Before I start on what will surely become a controversial post, let me prefix this with a giant disclaimer: I do think that all of these communities can be very useful and important to large numbers of women. I'm just struggling to see where they fit into my world.

Thinking back over the years that I've been involved in IT and geek communities, I've only been involved in the female support groups for maybe 3 of them. My first introduction to these was Debian Women, and while I'm not active in any way in the Debian community, I can remember being terrified of asking questions on mailing lists because I had seen how prickly that community could be, and Debian Women provided a helpful (and prickle-free) place to ask questions.

For some reason it was much later that I joined Linuxchix, and other than lurking on mailing lists, the occasional post and setting up their Moodle installation, I've never become particularly active there, either.

So perhaps I'm not the target audience. Or rather, a more accurate way to put that is: Perhaps I'm not the target audience anymore. I suspect that the time that these groups are the most helpful is for women who are trying to break into a geeky career (or hobby) and finding it a bit daunting. I used to get all torn up going to conferences and being mistaken for someone's girlfriend, but these days I have enough confidence in myself and in my standing as a giant nerdy-nerd, that it wouldn't affect me more than the passing annoyance of having to set someone in their place again. It doesn't affect my self esteem anymore.

This undoubtedly means that my place in these sorts of communities should now be of a more senior support role, helping younger women who are just starting to go through this, and I feel bad that I don't take that role on. I do mentoring in more official capacities (like GSOC), but not so much in the female oriented communities.

So why am I writing that I am disillusioned with it, rather than just saying, 'not for me' and moving on? The answer is that there are a few things about these communities that I find frustrating.

The first is the picking of battles thing. I watched recently a thread about the gender of the main character in a game, and what could be done about it. And to be honest, it kind of baffled me. Surely, there are bigger, more important battles to fight? I'm not a gamer, never have been. The closest I ever got was playing games like Kings Quest when I was little - and no, the fact that I was playing a male character trying to rescue a princess never deterred me in the slightest. I guess a predictable response to that is that the gender stereotypes had been so deeply ingrained into me, even at such an early age, that I didn't question it. But really - I just can't see how this is important in the grand scheme of things. Surely, surely there are worse problems to solve?

And the second reason is one that, more than just bewilders me, actively pisses me off: The most interpersonal difficulty I've had in recent years with peers in the geek community has been with women. I don't understand this (although I can make amateur psych-101 type guesses) and I find it really irritating. Maybe this is because I have a base expectation that we would be by-default supportive of eachother, being minority players together, rather than in competition, an assumption that is perhaps naïve of me, but I find it just flattens me everytime when I encounter it.

So this is not a linuxchix-ragequit or anything like that, I still read the mailing lists with interest and occasionally un-lurk and post something myself. It's more a reaching out to other geek women to remind me of the value these communities offer.

Turning twitter off has immediately increased my desire to blog. This is not surprising, but it's far more pronounced than I would have expected.

This possibly means that the quality of what I blog about will decrease, to meet the lower-quality twitter standards somewhere halfway.

Anyway. Here are some things.

- I cannot figure out whether I like Goldenhorse anymore or not. I'm leaning towards Not. Funnily enough, I used to love Kirsten Morelle's accent, and now I find it rather irritating.

- Using git again (albeit with the eventual target of cvs) is beautiful.

- I've completely given up on using Mac OS X and will buy a Samsung X45-A00D this week. There's just no point keeping mac hardware if I'm not going to run Mac OS X on it, and besides, I have someone who wants to buy the Macbook from me.

- IKEA is terrifying. People are terrifying. This was not helped by Sara's desire to "stand in the model kitchens and think about what our future lives would be like had we those kitchens". 99p cooked breakfasts are terrifying.

- I am going to Exeter tomorrow to talk about Mahara at an ePortfolio conference. From what I hear, the train ride from London is worth looking out the window. Not sure I'll be able to pull focus from my laptop, but I will try.

- I managed to figure out how to register myself as an overseas voter, which means that elections will allow me to stay in the Wellington Central electorate instead of forcing me to vote in Kaikoura which is where my parents live (and what I told NZ Post to forward mail to). This makes me happy, I have voted in the Wellington Central electorate since 1999.

- I've been thinking again a lot about the amount of personal information I put on this blog. I know I've written about this in the past but I'm thinking about it again. I think the amount of personal information I put on here has vastly decreased over the last 2 years, and I partially wonder if my audience has subtly changed in that time... but also I think the increase of the other tools I have been using (twitter!) have led to this. Twitter was much more personal than this blog was, partially due, I think, to the fact that I knew who was following me on twitter, and I really have no idea who reads this blog. I find myself wanting to write more personal things here and stopping myself, which hasn't happened for a long time. Maybe this is also a reaction to moving to another country and having a lot of things going on in my life right now.

I just witnessed first hand the sort of computer use experience that I hear people talking about all the time but, thankfully, am mostly sheltered from.

It was a recent looking chassis running some recent looking variant of Windows. I laugh to find that I cannot actually recognise Windows releases anymore, but this one had a big green "Start" button, so I presume this means XP or Vista.

The person was struggling to complete a task that really should not have been that hard, but Windows was slow and unresponsive (this of course could have been down to either the machine itself or network latency), and he responded to this by repeating the requests he was making of the operating system, on some occasions at least 3 additional times, rather than waiting for the first request to complete, while randomly hitting keys (that I couldn't see had any actual instructive use, but rather was just a way to express anger), and yelling at it, while waving his arms about.

I sat in silence, knowing that any comment I could possibly have would be misunderstood or at any rate, not helpful. At one point, he actually asked me, "why is it so slow?" to which I mumbled sympathetically.

It really amazes me that this is the quality of some people's interactions with their computers. It is so far from my own experiences with computers, where 99% of the time when something isn't working I know why, how to work around it, or how to fix it. In general my approach to breakages with computers resemble a challenge for me to solve, sometimes a frustrating one, but no more so than a complicated problem I'm interested in solving. Certainly the computer is not a black box that I am forced to use and loathe doing so.

I am at least mostly convinced that this person's problem was because he was using Windows, although of course there are some people who just don't have an aptitude with computers, no matter what.

I used to be fine with pretty much everything the internet threw at me. Sure, I would close websites immediately that I wasn't interested in, but I was never really scared of any internet trends. I never got into livejournal and I was scathing about it, but it didn't freak me out.

I had my own website/journal/blog since 1999. I completely embraced twitter. I reluctantly joined facebook (because Jonathan Baudanza somehow got to me when I was drunk enough to pinky promise), I use flickr because it's incredibly convenient (this after years of maintaining my own gallery), I use last.fm... I don't know why anymore, actually.

But recently I've been using these things less and less. Yesterday I had a total freakout about quality vs quantity (I could write a whole post about the propensity of people to vomit content in the general direction of the internet and hope that some sticks on a wall somewhere where someone might actually see it and pay attention to them! but I won't...) and turned off IM notifications in twitter (I cannot quite yet bring myself to delete my account), and unsubscribed from a whole bunch of rss feeds (no, not modblog yet).

And then today I had another look at github, and had another freakout. Is git suddenly cool? Well yes, it is and it's not sudden. But it's cool because it's an incredibly good tool. It's not cool in that web 2.0 way that twitter and pownce and dopplr and all those sorts of things are, at least I thought...

I thought I was living in this dual world. On one side I had those trendy web 2.0 things that I was a bit wary of but signed up with, used to keep in touch with people (not necessarily geeks), and on the other side I had this world where I use git and vim and ion3 and debian unstable and make scathing comments about graphical interfaces and pointy clicky ... and I could not imagine that those two would ever cross together into this sort of hybrid trendy geeky web2.0 nerdy monster.

Are nerds cool? Someone said to me recently that nerdy was the new black.. and I thought at the time, I was never cool in highschool. I wasn't a nerd, I was more uncool in that rebellious smoke behind the bike sheds and wear 20 up doc boots kind of way, but I wasn't cool and I had a pretty miserable time. Now I live in a world where I'm pretty far gone in terms of geekiness and I never expected that to be cool.

Github seems to me the ultimate expression of this. Take something incredibly geeky (people being passionate about their vcs), add web 2.0, stir, and you end up with cool nerds. It's no surprise to me that github seems to be so rails-focused (written in, as well as hosted project proportion). Rails people have to be the epitome of cool nerds, with their special lingo and their whiskey drinking.

I'm not renowned for it.

No, really.

(Note that this is the first reason I've found since I moved by myself in August last year)

I am terrified of spiders.

Last night, I woke up to my cat prancing about stalking something on my bed. I thought she must have bought something inside and let it go, so I turned on the light and sat up.

She was chasing a giant spider, and it was making its way right towards me, it was up by where the top sheet folds over the duvet.

I shrieked and shoved the duvet away from me and leapt out of bed. Once I had calmed down, I went into the kitchen to get a glass to put on top of it, but I went back to my room and gingerly lifted the bedding up and couldn't find it anywhere. It wasn't on the floor anywhere near the bed, it couldn't have gotten under the bed (I have a futon with a sled base).

There was no way I was getting back into bed with a spider potentially in there, so I grabbed my sleeping bag and slept on the couch. This morning I got up and very carefully pulled the bedding apart to wash.

After the last time I typed passwords into irssi after a weird problem with ion3 losing focus, I realised that my ~/.ion3 directory was completely out of sync with /etc/X11/ion3. But I didn't have the time or energy to try and reconfigure it.

But today I typed my password into irssi again, and as such, I decided it was time to do something about it.

So, I moved ~/.ion3 to ~/.ion3fucked and started again. But this time, I did something smart.

I created ~/.ion3clean. For every file in /etc/X11/ion3 I was copying into ~/.ion3 and modifying, I first copied it into ~/.ion3clean. This means that now I have a diff of all my changes. So next time upstream changes the config and I find that my ~/.ion3 is out of sync with what Debian ships (although after this mess I'm not sure there will be any more debian packages), all I need to do is re apply the diff! Glee!

Turns out that this:

:0

.* ^Subject: .*\[eight\].*

.internal.eight/

as opposed to this:

:0

* ^Subject: .*\[eight\].*

.internal.eight/

(leading . on second line) will really fuck procmail seriously. Luckily, with the help of mb2md, I managed to import .\* into the appropriate folders.

Stupid typos. Stupid tiredness.

Life has been just a little bit too chaotic recently, I feel as though I'm a little bit out of control.

Yesterday I moved my bedroom furniture around. I am trying to create less chaotic spaces to inhabit. It's much nicer now.

I think I need to spend less time rampaging and more time being at home doing interesting things like reading.

Yesterday afternoon was far too rampagey and then I went to Matterhorn and made a dork out of myself by hitting on a staff member (who as it turns out, has a girlfriend).

I have a giant bruise on my leg from being bitten during a grass squabble and today I have a hangover.

I need to get up and sort myself out and go to Auctores Malorum Breakfast at The Recovery Room.

Somehow, I spend a week in Sydney with almost no conscious attempts to ward off the sun, and get only very minimal burning on my shoulders.

I spend one afternoon in the garden in Wellington, drinking gin and tonics with a friend, and wind up incredibly burnt in legs, tummy, chest.

Hubris.

Dear Ra,

Please let this not peel. Please let the tan lines fade somewhat so I don't look like one of the bimbotic barbies at Bondi Beach.

kthxbye,

Penny

I'm home from LCA, got in just after midnight last night. Stumbled in and straight to bed. I had to re-get used to all the noise my house makes - either the week away had me forgetting, or Shalom was unreasonably quiet, or it was louder than normal last night, or a combination of all the above. At any rate, I lay in bed, listening, and happy that I was back in my house again.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed and to work, but not before I went to Mojo for a long black.

Time for a brief intermission to talk about coffee.

We didn't find good coffee in Sydney until Sunday morning, when Brenda took me to a place she had been before near our hostel in Gleeb. They had such good coffee and we were so pathetically grateful we wanted to hug the staff.

So this morning's mojo was very well received.

At any rate, I've been inside all day, headphones on, listening to Phoenix Foundation. (Yes of course, in celebration of being back in Wellington).

I went out about 2pm to get some food. Walked down Willis Street, it was a bit overcast but not too bad. Picked some stuff up from the supermarket and walked back outside to find it raining.

In complete gratuitous refusal to comply with what we would reasonably expect from summer.

So I smiled and walked back to work. And by the time I left for the day it was sunny and warm again. Typical Wellington. It's good to be home. Really.

I want to write some more stuff up about LCA, but I think again, as usual with these conferences, they're made by the people. There were of course, some fascinating talks given, but it's always the conversations I've had that I take away with me, with people I know slightly already, and people I know well, and people I've never met before.

People who teach me lessons, people who validate things I already think, people who offer new perspective. People who open up their home and cook amazing dinner for strangers, just because they have a friend in common and share an interest in Open Source. People who drop everything to help me fix my laptop when suspend/resume once again ruins everything. People who put up with me and those around me taunting them and do it with a smile and good grace. You passed the test! (I refer here mostly to those more 'miniscule' and those who tolerantly put up with being called by the wrong name all week just because of a resemblance). People who I took for granted as acquaintances, who I was pleasantly surprised to find became friends.

So who are those people that leave lasting impressions in my mind?

Fellow Catalyst travel & drinking buddies: Brenda, Dave2, David, Finlay, Gav, Ian, Joh. How I would have got through breakfast, the walk up, coffeeseeky, the walk back, dinner and booze without that rabble, I do not know.

People I knew before and found meeting again cemented their value in my mind: AJ, Holger, Martin.

People I met for the first time and left an impression: Andree (I was blown away by the hospitality of you and your partner), gnat (who was grotty the entire time and I liked it), Simon (I mean of course, Philip - were you starting to think I didn't know your real name?)

Did you notice that was in alphabetical order? I wouldn't want anyone to get offended.

Since I have returned, I have found:

- More instances of $chair->score++; $mjollnir->score--;
- last.fm backs up my top 3 artists. I am not surprised.
- I cannot believe that the following is the best (only?) photo of me at LCA on flickr:



Clearly, I'm desperately trying to unfuck ubuntyppc

At any rate, the one overwhelming thing that I take away from LCA is that it's incredibly validating to find yourself in the same physical space with people who are passionate about the same things you are, who want to talk to you and are interested in what you say, who surprise you and make you realise things about yourself you didn't know before.

Pretty Ace.

AND. Tonight I finally get my Robert. About fucking time. <3^∞

I am a sucker for these surveys. Off we go:

but here are some things:

• I have almost finished nanowrimo. 3 and a half thousand to go. I'm going to try and get it written tonight and then I will be free!
• It's not going to be near finished by 50,000 words though. I am going to think about it for a few weeks and then keep going, I think.
• I got tattooed on Friday, more work on my murex, it looks amazing. Manu at Tattoo City is highly recommended. I will put up before and after photos soon.
• I wrote an extremely difficult email today, getting it out was this very cathartic exercise and I feel like a huge weight is lifted off my shoulders
• Talk is cheap. If there's one thing I have learnt over the last few years, it is that it's very easy to say something to someone, and much harder to act it. I am inclined to distrust what people say to me until they've proven it with their actions. Cynical, I guess
• There is thunder! I am curled up in front of the heater with a glass of port, my cat, and my laptop, churning out the last few thousand words
• The writing of this novel, it being heavily autobiographical, has been an amazing reflective experience for me. Of course, it's been an experience in itself, going from having never written, to writing 50,000 words in a month. But I've been reliving some pretty hard past demons.. I will write more on this when I'm finished the novel, I think, or at least when I hit 50k.
• I have a fake tattoo on my upper arm right now that says 50k or bust!

So I've been taking antibiotics, doxycycline, to be specific, because of some dermatitis. Supposed to be taking two a day, with food.

So on Friday night, I went out for dinner and margaritas, and had my night time one when I got home (albeit at 2am, drunk). During the night, I slept terribly, feeling like something was stuck in my throat. When I properly woke up at 7am, I realised that it had, in fact, gotten stuck in my throat, and no amount of drinking water (or throwing up) managed to dislodge it.

Eating was doable, but nothing stayed down. Sunday afternoon, a knowledgeable friend tells me that this does, in fact, happen quite often, with doxycycline, and that you're not supposed to lie down for at least half an hour after taking them, and that they burn and cause throat ulcers.

Skip forwards to Wednesday, I still feel like I have constant indigestion, and a trip to the doctor confirms that I almost certainly have a throat ulcer. Around 3pm, I try to eat the first thing for the day, a banana and it hurts so much I only just manage to get it down (and keep it down!)

So now I'm taking more pills to try and get rid of it, I can't drink for a week, and I'm on a diet of yogurt, mashed banana and avocado.

Woe, sucks to be me, etc. I will definitely not be eating any antibiotics before bedtime anytime soon.

I've been composing blog entries in my head lately that I'll never write. I've also been composing letters in my head that I'll never write, but that's another story.

So why is this? Part of it is that it's about people who I don't want reading it, but as usual, there's a warning alarm in my head that my work persona and my personal blog person persona are too closely tied.

I was thinking about this recently, because one of our clients made a comment about having read my blog a few days ago. I mean, there are other clients who read my blog too, but she also happens to be privy to a lot more than just what I write on here. Like, me generally ranting about pretty much everything.

Anyway, clients in general who aren't Meredith reading my blog is a bit scary.

So I had a conversation some months ago with someone who was thinking about getting a blog, but wanted it to be completely anonymous or maybe even having two. I would be tempted to have two, and in the second one I could write about whatever I wanted and it would be private and fine.

But realistically, I want that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when lots of people are reading your blog. And so, I put the address of this one in my email signature (from non work accounts, that is), syndicate it on Planet Catalyst, and tell people about it. If I had another anonymous blog, I wouldn't get to do that. And let's face it, we all want lots of people reading what we write, right?