Yikes!  I almost missed Ada Lovelace Day! 

Anyway, when I think about women in technology, the women I think of are the ones that have shared the journey with me.  We all know how important it is to connect and share with others that are facing similar challeges; I know I wouldn't be the woman I am today without each and every one of you.  

So to all my fellow ladies at the CSE Department here at Ohio State (current and former!), all my Phi Rho sisters and all my other fellow women in technology -- thanks for being there and making the journey that much better!  Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Hmmmm....haven't actually been to the theater this year.  Best rented movie so far I think was Love Actually, with L.A. Without a Map coming in a close second.  Looking forward to Clash of the Titans and Tron: Legend in 3D. 

Best song I've heard this year....meh, can't think of anything. 

Best book I've read this year is Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.  It scared me to death, but I couldn't put it down.  

The "We Really Need to Stop Naming Decades" Decade.  

I don't know if the story is interesting or not, but it's a hybrid of two of my more commonly used handles: bekkara and rolaren.  I think I had an LJ account forever and a day ago with the username bekkara that I deleted, so I couldn't use that name without buying a re-name token, which I'm way too cheap to do.  rolaren (or ensignro), was, I believe, taken.  So I just combined the two. 

Bekkara is a modification of the word bekkar, from the Old Tongue from the Wheel of Time series.  If memory serves, I started using it when I was reading Anne Rice novels, during my "vampire period", if you will.  I had just created a Korbat on Neopets (think cartoony vampire bat) and was going to name him "Bekkar", but that name was taken.  So I figured I'd just add an -a to the end and make both the name (and the character) feminine.  Hence, Bekkara was born.  

RoLaren (or EnsignRo) is taken from the Star Trek character, Ro Laren.  I dressed as a Bajoran Starfleet officer one year for Hallowe'en, and one of my fellow Star Trek geeks said I looked like Ro Laren.  At least for him, the name just kind of stuck, so when I created and AIM account to keep in touch with him, rolaren seemed appropriate.  Of course, just plain rolaren was taken, so I threw some numbers on the end.  

I know I've been watching too much Doctor Who when the following tweet makes me think of "The Idiot's Lantern": 

This makes me sad. 

It makes me sad for two reasons.  The first is the obvious reason - I enjoy both Karen's work and Star Wars, and I'll miss her take on the Star Wars Universe.  

The second reason is that this is just one more thing that makes me wonder a bit about the direction of the SWU.  Ever since The Clone Wars movie and TV series, I've been slowly losing interest in Star Wars, or at least the most recent things to come out of Star Wars.  I finally watched The Clone Wars movie this week, and you know what?  I liked the book better.  (Guess who the author was.  Go on, guess.)  

I think it all started when I ran across this post on John Scalzi's blog.  Now, mind you, I've never read any of Scalzi's work, and being a SW fan, I approached it with a grain of salt.  By the time I finished reading the post, I was in shock.  While I don't agree with everything he says, overall?  Holy shit, he's right.  

Now, mind you, I respect George Lucas for doing his own thing regardless of what anyone thinks.  That's his right, and if he can make money doing it, more power to him.  But for me, it's becoming rather like that old sweatshirt that everyone's had for what seems like a thousand years.  It's comfortable, I still love it, but it's got a lot of holes and frayed ends, and in some places it just doesn't fit anymore.   Really, I ought to just replace the darn thing, but I just can't quite bear to part with it. 

Well, to look on the bright side, Karen still has a few SW tie-ins to finish up (looking forward to the two 501st books), and of course she has plenty of other things in the works.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Gears of War: Aspho Fields, and I'm definitely enjoying Jacinto's Remnant.  As long as she keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them.  And maybe somewhere in there I'll find time to finally finish the NJO and read some of the X-Wing books (After LOTF, Aaron Allston is definitely on the list of authors I'd like to read more of).

I left my glasses at work, so I can't look at the computer for very long without getting a tension headache. 

I read some documentation on OpenInventor on my 12" laptop anyway, because I'm a dummy. 

I have a tension headache now, right between my eyes. 

All of which necessitates this being a very short post. 

Ooooh, that's a tough choice.  It would be tougher if I had more to go on, keeping in mind that I'm only really familiar with David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston.  Well, and vaguely with Peter Davison, since I've seen Time Crash.  I'm going to have to claim insufficient information on this one.  

I'm optimistic about Matt Smith, though, after watching this interview with him.  His hair is kind of goofy, granted, but then again isn't that kind of part of the Doctor persona?  There's goofy element right along with the more serious "the buck stops here" kind of element, and you never know which one is going to surface at any given time.  I like the way he talks with his hands, too, the way he'd kind of wiggle his fingers when he was trying to think of how to express something.  

We shall see, we shall see. 

Considering my job, the last thing I want to be doing outside work is answering questions.  This does remind me of an amusing story, though. 

Back when I worked at a pharmacy, we had to ask every patient that picked up a prescription if they had any questions about their prescriptions.  That, of course, was typically shortened to "Do you have any questions?", which naturally prompted the occasional smart ass, completely unrelated question.  I don't remember anyone ever asking for my phone number, but I did have one gentleman ask me "What's the meaning of life?". 

My answer? 

42. 

That got him.  42 FTW!

Ah, yoga.  So nice to get back to that class.  I was really lazy over break -- and the scale shows it.  And my pants.  I don't like putting pants on and realizing they're a bit smaller than they used to be.  I really need to get back to working out.  I might start going in the morning instead of the evening.  If there's one time during the day that I really don't want to work out, it's at the end of a long day.  Usually I just want to go home.  We'll see if the urge to stay in bed is more powerful than the urge to go home. 

I'm also going to keep my hands occupied with something other than snacks while I watch the Fiesta Bowl.  I'm going to work on my Buckeye Afghan!  Maybe it'll be good luck for our boys. 

Go Bucks!