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Today on my bike ride home, I caught myself thinking "when I make it down to 70 kilo, I'll reward myself with shoes." Which basically wins the award for most stereotypically girly thought in a while. (Might be these though, which I kinda suspect loses the girl-points again.)
And meanwhile in gender issues, I realized the other day that we're now down to I think six female engineers in my office counting me, which is kinda sad given the double or triple digit number of total engineers in the office. In the "see something broken? well, fix it" engineering spirit, I'm thinking the solution for me is getting involved in our recruiting, probably -- because while I think the type of girl who goes into comp sci and sticks with it already isn't going to be intimidated by a room full of just men, I also think it's good for everyone, men and women, to be aware that there really really are women in our eng organization. Visibility and whatnot, right? Active women eng is a step in the journey towards the world where it's just as normal for a girl to be a software engineer as a teacher or salesperson or secretary or whatever other popular female occupational stereotypes there are. Was reminded by a conversation with one of aforementioned other women eng that it is totally valuable to me personally and selfishly to have other women around in engineering, which is causing the vague "s'pose I should get involved" thoughts to bubble up my priority list slowly. Still behind "finish this damn feature", but getting there...
Oh, and anyone got favorite laptop recommendations? My dearly beloved Thinkpad T43 is clearly about to bite it (currently whacking it in the exact right spot is required to make it get un-stalled, and that strategy clearly can only work for so long) and I'm debating what to get next. It's got to have a good (preferably full-size) keyboard and it's got to be sturdy, which argues for another Thinkpad; I'm debating cheap and big and desktop-replacementy versus small and light and limited (would have to get a usb optical drive, probably? or hell, a desktop media center machine for that sort of stuff) but portable. The Roommate has an X300 that I'm kind of eying -- but do I really need ultraportable? I've never minded hauling this one around all that much... hmm.
And meanwhile in gender issues, I realized the other day that we're now down to I think six female engineers in my office counting me, which is kinda sad given the double or triple digit number of total engineers in the office. In the "see something broken? well, fix it" engineering spirit, I'm thinking the solution for me is getting involved in our recruiting, probably -- because while I think the type of girl who goes into comp sci and sticks with it already isn't going to be intimidated by a room full of just men, I also think it's good for everyone, men and women, to be aware that there really really are women in our eng organization. Visibility and whatnot, right? Active women eng is a step in the journey towards the world where it's just as normal for a girl to be a software engineer as a teacher or salesperson or secretary or whatever other popular female occupational stereotypes there are. Was reminded by a conversation with one of aforementioned other women eng that it is totally valuable to me personally and selfishly to have other women around in engineering, which is causing the vague "s'pose I should get involved" thoughts to bubble up my priority list slowly. Still behind "finish this damn feature", but getting there...
Oh, and anyone got favorite laptop recommendations? My dearly beloved Thinkpad T43 is clearly about to bite it (currently whacking it in the exact right spot is required to make it get un-stalled, and that strategy clearly can only work for so long) and I'm debating what to get next. It's got to have a good (preferably full-size) keyboard and it's got to be sturdy, which argues for another Thinkpad; I'm debating cheap and big and desktop-replacementy versus small and light and limited (would have to get a usb optical drive, probably? or hell, a desktop media center machine for that sort of stuff) but portable. The Roommate has an X300 that I'm kind of eying -- but do I really need ultraportable? I've never minded hauling this one around all that much... hmm.
