As part of my job transfer, I'm moving offices.

Hundreds of years ago when pilgrims and adventurers and soon-to-be-Australian criminals set out to colonize a new land, the success of their journey was far from certain. There were dangers at every turn like starvation, irreparable damage to your wagon wheels, and -- as The Oregon Trail warned repeatedly -- death by dysentery.

For this reason, I'm planning my move very carefully so as to increase my chances of making it to my new desk ... alive.

For one, I'm not moving during shark season. Shark attacks can be deadly and even if the shark doesn't crush you with his huge jaws and teeth, a flesh wound can be fatal while on the road without proper medical equipment or training to handle it.

I'm also bringing more than enough supplies for the journey, like food and water, so that I can trade the extra amounts to other travellers on the road in exchange for medical supplies or a warm place to stay.

Lastly, it's extremely important that you know your route. Going even slightly off course can have drastic effects in the perilous wilderness. I made this map for myself so that I don't get lost.
I don't know if I'm going to make it alive but I'm going to try my best. Wish me luck and see you on the other side.

Day 2 on Ads UI, I'm trying to learn a bunch of new technologies like compile Google's web server on my local box and things like that. Well, what better way to learn how to change the server than make an actual UI change: adding some much-needed pink.


There we go. Much improved. No wonder I was put on a UI engineering team. My excellent sense of aesthetics. (Take that, Immanuel Kant!)

Yahoo!'s launching a "brand-new online destination for women". Cool. Then I read through the invitation. See if you can find the exact spot where I suddenly become insulted. (It's a game!)

Yahoo! Lifestyle event this Saturday @ The Clift Hotel

Yahoo! is launching a new site will not only help you stay on top of all the things that make your life hectic, but also let you share, connect and engage with friends and the world around you. It's all brought to you by the best writers and bloggers in women's publishing.

Please join for a few hours of information sharing and networking:

- Get a sneak peek of this brand-new online destination for women from Yahoo! and tell them what you think
- If you're new to blogging, learn how and why to blog from the best in the business
- If you have a blog, interact with women who may already be your readers
- Join a roundtable discussion on women's needs online and what we think the future of women's content online will be
- Enjoy a free makeover from noted makeup artists and take home a great tote bag

Enjoy a great lunch and end the day with a free makeover and a great gift bag! Yahoo! wants to learn from you, hopes you'll learn from us, and most of all, wants you to enjoy yourself!

If you'd like to join, please email your RSVP to Tracy Beasley at tbeasley@yahoo-inc.com as soon as possible. Friends are welcome to join too, just let Tracy know when you RSVP.
The day's agenda:

- Registration 10:30-11:00am
- Main Event 11:00-12:00
- Lunch and Breakout sessions 12:00-2:00
- Makeover sessions 2:00pm

The event will take place on Saturday March 8th, 2008 at the Clift Hotel, 495 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94102.

Some of you may wonder why I still have an account at a bank that froze my account because I was "suspicious", and threatened to call the cops on me because they typed my account number wrong. The first answer is: laziness. The second answer is: I've been trying to get an HSBC account for like a year now but they keep asking me to fax my passport to them and then keep saying they're not getting the fax.

Anyway, I still have an account with Bank of "you might be a terrorist" America, and on Saturday, they froze my account again. Let me further set the scene by pointing out that I noticed that they'd frozen my account when I went to purchase food at an airport, about to take a trip.

So I call BoA, ready to threaten to unleash a jar of bees at them, and the woman tells me that they've frozen my account because the BART took out $2000 from my account the day before.

What?!

The BART is one of the subway systems in SF, and on Friday night I purchased a $20.00 ticket from them. $20. Not $2000.

But apparently the machine screwed up (what's a little decimal point typo here and there?) and charged $2000.00 to my account. So BoA froze my account because it looked suspicious.

I told them that no, I had purchased a $20 ticket, and they reversed the purchase, unfroze my account and wished me a pleasant day.

No fuss no muss. Huh. And who said that a paranoid bank was useless? (I'm still getting my money the heck out of there as soon as I stop being lazy.)

Shameless Magazine has an excellent blog piece about University of Ottawa's Engineering Students' Society paper being shut down for misogyny. Here's essentially what happened...

Professor Kathryn Trevenen, with the department of Political Studies, complained about the ESS' most recent publication and wrote a letter explaining her belief that engineering students shouldn't have to pay for a newspaper that posts such misogynistic content out of their non-academic fees.

She describes the content of their newspaper in her letter:

After counselling men on the biological irrelevance of the female orgasm, the authors offer "tricks that will get her to think twice about finishing faster than a pedophile at a preschool." They encourage, "jerking off on her after she's finished: if she doesn't get the message after the first or second time, she'll sure get the message when you start aiming for the eyes." Finally, they recommend anal sex in language that evokes rape. They say: "Don't stop: Hey, if she's screaming and moaning in pleasure, just keep thrusting harder and don't let her get away...remember, you two aren't finished until you say you are."

The vice president of social affairs for the Engineering Student Society responded:

"For myself, personally, I think some of the content in the paper is meant to be humourous", he said. He added that engineers "have taken a lot of flak for being engineers," and are often the subject of jokes about engineers rarely touching women or getting laid.

"I believe that when we take this sort of thing in stride and that sexual harassment, if we dish out a little bit of our own, who's to say who's more right?"

Trevenen's open letter was supported by 15 additional faculty members and 44 students and community members. The Engineering Student Society was told that they "will not be allowed to print another issue until they create a policy that outlines what is deemed reasonable content".

So it's taken care of, right? Why am I even bothering to post this?

The part of this tale that's so frustrating is that some people will read this blog entry, roll their eyes, and think, "There goes another female engineer complaining about sexism again" and wonder why I can't appreciate a few engineers having fun in their school paper.

This has nothing to do with being uptight about a sexually-explicit article -- heck, if they wanted to write up intricate details of male-to-female surgery (hint: step one involves vertically slicing something in half that you normally don't want sliced) then I wouldn't be complaining about it. The tone and exact topic are what's at fault here.

The problem is that engineering has gathered a reputation as being its own little world inside of universities that's somehow different from every other department. They have their own culture and their own frosh events and their own way of doing things, and somehow the "boys locker room" atmosphere has become part of that culture and everyone just kinda shrugs and says, "well that's what engineers are like."

The Shameless article says:

In those departments where these boys' club attitudes go unchecked, women are allowed in so long as they don't make a fuss about it being a boys' club. If you don't just blend in to the misogynist wallpaper, then you are (oh sweet god no) a feminist, or worse, a humourless feminist.

Because what a downer you are if you don't laugh about rape. You must not find anything funny.

As Danielle, who tipped us off to this story, rightly pointed out, it's the female engineers who "often take the brunt of this sexual frustration and 'humour' and many end up feeling uncomfortable in the program once enrolled."

As Greg Wilson and I wrote in a Dr. Dobb's article a few years ago, the consequence of the atmosphere where students feel that it's okay to write anti-woman articles like this one ("but all in good fun!"), is that not only does it create a hostile environment for many students (male and female), but it also chases people away.

A wise friend of mine once offered me this litmus test to detect whether or not something is inappropriately misogynistic. He said: "Replace the concept of 'female' with 'jewish', and if it makes you cringe, it's inappropriate." It's actually quite a brilliant litmus test. What if, instead of an article about how women need to be dominated and humiliated, the newspaper had the an article about how jewish people need to be treated that way. Suddenly the excuse of "it's meant to be humourous" doesn't seem to stand up quite as well.

I'm spoiled here at Google (in more ways than just the food and massages) in that the typical boys locker room attitude doesn't really exist. Anything like this would just be seen as "Ungoogley". But when I venture out in to the rest of the geek world, on public forums or at conferences or reading articles like this one, I'm reminded of just how broken certain parts of the vast majority of geek culture still is. No wonder it takes so much work to try to improve the gender ratio in this field.

Portal, one of the hawtest videogames of all times, has had elements of the videogame snuck into Toronto. This is so cool. To all of you in Toronto, I'm jealous.

First off, if you're not familiar with Portal, watch Portal's trailer. Keep watching. Essentially you can create portals between two locations. Check out the Weighted Companion Cube in the game going through a portal between Yonge Street and somewhere on Bloor. (Photos by the talented daily dose of imagery blog).


You can actually see the other side's stores and such through the portal! Squee!

I so totally want to make some of these at Google now. Any Googlers want to help me out?