October 30, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
2:08 PM (Pacific)
Oh, here's a good one. I'll copy and paste a couple snippets for you:
The following internet discussion illustrates how women who "think" they are "intelligent" are the most irresponsible creatures on the planet.
...
This is why "half the population of the united states [should be excluded] from making decisions about the political representatives this country has". The female half must be excluded for their own good, and particularly for the good of the nation.
Yes! This site has exceeded their 20 MB transfer limit for the day. I'm looking at the cached version...it looks to be a conversation between two people on the Net. Someone copied it down and put it on...Free WebSpace. And it comes up on page 3 of a Google search for intelligent women.
Wow...that's all I have to do to get my site to show up on page 3 of a Google search for intelligent women? I've been wasting my time, I have.
At least your septic tank guy might turn out to be hot. :p
Lessee...my exciting day begins with...laundry. I folded some, I sorted some, I will wash the sorted load.
Then...a trip to the INS website. It's not called INS anymore, btw, it is now BCIS. I was looking for a form, but according to the instructions, I won't need it.
Hmmm...now I am printing out some business cards. I'll start that, go upstairs, get the load of laundry, put that in...
The other things I need to do...find out who takes the least expensive passport photos (I'm not going anywhere, I'm doing this for someone else).
Then...I need to finish my kids' Halloween outfits. I have most of it done already, just need to make the finishing touches.
In between these things, I'm still working on the site. It's good. I want to put ads in the Tech section. You know we have no XML on the site? Isn't that terrible? I will convert the site over, probably quite soon. XML is not a big deal. Then I'll need to write a section on XML in the Tech section.
That is basically my day. :)
October 29, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
11:34 AM (Pacific)
Oh yeah, I put up a Sephora link...thank you, Raphaëlle, for the tip! Sephora ships to Canada now.
October 28, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:48 PM (Pacific)
Okay, I put up some new ads on the site.
Eziba, which is a sort of Pier One-ish company (before Pier One stopped carrying clothing, jewelry and accessories). Stuff for home and self.
Beauty.com, which was spun off from drugstore.com. i.e. they don't carry as much esoteric stuff as Sephora, however they already ship to Canada and internationally, and they do carry an unexpectedly wide range of brands including Alchemy, Nars, Sue Devitt, yadda yadda...
Should you, dear visitor, purchase anything from these merchants, thebroadroom gets a small percentage of the sale, and that is how we bankroll the site.
October 27, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
9:28 PM (Pacific)
Okay I did a google search for "sarcasm emoticon." Seven pages of people agreeing there should be one.
How about this? :)`
Or does that just look like a dirty smiley? The idea is "dripping with sarcasm."
I suppose I should clarify that. To me, his arguments made no sense. It's as if you're specifying the outcome before doing the experiment, and changing your findings accordingly.
I can admit that's why I loved chemistry. It was the first class I took in college. It was not the notion of discovering why...what was liberating, to me, was the sheer process of quantifying, of proving by quantifying. Everything else in my life, up until that point...with the sole exception of some math I took when I was still in primary education...was arbitrary. Like assuming that there is some organic difference between the intelligence of people based on gender. Or assuming that the reason that men have a superior status in society, is because of some innate difference in intellect.
Why assume? There have been class differences in people throughout history. Do we conclude that the people at the top of the pyramid are there because they're smarter than the vast majority below them? Or could it be because they're, ah, richer than the rest of us? Maybe daddy's money has something to do with it.
What we need--badly--is a sarcasm emoticon. I've never seen one. I can't believe no one, particularly among those of you who live on the East Coast, has never thought of this.
Ever try doing a search for "intelligent women" on the Net?
It's fascinating. Some guy called Angry Harry wrote an article called "Men are more intelligent than women" in 2000. It's still there. I don't think I was angry, reading it, although I didn't actually read it, I just skimmed it. I actually thought it was kind of funny.
It's entirely different from wet heat. Wet heat saps you. Dry heat doesn't, exactly. You just feel...dried out, and hot.
Finally got my oil changed. Truthfully I don't like doing this. It's one of those situations where you have to act kind of tough...because men assume you know nothing (which doesn't bother me, I just don't like the thought of getting ripped).
What else...the usual. Got gas, washed the car. It was all around an automobile maintenance day, in this summery, almost infernal heat.
October 26, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:10 AM (Pacific)
Okey dokey...Tuesday will be our site anniversary. We will have been up for one year.
Hmmm...I have finished The Mall, that was the big bugger. Still there are many things left to do. I want to transfer all of my recipes from Green Choi to the Forums. The only logical way to do that is to copy and paste them in one by one.
One of these days I'm going to have to start using a "real" web page program. The last time I looked, we have 682 html pages on the site that get indexed in our own search engine. Fortunately, some of them are on the "subdomains" (meaning I don't have to do anything with them :) ) but the majority are on the site itself.
Meaning, the only way I have to change anything globally, is to use Javascript. As it is, our page footer is Javascript but I don't like to rely on Javascript for anything. Using HTML templates is much more practical when you start talking about changing hundreds of pages one by one.
I'm still using my 1996-era Java compiler to do the site.
Oh well...it's a beautiful day today. I want to do some house cleaning.
October 25, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:52 AM (Pacific)
October 24, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
8:31 PM (Pacific)
Blogrolling is pretty straightforward... I tried using people's "Blogroll Me!" link and it didn't work. I got the pop-up box, I added the link, and...nothing happened.
You can try it and see if it works for you. I use Netscape so half the time I suspect "it works in IE."
Log in...today I sent you an email with the new account info in it...from there it's just point and click. You get a box with your blogroll in it. Click on the "add links" link...fill out the form.
Make sure the target of your links is set to _blank. If it doesn't say _blank in the box, type it in. That makes the link open into a new browser window.
Aside from that...what can I tell ya. For a long time, I've seen thebroadroom as a business. i.e. we work, we get paid. Of course it is a different kind of business. We're not selling shoes. We're selling information and entertainment. Whether people buy that information and entertainment, well that's up to us.
Hence it does not bother me to be working on the site. Most sites take two or three years to hit their stride. We're already getting the hits now, at one year. So I have a positive view on it.
The old man and I have been running a small business for years...it's not dissimilar.
I will on the other hand, spend a limited amount of time checking out other people's sites. I'll go there...if it's good, I'll come back. But it has to be that good.
Sheesh, that sounded a tad sharp. Blogrolling is a free service, it's a good service, and it's not as if I expected, when I signed up, to get more than one blogroll on one account.
It's just that I've had one too many Internet service start out free. Once your site starts to depend on the service, that's when you get zapped with a fee or else you get dumped. I've had work permanently lost over that kind of crap.
I know how hard it is to make money on the Net. But no one wants to be treated that way.
Anyhow I've fixed the 'rolls, I've got no problem doing that.
Unbelievable... Blogrolling just "fixed" a "glitch" that had formerly allowed free account users to create multiple blogrolls. It's fixed now so two of my blogrolls got wiped out. Thank you.
Back to work.
October 23, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:24 PM (Pacific)
Sheesh...another day.
Time passes more quickly, the older you get. I remember when a year felt like an eternity. Now a year is nothing. A decade is nothing.
Perhaps that's why old people remember things that happened decades ago as if they had happened yesterday.
I for one can't remember things that happened two seconds ago. It's sad.
Did you know my hair is grey? Well not entirely grey. I've never seen it. I've been coloring it since I was...nineteen...since I came out to California.
This weather is next to bizarre. It's still doing the cold in the morning, sweating hot in the afternoon, either cold or hot in the evening, thing. Now there's more...there has been a thick blanket, literally, of fog, lying, not on the hills, but on the "lowlands." I almost took a picture of it then realized that it would be next to unrecognizable in a picture.
October 22, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
11:10 AM (Pacific)
It's the little things you cherish.
Like...having tiny, cold feet stretching down to warm themselves on your nice warm leg. I always let her warm her feet on me.
I remember when she was a baby, her first shots. She was crying but also trying to talk...this was before she could talk... Girls do communicate better than boys. They're more articulate, early on.
What will I do when she no longer puts her cold feet on me?
I can't believe those cultures where the mother favors the son over the daughter. Well of course I can believe it but I can't comprehend it. She is a part of me. She is...mini me. She's sweet but she's not dumb. She's just a little thing, like a doll.
October 21, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:55 PM (Pacific)
Well I hope that didn't sound like East Coast intellectual snobbery. It isn't.
The first thing I noticed when I came out here--Californians are not stupid. It's different, culturally; in some ways, enormously different. There is little difference between North and South, but East and West are like separate countries sometimes.
Californians...are used to earthquakes. Your life may be over in the next second, without warning. How would you know? It affects the way people live. You seldom go about thinking about earthquakes. There's nothing to think about. The earthquake happens or it doesn't.
East Coast disasters tend to come with plenty of notice. You seldom think that your life may be over, just like that.
The obvious factors: the East Coast is older. By American standards, much older. There is a closer proximity (distance and otherwise) to England, where people write much better than we do.
Hence there is a literary culture on the East Coast that is stronger than the one out here. There is one out here. It's less formal, more spontaneous, more open. People generally speak their minds in California where they would hesitate to do so elsewhere. So there is that.
The writing is less formalized but it's a trade-off. It's also much freer, it's less tied to any one particular model such as English writing. We tend to have fewer grammar police. I can admit I don't miss that.
October 20, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:20 AM (Pacific)
Okay I've got my Roget's out...a side effect, not often written about, of living on the West Coast is this: you lose your vocabulary.
Here it is...
pink, salmon pink, couleur de rose, rose du Barry, carnation.
And...
N. orange, red and yellow, gold, old gold, sunflower, helianthus, apricot, mandarin, tangerine, ginger, copper, flame; ocher, Mars orange, cadmium, henna, helianthin.
The most spectacular sunset...the kind that has people pulling over their cars just to gawk. And I didn't have my camera.
It began slowly...deep rose, wide streaks of cloud, interspersed with deep blue sky, wrapped all around, even to the east. I was driving the kids and my mother up the hill, trying to find a suitably dramatic place from which to view it. While I was driving, we'd catch a glimpse here and there of a golden eye and mammoth, glowing pink bands amassing to the west.
By the time I got to one street that flows straight down the hill, it had already progressed into a full-blown, Hallmark sunset. From its top down to the water, covering the coast from north to south, the sky was brindled with flame-colored ribbons of light.
It didn't last long, well I suppose sunsets don't, really. Still--better than Hollywood.
Would it make any difference to hang out with those grizzled East Coast expatriates? (That is the exact phase that invariably comes to mind.)
Somehow I doubt it. Everyone thinks he or she can relocate and keep selective aspects of his or her native culture. And gradually, that native culture erodes, although it never quite disappears.
October 19, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
9:48 PM (Pacific)
The most spectacular sunset...the kind that has people pulling over their cars just to gawk. And I didn't have my camera.
It began slowly...deep pink wide streaks, interspersed with deep blue sky, wrapped all around, even to the east. I was driving the kids and my mother up the hill, trying to find a suitably dramatic place from which to view it. While I was driving, we'd catch a glimpse of mammoth, glowing pink bands amassing to the west.
By the time I got to one street that flows straight down the hill, it had already progressed into a full-blown, Hallmark sunset. From the top of the sky down to the water, covering the coast from northern to southern edge, the sky was aflame with neon-bright bands of orange.
It didn't last long, well I suppose sunsets don't, really. Still--better than Hollywood.
Not much else happening today. Took the kids to the park, that microcosmic world. What else? Laundry. Finished writing the new front page to the site. Can't put it up yet though, a few things need to be finished off first.
October 18, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
4:43 PM (Pacific)
First of all--Yes!!!!!!!!!!! I got accepted by BelleBlogs.
Second--Yes!!!!!!!!!! I also got shamed into at least decorating this blog. Or having my daughter do it. (The figure in orange is me. She's the one in green directly on my left.)
Well in my meager defense, I am not an artist or writer who learned tech in order to publish said art and writing. I'm a webmaster who decided to have a blog. So there is that ugly, tabular esthetic. At least I didn't make a 1's and 0's wallpaper. lol
Believe or not, I am still going through the list of women bloggers. Well it's important, and anything that's important, entails a certain amount of labor.
Part of the problem...brings to mind my Java instructor. Miller, not Greenwald. He said, when correcting our Game of Life applets, he ended up playing them. So, I have ended up reading most of the blogs.
I've learned a few things...firstly, of course, about Blogrolling.
Secondly--Margaret Cho has a blog. (I've blogrolled it above.) The writing is good, intense, dense, more pointed and poetic than outright funny.
The closest brush I had with Margaret Cho's greatness, was one of my instructors at City College. This instructor claimed to have had Margaret Cho as a student. To this day I don't know if it's true or if it's bollocks.
It was a speech class. The same instructor falsified some of my grades. I'm the kind of student who keeps every quiz, every test, every piece of homework. So, all I did was produce this ream of crap to dispute my midterm grade. I won, of course. I was the quintessential female comp sci student. Better yet I was the quintessential comp sci student.
Thirdly--the OED Word of the Day link (also above).
October 17, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
2:03 PM (Pacific)
Hummm...
I was writing Michelle at life in the present and realizing...being as I've developed this odd habit of babbling out my thoughts (must come from blogging/reading blogs *g*)...that it's my belief that women's sites will eventually become all linked together. i.e. there will be three clicks between one site and all the rest.
Why three clicks? It's an arbitrary number. I suppose it's based on my own patience level. I've aspired, for quite some time, to link all the pages on thebroadroom together, separated by a maximum of three clicks.
i.e. I should be able to visit any subsection of the site from any page of the site by clicking three times at most. By "subsection" I mean the lowest level from the root.
Whether I've succeeded, well I can't say I've tested it out thoroughly. Just that I myself lose patience if I have to click more than three times to traverse our own site.
Why women's sites? Well it's fairly obvious to me. Most of us now live in a two-caste society. If you live in a two-caste society, and you're in the lower caste, chances are you will see the point (perhaps not even consciously) of keeping in touch with the rest of the caste.
I hope that doesn't sound negative. I don't see it negatively; to me it's just a fact. It's like psychics. I don't believe in them. Why? Because I've never heard of a psychic would could see the winning lottery numbers. I mean if there are seven winning numbers, couldn't you sense at least five or six of them? Shouldn't all psychics be independently wealthy?
To me personally, the only definition of equality is pay. Women get paid less than men. If the argument is that we have to stay home with the kids, then why don't we, as a society, find a solution to that? Shouldn't the workplace move away from the old model?
It'll all happen; I know it will. I felt...some years ago...that the Internet would inevitably bring women together, the way the English language united India. Not intentionally, but incidentally.
Hello...well I have finished the first pass on the list of Women Bloggers.
Now, all the links should point to valid, current URL's. I am going to go through again and make sure the titles are current (it seems to me I missed a few that had changed). Next year, I'll go through again and delete stuff that's been dead up until then.
In other news... One of these days, I'll have to finish my Hello Kitty Tic Tac Toe applet. Right now of course it's easy to beat the pants off kitty, since kitty moves entirely at random.
Advanced kitty though, heh heh...that will be impossible to beat.
I will finish The Mall first though. It's one more page.
October 16, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:22 PM (Pacific)
Now I'm up to T. Three of the "S" domains were down. I'll check them tomorrow.
I will be going through the entire list again...just to make sure I got everything right. (It seems to me I missed a few title changes in there.)
I'm going to finish it before adding any new links. To me it makes more sense to get the existing links correct first. I have a few requests to be added, so I'll add those afterwards.
Nice blogs, those.
I've also learned of a few things, such as the existence of Blogrolling. (It's okay, I'm the last person in the world...) We now have a Blogroll on the Homeschooling Blog and one on my blog.
Blogrolling is rather cool...you get a free account and you can put as many "Blogrolls" as you like in it. You make a Blogroll for each blog.
If someone likes your blog and wants to add it to her Blogroll, she need only click the "Blogroll Me!" link to pop open a box to add the link.
Likewise, if you want to add her blog to your Blogroll, you would click her "Blogroll Me!" link to do so.
The Blogrolls are somewhat less searchable than I had hoped. For some reason I had envisioned this enormous index of Blogrolls. But you can find out who has Blogrolled you. Likewise, people you Blogroll can find out that you've Blogrolled them.
I'll admit one thing appealed to me above and beyond any of this. The code is very fast to load. :)
Carol, lmk if you want one on your blog...
October 15, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
12:22 PM (Pacific)
Well another mistake I made, when I was young. A mistake often made by young people. I thought my problems were unique or at the very least different...and, it's crap.
I think...looking at it now. There is a certain finite set of needs for each person. You have to figure out what, for you, that set consists of.
And you have to figure out what those needs are. No one else can do that for you. Well sometimes your parents might be able to do that but it depends on how in synch your parents are with you.
If you're clever, you need an intellectual, creative outlet. You do. You'll never be happy without it.
Fortunately, we have the Internet now. It's that much easier to make a creative outlet. I don't feel that it has to be something that appeals to millions of people, but then again it should appeal to more people than just you.
Does that make any sense? There has to be a social element to it. Some kind of interaction, give and take, some mingling of thoughts and ideas. I don't believe in having ideas only for yourself. You have to help other people in some way.
Another thing you need...is a place to go to. It is not important what place. You need a reason to get up each morning, take a shower, wash your hair, and put on makeup if you do makeup, do your hair and put on clean clothes and get out of the freakin' house.
You need to be working towards something. Again, you need to figure out exactly what that something is. What kind of work do you want to do? What do you like to do?
I always recommend programming for people who really don't know what they want to do. Because, it's so different from anything else. Until you've done it, you have no way of determining if it's something you like to do.
I am very sincere in that. It doesn't matter which language. I started out with assembly language, after a brief exposure to Q BASIC. Assembly language is difficult and the instructor was...a tad disturbed...but the central logic for all languages is the same. You'll know right away from the first class, if this is something you love to do and want to do, or something that's entirely wrong for you.
Everyone has a calling in life. It's a matter of, what I want to do. Then, what I need to do in order to do what I want to do.
I'm now up to N on the list.
October 13, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
9:54 PM (Pacific)
Hummm...I like Sylvia Plath, you know. Maybe not for the same reason that other people do. I think she's funny. She had an incredible sense of humor.
I mean it is too bad, it is a tragedy, and I don't believe in tragedy. It makes no sense to me to commit suicide. Not that I haven't thought about it. It's the sheer overwhelming stupidity of it all. You are going to die anyway, what's the rush?
I remember a couple of scenes she wrote in The Bell Jar. Again it is not the tragic aspect of The Bell Jar that makes it a good book. It's the humor.
One was that trip she won along with some other girls at her school. Part of the trip entailed watching a movie...one of those 1950's moralistic sex=bad virginity=good pics. Well the girls had eaten some crab before they went to see the film, and the crab turned out to be bad i.e. food poisoning. So here they were watching this morality pic and feeling throw-up nauseated. They ended up vomiting (I believe in the cab ride home from watching the pic). i.e. vomiting out of the window of the cab.
It is not only funny, it's the perfect way of saying what she thought about the morality of the times. I mean that image is still clearly in my head. It's been years since I read that book.
Another scene...where she felt her entire life was out of control. Her clothes were all over the place and she didn't know what to do with the rest of her life. Her friend came and just picked up the clothes and put them all under the bed.
I thought...what a perfect solution. One person feels that the problem is enormous and insurmountable. The other just says hey, put it all aside for now. You can always take the clothes out later on, fold them and put them away.
Sheesh not much happening here. I had to rest today. I'm still coughing. I tell you, when I get sick, I get a cough, and it hangs around for weeks at a pop. Don't smoke!!!!!!!!!
Who's Larry? Larry is my grandmother's boyfriend's brother. He said that at my grandmother's recent birthday party...her 88th one.
It might have been a quip, but the last time anyone said something similar it was "Life begins at 40," and that was decades ago.
What happens when people begin to live longer and longer? They become like trees.
May I say that I'm hardly a naturalist of any sort, but I do believe that trees have souls. Not that I wouldn't cut one down; I would. It's simply that trees live long lives. They stand, silent, tall, observing, over a span of years upon years upon years. I speculate, occasionally, what a particular tree has witnessed over the duration of its life.
A lifespan of forty years, which might have been the expectation not that long ago, implies to us now that you would have to live your life very, very quickly. You would need to marry young, bear children young, and work hard. In a sense, you would hardly have the time to think deeply.
I think one of the consequences of our newly extended life expectancy is thought. Development of thought to a level unbeknownst to us before. Like the trees, an old person develops an extra soul from sheer longevity, from the singular process of observation over a long period of time.
/*****/
Is that Linkshare link too ugly? I wanted a smaller one, but the small ones were really super ugly.
October 12, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:57 PM (Pacific)
You can always tell people who have lived through lean times. They eat differently.
If, for you, the food was always there, and you never had reason to think that it would not always be there...then you might not know what I'm talking about.
First, there is this split second when the food arrives. The person just simply looks at the food, for that tiny, almost imperceptible moment. Taking in the dish, what's in it, the actual physical look of it.
Then...the person eats like butterflies. Light, delicate, efficient. Quick and studious. There is a ceremonious quality. Above all, as if this meal might be the last.
October 11, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
11:13 AM (Pacific)
October 10, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:49 PM (Pacific)
I like that parallel. :)
Thinking on it...an unorganized workplace, gives the management the illusion of being in complete control of the company. i.e. if the sumbitch doesn't work, I can can his butt without going through red tape.
But it really is just an illusion. (I might say, I am a little more sympathetic to management than to labor, if only because it's not as easy as it looks.)
It's an illusion because...our ruthless, manipulative, conniving individual does not have to play by any rules either. He can maneuver other people in the department to be on his side against you. He can start manipulating your boss or his boss or the boss's boss's boss to put pressure on you. He can start sleeping with your boss or make friends with someone who is.
Unionization forces you to go through steps to fire someone. First you have to give a verbal warning. Then it's a written warning. Then...whatever, another written warning. Then you can fire the sumbitch.
At each step of the way, the sumbitch has the option to change his ways and produce something. Probably not as much as you would like. But a lot more than that person who is sleeping with your boss. Now that person you really can't fire or make do any work.
In short I think having rules, regulations, and organization is a good thing--for management. Having a code of honor--which I think feminism is--is a good thing--for men.
It's tempting to try to hold on to that illusion of power. But it is an illusion. When it all boils down to ass-kissing, two-facedness, and manipulation, rather than straightforwardness, you have to know that you are not really in control.
Okay, I'm up to K. :) I know it's going slowly. Some blogs have not been updated for quite some time, but as long as there appears to be some activity, the links shall remain. I'll go through them all again a second time later on...there have been times in my life when I didn't update my own site for up to five months at a pop.
Weather: weird. It's cold in the morning. Not jacket-cold, but sweater-cold. In the afternoon, it's hot. Short sleeve hot. Then it gets cold again.
One thing I've thought...that feminism is actually the best thing for men. It is not often presented that way. It's presented as "lose everything, gain nothing."
But...hear me out. To me it's like unionization to management.
Yes--most management do not like unions. Some try to prevent unionization, some try to stamp it out once it happens.
Still the question is this. Is unionization detrimental to productivity? Over the long run?
In the short run, I can see why it's unpopular with management. They get a picture of a bunch of lazy bastards sitting around. You can't get them to work and you can't fire them.
But a lack of unionization...it just seems to me, is an invitation to let office politics subjugate productivity. As long as there is no organization, no rules, no policies, then it is the most ruthless, manipulative, conniving people who end up running the place.
Mind you I don't consider being ruthless, manipulative and conniving bad qualities in terms of business. It's just that in an unorganized workplace, those qualities work purely for the individuals who use them rather than for the company itself.
Feminism is a form of unionization...to me personally. Feminists expect a lot from themselves and each other. I mean I don't think the prototypical ruthless, manipulative, conniving model--which some people accept as intrinsically female--yes, they do. Some people accept a certain moral behavior in women that they would not accept in men. I'm saying I don't think that old model flies with feminists. It seems to me it's all about changing the system rather than adapting to it, rather than becoming corrupted by it.
Weeellll...it's odd. I think of my life as being divided into two discrete sections. One is Before the Kids. One is After the Kids.
Before the Kids comprises my life up until then: school and work. After the Kids began the moment I found out I was pregnant for the first time.
I don't know how to put this so I'll spit it out. Before the Kids--the work and school--my life was like a man's life. Men and women, boys and girls, go to school. Men and women, boys and girls work.
In school you get a diploma. You get grades. If you're smart and work hard, you can get good grades. If you stick with it and keep pushing, you get the same degree a man has.
Work...you get a paycheck. You have to eat s*** too (depending on your line of work of course), what I'm saying is that you get paid for your work.
In short, Before the Kids, I was treated with respect. Not always, but most of the time. My work and accomplishments were rewarded, tangibly.
Now After the Kids...as soon as I got pregnant that first time, I felt a distinct, irreversible change in my life.
For one thing I got sacked out of my job when the pregnancy started to show. I found out later it was not at all uncommon. I wasn't even the first pregnant woman to get harassed out of her job in that very department with that very management.
I got kicked out of one of my classes. Another one, I had to furnish a note (okay that was City College) that I'd really had the kid and that's why I was gone for like a week. Hello????? One day I'm nine months pregnant and the following week I'm not and I still need a note?
As soon as you get pregnant, people assume you have no brain and you need to be told every little thing.
As soon as you have the kids, everyone thinks they know better than you (without doing the work or having the responsibility of course) how to raise your kids.
I had this delusion that high tech companies--at the time, high tech hadn't peaked--would of course include on-site daycare for those employees who had kids. But they didn't. Oracle didn't. Oracle had this huge campus in Redwood City with everything except childcare on it. I called a few of the private childcare centers close to Oracle. One (with waiting list) charged $800/month in 1998...and wouldn't accept kids younger than 2-1/2 and they had to be potty trained.
Slowly...I realized that After the Kids, from the pregnancy on, meant doing things that men don't do. Because men don't do them, there are no tangible, socially recognized rewards involved. And likewise, a whole lot of self-righteous criticism from people who've never done it themselves and have no clue how hard or how important it all is.
Hum. Boys do learn to read and write more slowly than girls. Hey while we're being proud :) check this out:
My son (first grade) is doing multiplication. So I'm doing this:
3 X 6 =
and this:
6 + 6 + 6 =
So I said what is it? So he added it up and got 18. Then I did this:
3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 =
I expected him to add it all up. He just looked at it and said "18."
Today's deep thought: Women's work is never done. I know, no sugar, Sherlock, right? On the other hand--the chances of unemployment are exceedingly low, given that the work is in fact never actually done.
I mean, laundry. I wear one clean shirt per day. So does the old man. So do the kids. How does that translate into the amount of dirty laundry I see in the baskets after a couple days? I think someone else is living here, in a different dimension. Someone who doesn't, ah, do laundry.
Carol!!!!!!!!! Get a dishwasher!!!!!!!! They don't cost that much. In California, dishwashers are standard kitchen equipment. In fact, I've heard, if you rent an apartment in Los Angeles, it may not come with a refrigerator :0 but it will have a dishwasher.
Well who can say. Didn't the Seattle Mariners get to the World Series? (Recall I am sports illiterate so if I say something compleeeeeetely idiotic, don't be too surprised.) The Mariners were the laughing stock of the Puget Sound area at the time. Their motto was "Go Huskies!"?
In fact if I am correct, they beat the Yankees. Dang. I was cheering for the Yankees.
BTW I am up to H now on the list. It's a very interesting list. There's nothing actually radical on it, it is more of an intellectual list. Quite fascinating.
Anyhow I have some ideas for the next year of thebroadroom. One idea...it'll take forever to implement but here goes...would be to have a "guest writer" feature. i.e. we could shlep around and host a series of articles written by various women.
Another is to do book reviews...we'll have to pace ourselves, quality outranks quantity for something like that.
Another...involves universities. Not sure yet how to do it. Webspace and bandwidth are always issues when you're a student. Typically you get some small space as a student. After the class is finished, you may graduate to free webhosts. Some continue on to get their own domains. Still there is that scatteredness, that lack of cohesion. Hum. I'll have to give it more thought.
It's a stupendous work, I am very proud to be able to host and maintain it.
I'm still going through the links...I just finished the E section. Most of the blogs are still up, but many have moved. The first step will be to preserve the list as is, before adding anything new.
October 8, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
7:21 PM (Pacific)
Hummm...so Arnold Schwarzenegger won the election.
I suppose it's next to incomprehensible for people outside of California to understand even the recall election, much less the candidates, much less the outcome.
Well, one thing. Hollywood is an industry...just another industry, like steel-making or software...in Southern California. Southern California rules the state. It's where the money is. An actor is a worker, just like the steel-maker or programmer.
Granted, actors are known to be flaky, politically speaking. But they're not all dumb. Particularly those few who are self-made, i.e., not the "son of" or "daughter of."
Gray Davis...what can I say? I didn't want to keep him. It's less the issue of buying the seat, and more the issue of someone getting the seat, and after getting the seat, then revealing the state deficit.
And what else is Davis known for here? Cutting school budgets? Issuing drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants? Fixing an inflated electricity cost for ten years? Turning a surplus into a deficit? Tripling the cost to register your car?
California is more radical, politically, than any other state. In short there is enough sentiment to change whatever is not working.
A personal note...it irritates me when people make fun of Schwarzenegger's accent. So, he has an accent. Arianna Huffington also has an accent. Does it really take a foreigner to understand the American system? Imo, yes, sometimes it does.
As far as Cruz Bustamante...I'm glad he's not working under me. :) No one else took the offer to oppose Davis. Di Fi turned it down, Nancy Pelosi turned it down, Barbara Boxer turned it down. I didn't care for Bustamante either.
Well I think it's wait and see. Things couldn't get much worse around here.
October 7, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:50 PM (Pacific)
[Opening narration]
Charlie Townsend: Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the Police Academy, and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me. My name is Charlie.
Hmmm, now why did that pop into my head? It's been in my mind for some time actually so I looked it up on the Net.
I doubt there is a woman my age, who had access to that show, who does not know those words by heart.
I can admit that I myself did not play Charlie's Angels (that's what it was called, "playing Charlie's Angels") but I certainly loved the show. I never understood why people dissed it. What could be cooler than being a single woman career detective, who looked hot and could kick anyone's butt? Did you ever see an Angel making coffee?????
October 6, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
7:10 PM (Pacific)
Today the sunlight was almost tactile, in the way that only dry sunlight can be.
I should say the sun never gets this delicately warm in the South. Long before then, the air thickens into stickiness and humidity, and the sun simply radiates overwhelming heat, the kind that makes you step into the smallest corner of shade.
Today however I stood in the doorway and let the sun bathe my body in heat. It was almost summery-warm but with an underlying edge of fall chill in the air.
What can I say. It was kind of cool.
Hum. I never compare my own blog to other people's blogs. There are always better and always worse around. The point is to represent your own existence somehow.
A slow Sunday. Weather: sunny, clear, medium cold by California standards. Lessee. It's cool enough to wear the Doc Martens (which are the only thing to wear when it gets cold...your feet stay toasty and dry). Not cool enough to wear anything heavier than a leather jacket, if that.
You know I never had coughs when I was a kid? I started getting them after I started smoking. I haven't touched the stuff in years now, but it's my theory that I shot my lungs over it.
What I need to do is some house cleaning. Bleh. How to make it more interesting? What I need are some Clash CD's. The best I can do now is try dubbing my vinyl records onto cassette tapes...that is the extent of my equipment. I do have a Cure CD or two but it's not the same.
The towers of London, those crumbling blocks
Reality estates that the heroes got
And every hour's marked by the chime of a clock...
And whatcha' gonna do when the darkness surrounds
You can piss in the lifts which have broken down
You can watch from the debris, the last bedroom lights
We're invisible here just past midnight.
--The Clash, "Up in Heaven"
It'll sound sacrilegious but what else can you logically clean to?
We're going to make lentil soup tonight. That's set. Really basic...you get a piece of pork with some bone in it (some use pigs' feet but those kind of freak me out), lots of lentils, a little onion, bay leaf, some greens, maybe a little carrot. It's definitely soup weather.
October 4, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
1:54 PM (Pacific)
Hummm...the sore throat is gone, at least. A slight cough, and still need to take Sudafed. I'm guessing the whole thing will have basically dissipated by tomorrow.
What I was trying to say last night, was that our...American...perceptions are highly colored by...advertising. i.e. we do think that taking the right pill will fix everything in our lives, and that is oftentimes not the case.
Which is why there are some people who are against taking medicine for headaches. The notion is to treat the cause rather than dope the symptoms.
However there are things that can't be treated. Has anyone discovered the cure for migraines? You'd hear about it. If it can't be cured, then the next best thing is to dope the symptoms. i.e get the body to relax so that it can treat itself.
You'll note that most cold medications contain alcohol. Basically...overpriced alcohol, with some other stuff added in. Most home remedies consist of...alcohol. Brandy, etc.
I myself swear by Russian vodka. Russians can survive the Russian winter, so don't tell me they don't know how to deal with inclement weather.
Hummm...foggy today. It's been cold. Normally I would dread the arrival of cold weather, but this time I feel different. I was very strong when I was a kid. I'd go out without a coat... Now it is not quite like that, but this time I'm not afraid. I'm actually looking forward to wearing my scarves, winter coats, sweaters, yadda yadda... Got to dig out those Doc Martens.
October 3, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:55 PM (Pacific)
Okay, that was probably not fair. Doing it properly, you would use the Perl to rewrite both the form and whatever the user put inside the fields. Here you are asking Javascript to do the work of Perl.
Still it's annoying.
October 28 marks the beginning of the second year of thebroadroom. I am writing a new front page. I'm thinking in terms of updating the site on a quarterly basis. i.e. I don't want to do it monthly. I feel the quality of the work would go down.
Anyhow the site will become somewhat more structured. Not horribly structured, just slightly more structured.
Ugh I've had a cold the past two days. I took an 800 mg Motrin and my throat is still killing me. At least the Sudafed works.
I'm anticipating it'll be better tomorrow...you know how you feel it when a cold peaks?
I was just thinking...something a friend said. About whether to take medicine when you have a headache. Some do, some don't. It reminded me of Northern Exposure.
Now I did not watch Northern Exposure when it was actually on. I watched it when A & E bought it. Hence I watched it every day. It's one of those shows that doesn't make sense unless you see it from the beginning.
If you haven't watched it, the plot is this. (Okay it is tv, this could never really happen.) This young New York doctor is, well, railroaded into working in this tiny Alaskan town. The culture clash is astounding as you would expect. There is a romance in it, it's rather charming but the overall show centers around the native culture and how it differs from the mainstream American one.
One episode...let's see if I can remember the details. One character is shedding skin for some unknown reason. A native doctor tells her that she is being reborn, like a snake. The New York doctor is furious, that this guy is telling his patient any such thing.
That's the thing. The "Western" view of doctors is that they're like gods, that they can cure any disease. The native doctor just told him that people either die of what's ailing them, or else they get better on their own. The role of the doctor is simply to make the patients feel better.
Hence the native doctor's approach was to figure out what was bothering the patient on a mental level. The Western doctor's approach was strictly limited to the mysterious skin-shedding and what to do about it (which he didn't know what to do about it).
So for a headache...the role of the medicine is not to "cure" the headache. It's to dull the pain until the headache goes away on its own.
Sheesh what am I talking about. Time to go to sleep.
Okee! I put a feedback form here: link. It's linked to from the main page of the site.
Get this: the bugger wasn't the Perl. It wasn't even modifying the path to sendmail (I had to use the bugger path for that but so what?). The real bugger was...trying to use the form inside a frame.
Okay the user wants to hit the back button to go back and fill out the fields in the form. Piece of cake right? Well it doesn't always work in a frame. No one ever thought of how to navigate a frame back button consistently. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Doing it any other way...say, using the URL of the previous frame...stands a good chance of wiping out the form fields. So the user's carefully filled out comments are completely gone, because he left out the email field and had the audacity to try to go back.
Why does Perl work and Javascript doesn't?
I could bugger around with it endlessly but, it did occur to me that there could be reason to launch the feedback form in its own window. That would wipe out any uncertainty as to whether the user could ever fill out the damn thing and, also make it somewhat easier for the user to simultaneously comment and view whatever he's commenting on.
I shouldn't blame Javascript. I know, I know. I can't even imagine trying to develop a language to work across Netscape and IE especially if IE hates you.
October 2, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
8:55 PM (Pacific)
I thought this was funny. It's a real ad for a local church:
Top Ten reasons why people don't go to church
10. can't find a polyester leisure suit anywhere
9. relate to jazz and rock more than Handel and Bach
8. Three Letters: N-F-L
7. would rather sleep in my bed than in a pew
6. People that happy just give me the creeps
5. one word: hypocrites!
4. already served time as a child
3. can only remember 3 commandments
2. When I want to feel guilty I just call my mother
and the #1 reason people don't go to church is...
...Because they haven't tried Bay Hills Community Church!
Say...we saw this cool house when we were house-hunting. It didn't look like much on the outside, so we went in...haw haw...it turned out to be one of those 1.x million dollar California houses. Really nice but, ah, a tad spendy.
What stuck in my mind was the laundry room. Yes, the laundry room. Get this--they had two washers and two dryers. A nice long counter and a big tv.
At first you're thinking, wow...but is it really that much more expensive? You have the upfront cost of the additional washer and dryer plus installation.
After that, you don't have to wait interminably for the dryer load to finish. You can wash two loads. Split one load into the two dryers. When that's done (in the same time it would take to dry a single load), split the second wash into the two dryers. Meantime you can be washing another load in the first washer.
You still get a slight back-up but it beats doing laundry all day!
BTW that's the only house I've ever seen that has that feature.
October 1, 2003
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
1:11 PM (Pacific)
Okay, at least my digital photography has improved...? link.
It is tricky doing anything remotely resembling a close-up. I forget how much optical zoom this baby has. I don't even bother with digital zoom, it just makes everything blurry.
I use the close-up button and...most importantly...the camera has to be as still as possible. i.e. it's better to use a tripod or other stationary surface or else lean your elbow on something.
Using Photoshop, you can also apply filters. Sharpen Edges works well as does Sharpen More.
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