So I took the opportunity to check the logs on my website tonight (I do this rather regularly). The lesson I learned from this routine task is that when I post on slashdot, apparently a lot of people hit my site to check it out. I imagine they are rather disappointed. Most seem to be looking for pictures of me (I can only imagine of what nature) as I have a slew of 404's from visitors trying to randomly guess names of pages and directories where such pictures might be (nice tries all, but I don't keep pictures of myself on the website). Persistant buggers. I did appreciate the person who left the little "slashdotted_bah" message for me - I'm glad I'm not the only one who leaves messages for people in their logs! Of course, leaving messages here would work better - I might actually respond.

Well, was I surprised to come home and see that something like 12 people posted comments directly in reply to the one I made (see today's article about women in computer science for the whole discussion). I never knew I was so controversial! :) I don't know if anyone actually reads the tripe I write here, but for those who added their two cents to the discussion I want to say thanks! I saw a lot of good points that were made, and I appreciate the fact that people made an effort to speak up and try to dispel some of the absolutely ridiculous myths that were being thrown around. I think a lot of the gals here at Slashdot typically lurk in the shadows, and it was good to see some people talking about their experiences in the workplace. I added a few people to my friends list who made particularly nifty contributions to the discussion (in case you are wondering how you ended up there).

Since I just posted a comment in a recent /. article about women in computer science, I figured some curious people might come here. If you are interested in some good stats on women in computer science, and some of the issues surrounding the topic, try here:

http://www.anitaborg.org/faq.html

If you are a woman who is in computing and would like to build up your support network, try joining the systers mailing list:

http://www.systers.org/

I found another funny comment on /. and need a place to put it, as well as the other one I saw a couple days ago.

Funny stuff about RFID

Funny stuff about SCO

I am proud to say I made another intelligent comment today. Or at least informative. I wonder how many of those I have to make before I have Karma: Excellent?

I must say that my employer's cafeteria has excellent vegetable pizza. I know that doesn't have anything to do with anything. I'm just saying.

So on to more technical things. I'm trying to figure out a nifty way to submit things on a page without refreshing, in a cross-browser compatible manner (ha). So far I've come across pushlets and jsrs. I'm not sure either is what I'm looking for. If anyone actually reads my journal and has suggestions (ones that don't involve iframes) feel free to comment.

I am in training at work. Training is like having 8 hours of liberal arts lecture a day.

I have been very lazy this week in general. I'm having a hard time getting to bed early enough to get an adequate night's sleep. Early enough in this case being 10 or 11 p.m.

I will soon have new hosting for my revamped website. One of my old co-workers is giving me space at his hosting company for a great price. Once it's set up, I should have a real blog there, but that won't be until August.

Today I am a moderator again. This is the third or fourth time, I think, in the last couple months. I must be a super-average user.

So we finally got our treadmill hooked up, which is very cool. The thing no one ever tells you about treadmills is the vertigo you get after you get off of one. It's sorta like when you were little, and would stand in the doorway and push your arms against either side, then step away to see if your arms would float upward on their own. When you get off of a treadmill, it's like every step you take your legs just want to keep walking without you.

I left all my good lip gloss at home today, which is very annoying. I'm left with only an average pot of Burt's Bees Raspberry Lip Gloss, which is neither glossy nor raspberry-flavored. That's $4.00 I'll never get back.

It occurs to me that today I have typed in capitals. So much for consistency.

yah, so this is my first journal entry. i haven't decided if i want to write journals in all caps or all lowercase or what yet. all i know is today i feel like lowercase plaintext, and so it is.

anyway, today i had my midterm in eecs 591. distributed systems, in case you are that curious. it wasn't as bad as i expected. i think i at least passed, maybe even did well.

so maybe since you are here, you want to know something about me. well, i won't tell you much because how do i know you aren't some kind of weirdo stalker or something? but here's a few tidbits. my name is dawn, twenty-somethingish, married to greg almost a year. i like linux (debian is best) and security-related things. i write perl, c, c++, java (not necessarily in that order) and all sorts of web stuff. i live near school, because i'm a grad student right now. and um...i like to cook (food network rules) and decorate (trading spaces rules) and watch 24 on tv. and that's all i'm saying for now.

sooooo...i think that's enough about me. maybe i'll say more tomorrow. or maybe i'll just let you wonder.