When I started doing tech support, nearly 15 years ago now, people were often surprised to be working with a woman. I just realized I'm on a conference call with two other women, and we're all comfortably discussing our various programs. I don't know if it's because I'm working with companies with a computer bent more often, but women are by no means remarkable in my sort of tech stuff. Even when I'm talking to people working on their own, without corporate backup, no one's surprised to be talking to a woman. I'm still sometimes mistaken for a man, but that's more because I have a low voice and people sometimes hear my name as Tommy.

For the first two years I worked here, I was the only woman in Tech Support. Six years into the job, I'm one of four. The world, it progresses.

Connie, that's good to know!

Suzi, that's pretty much my every day. I've been trying to recalibrate my internal clock, but it hasn't worked so far. My clock wants to stay up til 1 am and sleep til 9am.

Most of the time I like working at home. I get a lot done. Today, my bed is calling me and it is just down the hall. Technically I could take a nap and just work later than usual but I have all kinds of stuff I need to do this evening and I have tix to see TDKR (going by myself). Maybe I'm just anticipating being even more exhausted tomorrow.

When we did the IT scavenger hunt, our team was 4 chicks and a dude--1 IT project/development manager, one systems business analyst (me), one tester, and I don't know the other chick--I wonder if I can look her up--what the hell was her name?--I'm avoiding literal parentheticals because y'all won't tell me how to punctuate this, and look what crap I'm writing instead--ah, she's the admin for Business Objects. The guy is mainly Telephony in the Infrastructure team. We work together a lot when it comes to spinning up new web sites. Anyway, we were one of two teams with that demographic. So when we had to take pictures in the mirror, although the rules allowed for a gender split, we just yanked him into our washroom.

My boss complains, and not rarely--that the direct report he has most contact with is female, I'm one of the indirect reports that he has a lot of contact with, his CIO he reports to is female, and the president of the company is female. Many of the people that will sit on executive teams of a given project will be female, since the head of Marketing is a she, as is Compliance, HR, and a few of the other VP level positions.

My boss complains, and not rarely--that the direct report he has most contact with is female, I'm one of the indirect reports that he has a lot of contact with, his CIO he reports to is female, and the president of the company is female. Many of the people that will sit on executive teams of a given project will be female, since the head of Marketing is a she, as is Compliance, HR, and a few of the other VP level positions.

I have trouble seeing that as something to complain about, as my industry is female-dominated and most of the rare guys in it seem to be the squirrel-y problem cases.

COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS ARE KILLING YOU: [link]

ita, if you're interested in baby names from a rather more fact-based perspective, the best place online is [link] - and read the comments on blog posts, there are a couple of very knowledgeable commenters amongst the "what should I name my baby" people.

The hard part is, there are a lot of questions for which there's not any hard data collected, like race/ethnicity.

My boss complains, and not rarely--that the direct report he has most contact with is female, I'm one of the indirect reports that he has a lot of contact with, his CIO he reports to is female, and the president of the company is female. Many of the people that will sit on executive teams of a given project will be female, since the head of Marketing is a she, as is Compliance, HR, and a few of the other VP level positions.

Oh hello, welcome to the world of most any women not in certain select industries. This is an issue why?

Hiro is named that because Stephenson is crappy about names. Okay, that's unfair. He's named that because Stephenson values wordplay over ethnic accuracy in naming. Which also lead to major plot points being dependent on a name that was a wrong name in another book. Which led to me throwing the book across the room, the only time I have ever committed such a desecration. I may have issues with him.

Why is it wrong for a Japanese national to be called Hiro, Liese? I thought that was perfectly reasonable. There's no reason a Japanese national has to be Japanese by blood, but adopting the names of your birthplace isn't weird.

I don't know about the error in the other book, but a kid born in Japan with an American father having a fake English language last name and a real Japanese first name worked fine for me no matter what race he was.

Matt, I had a long response to you, with lots of demographics of our company, but then my computer took it upon itself to reboot, and I don't have that in me again. I'm fucking toast. Suffice it to say my boss feels vulnerable to mass pressure put on by women in the office in a way he doesn't feel he has to comply with his male colleagues whether they're above or below him in the org chart. I also wonder what a guy would have done instead of crying when I got too angry and frustrated to talk, and how he would have responded.