sheer potentiality

Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — Looking to recruit more women, and perhaps date some sorority girls, the largest computer club at Washington State University hopes to hold a “nerd auction.” The idea is to trade their computer skills to sorority girls in exchange for a makeover and, possibly, a date.

“You can buy a nerd and he’ll fix your computer, help you with stats homework, or if you’re really adventurous, take you to dinner!” Ben Ford, president of the Linux Users Group, said on its Web site recently.

Ford acknowledged that some of the group’s 213 registered members may not be ready for the auction block.

“The problem is that we’re all still nerds. Let’s face it, guys. If anyone’s going to bid on us, we’ll need some spicing up,” he wrote. “And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?”

Source

This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Of course, the entire reason for this was mentioned later on:

This all began as an effort to recruit more women into computer science progams…

Somehow, I doubt that perpetuating the stereotype that college-age women are too stupid to operate and maintain their computers without the assistance of male nerds will help this. (Even if it is true, it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than any inherent problem with women, and perpetuating the stereotype only makes it worse.) And while it’s no secret that computer enthusiasts are generally male nerds with little ability to attract women, I don’t think advertising this generalization will attract women to computer science programs either.

A public relations class decided to help by studying the social dynamics of the Linux group, which focuses on the use of the computer operating system.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the PR class that came up with this dumb idea; it was Ben Ford, in the shower. I say “fortunately” because WSU’s communications department has a good reputation as far as communications departments go, and after this level of national embarrassment I want there to be something left over for WSU to be proud of.

I’ve safely made it back to Pullman, where I will be taking summer classes for the next two months.

I’d forgotten how hot it is here during the summer. I am already sweating more than I have in months. Fortunately, the inside of my house here does a good job of keeping cool (and conversely, a poor job of keeping warm in the winter).

My month in Port Angeles was relaxing and refreshing, despite certain disappointments. Nonetheless, I anticipate enjoying the rest of the summer, especially if my UW transfer application is accepted.

“Physics does involve occasional congress with demonic beings…this demon is very stupid and has a very boring job”.

My electrical engineering professor just spent twenty minutes ranting about how engineers are better and more important human beings than everyone else.

He also described IEEE student group activities as involving “…rafting, pizza, beverages of some description…”

Things my computer science instructor said in class today:

“My assignments have been described as everything from fun to challenging to brutal.”

“I can only take a limited amount of time per week…somewhere around 168 hours. And I do expect you to take an hour per day for shower.”

(in response to my “An hour?”) “Well, shower, food, sleep…you can think about your assignment in the shower, though.”

“We have a grad student who has all A’s and one A- all the way from undergraduate to Ph.D. I gave him the A-. He just skipped one part of one assignment…”

I think it’s fair to say I’m an intelligent student capable of performing well in class. At least I like to think I am, and here is why: generally when a professor makes a class easier rather than harder, I’m more disappointed than relieved.

In one of my classes in the College of Business (which will remain un-named), the professor recently went over mid-semester evaluations and granted a popular request to announce quizzes beforehand instead of having unannounced pop quizzes throughout the semester. This disappointed me, and I think I understand why.

In “How to Make Wealth”, one of Paul Graham’s essays, he talks about solving not just valuable problems, but hard problems as important for startups:

 This is not just a good way to run a startup. It’s what a startup is. Venture capitalists know about this and have a phrase for it: barriers to entry. If you go to a VC with a new idea and ask him to invest in it, one of the first things he’ll ask is, how hard would this be for someone else to develop? That is, how much difficult ground have you put between yourself and potential pursuers? And you had better have a convincing explanation of why your technology would be hard to duplicate. Otherwise as soon as some big company becomes aware of it, they’ll make their own, and with their brand name, capital, and distribution clout, they’ll take away your market overnight.

Challenging course requirements serve the same function. They allow the more talented, ambitious, and hardworking students to become obvious in their talent. Employers look at your transcripts. They read your grades. The grade in the transcript should accurately reflect the student’s value to the employer, and the best way to do that is by making the class difficult enough that the more talented can get a high grade while the less talented get a lower grade. Trying to give everyone a good grade only puts less talented candidates in competition with more talented candidates while clouding the employer’s ability to tell the difference. It represents a fundamental failure of the university’s duty to provide educated, qualified professionals to the work force.

I shouldn’t have gone to work out today.

I left to work out a few hours ago. When I came back, most of the people I wanted to talk to were offline, and I was too tired to do anything else. I might go to bed shortly after writing this post. I might stay up and play Knights of the Old Republic instead, although if I start I’ll feel compelled to record my actions and write a fanfic out of it, and I don’t have the energy to do that.

Two nights ago I decided to shave. I’m pretty happy with my appearance overall. When I take care of it, my hair is smooth and shiny and healthy, my body doesn’t look too bad when I have clothes on (and would probably look great if I took better care of it), and my face is alright. The only thing I don’t like is my facial hair. Sometimes I want so badly to have a thicker beard that’s worth anything instead of this patchy-ass curly shit. I got sick of it today and shaved it all off. It’s really quite frustrating to find that there’s something I don’t like about myself that I can do absolutely nothing about. It makes me feel incredibly powerless.

Something else that makes me feel incredibly powerless is when I see a young woman or girl crying. Unless I know beforehand that it’s her own damn fault, seeing a woman crying makes me feel sympathetic, tender, but completely powerless. I mean, I can’t just approach a complete stranger who’s crying and try to comfort her, can I? (Actually, I tried it once. I don’t know if it helped.)

Sometimes my friends joke that I’m too much like a woman. Maybe so. For instance, I do have mysterious mood swings for no apparent reason. Tonight I’m actually pretty depressed. I didn’t really feel like working out even though I did, and now I’m sad that I didn’t get to talk to anyone. It might strike some of you as strange that talking to people online is so important to me, but to be honest, most of the people who are worth my time and attention don’t live in Pullman, and if they do, I haven’t gotten around to meeting them. Sometimes I think that when I graduate, I’m going to leave this place, never come back, and never care about it again. Sort of like the way I feel about Port Angeles, except there’s a few people in and from Port Angeles that I do care about—more than I’ve met in Pullman, to be sure.

I should have picked a harder major. It’s hard to feel superior to others when you’re a business major, even if it’s MIS. And majoring in philosophy only helps slightly. I don’t know—as much as I hated high school and wanted to get out, it was better in some ways. I had more friends, friends who were just plain better people than the friends I have here. I had a lonely existence in high school and never really spent much, if any, spare time socializing, but it seems that even that was better than now. Inevitably, everyone who was as smart as me went to a better college than I’m going to. And the thing is, I’m too far out of money to transfer or change majors. All I can hope to do now is graduate and get ahead in the real world.

Or maybe I’ll screw that up too and live a dull, meaningless life.

Textbooks are usually a major expense, but this year I’m taking another approach to textbook purchases. Simply put, I’m not. I’m not going to buy any textbooks unless I personally want them or unless I’m convinced that they’re absolutely necessary. In lots of classes I can concentrate and take good notes and not really need to read the book, so why should I bother buying it? This is particularly true of some MIS classes. If you’re relying on physical paper for information about technology, you’re quite often a moron. Books aren’t updated when reality changes, and reality changes far too quickly and far too often in this field for it to be worth printing a book about. (It’s true that some things stay constant long enough to write a book—I’m not making broad generalizations here.) Anyway, I haven’t bought any textbooks yet, although I’m probably going to eventually.

I’ve also decided to get into better physical shape this semester. My energy level is lower than it should be even though my thyroid levels are at pretty good levels, so maybe getting into better condition will help with that. Well, that, and I want a toned muscular body for reasons of sheer vanity. (Don’t tell anyone).

So aside from classes and personal growth, what else am I doing? Well, as I may have written about before, I’m working at the AML. There’s a one-credit class, English 300, that basically covers how to use the lab and lab software, and the course is now taught by the consultants in a series of workshops. So I’ll be teaching people how to use the video editing software we have in the lab. Towards the end of last semester I worked up a workshop outline with a couple other consultants and this semester we’ll be teaching it. This should give me more hours of work and more interesting work to do, so that’s a definite positive.

I have a few other ideas and ambitions for self-improvement, but I’m a little anxious to see if I’ll have time for them, and if so, how many of them I’ll have time for. I do know that I’ll make more out of this semester than I’ve made out of past semesters. I’m mature enough now to meet the challenge of life and to make the most out of it. So be it.

Today was the first time the realization actually struck me that I’m back in school, taking classes and incurring the associated obligations of being a student. A lot has changed over the course of the past couple weeks.

I’ll start where I left off: Christmas. Many people complain about the commercialism of Christmas and how that threatens its spirituality. As I explained earlier, these people are morons, and contrary to their whinings, the Jews and trial lawyers didn’t stop me from having a rather joyous celebration of family and prosperity. I love Christmas, and I had a pretty good one at home with my parents.

Upon returning to Pullman last Thursday, on the fifth, I faced a number of daunting tasks I had to complete before classes started anew. I had to finish moving into my apartment and make the place habitable. It still requires some severe cleaning, but in the past few days I’ve accomplished the important parts; there’s now a clear walking path through my bedroom, I have internet access, and my door can be safely and reliably locked. Unfortunately, some of the items I’d foolishly left in the apartment over break were stolen by the previous tenants, so I have taken the liberty to do as I please with the items they’ve left behind and neglected to retrieve. Among these items is some sort of fish in a bowl. My roommates and I are debating what to do with it: Jeff leans toward experimentation while Greg and I are leaning toward disposal. They also left some rapidly-decomposing food products in the fridge, which we are all leaning towards disposing.

There was also a situation where one of the previous tenants had a boyfriend who had a key to the place. I managed to retrieve the key with no loss of life and limb, although there is still another key out there. I’m going to suggest to my roommates that we put in a work order to change the lock on the front door entirely just in case.

On Monday, I went to class for the first time. Since I’m living off-campus this was my first time on Pullman’s marvelous bus system, which I’ve recently discovered is quite crowded at certain peak hours. It interests me how people on buses and elevators will ordinary go out of their way to sit a distance away from everyone else given the chance, but as soon as that’s no longer feasible, they have no problem cramming in together with complete strangers. It’s even more apparent on elevators—while bus passengers seem to accept their fate, elevator passengers relish it. Invariably, when I look with uncertainty into a crowded elevator, the passengers welcome me and insist that there’s room. It’s not friendliness that fuels this—people aren’t mean around here, but they aren’t particularly friendly either, like they are in the South, for instance. I think people secretly enjoy cramming together in small spaces.

Lots of animals like to crowd together physically. Puppies will pile atop each other to sleep and penguins will huddle together for warmth in the antarctic cold, but humans don’t usually engage in mass physical contact without some excuse or pretext. Public transit allows us to fulfill this need in a socially acceptable way, as do elevators. (I suppose that, in its time, the fad of cramming as many people as possible into a telephone booth or Volkswagen, was another way to fulfill this need.)

Anyway, onto class. Here’s a summary of my classes:
MIS 271: Programming in C#. Seems interesting. Seems like real programming. Seems like fun.
MIS 322: Systems Analysis and Design. What is systems analysis, you ask? Good question. It’s what systems analysts do, and since I want to be a systems analyst, maybe I should take this class. (I don’t have choice since I’m an MIS major anyway.)
MIS 375: E-commerce or somesuch. Another MIS requirement. Seems moderately interesting, and it’s in the Boeing Wireless Classroom of the Future, which I’ll explain more about in a future blog.
UH 350: An Honors requirement, UH 350 classes are about non-Western civilizations (we study Western civilization in UH 330). My particular section is about East Asia, which is a very interesting and important region of the world.
MgtOp 340: Operations management—a wicked sweet class. If I wasn’t an MIS geek I’d definitely consider it as a major, because operations management is a pretty geeky job in and of itself. It involves using statistics and statistical analysis to figure out, for instance, the most efficient way to manufacture goods, or how to empty and refill an airplane in 12 minutes, or things like that.
Phil 490: INPC Seminar. It’s about free will and ethics and shit. I’ll explain more in a later post.

Overall I’m pretty enthusiastic about this coming semester. I’ve got more to write about but not enough time, so…if I don’t post again tonight, you all better harass me until I do.

You know, after summer, when campus is usually very quiet and you can stand on the Terrell Mall and have only so many people in sight you can count them on one hand, being back for the fall semester is quite a difference. It’s very populated and the campus is buzzing with activity. A variety of campus groups, from Christians to Young Democrats, are around promoting themselves. The student bookstore is filled with students getting ripped off on textbook purchases. And the hallways of Todd are crammed with students going to and from classes. Altogether it’s good to be back on a campus that is alive with activity.