Lisa Beimler said:
> > Go to most computer departments and count the number of women
> and you will
> > see we still have a long way to go. Computing is still a guy's club and
> > most women I know, myself included, still feel they have to break in and
> > show themselves comptetent.
Quite a few people have mentioned the "show themselves competent" motif.
I've noticed this a few times in my transistion from "using computer" to
"knowing about computer" and I find it awfully tiring - no, it's more like
wearying. That sort of tiredness that seems to live in your bones. The
constant assumption that you are, in fact, some sort of quasi-intelligent
parrot is just, gah...fear the napalm in my head.
When I went looking for a ten port patch panel for our flat intranet, the
one shop assistant that did help me, only helped *after* a short but
interesting conversation about the merits of BNC vs UTP. The rest...well, I
got asked if the cable "looked a bit like a phone cable, but bigger" or "we
can hold it until tomorrow if the others want to look at it, to see if it's
what they want".
It doesn't even have to be that overt: in fact, it's nicer when it is,
because then you can put your finger on it and go, ah, idiocy. Had a
conversation today with Guy-I-Know:
i) I met this guy at a LUG meeting
ii) he knows I have a dual boot Win2K and Slackware box...
iii) ...that I set up myself.
Was having trouble with a laptop: wouldn't fdisk, wouldn't format, wouldn't
"upgrade" existing 'doze installation, and couldn't get into BIOS, and was
basically bitching about it in the hope that something would occur to either
of us. What I got was instructions "boot ME, run DOS prompt, use fdisk" and
"the boot order should be...".
Really? It's amazing I didn't think of that. Oh. I did. And I told you I
tried them, even.
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