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Today I heard an interview with Monika Henzinger, Director of Research at Google
on WREK. It was part
of their airing of 51%, a
program that deals with topics of interest to women. They feature a
segment called “The Tech Club” that interviews women who are
scientists and engineers. That name is terrible and boring – I think
it should be called “Badass big brained science babes tell all!” Still, I like this agenda, and the young women
(like young young, I think still in their teens) who do the interviews
ask a lot of questions like “How would women get into this line of
work” and other practical concerns for girls getting into this
game. More women engineers and scientists is more good, I think. This
interview was good and cool. I did not realize that Google has an
onsite doctor and dentist (part-time, I think) and laundry, so that
employees can handle some of the concerns of their day-to-day lives
without leaving the premises. It sounds altruistic but they just want
more from employees, so all the errands that you don’t have to run,
you can sit in front of a computer. It is definitely worth listening to.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

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I got this one from Gerald Masters on DM.net – It’s time for the 2003 Big Brother Awards. From the press release:

In April 2003, Privacy International (PI) will hold the
fifth U.S. “Big Brother Awards” to name and shame the public
and private sector individuals and organizations that have
done the most to invade personal privacy in the United
States in the past year.

I know who my nominees would include but I can’t tell you or I might
be arrested for speaking out against our fine government. At my work,
I refer to them as “Little Brother.” They’d like to be Big Brother,
and they read our e-mails and IM traffic but they ain’t got that much
game. They are BB wannabes, hence the “Little Brother” moniker.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

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I just rewrote this blog to make all references to my e-mail address
point to a newly generated Sneakemail.com address. I’m drowning in
spam, a consequence of having had the same e-mail address for 6 years and using
it as my main one on web pages, usenet posts and basically all public
functions. Even though I have more firepower than 99% of people
(running SpamAssassin, CRM114 and POPFile on my mail before it hits my
inbox) I’m still sick of it. Over the next few days I’ll be converting
all my address references on all public webpages to sneak addresses,
eventually shutting off what has been the main one. It sucks, but
that’s how it goes.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

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I just submitted this article to Slashdot, one about the mechanics of why teenage nerds are ostracized by Paul Graham. Interesting reading, particularly if
you are twelve years old and nerd enough to be reading /. – I’m 25
years too late to have this information help me. We’ll see if I get a
little /. karma from this. I also submitted this weblog as the link
from my name. I’m a little worried about that, since I pay for
bandwidth from Hurricane Electric. This
might have been a tactical mistake. Only time will tell (if we stand
the test of time.)

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

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I think I figured out the mystery of the weird RSS generated by
BlogMax. Yesterdays entry about the Wild Blue and the
Gray
was generated with a title of “Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom” and a link to craphound.com. By examining the source text, I
realized that was the first link that was all on one line with no
break in the middle. By deleting the linebreak in the middle and
regenerating, the new title was the text inside the link to WB&G and
the link was to the AlexLit eBook. Now that I know it, it makes
sense. Some entries come in as “No Link” – those ones have no anchor
tags or have none without embedded line breaks. I can work around
this. It’s a little arch to think that I’m choosing my wording inside
the links based on what I want the title to be for that entry, but
I’ve worked with weirder restrictions in my life.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

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It is all coming together. Today looking at my Zoe I ran across a link to
the weblog for Game designer and SF writer Greg Costikyan via a link I found on Boing Boing. I really like
Costikyan. I interviewed him on the radio show, I like his
games. He’s one of the few guests who actually wrote me a note
thanking me for the interview (I think Robert Jordan might be the only
other one.) His current weblog entry is a harsh criticism of the
gaming industry via a report filed from the Game Developers Conference. To
close the loop. I’ve added Greg’s RSS feed to my list in Zoe. Ahhhhh.

Published by

dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.