Gay Girl Geek

So, this is a big, major announcement:

I don't think a master's degree in computer science is for me.

A master's degree might be. But not in comp sci. See, I didn't really enjoy my experience at Berkeley. Hated it, in fact. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad: I enjoyed living in the Bay Area for awhile, and hooking up with Berkeley Circle K was one of the best things I've ever done. But the job was made of suck.

I've spent the past few days trying to analyze why exactly it sucked. In part, it was because my mentor was awful. The whole point of the program was mentorship, and I don't feel like she mentored me at all. If anything, I got the impression that she didn't like me and underestimated my abilities because of the school I'm from. But it wasn't just my mentor.

I also hated the work itself. Maybe it's just that computer vision isn't for me. Maybe it's just that I didn't feel anyone else cared about the work. Maybe it was pent-up frustration from working in C, which is not even close to my favorite language.

But really? Honestly? I think it's doing research that's the problem. I don't think I'm cut out for it. I hated reading all the papers about what other people have done in the field. And I hated writing my own paper even more.

See, the point of writing a paper, unless I'm completely wrong, is to show other people what you've done. But in reality, who gives a shit? I doubt my mentor at Berkeley even read my paper. The people at DREU will probably read it. But no one else will. And even if I had some sort of original, breakthrough, awesome idea, and tons of computer scientists read it and cited it and used it in their own work, that doesn't feel like enough to me. If other people using my work was what I'm after, I could get that from an open source project and go through a hell of a lot less money and hassle.

One of the major cliches about higher education is that you spend a lot of time learning a lot about very little. And I don't think that's what I want to spend the next few years of my life doing.

So, maybe not grad school. But the business world is definitely not for me. Yeah, good benefits and good pay are awesome. But being a code monkey sounds even less appealing than writing papers. Whatever I'm looking for in my life's work, I've always known I'm not gonna find it in a cube farm.

Instead, I've got a crazy idea. It's not an original idea, but it's a revolutionary one.

I think technology can help people.

I want to work on a project like OLPC (although hopefully one that's a little more successful). I want to be like the people who are running NadaNet right now. I want to participate in tech bridge world.

In short, I want to take what I know about computers, and use it to actually make a difference in someone's life.

I have no idea how I'm going to do this. It might involve a master's degree but not directly in computer science. It might involve joining the peace corps or americorps or some similar organization. The answer might be to suck it up, do the higher education, and then teach somewhere. Get girls interested in comp sci somehow.

Like I said, I don't know how I'm going to do it. I just know that I can't settle for anything less. So I'm going to find a way. I'm going to combine my two passions, and I'm going to make something awesome happen.

Wish me luck.

So, I gave in. I got a twitter account. I know conformity, blah blah. The truth is, I've been thinking about getting one for awhile now. But I know I would abuse it as much as I do my facebook status, and as much as every other boring person out there abuses it. So I've been looking for an idea.

Then, the other day, I was walking to the lab, through the quiet upscale residential neighborhood I'm living in. And I saw a deer! A real, live, cute little fawn, who was clearly very lost, just running down the road. I didn't have time to take a picture, but I thought "I wish I could use this as my perkilator!"

For those of you who aren't in UA Circle K, the perkilator is a tradition that was started by the president of our club when I was a freshman, Jennifer Eckhoff. The idea is that we have a green travel coffee mug, and at the beginning of every meeting, we pass it around. Each person says their name, something that made them perky that week, and then puts in any spare change they might have into the mug - the perkilator. Whenever the perkilator starts to get full, we decide as a club on a place to donate the money to. Over the years, we've raised an awful lot of money for Unicef, the six cents initiative, the Fuller Center for Housing, etc. Plus, it's a great way for people in our club to get to know each other.

But the really cool thing about the perkilator is that it's forced me to come up with something good that happened to me every single week. No one wants to hear about how I did badlly on a test or made an idiot of myself (again) or any of the stuff I normally dwell on. No matter how horrible my life has been each week, I always manage to come up with something, and once I do, I usually feel better. The power of positive thinking, I guess.

So anyways, when I saw that deer and thought about the perkilator, I suddenly knew what I want to do with a twitter account. I'm going to use it as my own daily virtual perkilator.

It's probably gonna be a little boring; my perkilator stories at meetings sometimes are, too. But it will at least be positive - none of the FML stuff I tend to post in my facebook status. And, hopefully, it will force me to put the power of positive thinking to work in my own life, by making myself come up with something good for each day.

I also want to somehow incorporate giving into this, since the coolness of the perkilator is not only the fun stories, but the donations we make. I'm not really sure how to do it yet. Maybe I'll give a dollar to some charity for each post.

Anyways, if you feel like following me and finding out what makes me perky, here's the link: http://twitter.com/BeardIsPerky

Let me start this out by saying: I am agnostic.

What does that mean? Well, it means I'm skeptical about the existence of God. And it means that I reject the Christian religion that I was born into.

See, I don't really understand Christianity. There are a lot of questions that I have about it that no one's been able to answer to my satisfaction. And frankly, it reminds me of a cult. A mainstream cult, but a cult nonetheless.

Let's look at the facts. Oftentimes, Christians are encouraged not to ask questions – to accept the church's teachings as truth without any further verification. In fact, when I've asked my mom's pastor for some sort of backing, he quoted a bible verse to me – that says that the bible is true! Hrm... the bible is true because it says it is. Interesting.

Furthermore, what are Christianity's qualifications for getting into heaven? You don't have to be a good person – you just have to accept Jesus. In fact, it doesn't matter how good you are – Jesus is the “way the truth and the life” and no one reaches God unless they go through Jesus. Some part of me likes the sound of this. I mean, I agree that everyone is bad - “we've all sinned.” If salvation is based on how good of a person you are, where is the line drawn? How many good things do you have to do before the good cancels out the bad?

But basing salvation solely on belief in Jesus also disagrees with my gut. There are somewhere around 6.7 billion people in the world. 2.1 billion of them are Christians. That's 33%, and probably includes a lot of people who aren't actually “born again” Christians. So God is damning more than two thirds of the world. Doesn't sound like a loving God to me. Nor would a loving God threaten people with hellfire just to get them to “love” him in return.

I find the Christian portrayal of God rather disturbing and contradictory. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why did he allow Eve to take the fruit from the garden of Eden? The Bible says that God knew everything about us before we were even conceived, so saying it was Eve's free will is contradictory. Saying that Satan convinced her to do it is even more contradictory, because it gives Satan power equal or greater to God's. So the only option left is that God allowed evil to enter the world – and why would a loving, righteous God do that?

The more I examine Bible stories, the more I realize that they don't really portray what I learned in Bible school. Take Noah, for example: the story isn't really about all the cute animals coming to the ark one by one. The story, to me, is about God getting pissed off and killing a whole bunch of people because they wouldn't listen to him. And not just killing them; damning them to eternal torment. Sure, he gave us a rainbow and promised not to do it again. But it still gives me a not-so-good impression of our Holy Father.

Or how about Abraham and Isaac? Isaac was Abraham's long awaited only son, yet Abraham was willing to kill him if God so desired. Christianity teaches this as a positive story – God stopped Abraham before he did it. But that kind of religious fanaticism just scares me.

I could go on and on. But the bottom line is, I don't understand where Christians get the idea that God loves us. When I think about the old testament and the bible stories I learned as a child, I see a jealous, petty, angry, and vain God. A God who cares more about the advancement of his religion and his purpose than he does his followers. And I don't think a God like that is worthy of my worship.Even if I did believe in the Christian God, I wouldn't want to be associated with his followers. I know you can't judge a group by its most extreme members, and I apologize to my Christian friends for this whole section, but let's look at those extreme cases for a moment. Throughout history and currently, Christianity has been used to justify bigotry, racism, homophobia, war, and general ignorance and intolerance. In general, conservative Christians tend to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong, sinful, against God, and going to hell. They believe in freedom of religion, as long as by that you mean the freedom to choose which sect of Christianity you want to belong to.

No. I don't want to be associated with a God or a group of people like that.

So what do I actually believe? Why do I call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist? Why not become a Buddhist if I hate Christianity so much?

When it comes right down to it, I don't think that anyone really has the answers. I think religion is humanity's attempt to explain the unexplainable – and that's fine, as far as it goes. But as soon as you start claiming to know what happens to us when we die, I'm going to call you a liar. No one knows, and no one can ever know.

As I said above, I don't think the Christians are right. I don't think the Buddhists or the Hindus or any other group of religious people are right, either. If I had to throw my lot in with a religious group, I'd go with the atheists, but they might be wrong too. Hell, maybe the Romans were the ones who had it right 2000 years ago. Who am I to say?

I believe in people. I believe that everyone is both good and evil. Even the evilest person in the world has some bit of good in him, and even the best has done something evil. We're all fucked up, and we've all made mistakes. We're human, it happens. Part of what defines us as people is how we react to our mistakes and our flaws.

I believe in good and evil, but not as perfect concepts. I think it's “good” to help people, and “evil” to harm them. So it's dumb to describe people with those words, because everyone has hurt someone, and everyone has helped someone. To me, morality should be based on the golden rule, and to an extent, the wiccan rede: “An it harm none, do what ye will.”

I guess, in a word, I'm a humanist.

As far as the existence of God: I'd like to believe that there is a God. I'd like to believe in a personal being who loves us and cares for us, who created the world with a good purpose in mind. But the evidence in the world around me seems to suggest that such a being does not exist; or if he does, that he is not omnipotent. I can't rectify a loving, personal, and all-powerful creator and the hell that exists in the world around me. But I haven't totally ruled out the possibility. To make a comparison an atheist friend of mine is fond of: I haven't completely given up believing in unicorns, even though I'm pretty certain they don't exist.

I'd nearly forgotten this blog existed.

I have a lot of things going on, and a lot on my mind lately. But I came here to post a specific thought, and here it is:

It blows my mind sometimes how much work has been done before me. Take math for example. All those formulas and theorems that I've spent hours trying to learn for the past few years - someone had to think of them. And then, once they'd thought of them, they had to prove they were right. I know this may seem like an obvious assertion, but it's just... staggering, if you really think about it. Especially considering that not all of this stuff is exactly straightforward.

It's not a coincidence that each math class builds upon each other, either. Each theorem is built upon previous theorems, and our understanding of them. Following facts until they reach a conclusion. But if we didn't have that previous work to rely upon, we'd be nowhere. You can't do calculus if you don't know algebra. You can't do algebra if you can't do arithmetic.

What if we hadn't had that basis to build upon? What if, say, Newton never published his thoughts on calculus? Or Euclid never published his geometry? Where would we be today? I know most of the thoughts that these particular mathematicians presented weren't completely unique, and the ideas probably would have shown up eventually. But it's still an interesting thought.

Now let's look at computer science. Have you ever thought about how much code goes into making your computer work? Even if you ignore the hardware side of things, there's the bootloader, the bios, the operating system, the individual device drivers... we rely on all of these things to make our applications work, the same way we rely on arithmetic to make calculus work.

Except computer science faces some issues that math doesn't. First off, computer scientists almost never have to prove that their code works. It's nearly impossible to do so, and it takes too much time and effort, so pretty much the only people that bother with it are people who write code that will cause significant human or financial loss if it breaks. That means, basically, that no one has *proven* that anything on your computer works. We just know that it works under most testable circumstances, and that's usually good enough. Except when it isn't.

Second, programmers face a lot of issues with licensing and copyright law. Remember when I said to imagine if Newton had never done his work with calculus? Well, what if you knew that he had done it, but you weren't allowed to use his work in your own proofs? You'd have to reinvent Newton's theorems, just to prove your own. Sounds pretty ridiculous, but that's basically what's going on in the software world right now. And that's why open source software is so important. We need that background, those blocks to build upon. We can't really make progress unless we've seen what came before.

I think this is getting a little off topic now, but the other thing that's been on my mind lately is how much computer science is being used in other disciplines. I think math people are used to seeing math being used everywhere, and to an extent we're all used to seeing computers everywhere. But it's neat to think that just 20 or 30 years ago, mathematicians (and college students) didn't have calculators. If they wanted a specific value of sin or cos at a non-standard value, they had to look it up in a table. Or, think about the largest prime number that was found to date. That was done using a high-tech, complicated technique called distributed computing.

I don't understand why there are so few girls in computer science, because the applications of it are so diverse! People think that if you're a computer science major, you're going to end up in a cubicle somewhere churning out code and rarely interacting with another human being. There are lots of jobs out there like that, but there are so many more possibilities! The internet put the world at our fingertips, and now we get the chance to shape it.

I'm so disappointed in people.

If you haven't heard, I fell for another nerdy computer science guy. He's the best thing that's happened to me in a long time, so of course, when I went home this weekend, I was gushing about him.

My mom was happy for me. Her friend Donna? Not so much. Her first question? "Is he black?" No. He's not black. But why the hell does that matter?

It's no secret that my last boyfriend was black. And it's no secret that our relationship wasn't meant to be. But let's leave him being black out of it, shall we?

I expect this sort of thing from my aunt. I've even learned to stomach it from her, as difficult as that may be, for the sake of my relationship with her. I don't have to stomach it from Donna. Who I date, what gender they are, and what color their skin is is even less of Donna's business than it is my aunt's. And trust me, it's none of my aunt's either.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. This is the woman who still can't deal with the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. She refers to Janet's girlfriend by first name only. Never anything to indicate that the two of them are more than just friends. Even though they've been together as long as I've known them.

It just... pisses me off. In a day and age where we've finally elected a black president, why is it not OK for a white girl to date a black guy, or a black girl for that matter? This is America. We're supposed to be the land of the free. But how can we be free if society still tells us who it is and isn't OK to fall in love with and marry based solely on gender or skin color?

I'm so upset about proposition 8 in California. One of my friends said recently that she was hoping that people's common decency would win out. I guess I was hoping the same thing, but I should have known better. Common decency isn't so common when it comes to these sorts of issues, I guess.

I'm constantly amazed at how divisive this issue really is. And how moronic the arguments against it are. Because basically, the argument always comes back to this: How does it hurt you, as a straight couple, when two gay people get married? How does it hurt society? It doesn't, and all the arguments that it does are complete and utter rubbish.

I'm just so disappointed. I wanted to see some respect and decency come out of this election. I wanted to see an affirmation that our nation is wising up, and opening up their hearts and minds. Instead, I saw only that we have a deeply divided country. I saw a religious right that will say anything it has to to convince people that their views and only their views are the correct ones. And it sickens me.

I have hope. This won't be the end, and I think Barack's win will be a big step in pushing this nation in where it needs to go. But I don't think he can work miracles. Real change takes time. We're certainly not gonna see legalized, widely accepted gay marriage in Barack's presidency. But it's going to happen.

And when it does, I'm gonna have a lot of weddings to go to.

So to preface this... I'm sorry I haven't been updating lately. A bruised shoulder and a crap-ton of homework will cause that.

So, I said in one of my early posts that I thought I saw gender differently than most people. I'm gonna have to retract that statement, and edit it: I think I see sexual roles differently than most people, but not gender itself.

The reason for me changing my mind? I read Self-Made Man.

The premise of the book is that the author, a lesbian, decided to disguise herself as a man for about a year. She's not a transvestite or anything - she just wanted to do it as a social experiment. And her findings and the way she wrote about them are incredibly interesting.

When I first started reading the book, I didn't like the author at all. She struck me as an annoying feminist liberal - the type of person who looks down her nose at everyone. The whole premise of the book is based upon her deception of everyone, and at the beginning, it doesn't seem to bother her at all. But through the course of the book, she undergoes a very noticeable transformation. She begins to relate better with men, and she feels a great deal of remorse for the deception the book is based upon.

Regardless of how you feel about the author, the book itself is eye-opening. I wish I had a copy to give to every straight girl who's ever wondered why her boyfriend won't talk to her. The author discusses a man's role from a man's eyes (or nearly a man's eyes). She had to undergo not only a physical transformation, but a personality transformation as well in order to be perceived as a man. She found out firsthand how society restricts men emotionally, and how men's friendships work.

I think I liked the book the most because it made sense within my own experience. The author had a lot of things to say about women, some of them less obvious than you would expect, and some of them downright accusing. For example, when she started dating women as a man, she realized firsthand how much bias and hatred men experience from women - they're guilty until proven innocent most of the time.

The book also made sense when I thought of the majority of the guys I know. I tend to make friends with guys who don't follow the stereotypical gender roles, and I think that has minimized the issue a lot in my eyes. I've always thought that if my friends can do it, everyone else should be able to, too - but it's not that simple. I think if I've gained nothing else from reading this book, it's a newfound appreciation for men in my life who ignore the stereotypes, and perhaps a little more patience with the men who don't.

I think the book also changed my perception of myself as "one of the guys." As much as I may feel that way sometimes, I'm really not. I still relate as a woman does, with all of the pros and cons that come with that. For example, I need to hear the I love you when I'm in a relationship - it's never good enough for me that it's implied - but I also am quite comfortable discussing my feelings in pretty much any situation. There are generalizations here, obviously - I know plenty of men who discuss their feelings openly, and some women who don't. But the point is, I think I'm a lot more stereotypically feminine than I give myself credit for sometimes, especially when it comes to relationships with men.

In any case, I highly recommend the book, especially if you're really interested in gender stuff like I am. And if you do read it, I want to hear what you think of it. :-)

If your mobile phone could do anything in the world, what would you want it to do?

That's the question Google asked developers last year. And they got some really freakin' cool answers. The idea here is the google isn't making a gphone, but an iphone-killing operating system that can be ported to any phone. The best part is that it's open source - opening the door for all the linux nerds out there to go to town on amazing applications.

Among my favorites from the winners: An app that lets you take a picture of a barcode, then gives you prices and reviews of the item. A media player that downloads lyrics and video with your songs. And a picture-based navigation system that lets users review and recommend locations.

Pretty sweet, right? That's not even the best part. There was a contest, and there's going to be another. Grand prize: $275,000 to the top 10 teams.

Needless to say, Kat's seeing stars... and possibly a super awesome honors project. Now all I need is an original idea for an app. And permission from the department to make this thing my life.

For those who are interested in the non-programming side of this awesomeness, rumor has it the first phone will be out in October or November - just in time for Christmas. It's called the Dream, and it should be contracted through T Mobile. Luckily, I have a Sprint contract that's set to expire in late October. Can't wait to own one!