Microsoft has acquired a startup called BlueStripe Software today and shuttered it. It will take BlueStripe’s technology and add it into some of Microsoft’s major enterprise products like System Center.Most of the small BlueStripe team will be joining Microsoft. Microsoft would not confirm the number of employees involved, but according to LinkedIn, about 25 people worked there. When we asked for details, Microsoft sent us this statement:

“Core members of the BlueStripe team will be transferring to Microsoft. Microsoft is not sharing further details on BlueStripe personnel. BlueStripe brings both a talented set of personnel and a strong set of products.”

Source: Microsoft acqui-hires, shuts down startup BlueStripe – Business Insider

I decided a few weeks ago to complete my term as PTA president of Ligon. Leading a PTA is an enormous amount of work and a good deal of stress, in addition. Right now I need to be reducing the stress in my life, so I opted to hand the reins over to someone else.

Was I a perfect PTA president? Hardly. I made a lot of mistakes and learned some hard lessons in the process. Still, I was the best PTA president Ligon had. I was willing to step up when no one else did.

Overall, it has been incredibly rewarding to do the job, though. I might not have heard much from the parents but I did get a huge round of applause from the Ligon staff today during their staff luncheon. The assistant principal told me he’s seen a lot of PTA organizations during his career as an educator and Ligon PTA’s by far the best he’s ever seen. It meant a lot to hear that!

I leave the PTA leadership in good hands with the incoming president, Terri Hart. I wasn’t able to pull off a PTA election at the end of the year, so I’ll stay on as the official president until the first meeting when we can make it official for Terri. She will hit the ground running over the summertime, though, with me showing her the ropes.

I also plan to continue playing a role – after all, how could I not? We’ll have both kids at Ligon next year and I will continue to play a role in the education of my kids and their classmates.

Volunteering gets into your blood, you know. It’s not easy to give it up.

Chancellor Angela Merkel got on the phone with President Barack Obama with a message that was coldly blunt: We cannot go on like this.Her government had just sent the CIA chief packing after German intelligence uncovered a spy in its own ranks. It was the second big shock to the relationship after the Edward Snowden document dump disclosed that the U.S. had been spying on her cell phone. German media was filled with daily pronouncements about the worst rupture in the U.S.-German alliance since the Iraq War.

Source: How Obama wooed back Merkel – Edward-Isaac Dovere and Matthew Karnitschnig – POLITICO

I disagree with this premise. My boss calls her colleague her “work husband.” In this case it means they work very well together.

I certainly don’t condone treating women like assistants but many men (like myself) hold their wives in very high regard and to be called a “work wife” does not necessarily mean they are seen as less than equals.

I have already provided my thoughts on equal pay, so I won’t even go there.

Litigators— lawyers who work to help clients win, or survive lawsuits—can have high-stakes careers. One female litigator’s job, however, came with a less thrilling description. “She had always been the self-appointed ‘detail-oriented task manager on the team, scheduling meetings, keeping the calendar and taking notes,’” wrote the author of a broad study on workplace inequality in law, released by American Lawyer magazine last week, about one of the lawyers who journalists interviewed. The lawyer’s male colleagues called her their “work wife.”

The “work wife” badge is a symbol of a culture in which women are seen as supporters of, rather than equal to, their male peers.

Source: Top Female Lawyers Say They Are Treated Like Assistants at Work – Bloomberg Business

One day in October 2001, I made my way to Heathrow airport to pick up the son of a family friend. This was in the days before Chinese students had started coming in numbers to the UK and a tall, skinny Chinese youth standing at the airport exit was quite noticeable.

Du Zhuang, frail and as insubstantial as plasterboard, was pushing his suitcase with one hand, and holding his phone with the other. He was not looking around, but listening to the person on the other end with single-minded devotion. On his face was the serious, almost devout, expression of someone receiving an edict from the emperor.

It was only when I was standing right in front of him that he finally looked at me, and smiled. In those days, Chinese people did not hug or exchange pecks on the cheek, while shaking hands was for grownups only.Instead, Du Zhuang passed me his mobile phone, saying, “My mother’s been waiting to speak to you!”

Hearing her shout down the phone it was as though she had jumped out in front of me. I will never forget his mother’s first words that day: “Xinran, my son is in your hands now! Remember to help him to open his suitcase, he can’t do anything!”

Source: China’s little emperors – the children without siblings | Life and style | The Guardian

I was showering this morning when I realized that the water pressure isn’t what it used to be. There is no cut-off valve for the shower (or at least, any accessible valve), so I began to wonder what might account for the weak water. It’s true that a pipe from our water heater busted last fall but that was fixed up better than new by our ace plumber, Allen Baker. There was no other water running in the house at the time, so what is left?

Then it hit me (an idea, not the water). Last year, we were on the end of Tonsler Drive and the end of the water line. When the new Oakwood North subdivision went in, it extended this water line. I didn’t notice any drop in pressure initially since the homes were only slowly becoming occupied. Now that the neighborhood is almost built out there are now a lot of morning showers competing for the same water pressure.

It reminded me of the scene from There Will Be Blood: the new neighbors are drinking my milkshake!