Because of the cultural perception that romance Isn't Manly, we've developed such low expectations that one to four days (throw in anniversary and birthday) seems great. I will say that the geeky males I've dated seem to be better at it than the average, though. :)

(And I'm from Michigan and I've heard of Sweetest Day.)

Dragon Age: Origins is one of the few CRPGs I've played that seems to cater to female gamers. It's great. :) (Although you may get tired of hearing about Alistair, the main female love interest... ;))

Anyway, I think it's great to hear about all of these customized gifts - they really are the heart of romance.

I do all of my news (followed by webcomics) first thing, so all I had open was my email program and Firefox. Just for kicks, I opened up my development environment* and that bumped me to 18 - I didn't have a ton of files open before the holidays.

* Rational Apex - I do Ada work. Please, no expressions of pity.

I admit, my data is a little stale - I graduated HS/College in 95/99.

I work at a defense contractor. There's a little bit of sexism that seems to be primarily from older former military types, where I think it's less that I'm a female programmer than I'm a female programmer working on artillery software. And the one time that I overheard a co-worker who got passed over for promotion in favor of me comment that to get his promotion he would have to change his gender.

In college, I was in the first class of women that they admitted. (It was an all engineering and science university.) To placate people, they accepted additional students equal to the number of women so that no one would whine that they could have gotten in, if it weren't for those girls. The most sexism I had to put up with was actually from my Psych prof, of all people. Other than that, I think the divide was more between the merely-geeky-enough-to-go-there and the ubergeek types. Anyway, they opened up their pool of applicants and the average GPA went up quite a bit.

I was very lucky; we had conversations about this in college, given our environment. I knew someone who's own father didn't want her to go to college because "you'll just get married and waste all that learning". We all had to deal with teasing in high school, etc, but it's difficult to tell if it's the same as what other geeks went through, or worse for women. Personal experiences are difficult to compare.

While I used to go to libraries as a kid when my parents were unwilling to support my reading habit financially, I don't really go anymore because if I enjoy a book, I want to keep it and reread it. (I can understand my parents not buying me as many books as I could read - it probably would have lead to bankruptcy.) I like to think I'm a good judge of whether I'll enjoy a book, and I can always find people to gift with it or exchange if I don't like a book. I absolutely don't buy hardcovers except from authors I have already enjoyed, though.

I think one advantage of The Doctor in this poll is that people are actually voting on an array of characters. Someone else is voting for a recent newfangled incarnation, while I'm voting for vintage Jon Pertwee Doctor.

I suppose technically you were allowed there, but not in normal game play. For those who have never played it, Adventure was a rudimentary CRPG - there were two or three castles depending on difficulty and up to three dragons, assorted magic items like the spear and passwall, and your goal was to find the chalice and return it to the gold castle.

In one of the castles, there was a set of catacombs, and in the catacombs there was a magic item with no other purpose than this, usually referred to as the Dot or Grey Dot. It was one pixel and embedded in the wall in an area that you needed the passwall to get to. Then you brought that and other magic items to a certain area and you could go through a wall to a secret room that read 'Created by Warren Robinett'.

In addition, I used to be a volunteer guide in Everquest and occasionally had to help people who had fallen under the world. :)

I also realized that the missions were getting somewhat repetitive.

I am, however, really looking forward to the upcoming Star Trek and Star Wars games. Or, rather, I look forward to finding out whether they suck or not. :)

I was enjoying EVE to start with, but I eventually realized I was playing a fundamentally wrong game for me. This realization came when a couple of dozen people blew up my battlecruiser and podded me when I was simply jumping into an area to do a mission. (Podding, for the uninitiated, is destroying your lifeboat; you lose all of your implants and potentially some "experience".)

And then I realized that I wasn't interested in a game where I spent a substantial amount of time reading a book while traveling and/or mining.

(shill)But hey, my husband at Dragonfire Lasercrafts has the images licensed, so he can make merchandise for the game, and continues to enjoy playing. (/shill) These days, I'm playing Pirates of the Burning Sea.

(extreme vibrato)Frodo of the Nine Fingers... and the Ring of Doom!(/extreme vibrato)

I love my 9/80 schedule, and my company has been doing it for longer than I've been here (and I hired on in 1999). I work at a company that has a history of discouraging 'casual' overtime (we get paid for OT! We just need eight hours of it first. It's better than nothing.), so unless something has really gone veryvery bad, we're not coming in on that Friday.

Everyone knows which Fridays are 9/80 ones, so typically very few meetings get scheduled on them.

I find it's great for getting things done, particularly for scheduling doctor appointments.