iCertify iPhone app for CCNA study

It's been a long journey, but I am finally able to post a Makers of Things blog post about something I made. I made an iPhone app! I had lots of help. :-) It's called iCertify and it's a set of flash cards to help people pass the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification exam. You can learn more about it here. You can buy it at the iTunes app store.

iCertify is an independent product, not sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco, Cisco Systems, and CCNA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries.

Hats Off to Twitter and Their Hosting Site

I applaud Twitter for delaying its scheduled maintenance to allow tweets to come in from Iran regarding the Iranian election. Twitter delayed its maintenance till the next day and implemented it at 1:30 a.m. Iranian time, when most Iranians would be asleep. Of course, everyone is blogging about this, but I feel compelled to blog because I have a semi-unique perspective. Really I do. :-)

I would like to say "hats off" not just to Twitter management but to the network engineers, sys admins, and programmers who handled the rescheduled maintenance tasks so effectively while the entire world was watching. Those of us in IT know that upgrades hardly ever go smoothly. But Twitter and their network hosting service carried out what Twitter is calling a "critical network upgrade to ensure continued operation of Twitter" in less than the planned one hour. They finished ahead of time! According to Twitter, the upgrade significantly increases network capacity. Perhaps it was something mundane like disabling a hard-set "speed 100" command so an interface would auto-negotiate to Gigabit speed. Or perhaps it was more complex. Either way, we IT people know how much can go wrong, even with something simple like auto-negotiation. So, hats off to the engineers! We makers of things (engineers, sys admins, Twitter developers) come through again!

How I met my DH

I heard my coworkers talk about him before I met him, this computer whiz kid with a 4.0 grade-point average from MIT. Word was he was going to save us from our dismal destiny, daily predicted by the Wall Street Journal. I had already noticed his car in the Apple Computer parking lot. It was a long, white Plymouth, a defiant display of American pride, so unlike the Toyotas and Hondas driven by everyone else in California during the 1980s. A blue and white sticker pasted to the back bumper said, “Honk, if you hate the IBM PC.”

I heard his voice before I met him. Most of the other software engineers talked softly, if at all, murmuring to each other about the latest affront on our entitlement. “Did you hear? We’re not going to get free Friday morning bagels anymore!” But his voice, with its East-coast volume, traveled over cubicle walls. 

The first day I met him, I was sitting in my 8 by 10-foot cubicle, furious at my Lisa computer that would not do what it was told. I sat tensed in my not-so-ergonomic chair, surrounded by line analyzers and other test equipment, ready to pound my fist into the cute, greyscale icons on the Lisa's screen. 

“Hey, Priscilla,” I heard from outside my cubicle. It was Ralph, a happy-go-lucky coworker who spent more time wandering the cubicle maze than actually working. “Our project has been canceled and we’re out cruising for chicks!” he announced in a jolly tone. “Have you met my teammate, Alan?”

Visible behind Ralph were a pair of huge, dilapidated sneakers, and a set of long, skinny legs in tight, Levis jeans. Above a lean torso and thin shoulders, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses peered out from wild, frowning eyebrows. The comment about chicks was not sitting well with this young gentleman.

Being in no mood for interruptions, I quickly shook the slender hand, and glared at the intruders. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to benefit from this unexpected visit from the local genius. I put on a smile, and said sweetly, “How would you ignore the high-order bit from a byte? I'm trying to read a character from the keyboard and the high-order bit is useless and I hate Pascal.” Without a millisecond of hesitation, Alan leaned forward and said kindly, “It’s not too hard once you get used to it. You just have to do a modulo 128.” With a quick grin, he and Ralph disappeared from my doorway, and moved on to the next cubicle in their search for chicks. I knew at that moment that I didn't want this Alan character to meet any other chicks besides me!

Are these women pair-programming?

Dell just announced a new website to sell netbooks to women. Is this a good thing? Do women need their own site? The netbooks are adorable. I want one. But I'm frustrated with the site. It's too hard to get to the technical details. The Tech Tips aren't technical. Plus Dell isn't showcasing the netbooks that sell with Ubuntu, just the ones with Windows XP. I wonder what this says about their assumptions about the female market? I would think that they would realize that their target market includes women programmers, Unix sys admins, network engineers, computational biologists, and technical instructors who travel for a living and are sick of carrying around a massive laptop. (Dell has made progress though. Recently they removed the Tech Tip that had to do with counting calories. The last thing we need is more anorexic Dell girls!)

I like to imagine that the women in the Dell photo are pair-programming. Pair-programming is a method for software development where two people work together. One drives (types) and the other navigates (makes suggestions and checks the work). Studies have shown that although a task may take 15% longer with pair-programming, the results are less buggy. The design and implementation are better, technical skills and team communications are improved, and pair-programming is considered more enjoyable at statistically significant levels. Two heads are better than one!? 

Books for Nerd Mothers

Everyone is blogging and tweeting about this by now, but just in case my readers (all five of them!?) don't know about it, I thought I'd write about the very cool promotion O'Reilly books is having for the month of May. In honor of technical moms O'Reilly is offering a 40% discount if you use the code MDAYT. They are also posting pictures of moms, including my mom! My mother is 85 and still a nerd! She learned computer programming in her 50s about the same time as I was learning it in my 20s. She still spends many hours a day on her Macintosh. I'm glad we finally weaned her from her PCs.

The O'Reilly promotion got started when HillaryP who blogs about technical books and software noticed lots of mother's day promotions for flowers and beauty products and other girlie things. This got her thinking and caused her to post to her Twitter account, "Wouldn't it be awesome to see a mother's day discount on MS Press or O'Reilly books or other tech items?" Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly, took her up on it!   

I'm not a mother, but I am a nerd. My mother is both a nerd and well, duh, a mother. My mother's daughter is a nerd and a mother. What, you say? How can that be after what you just told us? It's a riddle! Ok, here's the answer. I'm referring to my sister, Sally, a brilliant programmer, security analyst, and QA expert. Her gorgeous daughters are also pretty tekkie, though they work in other fields. Hey, it's Mother's Day. I can boast a little even if I'm not a mother. Anyway, Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Sweat Pants Salvation

As makers of things, we nerds are responsible for an awful lot of junk that needs to be thrown out. What's the best way to handle this? I doubt it's what my dear hubby (DH) does. He secretly stashes his old electronic equipment in our attic and stacks his old nerd clothes in our closet. Take his 10 year-old sweat pants, for example. Please take them! DH wants to either hang on to them for another 10 years or give them away to some poor person. Who would want them, though? I take care of my sweat pants as you can hopefully see from the picture. I can't say the same for DH.

Today we had another heated discussion about the disposal of old things such as his sweat pants. I want to throw them in the trash. DH insists that we could give them to the Salvation Army store. He objects to the rampant consumerism he sees in the US and the excessive resource usage caused by producing and marketing a new pair of sweat pants. His points (if not his pants) are valid, but, did I mention that the sweat pants are stinky, smeared with grass stains, and holey? And when I say "holey" I mean full of holes, not sacred, despite DH's belief that the pants will somehow reincarnate into something that will save a poor homeless person from nakedness in the Salvation Army.

Now, I'm an environmentalist too. I was one of the first people I know to recycle bottles and cans. In grad school my roommates and I depended on the extra money we made from recycling. How else could we afford new cans of Mountain Dew? But when DH gets stubborn and illogical about his sweat pants and other old stuff, I tend to overreact. The end result? I drove to the Salvation Army in an attempt to make the sweat pants disappear. Yes, I admit I actually polluted the air in order to drive to the store to get rid of the sweat pants.

The Salvation Army said "no thank you!" They didn't want the sweat pants. Can you blame them? Luckily I'd also brought lots of my clean, un-torn, designer blouses and slacks to give away too. Then, I admit, I actually drove another 10 miles to the mall. There I bought a new pair of warm, fleece, sweat pants, just like DH's old ones, for $4.00 at JCPenney. Seriously, only $4.00! Does this make me a bad person? Were the sweat pants made in a sweat shop? I made JCPenney happy but what would JC do? Will I still find salvation?

Well all's well that ends well. DH is wearing his new sweat pants and didn't yell at me for driving to the mall. Oh, and by the way, we still have the old sweat pants. Would anyone like them? I'll walk to your house and deliver them in an environmentally-safe manner if you will puh-leeze take them off our hands.

Happy Equal Pay Day!

Today is the day that women "celebrate" their pay "catching up" to that of men. "Celebrate" and "catching up" might not be quite the right words, but celebrating is better than whining. In fact, some AAUW chapters, including my local chapter here in Ashland, OR, celebrated by giving away free cookies with a bite taken out of them. The remaining cookie was 78% of the original cookie to represent the ratio of women's wages to men's wages. The AAUW's booth in our downtown plaza today was quite crowded with people of all ages and gender taking free cookies and free literature about pay disparity.

The National Committee on Pay Equity started Equal Pay Day in 1996 to raise public awareness about the gap between men's and women's wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how much a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man. Tuesday is the day of the week on which women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week. April is the month when women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous year. On average, full-time working women earn 78% of what full-time working men earn.

I've read a few blog posts that object to women making a big deal out of the earnings disparity. The blogs rehash the same old myths we've been hearing for years. I would like to make a few points about these myths:

Myth #1. Women earn less than men because more of them work part-time. Nope, that doesn't explain it. The data used to celebrate Equal Pay Day are based on an analysis of full-time, year-round workers.

Myth #2. Women choose less lucrative occupations than men. A 2003 Government Accountability Office study controlled statistically for this factor and still showed women's average pay was about 80% of men's. Also, I have to ask, why do certain occupations (librarianship, teaching, etc.) attract more women and why do these occupations pay so little?

Myth #3. Women aren't as well educated as men. Well, this simply isn't true. More women go to college than men these days. Also, studies show that one year out of college, women graduates earn, on average, only 80% of male graduates.

Myth #4. Women take time off to raise families or take easier jobs because of small kids at home. Um, why should women do that more than men? And even if they do, please note that the GAO study mentioned above took that into account.

Myth #5. Women aren't as good at negotiating salaries as men. This is possibly true, but studies by Carnegie Mellon researchers and others show that when women do negotiate, they are less likely to get the job. Hiring managers are often turned off by an assertive woman but impressed by an assertive man.

Myth #6. Women whine too much and the government shouldn't protect them. Well, we're trying to whine less and celebrate with half-eaten cookies, so give us a break! Regarding the government, I'm all for a government with a small footprint. It would be nice if anti-discrimination laws were unnecessary. Let's all aim for that. If you're a man in a position to hire employees, please consider writing job descriptions that detail the knowledge, skills, and abilities that potential employees should have and appropriate salary ranges. Then hold interviews. Let other managers and employees assess the potential hire. Don't just give the job to your male buddy at the salary he suggests. I've seen enough of that to make me want to upchuck my cookies.