Geek in Heels - Page 64

Nov 23, 2011 • In Career, Funny

Résumé vs Reality

Guest Post: It’s the Economy, Ladies

Today we welcome back guest blogger Susan. I have always admired her professionalism and diplomatic approach to feminism, and this post certainly does not disappoint.

What do you think? Do you believe the financial crisis may not have happened if women had been in charge? Do you think that women need to take a more proactive and entrepreneurial role in this economy?

After the financial crisis that put this country in it’s current mess, I saw lots of speculation floating around that if women had been in charge of our financial institutions, this would never have happened. Interesting. Now women are being looked at as a possible fix for our unemployment woes.

Women in tech is a recurring feature on my blog, mostly because I am one. So I’m really excited to see some research from the Kauffman foundation recommending a focus on science and technology startups created by women to help our economy. More jobs are better any way you slice it, of course. Is encouraging women to found their own companies the way to get things moving? It’s certainly worth a try given that some other things meant to stimulate our economy haven’t really done the trick.

You don’t have to look hard to find the stats on how many men start their own companies when compared with women. This research article even mentions that the rate of women patenting research is lower than men in similar fields. Women in scientific fields also seem to gravitate more toward non profits and universities than the for profit world. There are many reasons people suspect more women in all industries don’t start their own companies; lack of networking opportunities, lack of funding opportunities, even lack of confidence are all considered culprits.

Starting a company, tech or otherwise is a big commitment. There are the barriers to entry that people love to site in articles about the lack of women in tech. But there is another camp entirely who believe that opportunities or not, most women just aren’t interested. The argument here is that women may prefer a more collaborative role to a strictly managerial one. Some prefer more “social” job positions like sales and marketing. And the most obvious one; if you are the COO of your home and family, you probably already have enough on your plate without trying to launch your own business.

I’m not sure which (if any) of those are the reason for where we are now. There is certainly enough speculation floating around about it. What I’m really interested in is if any of these strategies to empower women actually produce results. Most people can agree that there should be more women in tech, but nothing has actually changed just yet. I think all the unemployed people out there would agree that we can’t really wait around to find out if it will. Regardless of who helms the next wave of innovative companies, no one would argue that start ups are an important source of new jobs. Somebody needs to get cracking.

Image by mant.

About the Author:

Susan Cruickshank is a feminist, blogger and owner of too many pairs of trousers. She puts her own spin on women’s career and other work-related issues on her blog Wearing the Trousers. When not blogging, Susan enjoys the Boston music scene as fan and sometimes performer and spending time with her husband Rob. Her other favorite activity is posting ridiculous pictures of her cats on Facebook.

Things to Tell Our Grandchildren

I would like to add one more: “I am older than the internet.” 😀

Via haha.nu.

Guest Post: Lifelong Partner, Lifelong Travel Companion

Today’s guest post comes from someone whose blog I have been enjoying since my own blogging days on Xanga: Ray, otherwise known as jigg. Ray recently celebrated a kickass BBQ wedding and is fresh back from a European honeymoon; after all this excitement he is currently on a short blogging hiatus, but was kind enough to contribute a post for my blogging maternity break. So sit back and enjoy!

One thing I have always wanted to do was travel the world. Many people I know also want the same thing, but only 1 or 2 of them actually tried to make it come true. A few years ago when I was single, I thought I had to see and travel as much as possible. What if my future wife isn’t the perfect travel companion? It’s possible that people have different interests and anyone who has traveled with others know that there are often conflicts of interests.

Unfortunately, like almost everyone else, work and the lack of money, kept me home. Actually, I should blame myself for not doing everything I can to realize the goal. And then, I met my wife. We began dating, got engaged less than a year later and then married six months after that.

The interesting thing about my wife, Mrs. jigg, is that she grew up open-minded, but uncurious. Basically, she was open to new things, but wasn’t really curious to try new things. The size of the world is different for everyone — and this depends on who you know and how much of the world you have seen. Most of her friends were from where she lived, Boston, and she never really looked for opportunities for travel.

Before I met her, it was quite a gamble for me to hope that my future wife would be a good travel companion. While I knew she was the one person I would want the spend the rest of life with, I actually wasn’t so sure if she was the one who I would want to see the world with. That sounds really bad but what if hiking to the top of Machu Picchu isn’t her thing? What about going to third world countries? What about the miles and miles of walking and sightseeing that I love that she might not enjoy? Maybe she likes the beach/resort types where it’s more about R&R than venturing to places where you’ll need a vacation for your vacation afterwards. There are endless possibilities, but in order for me to realize my goal, she would have to also want the same thing.

While we’ve been to a few places together (mostly short weekend trips), the ultimate test was our honeymoon this past month. After a lot research and discussions, we decided to go to London, Paris and Rome, for a total of two weeks.

While the details of the trip will be in separate blog entries (sorry, too many things to post), I can tell you that she passed with flying colors. We wanted to do the same things, liked many of the same things, and most of importantly, she was not a burden to travel with. In fact, she was fun to travel with and it made the whole trip fly by. Sure, as her husband, I had to carry her bags at times, but that’s a given. I knew she never had a princess attitude (one of the things I love about her), but moreover, she was a real trekker, resting only when she needed to and never complained.

To be honest, I was more curious with how she would be on this trip, than the things we would see. Most importantly, even if there are some places she does not want to go, she is perfectly okay with me going without her. I always tell her that I was the best decision she has ever made, but she truly makes me feel like I’m the luckiest man alive.

About the Author:

jigg (lowercase j!) as his readers know him as, has been blogging very consistently for the past 9 years on his random thoughts on life. He is currently on a short hiatus, but is working on updating soon with a recap of his honeymoon with his wife, Mrs. jigg. His blog can be found at xanga.com/jigg and can be reached at jigg.xanga@gmail.com.

Code Cards [Expressing Your Geeky Self This Holiday Season]

I’m loving these geek-infused letterpress Code Cards by designer Matt Raw. The Egg Nog Arrays set includes designs in four different languages — Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript — each spelling out the perfect recipe for egg nog.

The Code Cards shop also carries CSS Happy New Years cards as well as &hearts; cards:

Whichever design draws your fancy, you’ll be sure to make a geek very happy this holiday season with these cards!

Via Gizmodo.

Guest Post: Whatever Happened to Thanksgiving?

As much as I love the holidays, I’m the type to get irritated to see Christmas decorations up in public or to hear holiday songs on the radio before the month of December. So it comes as no surprise that I nodded in agreement as I read the following guest post from contributor Terri — Thanksgiving really does seem to get the short end of the stick this time of the year!

What do you guys think? Do you gloss over Thanksgiving in favor of the December holidays? Or do you look forward to Thanksgiving with as much enthusiasm and excitement as Terri and I?

Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? This is one of my favorite holidays by far, but I’ve been noticing a decidedly different tone surrounding it in the past few years. Thanksgiving seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to coverage and attention in the media and our culture until a day or two before. If you didn’t know it, you’d think there was a holiday lull between Halloween and Christmas. I could have sworn on November 1 that I saw a commercial with bells jingling, splashes of red and green and someone resembling a Santa. Oh. Heck. Nah.

Perhaps I’m making this all up, but I guess there is a little sadness in my heart that Thanksgiving doesn’t get the attention it deserves these days like Halloween or Christmas. As an only child growing up with a single mother, the holidays, beginning with Thanksgiving, were one of my favorite times of the year because I got to feel like I was a part of a large family. It’s not that I don’t have extended family, but most of them were born in and live in other countries where Thanksgiving doesn’t even exist. It’s just another Thursday in November to them (although they do acknowledge our day off and celebration with a little jealousy).

My mother and I would get together at my godmother’s home, and she sometimes had up to 30 people over just for Thanksgiving dinner. One year, there was even a DJ and a party in the basement. Seriously! While I enjoyed my singleton childhood, it was fun to feel as if you were a central part of some bigger family holiday. It felt like I was celebrating an ideal and joining in something bigger than just our tight-knit two person household.

I don’t know why we’d want to overlook a holiday like Thanksgiving, since it brings us all together. It doesn’t necessarily have the religious connotations that Christmas has, and who doesn’t want to be grateful and thankful for a day? It also doesn’t have the overt patriotism of Independence Day (yes, I know there are some politics at play with Thanksgiving, too). To me, it’s one of the few holidays in the U.S.A. that can cut through all of our differences whether we’re Christian, Muslim, an immigrant or can trace our family back to the founding of the country. Thanksgiving is a holiday for everyone.

Since everyone can celebrate Thanksgiving, I love that over time the perception of Thanksgiving food has changed, too. I like the fact there are quintessential traditional Thanksgiving dishes we can count on, but we take each of these dishes and make them our own, kind of like our American experience. Everyone with their cultures and experiences has added a little something here and a little something there to change what is customary about the proper Thanksgiving meal, but it’s still all uniquely American.

I’m no longer attending the big Thanksgiving dinners that I’m used to, but that’s in part because the baton has been passed to me. I made and hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner last year. Feel free to take a look at what I made for dinner. Whether or not Thanksgiving gets short shrift, it will still have the all important 3 Fs: food, family and football. That’s my kind of holiday!

About the Author:

Terri writes the blog Try Anything Once, which chronicles her local, national, and international food and travel adventures and everything in between. She can usually be found tweaking her list of restaurants to try, watching DVR’ed episodes of Top Chef, dreaming about her next trip, and tweeting way too much.

Guest Post: Incorporating a Baby into Your Life

I will be the first to admit that my life has changed tremendously since having kids. Not that I was a party animal before kids, or that J and I regularly took spontaneous trips to Paris, but that I go out A LOT less, and practically every decision I make includes the question “What about the baby?”

And I guess I’m a bit of a wimp in this regard, because ever since Claire was born I have never spent a night away from home (aside from hospital stays), never traveled more than a hour’s radius from home, and much rather prefer the safety of my home to places where I — and perhaps others — will need to make special accommodations for the baby.

But I know that motherhood doesn’t have to be this way. And to present this case is guest author Heather, who recently had a baby of her own and has already done so much with him, fully incorporating him into her life rather than the other way around. As is the case with most parenting decisions, I am sure that there is no “right” way, but I can’t help but wonder how my readers have, or plan to, handle this aspect of parenthood?

Early on in my pregnancy, after the initial excitement and flurry of news-spreading settled down a bit, my husband and I started talking about the enormity of how our lives were going to change. I think it’s a common discussion for new parents who have no idea what to expect when a baby enters their lives. It’s hard not to think that the lifestyle you have grown accustomed to is about to become non-existent and that your days will be filled with nothing but diaper changes and Barney re-runs.

You know why we all think this? Because we are told so from the moment those two little lines show up.

“Enjoy time with your husband now because you’ll never get time alone again.”

“Go out with your friends now because your social life just became non-existent.”

“Never again will you be able to be spontaneous. Kiss last-minute vacations goodbye.”

“Your life is over for the next 18years!”

I’m sure people think it’s helpful to impart their wisdom on new parents, but all this ‘advice’ just scares them more than they already are and in my opinion is sort of a bunch of baloney. You life does not have to be over when you bring a child into the world. Will your life change? Of course. But it doesn’t have to change for the worse!

So many new parents give up everything they love because they think they have to, that it’s what is expected. They revolve their life around their new bundle of joy instead of incorporating their child into the life they have created. From my perspective, this only leads to resentment and alienation from the partner you created this life with.

My husband and I talked about this a lot during my pregnancy, constantly reminding ourselves that we wanted to raise this child as part of our family, not as the ONLY valid member of our family.

I admit, it’s been hard since our little boy arrived to stick to that plan. He is a fussy baby and nurses a lot, so I’ve been scared to venture out into the world with him. It seems so much easier and safer to just stay at home. But when I do get out, it reminds me that our plan was a good one. It’s fun and refreshing to get out — both for the social aspect and simply for the fresh air. If the baby gets fussy or needs to nurse, we find a place to calm and feed him. We have to roll with the punches a little bit more and be much more flexible (schedules are sort of a joke), but we make it work.

In the six weeks our baby has been with us we have taken him shopping, out to eat, on walks with the dog, and even on an overnight trip to a tourist town a couple hours away. And we plan to keep it up —taking him with us when we want to go out, saying ‘yes’ to trips away from home, and continuing our hobbies and activities. We know it will make us stronger as a couple and stronger as a family.

What are your thoughts? Do you make sure to keep your life as close to ‘normal’ as possible or do you think your life must change drastically when you add a member to the family?

About the Author:

Heather Kalinowski is a new mom to an 11 week old baby boy. When she is not changing diapers and cleaning spit-up, she is helping pet owners protect their pets with Trupanion pet insurance. You can also find her at her personal blog at http://familyandfur.com.

Epic Showdown

For what it’s worth, my money is on Ron Swanson. What about you?

(And you know that I would stick around for the self-defense demonstration by Dwight!)

Via Reddit.

P.S. — Methinks NBC should do a giant mashup special where the worlds of Dunder Mifflin, Kabletown, Pawnee, and Greendale Community College collide. Who’s with me?

Guest Post: Real Life “Sitcom”

Today’s post comes from Scottie Ann, whose life as an Army Wife can be viewed at Kelly Stadium. Reading this post resonated with me — having just given birth to a baby, your hormones are everywhere, you are sleep-deprived, and the things you’ve found enduring about your husband can start to annoy you to no end.

But after this? I am reminded once again that we love each other despite, and sometimes BECAUSE, of our faults.

And this tough post-partum period? It too, shall pass. 🙂

Enjoy this post — I sure did!

Since Aj deployed, I hate to admit, I have had a lot more TV time then I used to, or really should. Although, I tell myself it’s ok since I am usually multi-tasking when it’s on. But I’m just not used to sitting long enough to take in one 30 minute program, let alone two different hour-long programs. But my recent upgrade in viewing time has actually brought out some really fascinating sociological thoughts. One of which really hit me this week, thanks to the best gift God has ever given me, my husband.

I am a person with faults (I know, I can hear you gasp in surprise). In fact, I have many. One of them is my overly emotional immediate responses to different things. I get really worked up extremely fast and the emotions that come with it are just as high, I then spend a good 20 mins venting, at which point, I calm down and become a sensible and rationale human being again (no comments from the peanut gallery please). Poor Aj dealt with one of these “outbursts” earlier this week. I want to add here that I am not in any way saying this is when I get angry. It can be when I am angry, but also happy, sad, or just on a topical soap box. These outbursts are part of the glorious wonder that is me.

I am very aware that I do this, and I honestly try to keep it down as much as possible. I actually feel terrible after I get worked up cause I can be a real pain in the ass. I then apologize profusely for this obnoxious fault. This week, I was apologizing to Aj (I had been crying on the phone to him the night before) that I got so worked up so quickly and that I knew it was stupid. He then told me it wasn’t stupid. It’s ok, and that he understands. He didn’t say it to make me feel better, he said it because he really understands that, that’s me. That’s one of my faults and it’s part of who I am. After we got off the internet from him telling me that I am ok and not to be sorry, I immediately thought of one of my all time favorite quotes: “You don’t love someone despite their faults, you love someone with their faults.”

That night, I watched one of my newest favorite television shows, Bones. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s about a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan who helps solve murders. She is ridiculously intelligent and very beautiful but when it comes to emotions and understanding the illogical part of being human, she is the equivalent of Data from Star Trek. Completely confused by illogical uses of emotions and psychology, she is a wonderful character on the shown because of this “flaw.”

This got me thinking, all of the characters on sitcoms that are the most loved, are that way because of their flaws. For example, every member in the cast of Friends has different flaws. Joey is a lovable lady’s man but not too bright. Monica is OCD and high strung, Rachel a spoiled rich girl, Rozz is like the human equivalent of Eeyore, Chandler a sarcastic mess, and who can forget Phoebe’s terrible music and eccentric ways? The flaws of these characters are what we love. Without them, the shows and people would be boring. We love them with their faults, not despite them.

I love Aj. I love the fact that when football is on, despite his best attempts, a conversation is borderline useless. I love the fact that he has so much energy that my dad asked us to go to the park to play (we are both in our 20’s). I love that he is so competitive playing Madden that we have agreed to adjust our “title” to boyfriend and girlfriend when we play against each other (so he never has to say the phrase, “My wife is beating me at Madden.”). I love how he whistles constantly for no reason. I love him with all of these things, and apparently, Aj loves me for all of my “flaws” as well.

I guess what I am saying, is that we should always try to improve and want to make ourselves better (I still am working on a way to curb my emotional craziness) but that we shouldn’t feel guilty or apologetic for our “flaws.” They aren’t faults, they aren’t even flaws, they are what makes us lovable, and when someone truly truly loves us, they love all the annoying things that come with us.

About the Author:

My name is Scottie Ann. I’m an Army wife, personal trainer, cheesehead, huge sports enthusiast, self proclaimed nerd, and a bit of a girlie girl. My husband and I love our active and sometimes odd little life with our two dogs. Our blog is a bit about our life, sports, things we find amusing, current events, and everything in between. I am thrilled to have been asked to guest blog for the amazing Geek In Heels. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and come visit us over at Kelly Stadium, we’d love to have you over!