Month: November 2006

Baffled And Disappointed – Top Ten List Gets It Wrong

We all love Top 10 lists – they can be fun, informational and succinct – like a really good parable or story. A recent Top 10 list on CNet has, however, really missed the mark: Top ten girl geeks. I think there’s some humour in there and perhaps some basic research and genuine admiration. But I think in this case the list has done a disservice to women who are trying to topple that horrible trend of geeks and computers being so strictly gendered as masculine and feminine respectively.

If the list of the top 10 geek girls in history is so sparse that the author needed to include a fictional character, a cartoon character, and a Hollwood geek-lust icon then one of two things is wrong:

  1. There is a serious lack of role models and innovators to choose from
  2. The author simply didn’t want to present an honest list

Seeing as how there are some potential list members missing from this list, I tend to think that the first possibily – that there is a lack of people to list – is not the problem.

So that leaves us with the option that the author didn’t want to make a genuine list. Perhaps it was deemed too staid and boring if there wasn’t something pop-culture-related on the list? I’m not sure of the motivations.

However I am sure that this list gives me the impression that when discussing women and computers it is OK to put them on the same level as fictional characters and cartoons. People say that the computing industry isn’t hostile to women anymore? Really?

On a related note I was elated to see that the Gnome project created a women-only opportunity over the summer in relation to the Google Summer Of Code project. Kudos to them for standing up and addressing the elephant in the room, and then for actually doing something about it!

Wow, What A Couple Of Weeks!

You may or may not have noticed that it has been almost two weeks since my last post, and that this site has been intermittently available over the last week and a half. Well there’s good reason, I swear – and it has nothing to do with my relative level of laziness!

  • The Lower Mainland (Vancouver and its surrounding burbs) was beaten about severely by the remnants of Typhoon Cimaron as it decided to slap us around a bit after passing through the Philippines. As a result over 120,000 homes were without power for at least a day, often several. Our house was without power for over 24 hours – which made for a cold night!
  • The storm seemed to have a negative effect on our house’s electric system as we are now experiencing power loss whenever we turn on large-draw machines such as the clothes dryer. So we need to get an electrician in to check things out – yay!
  • We subscribe to Shaw Phone rather than using Telus’s land-line, which also meant that for the better part of last week we were without a working phone at home – and I will certainly be talking to Shaw about that. This new service of theirs may not be as reliable as they would have us believe.
  • The water system in the Lower Mainland was put on a boil water advisory last week too thanks to the storm’s affect on the water reservoirs. Luckily White Rock wasn’t affected but that wasn’t clear to us for a day or so. However some cities are still on the advisory, and people are starting to get nasty to each other.
  • We also have been trying to sell our Mazda 626 as we’ve budgeted for that money when buying the new truck. Saturday I think we’ve found a buyer, but nothing’s written down yet.
  • I also tested for my black belt in Taekwondo on Saturday.
  • Marley’s eating solids and has a few 6-month-old pictures up.

Basically its been a really hectic and stressful few weeks. Now that things seem to be settling down again maybe I can start returning all those phone calls we missed during the outage.

You have no new messages

Oh … OK then. Back to work I guess.

NHL Gives You A Digital Choice

I’m not a hockey fan myself, but I have a few friends who are. Anyone interested in catching an in-season hockey game that for some reason they couldn’t watch live? Maybe you’d like to review a few key moments? The NHL wants to help you out.

NHL Interactive Cyber Enterprises (ICE), the digital arm of the National Hockey League (NHL), today announced a multi-year deal to provide NHL video content to Google Video. The NHL will provide in-season full-length games on delay to Google Video at http://video.google.com/nhl.html. Google also will receive select NHL classic games.

That last little bit there is perhaps the most interesting part of the announcement … for example maybe you want to look back on the 1994 Stanley Cup final: Canucks @ Rangers?

One caveat – this stuff is only free (and add-free) for the first two weeks of November. Get it while you can!

Marley Update – We’ve Got Pictures!

Just a quick note that Alisa has been diligently posting pictures of Marley and the rest of the crew (that would be Alisa, Dazy, the rabbits and myself) over the last few months. If you want to see her dressed as a chick (or a duck depending on who you ask) you should check out the Hallowe’en album.

3 months and a trip to the BC Interior
4 months
Rob and Sophie’s wedding
5 months and Thanksgiving
Hallowe’en

The earlier pictures are still available in her album, of course – this is one well documented child.

The ones posted are not the full-sized images, so if you are interested in prints just send us an email or call us and we can send you the original image or something. Whenever a new album is posted Alisa sends out an email to anyone interested, so if you’re not getting these emails anymore and you want to, let us know and we can stick you on “The List“.

OK, proud papa out.