A few months back I purchased Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher of the Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science.

This book had been described to me as “Required reading for women in IT.”

It’s not. [lj-cut]

It’s a wonderful book detailing the work at Carnegie Mellon and institutions around the country to boost the number of women in Computer-related education programs. It does a great job of outlining the problems many women face when confronting computer science in primary schools and universities. It provides solutions for encouraging women in these places promotes a culture different than the typical “white male hacker” image that is so often broadcasted.

I think this is a book that needed to be written. If the view toward women in IT is going to change, a fine place to start is on an institutional level where progress can be monitored and methods for attracting and keeping women in IT programs tweaked in a controlled environment.

This book is required reading for anyone working to create a computer-related education program that attracts women.

But required reading for women who are already working in IT? The book was not written to address the real issues women who have or are trying to build a career in IT face. There are only two reasons I can think of that someone would think it was required reading:

1. All women in IT feel like they’re “the only one”

I would find it difficult to believe that a woman heavily involved in IT would not have encountered any of the many online groups composed of women and involved with encouragement and mentoring if it’s something they were concerned about. There is LinuxChix, WorldWIT, various open source sub-projects that target women (Debian Women, KDE Women…), GenderChangers, just to name a few.

And if anything, this book made me feel more isolated. I fall into many computer nerd stereotypes, I have many of the same hobbies as my male counterparts. The book does not focus on girls like me who just love computers but instead it tends to focus on the generic pool of intelligent women who could do CompSci but instead go into other field.

2. All women in IT are involved with and concerned about women’s issues

Again, not true. Not every women involved in IT is working to break down the gender barriers. Not that they’re opposed to it, but they’re just like any other geek who loves computers, just because they’re a woman doesn’t mean they have to be a feminist.

In fact, I would consider myself someone “involved with and concerned about women’s issues” in IT, and reading the entire book was a bit much. I would have been happy with an article :)[lj-cut]

Back on October 19th I wrote an entry with the subject Returning to Healthy Habits. There was tons of good advice in the comments. The entry has been very helpful getting me on the right track and knowing what bad habits I need to target and deal with.

Now that the holidays are over I think it’s up for an update on how I’m doing.[lj-cut]

The good news is that I have been very restrained when it comes to the sugary snacks at work, which I’m quite proud of because there were so many around the office during the holidays (and the holidays won’t end! There are still new boxes of chocolates and candies every day!). I haven’t been buying soda at all at work, just drinking water, tea and coffee. There has been no prolonged stress or depression that makes me want to run to food for comfort. And Michael has been cooking so we’ve been having more healthy meals and fewer “I’m too tired lets go out/get take out” evenings. Best of all, because of these changes my stomach hasn’t been bothering me lately and I haven’t put on any more weight in these past 3 months.

The bad news? Pennsylvania Breweries 3rd Edition, By Lew Bryson, need I say more? The holidays – I might have been well-behaved at work, but I seriously indulged when we went on vacation. I’m still tired a lot, I think this is also a carry over from the vacation, it’s easy to get used to being lazy. I haven’t developed any exercise routine, and since it’s winter now I haven’t been able to take walks at lunchtime, so I’m less active than I was when I wrote that entry on October 19th! I also have no good snacking/meal/grazing routine in place yet. I started bringing fruit to work, this went well for a few weeks, but then I just wasn’t eating it, and didn’t resume the practice after I came back from vacation.

So here’s the plan:

Establish snacking/meal/grazing routine – review suggestions from October entry, experiment a bit.

Stop being so lazy and start doing some sort of exercise. I’ll start simple with situps and pushups and hit up on his offer to let me borrow his DDR mat to see how I like it.

Keep all drinking to weekends – the brewery exploring thing is very fun, I am not going to commit to giving it up. But I can quell the temptation to have a yummie ale or a glass of wine with dinner on a Tuesday.

We’ll see how I’m doing in another 3 months.[/lj-cut]

4:20 – Wake up with bloody nose, creates headache
5:20 – Cat wakes me up to feed him, I take advil
6:00 – Alarm goes off and Michael gets up
6:50 – Michael comes in room and asks if I’m OK, “I’m fine, bloody nose make head ache”
7:25 – Normal time for me to leave for work, instead I’m calling my boss saying I’ll be late
8:30 – Head still pounding, take advil, go back to bed
9:25 – Head not feeling quite so bad, shower
10:00 – Leave home for work
10:30 – Get to work over 2 hours late
11:30 – Boss returns from meeting and tells me about how she was in bed all day Saturday with a cold (“oh really, you too?”)

What a delightful way to begin my week.

At least I feel better now.

Movie night went well, the usual crowd was there, the guacamole I made went over very well – it was gone before I knew it!

2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 Tablespoons white onion, chopped
1 large or 2 small Jalapeno peppers, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 large, ripe avacados (about 1 1/4 pounds)
1 lime
1/2 cup chopped tomatos

Using the food processor, mix cilantro, onion, chilies and salt until they form a paste.
Cut avocados in half, remove pits, and scoop out flesh into food processor.
Cut limes in half, squeeze juice into food processor.
Mix/chop with food processor until it looks like guacamole!
Put guacamole into bowl and add chopped tomatos with spoon.

Yum yum. As usual we also ordered pizza and picked up a 6-pack of Yuegling Black & Tan, which I was skeptical of but it turned out to be a pretty good beer. Bob brought Firefly so we spent the evening watching that. Shortly after midnight Bob had to head out, we spent the rest of the night (until almost 4am!) just talking.

I was sick yesterday. Coughing, congested, stomach hurting, sore and tired. I slept in until 11:30, got up and had a sandwich, went back to bed and slept until 4:30. This is most unusual for me. When I finally got up and took a shower I felt better, and since Michael had spent the day cleaning while I was in bed we decided to go out to dinner.

We went to dinner at Sly Fox in Royersford. I skipped on the beer, Michael got the very hoppy Odessy Imperial IPA and actually said “This borders on being too hoppy” – which is something I never thought I’d hear him say ;) So not to miss out on beer consumption just because I wasn’t feeling 100% I ordered a growler of their Route 113 IPA to take home.

Behold, the cutest growler ever:

I still felt tired last night, ended up not getting anything useful done on my computer and went downstairs around 10 to watch The Great Escape (1963) on WLVT. I’d never seen it before, good movie. I was most pleased with the fact that they didn’t feel the need to always show the gruesome scenes of people being killed. Of course it’s a war movie, but so much of what I see produced these days goes for a shock factor and it’s rather tasteless and desensitizing. Of course you could argue that all war movies should be tasteless and desensitizing because wars themselves are, but I wouldn’t agree with you %)

Today I am feeling much better, going to try and do all that stuff I said I was supposed to do yesterday.

It’s been a fairly unremarkable week, but I will make an attempt to remark on it.

Recovering from vacation is tough %) My sleep schedule didn’t get as messed up as it usually gets on week-long vacations, but I do feel it. Mmm coffee.

I did some organizing for the upcoming MontcoLUG meeting, we’re going to try and hold it at the home of one of the LUG members and see how that goes. I am cautious about holding such things at personal residences as I know that can be a deterrent to attendence, but I figured it was worth a shot. I’ve met this guy who is hosting and am pretty sure he’s not a serial killer.

Evenings have been spent catching up on house stuff and things. Work has been busy and exhausting but good.

Tonight Michael is going to the men’s sweat in Malvern and I’m going to have some friends over. I purchased the ingredients for the guacamole we had at Morgana’s and I’ll be making that up with the shiney new food processor. Bob said he might swing by with beer and Firefly episodes, which would be nice.

And a side note about the guacamole – I learned this week that Coriander and Cilantro are the same plant (see here). I knew what the Coriander plant looked like when I went to the grocery store, bought Cilantro and got home to look at the recipe to find it wanted “Fresh Coriander” – damn, I got the wrong thing! I intended to go to another grocery store during lunch today to see if I could find some Coriander, and hit the internet beforehand to double-check what it looked like and the google images search led me to my discovery. Gosh, I’m such a cooking n00b.

Saturday I hope to finish catching up with everything on my plate. I need to do the budget for 2006, file away the 2005 stuff, update my resume, work on a proposal for some possible contract work… Next week should be much calmer *knocks on wood*

I came to an interesting realization when I was up in Maine for a vacation: I don’t love Maine as much as I thought I did.

I love the ocean, the mountains, the general laid-back feel of the place. I’m quite proud of being a Mainer. But every time I go back I can’t help feeling some of the bad vibes that were created up there when I was growing up. The responsibilities I had when living with my parents, the rough time I had through high school. I was sick a lot when I lived in Maine, I was constantly stressed out, I was painfully unpopular. Almost every time I see a familiar place in Maine I’m not filled with happy nostalgia, I start putting up defenses. My “hometown” doesn’t feel like Home at all, it’s a place that feels bad and must be avoided lest I encounter someone I knew from my life back then.

I’ve certainly changed a lot since I left Maine. When I lived in Maine I was a loner, enjoying reading and walks alone in the park and on the beach above all other things. For the longest time I believed I’d be happy to live out my life in a cabin in Maine full of books and cats, as one of those crazy spinster cat ladies. After all, I knew from High School that I’m not fun or smart or interesting, so screw the world, I’ll be fine by myself.

Of course, as we all learn, High School is nothing like the real world, so as soon as I left Maine my world view was turned on it’s head and it turns out I’m all those things I “knew” I wasn’t.

And now? At this point in my life I would probably be miserable in that cat and book cabin. I actually like living near a city where I can always find new people to hang out with, things to do, and groups to get involved with. When I return to familiar places in Maine all I can think about is how tiny it is, how few people there are. Where is the fun in that?

That said, I wouldn’t object to moving to a more secluded place someday, I can see myself growing out of this social butterfly stage and wanting quiet again. But I’m now quite sure it won’t be Maine that I go back to.

“Speaking of software bugs, Microsoft Windows. Need I say more?”

Marketplace on the latest Windows security vulerability “which should be patched by next week”

Today was the last day of my 11 day vacation.

I took a picture of the Toggle Coat I got from L.L. Bean.

It’s such a nice coat, I’m glad we bought it.

Yesterday we didn’t end up leaving Bob and Morgana’s until around 4PM. The drive home was uneventful, the only falling snow we encountered was around Albany (ah New York!). We got home shortly before 2AM this morning.

Michael had to leave for work at 8 this morning. I got up as soon as he left to start emptying suitcases and things. I also enjoyed one of Morgana’s cinnamon buns, she forced us to take a few home with us %)

I spent the better part of the morning doing laundry (still one more load in the dryer) and took down the Christmas tree. As is his usual routine, Michael worked a half day in the office and then came home to work from here, on his way he picked up Caligula from his mother’s house. Shortly after he came home I left to go to the mall and grocery store. It was raining so apparently half the Philadelphia area also thought it would be a good day to go to the mall, yuck. I picked up the things I needed at the mall, was unable to find a reasonably priced food processor, so I hopped over to Target. Ended up getting a Black & Decker: Textured Series 500 Watt Food Processor, we’ll see how well it works later this week and I attempt to make guacamole. I got home from all the errands around 5, made dinner while Michael learned how to use the bread maker – we shall see around 8PM how successful the first bread making attempt was.

Food processors and bread makers, boy I’m an exciting chick!

I’m now going to go downstairs and get my pajamas on, will probably just veg out to some Red Dwarf and snuggle with Michael for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow it’s back to work, and I’m ok with that, this vacation was wonderfully refreshing.

New years eve was fun. For dinner we had really great steak, like, I-can’t-believe-this-was-purchased-from-a-grocery-store great with a bit of red wine.

I pretty much wimped out when it came to drinking, had a couple bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and then switched mostly to water. Vacations always mess up my hydration schedule and I always end up dehydrated, no fun when you want to enjoy a night of drinks.

I helped Morgana prepare some amazing guacamole, which I got the recipe for and will certainly be making for in the near future. The recipe insists that freshness is the key, and I’m inclined to believe since this is the best guacamole I’ve ever had. We also had shrimp, carrots and celery w/ dip, and of course a little swedish treat of sill (herring) and a shot of Aquavit. We spent the evening watching BBC America’s New Year’s Eve binge of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Around 11PM Morgana made some swedish cinnamon buns, which are not glazed, instead they’re topped with a crushed pearl sugar (looks like the big salt used on soft pretzels). These cinnamon buns were delicious! We enjoyed them in the last few minutes of 2005. At midnight the champagne was opened and we each had a glass and stayed up talking until around 1:30 when I had to hit the sack.

And now it’s Sunday morning. The plan had been to leave early this morning, but that didn’t happen (big surprise, who plans on leaving for somewhere New Years morning?). We figured we’d stay for a bit to avoid the snow and just get home late. Hopefully we’ll be leaving soon, I really want to get home today and have a day to recover before going back to work.

It’s been a relaxing couple of days. Yesterday we thought about going to Freeport to do some more shopping, but instead decided to stay in. Michael and Bob spent the afternoon installing Debian on a computer with a fussy SCSI setup. I spent the afternoon reading journals, then went off to a quiet place and finished Transmission by Hari Kunzru, which was quite enjoyable.

In the evening we headed out to a Maurice Restaurant Francais in South Paris (Maine, ahahaha!) with Morgana and Bob. I ordered the Le Scampi a la Hollandaise (Shrimp & crab sauteed in butter, herbs and garlic w/ a Hollandaise sauce) and Michael got one of the steaks. It was a delicious meal!

When we got back to Bob and Morgana’s place we poured some wine and sat down to watch The Brothers Grimm, which wasn’t as bad as I expected, often amusing, and about halfway through I fell asleep. I don’t blame the movie, I think it was the wine. When the credits rolled Michael woke me up and I went to bed, apparently he stayed up with Morgana and watched some swedish movie.

Today was another lazy day! [lj-cut]The only thing I did was go out with Michael and Bob to a local computer shop (which was in a house, he’s a local guy who mostly spends time fixing harddrives and clearing off viruses for people in the area – ah Maine!) and then to the grocery store, it was so great to see wine and liquor in a grocery store again. When we got back here we ate some lunch (leftovers from Maurice’s, yum!) and then I ran off to find a quiet spot to read while Michael and Bob hung out. I started reading Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy, which is turning out to be a delightful read.

Now I’m sitting at the computer again, just chatted with about the weather. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow and tomorrow is when we’re driving home, oops! We’ll see how the weather is in the morning, it shouldn’t be too bad, but we might need to alter our route so that we don’t take the scenic route through the mountains of PA.

It smells so good in here, Morgana’s cooking some steaks for dinner, and a bit later Michael’s gonna help out with making guacamole yay! We’ll be celebrating the new year with good food, good friends and good beer wine and liquor!

Happy 2006 everyone![/lj-cut]