

This is for http://itsc.oetc.org . Thanks to Darren Hudgins for the nudge to make this!

For Anna Simbulan (welcome to Toronto!) and others this can help along the way. =)

• Winter and clothing
  

  Toronto can be cold. Dress in layers. Long underwear, sweaters, gloves, and hats can help you keep warm. Thinsulate is better than knit when it comes to blocking out wind. Layers are better than a big coat because you can adjust the warmth depending on changes in weather, physical activity, etc.

  Winter can also be pretty grey and depressing. If you’re finding it hard to get through the day, get plenty of sunlight. Sometimes colourful things can be helpful, too.

  Things might look pretty expensive, particularly if you do the CAD-PHP conversion and think about how much cheaper you could get things at ukay-ukay or bazaars. Check out second-hand stores like Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Value Village. You can usually find perfectly good clothes, coats, and household items for much cheaper than the retail price.

  If you need to walk around downtown Toronto, check out the underground PATH.

  Find something to enjoy about winter. I’ve learned to think of winter as a season for cooking, baking, hot chocolate, and early(ish) bedtimes.

• Home and society
  

  Be prepared for homesickness. It’s a natural part of moving.

  Be prepared for cultural differences. Avoid making jokes or statements that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise politically incorrect.

  It can feel pretty lonely when your barkada and social support networks are half a world away. Check out classes, go to activities, meet people, make new friends.

  Free video-calling programs like Skype and social networking tools like Facebook help you keep in touch with old friends.

  If you want to cook recipes from home, you can find many of the ingredients in Chinatown or even in some of the larger supermarkets. For example, you can find Skyflakes, ampalaya, bagoong, and halo-halo ingredients in Chinatown. The No Frills supermarket in Dufferin Mall has Skyflakes, too.

  There aren’t that many Filipino restaurants downtown, though. Definitely worth learning how to make things at home. You may find some neighborhoods with Filipino stores (including places where you can buy balikbayan boxes). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Manila#Toronto

• Resources
  

  The Toronto Public Library is amazing. Sign up, get your library card, and use http://torontopubliclibrary.ca to get books delivered to the branch closest to you. It even has a number of books in Filipino. Check out the e-books, movies, music CDs, and graphic novels as well.

  The library has many seminars for newcomers and job-seekers. There are many other newcomer organizations, too. Take advantage of the services and training they offer, such as networking events and free training.

  Public transit works pretty well. You can even use maps.google.com to plan your route.

• Work
  

  If you’re applying for a job, it’s worth reviewing your resume and using the Canadian conventions. For example, people here don’t indicate their age, marital status, height, or weight on resumes.

  If you get stumped by employers requiring Canadian experience, consider volunteering or working in a different position for some time in order to pick up that experience.

• Finance
  

  If you’re having a hard time getting a credit card, get a secured credit card first, then use that to build your credit history. When I started, I got the TD Green Visa card. I deposited some money and that deposit was used to secure the card. Once you qualify for a better card, you can switch to something like PCFinancial Mastercard (equivalent of 1% rewards) or MBNA Enrich (3% cashback on groceries, 1% on regular purchases).

  Compare prices online. Buying textbooks or other things? Check ebay.ca and other sites before buying things in person. You can often find significant discounts online, too, and shipping is reliable. Look for free or cheap stuff on craigslist.ca or kijiji.ca, or join a Freecycle group.

  Keep some savings in a checking account as an emergency fund / buffer and the rest in a high-interest savings account. Don’t overload yourself with credit card debt. Pay off your credit card every month, if you can, and plan your spending so that you don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck.

  Enjoy life. =) There will probably always be things and people you will miss, but maybe Toronto can become a second home.

  —-

  What other tips would you add?