There once was a girl named...

Photos from Bay Area Derby Girls

2008-05-08T18:04:42Z

Once again Boss Hog catches some great candids before and after the game. This time he shot all in film (gasp!)

I like to win!

Lisa Lawless and Deadly Nightshade of the Oakland Outlaws.

On Vox: Oakland Outlaws vs San Francisco SHEvil Dead

2008-04-15T18:44:10Z

Tickets are on sale now for the April 26th Bay Area Derby Girls second bout of the season. This time we're back in Oakland at the Dry Ice Arena. Tickets are for sale only online, and they will sell out! Buy them now. This will be your last chance to see me skating with the Bay Area Derby Girls before my move to Seattle! The after party is guaranteed to rock.

Lisa Lawless 42

Originally posted on lisa.vox.com

Derby weekend

2008-04-07T18:53:15Z

This weekend the BAD Girls co-hosted The Big One, a California derby tournament in Davis. I put off thinking about the event just long enough to get asked to be an announcer as part of my required volunteer shift. Two days of derby, several hours of talking in to a mic, not enough sleep, a lot of beer and ribs and hot dogs. And now I need a derby vacation.

I tried to focus more on explaining what was going on in the game, rather than color commentary. I used my old choral training for annunciation and my karaoke experience for speaking in to the mic, etc. The hardest part, by far, was knowing how I was planning to end a sentence before I started it. Turns out I almost never use that skill. I also had to try very hard not to give away too much of the game to the players, or to start telling the girls how they should be playing their game ;)

The Bad Girls cleaned house in the tournament, btw.

Every time I spend time with derby I'm reminded of how lucky I am to be a part of this.

Back from Belize

2008-02-26T02:56:09Z

Had a beautiful time on Caye Caulker. Got to see a full lunar eclipse, dance at a full moon bonfire, chase after a sea-turtle, jump off a diving board, got a tan, and see another beautiful sunset on a sailboat. The highlight of the trip was when Henry asked me to marry him, and I said yes!

As the sun was setting we grabbed a private spot on the sail boat and started our usual smooching. Henry seemed more emotional than usual, which made sense once he asked me to marry him. I told him yes, with a huge smile and tears in my eyes. (The tears were from the wind, of course.)

Henry nervously fished the ring out of his pocket. After the ring was on and I dried my eyes a bit, he waved to the captain, who paused the reggae to make the announcement to everyone on the boat. We were toasted with champagne (Henry had the bottle stashed in an ice chest before we left) and more reggae.

The rest of the sunset sail was full of smiles and congratulations. The mood was perfect as the full moon rose and the sky filled with stars. We danced and drank rum punch and began our plans for the ceremony...

I know we've been dating for a bazillion years but no time would feel more perfect. I'm so happy, guys!

Thanks to henrylyne for sharing his island again, and Maile for the photos!

Six Apart is Hiring!

2007-11-21T06:52:02Z

The Six Apart Operations team is looking for a Senior Network Engineer to join the team. You should be in the Bay Area (or in to moving here) and awesome. You'll be working with the best operations teams supporting the sites you love. You wouldn't say no to the baby animals, would you?

If interested, send your resume to jobs@sixapart.com or contact me directly.

Halloween

2007-11-03T23:12:38Z

brad as Facebook and me as robot maid

I wore this costume (with skates) for a themed house party last month and I was so excited about wearing it again. I couldn't pull off the skates (Brad wouldn't allow it in his house, etc) for Halloween but I still loved it. I was originally shooting for Rosie from the Jetsons but things got a bit more, uh, modern. Full costume shot behind the cut.

These photos taken by brad and more are here.

Brad Fitzpatrick is leaving Six Apart

2007-08-08T04:57:38Z

First of all I'd like to say congratulations and good luck to Brad Fitzpatrick on the decision to make the big change and move on from his first job! As a co-worker and friend of Brad's I know he's making the best decision for him right now. Nine years is a long time to work on a single project, any project, and I've always felt it showed a certain stubborn (or masochistic) side of him to have continued to be involved for as long as he has.

When I first met Brad (21st birthday I think?) there was no way I'd have guessed we'd end up where we are today. Over the years I've worked on Livejournal as a systems administrator, gone through acquisition with Six Apart, eventually moved to San Francisco to extend my role beyond just that of a systems administrator, to my current position of Director of Operations Engineering for Six Apart. I'm extremely thankful for everything he has taught me directly or indirectly, and I have a lot of gratitude toward him for making all this possible.

Brad has done a tremendous job creating Livejournal and growing it from nothing, with the support from his family, his friends, his community and his employees. The people at Six Apart may not all have been there for the first purchase of a server, the invention of mood icons, the first power outage, the partitioning to user clusters, the horribly painful early days of implementation of memcached but some of us have!

Brad has always worked with a team of capable individuals, a group that over time was able to take on more and more of the responsibility for the community and the site. This includes decisions regarding support, engineering, financial, marketing and operations. Sometimes these decisions haven't always been the best, and we've certainly had to learn from mistakes. I have felt lucky to have had the support from Brad to help in technical decisions or problems when needed, but it has honestly been a long time since he was in a position of responsibility regarding the technical infrastructure of LJ. I'm sure it has been frustrating for him at times to not have that role, but the site has continued to run, grow and improve, in ways that he and I could never have managed between just the two of us before we joined Six Apart.

The notion that Brad has been the only major contributing force to Livejournal over the last few years is misleading. Six Apart is host to a large pool of talent whose contributions are utilized across all of our products - and other sites! Features added to Perlbal originally to help block spam for Typepad is used to help throttle bots on LJ - allowing us to have the site crawled by spiders (good for search engines) but not impact performance. Ben Trott's work on TheSchwartz is used to implement such features as instant notifications and the return of birthday reminders. hachi is our resident MogileFS expert and contributor, which we use across all our sites for reliable data storage. groknaut has taken on the not so pretty task of wrangling an unruly collection of hardware gathered through the years and retrofitting our infrastructure to something more manageable and sane.

With a history as long and exciting as Livejournal - 9 years is a long time in the tech world - it is hard to get beyond feeling that we're always trying to catch up. With the latest addition of dormando as our Mysql DBA I think we've got a better fighting chance. I'm at least glad to be rid of *one* of my many jobs. Livejournal had 700,000 users when I became the (only) Livejournal systems administrator in 2003. At that time we were struggling to keep up with unprecedented growth. Today our servers are supported by a team of more than ten very capable and motivated members of an operations team in a 24x7 environment. We've got a dedicated group of engineers on staff who use the site themselves, who care about the same subjects we hear from our users. Work continues on developing the core technologies Brad and the people working for Livejournal helped create (Memcached, Perlbal, MogileFS...) and we'll continue to use these technologies for *all* of our products. Livejournal ran with a skeleton crew of developers and systems administrators for years, and I'm glad to see that - even with Brad leaving - we're continuing to make positive changes.

There is an assumption made by many that Brad has been in a position of management for Livejournal, but as he's written, this has not been the case for awhile. In fact, long time employee Brad Whitaker has been the very capable Engineering Manager for Livejournal for some time now. Brad Whitaker started working on Livejournal a bit before me (and before he was paid for it), and remains one of the most dedicated individuals I work with. That Six Apart has continued to acknowledge his contributions to the site, and by keeping him in a key position of influence I know that they continue to trust his experience as a manager, a developer, an employee as well as a user.

So I wish you luck, Brad Fitzpatrick, in your future projects and a very sincere thank you for everything you've done, for Livejournal, for Six Apart, for the Open Source community, and for me. While your leaving is certainly symbolic of a change in the Livejournal life-cycle, I don't fear this change - and I know we'll be able to continue to grow regardless.

So that happened

2007-07-28T01:53:40Z

Have I got an update for you! But not now. For now, I want to say Happy Systems Administration Day to all you admins out there, and a huge shoutout to everyone on the Six Apart Operations team. You performed brilliantly this week.

Jobby Job at Six Apart

2007-05-08T18:09:46Z

Six Apart is looking to expand our team with another kick ass Mysql DBA. If you have experience working with Mysql in large scale systems with emphasis on high availability send me your resume please!

Job Description, etc.

You'll be working on the database infrastructure for Livejournal, Typepad.com and Vox.com in a bleeding edge technology environment. We make the infrastructure that makes Web2.0 go around.

Plus, you'll be working with me, and I'm pretty much awesome.

lisa @ 2007-04-11T07:53:00

2007-04-11T14:56:09Z

Caye Caulker, Belize

2007-04-05T21:39:35Z

Me, in love (with the puppy and a man), tan, rested, at peace, HAPPY

We stayed on a small island about 45 minutes by water taxi off from Belize City, called Caye Caulker. Tickets ran from $600-$800 (depending on how far you bought them in advance) and Henry and I stayed in a small room for $15 a night.

The island itself is 5 miles long, but most businesses and hotels are within about a square mile. There are 3 unpaved "streets" - Front, Middle, Back - and most people walk, ride bikes or drive golf carts to get around. Belize is an independent country in Central America, English is the official language, and the local population is made up of people of Mayan, African, Mexican and Spanish descent. The most common non-english language to hear on the island was Creole.

Most of my days involved sleeping as long as I could with the sun on my face and roosters crowing outside (maybe to 9am), eating a slow breakfast at the Amore Cafe with fresh fruit and drinking locally grown organic coffee. If no activities were planned, the day involved wandering around the town, sitting on the front porch in a hammock reading, riding bikes to explore the southern part of the island (with crocodiles!), drinking Belican and rum punch, eating ceviche, tanning and swimming.

I went on two different snorkeling trips, the first with Tiffany by motor boat where I got to see eels, lobster, and swim with a school of sting rays for the first time. The second trip was a full day on a sail boat with Henry and Maile. We swam with more sting rays and nurse sharks (!), more eels, an eagle ray, and schools of barricuda. The water was extremely clear and the sand very white so visibility was fantastic.

In the evening we'd go to the Split for a beer and a dip in the ocean and watch the ball of the sun dissappear over the ocean like I've never seen before.

Night time was either for going to sleep early or for hitting up the local dive and disco. We went to Karaoke twice (first night I performed the same song twice in a row?? because the dj wanted?), and dancing a few times. I learned to dance the Punta and made new dance partner friends. Even scored some digits!

There are some trips that are clearly travel, some clearly vacation, and many more that are a mix. While I've loved many places I've travelled, this was the best vacation yet. I'm still amazed at how relaxed, content and happy I was during the trip, and about how much I loved having Henry there doing the things together we love - exploring, meeting new people, trying new things, eating, relaxing. And all without computers!

All of henry's photos can be found here. Some of my favorites:

Go Slow is the motto for Caye Caulker, and you're reminded of this upon entering the island from water taxi

This gigantic bowl of ceviche was prepared for us moments earlier by Wish Willy. He had just pulled the conch out of the water, chopped it up, mixed with salsa and handed it to us with a bag of chips. After we ate as much as we could he took it away to make some stir-fry (for another customer, I assume).

Our "hotel"

Sunset with pelican

We took a day trip inland for cave tubing and to visit some Mayan ruins. The trip involved 10 of us in a van without seatbelts on this highway going 80mph. This was the most terrifying time of the trip for me - with sharks and eels behind.

In front of some ruins, the ruins of my people.

dan_erat on the porch hammock

Riding bikes to the dump, to view the crocodile. This landing strip is the only paved part of the island. We had to ride down it at one point when stuck on the other side with no way around except back to a growling dog that attacked Henry.

There were so many cute puppies on the island, but this one stole my heart. And Maile's.

Griff swings while waiting for the sunset sailboat.

This guy hangs out at this little grill all day grilling up shrimp sticks for $2.50. We thought we could get some quickly before the sunset sail but ended up having to run to make the boat (with sticks in hand! so dangerous!)

Then Jesus visited us.

Front street

Henry at breakfast on the last morning. He finally got some sun.

The "Split" at one end of the island where the best swimming is, as well as the strongest rum punch. This placed looks more like something out of the Real World Belize than what it is, an extremely casual, non pretentious awesome place to hang out and get drunk (like the rest of the island).

Like stopping to ask for directions

2007-02-08T10:24:12Z

I've been brain-deep in work for the past couple of days, but Jeremy Cole made my night by showing me his latest patch for Mysql - a progress indicator!

The Progress_rows number indicates progress within a given step of executing the query. For instance, if you run a SELECT with a GROUP BY that can’t be done using an index, you will see two cycles of Progress_rows: once with a State of “Copying to tmp table” and once with “Sending data”.

"american food" in tokyo

2007-01-17T06:36:04Z

I'm here in Tokyo for work, but the second most frequent activity is eating! We've had pizza a couple of times in the office during busy days from the Pizza Hut across the street. While the name is the same, that's about where the similiarties end. Oh, except they have the cheesy puffy crust which I vaguely remember being marketed in the states. So far I've had tastes of: Shrimp and Broccoli with a mayonaise-y sauce, Meat with a gravy sauce, Vegetables with corn and red sauce, "Korean" style pizza with hot dogs in the crust(!!) and shaved pepper on top, Pizza Carbonara which is similiar to the italian pasta dish: bacon and cheese with an egg + cream sauce. None of them were spectacular - it is Pizza Hut, afterall - but they weren't awful at all as long as I didn't think about the ingredients (especially the egg sauce). We were given packets of green chili sauce and maple honey to put on the pizza. As sides, we had fries and sweet potato fries.

The McGriddle is being advertised everywhere in the trains. One man told me he thought it was a japanese invention and was surprised I'd heard of it. I can see why he'd believe that, since it sounds more like something invented here.

konichiwa

2007-01-13T06:28:58Z

Garth (my travel partner for this trip) and I made a day trip on shinkansen to another coworker's family home in Hakone, which is famous for onsen (hot springs). The hot springs are literally running down the street! We're stopping our eating and walking for a bit of work, and later on are going to be enjoying some nabe. I just got a CNN breaking alert that said "-- Tsunami warning issued for Japan and surrounding areas after quake east of Kuril Islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says" which was pretty alarming until I realized I'm up in mountains and nowhere near Hokkaido. I've been on edge about earthquakes the whole time I've been here and have prioritized learning japanese that might help in the event of an emergency. Now I've just got to add "shark, bear, vomit" and "plane" to the list and I've got most of my irrational fears covered.

Travel woes

2007-01-11T03:14:22Z

P1100024.JPG
Originally uploaded by lisa.phillips.

I'm trying to fight a cold that's been coming on since I arrived. These are very fashionable in Tokyo this time of year, and there's an added benefit of the trains not smelling so awful during rush hour.

How to Last

2007-01-04T06:59:11Z

You probably wouldn't know it from looking at me, but I've been in a relationship with the same man for the last five and a half years. We're not married, have never lived together, and currently I live about 1,000 miles away from him.

This is surprising to me for several reasons. I didn't grow up dreaming of weddings, I've got a long line of broken marriages above me, I'm scared of any type of long term committment, and believe it or not I'm not the easiest person to date. I don't self-identify as a girlfriend or part of a couple, it doesn't bring me comfort to know that I'm completed by someone else, and I get itchy at the thought of settling. But, I'm happy with him, he's happy with me, and somehow it works... it helps that he also seems to have the tolerance of some kind of masochist.

To be honest, the years haven't been without a few breaks. We've tried quitting, we've taken breaks, we've discussed futures without each other, and every time we've come back stronger than the time before.

Somehow, we've ended up here. We're long distance, but we talk every day. We miss everyday physical companionship, but we make all attempts to see each other at least once a month. Things aren't always spectacular, but they are often enough to make them seem that much more. I've been told more times than I can count that we should break up. I've moved from talking to people who understand to running out of examples to compare us to. We've gone from rocky to smooth and rocky again, but we've also got ourselves in a nice position where we each live our own individual lives and still want to make the time to share with each other.

Five and a half years isn't really anything, really, but it is enough to have learned a few things. I don't want to make it sound easy. Or perfect. Or even better than any other relationship. But, what's the point of growing if you can't share with others?

And so, you didn't ask for it, but I'm presenting my readers with my 2007 list of How to Make it Last According to Lisa, Or At Least What Worked For Me (including a few pointers from Henry) In No Particular Order

* First of all, read this book!

(Henry and I both read this at a pivotal point in our relationship. At best, it will make you rethink your approach to your relationship, at worst, it gives you a vocabulary that can come in handy during future discussions)

* Slow dow, you'll be glad you waited

(There have been moments where it has seemed like we weren't going anywhere, that we weren't *something* if we weren't married, or living together, spending every night together, or wearing matching sweaters. But we never put those needs in front of the rest of our lives, and I'm glad. What we have now is a base on which to grow all those things, without the sense of regret that we are in a situation difficult to get out of)

* Take care of yourself first

* If you find yourself obsessing, get some exercize

(The best thing you can do when you know you're stuck is get your blood going, plus it is a bonus of helping your self esteem)

* Develop methods of relaxation that don't involve each other

* Make a healthy sex life a priority

* Choose your battles

* Continue to grow in your individual lives

* Accept and encourage growth in your partner

* Talk to each other every day

(Even if it sucks, even if it is only an email or an sms, even if it feels ridiculous, this is one that I'm always glad he makes me stick to)

* Be clear to yourself and to your partner about your expectations

* You can never give each other enough compliments.

(I don't mean the fakey stuff you say because you think you're supposed to. If you think his ass looks awesome in those pants or her breasts are amazing in that sweater - tell them!)

* Don't be afraid to talk about breaking up

(But don't obsess, either. Nobody wants to feel trapped, nor do they want to feel a lack of security. Be realistic about your future, whether or not you think it includes your partner)

* Don't go to bed mad

(Ok this one sounds ridiculous right? We read it on some list about how to have a marriage for 50 years or whatever and most of them were shit but this one stuck. It takes a lot, but ultimately it means for every fight somebody has to have the strength to step up and make things right...which leads me to...)

* Sometimes, be the first one to apologize

* But, Don't apologize unless you mean it

* Take responsibility for your part in the relationship

* Respect your right to privacy, and his too

* Take space when you need it, comunicate somehow that you're doing it, and come back when you're done.

At least, that's what I think we do. What works for you?

blogging is exhausting

2006-09-12T21:12:12Z

Roller Derby update

The B.A.D Girl All Star Team featuring yours truly

2006-06-02T19:38:18Z

Buy tickets online, or for those of you in SF you can get tickets directly from me.

lisa @ 2006-03-24T23:40:00

2006-03-25T07:41:37Z

Come see me for my first bout as an Oakland Outlaw on the Bay Area Derby Girls league
Buy Tickets Now!
April 1st
Doors open at 8:30, bout starts at 9:30

Another mail server admin request

2005-12-15T20:15:25Z

If any of you have any contacts with hotmail (msn) postmaster please contact me! They like to block livejournal mail as well.

Well we did it

2005-11-23T19:45:45Z

My first day working for Livejournal was almost 3 years ago, and it started with setting up our 3rd cabinet in the Seattle facility with Brad. Next week Matthew and a guy will be removing all the leftover equipment still sitting there, and by December 1st it'll be emtpy.

(as a side note, I met Brad 5 years ago when he moved the couple of LJ servers in to the closet "noc" at Speakeasy)

When LJ was acquired in January last year I knew eventually we'd have to move the data center. Managing multiple centers in such distinct ways isn't efficient, and we weren't able to convince the Six Apart ops team to move their machines up to Seattle. It isn't often that we physically have to be there, but I personally have installed about 1/2 the equipment in that data center so maybe I've got emotional attachment. Yes, to computers.

But to be totally honest, I really really didn't want to have to manage moving 130 pieces of equipment to another state.

We stalled as much as we could, but finally the time to move came and over the last 3 weeks we've succeeded. All of Livejournal.com is now hosted out of a data center in San Francisco (365 Main).

I couldn't give enough praise and thanks to everyone on the LJ team, the Six Apart ops team, and the most uber respect to matthew, brad, crucially and xb95. I showed up Thursday in San Fran without a lot of sleep and worked straight through until last night when we finally got to have some sushi in celebration. Mark, Artur and Brad were in the office with me almost the whole time, each of us grabbing short breaks for sleep where we could. Matthew rocked managing the team of movers for the physical move, hopping planes and joining us by phone when he could.

And thanks to anyone who has had to come in contact with me in dealing with my crabbiness and one track mind.

The LJ team really do seem to have a unique way of being able to work together without killing each other. Its not all fun and games, but we get things done and when there are problems everyone is smart and dedicated enough to solve them. I'm thankful Management also seem to recognize this and allowed us to work the way we needed to get this done.

Personally I'm beating myself up about all the things that could have gone better, been better planned, how I want to fix things going forward. But I think in general, from a users perspective, the bumpiness over the last 5 days was manageable. Correct me if I'm wrong!

There is a fair amount to clean up, but for the first time in a month I should be able to go to sleep tonight without fighting fits of anxiety. And in my own bed, too!

In personal news, my brother Mark is getting married on Saturday. I'm flying to Phoenix Friday morning and coming back Tuesday. I haven't seen the family since New Years, so I'm really looking forward to it. I'm meeting my nephew Ethan for the first time. I've been putting my personal life on hold for the last month, and I can't wait to get back to "normal."

AOL

2005-11-20T22:19:55Z

Anyone have any contacts with AOL postmaster engineers who can get us on a spam whitelist?

Championship Tickets

2005-09-30T21:48:59Z

Buy your Rat City Rollergirls Championship Bout Tickets.

October 15th. There's enough time for you San Francisco people to plan for some "working in Seattle" days and to come see me in action before the season ends.

I'll be on the news tonight

2005-09-12T22:56:21Z

Rat City Rollergirls on Komo 4 tonight!

We're also going to be hanging out at the Funhouse. If you haven't bought your semi-finals tickets you can pick them up there with no service charge!

hey!

2005-07-20T18:15:56Z

Go buy your tickets to the Saturday bout!. Its from 6-9pm. Then come buy us celebratory drinks at Jules Maes afterward!

We're not having another game until October, so stop putting it off already!

Photo by henry