by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

I think it all started with the electric typewriter. I loved that thing. My father was a free-lance writer who produced a fair amount, and was actually published in a few magazines. He used the electric typewriter, of course, and it was in the “study” which always had a desk (no matter which house we were in, there managed to be some place for Daddy (yes, I call him Daddy, deal with it) to write), but was also a mishmash of boxes filled with photos, old yearbooks, and other memorabilia. I have many fond memories of various rooms over the years where I would sit and thumb through books or look at old family photos, or read strange things I later discovered that my father had written.

I adored the sound the typewriter made. The hum as it was powered on, the sshtick as the typewheel spun around and shifted to the left margin, the whir of the platen as I feed in a sheet of paper, and of course the clacking as I typed. When I was fairly young, I’d just sit at it and make noise with it until I was told to turn it off and stop wasting paper and ribbon. I learned to touch type by the time I was twelve years old, and I used it for various reports at school. Then Daddy brought home a sort of word processor. It was like an electric typewriter, but it had a little screen where you typed in your words and could get them right before you committed them to the paper. I remember thinking how utterly cool that was.

Then he brought home a computer. I was around fourteen or fifteen years old and he brought home a Commodore VIC-20. It didn’t have a cartridge slot, it used a cassette that stored the software you ran on it. It came with Lunar Lander and I was hooked. I loved that game. I thought it was so amazing that you stored the game on a cassette!

After the VIC-20, we got a Commodore 64. This had a floppy drive, so we were able to load programs from 5 1/4 inch floppies. I played a jillion games on that thing (Infocom Text Adventures anyone?). I learned about basic programming, and about loops, and pokes, and peeks, and creating little things that floated around the screen, and I was charmed. It never occurred to me that I could do anything with that, though.

I hadn’t been much interested in math or science in school. Frankly, I was never encouraged along those lines by the school system. In fact, I was kept in lower level classes because they wanted to make room for more males in the upper level maths classes. This put my nose out of joint and pushed me more into the humanities. I still dated guys from the chess, science, and forensics clubs, though.

I went into theater arts in college, and I was working backstage. I enjoyed the organization required to be a stage manager, and had envisioned myself in a professional career in Minneapolis (I went to college in southwest Minnesota). I wasn’t ready for college, though. And it kicked my ass. Not academically, but emotionally. I dropped out and got bits and pieces of theater work that didn’t pay the bills, and office jobs that did.

I never stopped loving computers, though. I was delighted when I found out that the college I was going to had a computerized card catalog in the library. My roommate was a math major, and she introduced me to the wide area network chat that connected the entire state college system. I started spending nights and weekends when I wasn’t in rehearsals chatting from various terminals around the campus (some that used acoustic modems and print-out displays instead of monitors). I got to know a variety of math and computer majors from various schools, and we’d often head out on road trips to visit them. After dropping out of school, I kept in touch with these folks, mostly through computer bulletin board services (BBSes). I knew people who maintained their own, and often hung out at their houses to play games or such online.

I spent from 1984 to 1987 this way. Going from office job to office job. Eventually getting into data entry jobs, and chatting/emailing with folks on BBSes when I could get near a computer/terminal at someone’s house. Eventually, I moved in to share an apartment with one of the guys I’d met during the party days in college. He owned an Amiga 1000 and a Commodore 128 that he used in 64 mode to connect to a national network called Quantum Link, which was specifically for Commodore owners.

A new world opened up. I found chat rooms that were way cooler than the chat program I’d used in college. I found a place where roleplaying gamers hung out called the Red Dragon Inn (Q-Link eventually became AOL, it was way cooler when it was Q-Link). I met people from all over the country there, and spent a lot of time (and money) chatting with folks. Eventually, I met a couple from Alaska who had an extra room in the house they were renting and who were willing for me to move in and pay rent and help me get settled. I wasn’t really doing much in St. Paul, MN at the time, so I decided Alaska sounded cool.

I moved there and we hit it off pretty well after a bit of a rocky start. I was 22 and I managed to get a job in a furniture store, and still kept chatting on Q-Link whenever I could. I tried to get the furniture store to consider getting computers to manage things, but the owner wasn’t interested.

I also met my husband online. This was 1988. I was in Alaska, he lived on Long Island. We met in Q-Link, in the Red Dragon Inn, and in an online game of Trollball using the Runequest gaming system. :) We became romantically involved and chatted online, called each other, and wrote each other cards and letters. Eventually, my roommates were moving out of state and I needed a roommate to afford rent. My husband was ready to move away from his mother’s house, and I knew he’d been looking at places like Colorado, some place where there was wilderness. So I asked if he’d be interested in moving out to share the apartment and see if our romance would survive the reality of who we were. He thought about it and decided to give it a go. He arrived in Juneau on December 5, 1988 and we’ve been together ever since, we married around two years later. We used Commodore and Amiga computers, and ran our own BBS for a while, that was connected to FidoNet.

In time, I finally got a job working for the state, doing data entry for a Medicaid program, and that started me off on being a power user and computerizing the offices where I worked.

I set up all sorts of things. I learned about desktop publishing. I worked on a manual for the program I worked for. I acted as a liaison with some programmers we contracted with to provide time study software. I learned about ad hoc reporting and building queries, something for which I seemed to have a natural ability. Still I’d not seriously entertained becoming a programmer.

I spent the next several years working in office administration jobs (in 1993 we moved to Vermont after we’d decided Alaska wasn’t going to give us everything we wanted), and in each job I did everything I could to computerize as much of the work as I could. I developed a lot of systems for things, working my way through Windows 3.1, Windows 95, etc. My husband had been telling me for years that I could be a good programmer, and that I had the right turn of mind for it, but I wasn’t convinced for the longest time. I think that somewhere inside was this stubborn girl that got the idea that math wasn’t for girls and programming was math.

Eventually, however, he convinced me. He taught me some basic things, and I made a shift in my career. I’d always been the person that people came to first with their computer problems, so getting a help desk job seemed like a logical next step. I got a job working for a local ISP in 1997. I did phone tech support for two years before getting a job with a bank fixing general problems on the computer systems and setting up print servers and back up print servers on OS/2 (shudder). Then I got a job helping support databases for the state treasurer’s office, and I started learning Cold Fusion and writing small web applications.

This is where I am now, though not in the treasurer’s office any more. I write and support databases in Microsoft Access and SQL, web applications in Cold Fusion and .Net, and front ends in Access and .Net. I offer computer support to the community through a timebank exchange (which is AWEsome, by the way). I play games online, and have a blast surfing in Second Life (literally surfing, with a surf board, on the ocean), which seems like a natural progression in online communities that I’ve been happily participating in since 1983. I like loads of other computer games, too. I play Sims 3 when the mood takes me, and I’m shocked how much I enjoy RockBand. :) And finally, FINALLY, after five years of not having anything but satellite internet at the house we built in 2004, we have an actual T1 line to our home (DSL and cable internet are STILL not available in our area).

There are no less than seven computers connected to our wifi network, and we both have two computers each (he has a laptop and a netbook, I have a desktop tower and a netbook). We have a media/file server. A PS3. Our guest computer for house guests that can be configured however necessary for friends who might be staying with us. The Linux server my husband uses to hold the development code for an online game he codes for… there must be more… I suppose the DVR we have connected to our Dish might count…

I love technology. I love computers. I love the internet. I don’t see how anyone can NOT love these things. I accept that there are people who don’t, but I just can’t… understand them, I guess.