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For those who may be unaware, Ada Lovelace Day – today, March 24th – is a day intended to celebrate the titular Ada Lovelace, and her achievement as the world’s first computer programmer. Hand in hand with that, it is also an opportunity to heap praises on women in technology throughout the ages as a reminder that achievement in furthering the human race is not relegated to any gender and a call to women to embrace science and technology for themselves.

There was a call for people to use the power of technology – to wit, the internet – to spread the word about this perhaps lesser known day of recognition and remembrance. The petition requested that people who wished to participate write about a woman in technology whom they admire. Seeing as charity begins at home I thought I would write about the woman in technology who I am most familiar with: myself.

But lest you think me vain and self-aggrandizing, let me qualify my self-nomination by way of an old axiom: No man is an island. (Which is pretty obvious if you ask me. An Island is a parcel of land completely surrounded by water.) My exploits in technology and advocacy of others to embrace technology have been absolutely the products of a life spent immersing myself and being immersed in the technological knowledge of others.

My mother and father, who gave me so much and never once hinted that technology was limited by anything as thoroughly unrelated as gender. Who both embraced emerging PC technology, and were never satisfied to throw away anything they thought had the remotest chance of being repaired.

When I was young, my dad brought home a Breakout arcade cabinet that had been abandoned by the side of the road. It needed a little work and I think the coin door might have been off, but so what? Some tinkering later, and I might be one of the few kids who didn’t grow up rich that had an arcade cabinet at home at the age of five. We had a TI (99/4A from the looks of things, I don’t have the box with me right now. It was the beige one, a little slimmer than the one pictured there.) that plugged into our tv, and I played math and word games on it, and even taught myself a little BASIC with a book that came with it.

We went to big computer expos and got games on 5 1/4″ floppy discs. (Jill of the Jungle FTW). And of course I grew up with console gaming (I still have my Atari 2600 [AND an honest to goodness copy of ET] and no you can’t have it). My mom taught me how to wire lamps and had me assist in the fixing of VCRs, vacuums, and stereos. They got me interested in science fiction and real science. We had a set of encyclopedias that did more than collect dust. They always insisted that math and science were not only important, but they were the foundation of all that we enjoy today and should be enjoyed themselves.

Along the way I had some terrific science teachers who helped me enrich myself even more, and my school was fortunate enough to have a computer lab and more fortune still learning how to use computers for more than just typing papers was encouraged. They showed us how to use search engines to assist us in research for assignments and to find things that interested us too. My junior high/high school’s website was originally set up by a student, in fact. My parents were impressed, but knew a thing or two about basic website security at that time, and hacked said website at one point to prove that security was critical. (They believed them.) We learned about newsgroups and FTP and IRC together. I used to wake up in the morning to my dad hammering away at Wolfenstein 3D or Descent.

After I dropped out of high school due to the complications of frequent moving, I devoured books and taught myself HTML, setting up my first website in the mid-90s. I joined a forum dedicated to fan fiction RPG for a novel series I was interested in and quickly found myself helping them with maintaining the website and running the forums. We helped each other learn how it all worked and all-in-all we were a pretty good team. As time went by I moved on to other things, but continued writing, and set up my first blog over at a site called pitas.com, which allowed me to cut my teeth on CSS. (My pitas blog still survives, but since I had to hotlink the images in an era pre-photobucket, the much of the layout is broken.) During that time I got introduced to Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop too, tinkering with those and dumping the results at a site called Elfwood. I inhaled tutorials like fresh air – thank you countless tutorial authors past and present – though I always enjoyed figuring out things on my own.

I’ve learned to love Linux, I can change a tire, I’ve replaced laptop parts, and built computers. I work with computers every single day still, and I get giddy over science articles. I’ve blossomed through experience into a tech go-to person. People take for granted that if it’s on a computer I’ll have the answer. Sometimes, they’re even right. What’s more important is I’ve never stopped learning and I know the answers are just waiting to be found. Practice and experience is all it takes, and this is what I tell everyone who asks me for help. Technology isn’t hard or scary and I make it a point to try to educate everyone who asks me for assistance. I am often awed by the repulsion people have toward learning, particularly when it comes to mechanics and computing. It is something I always took for granted, and to an extent I still do. Yet with a background like that, is it really surprising?

I am eternally grateful to Ada Lovelace, and to all the mathematicians, scientists, and computer nerds that came before me. Through their efforts I’m able to share my own experiences with tech with all of you now (even if it’s tl;dr). It’s through the efforts of people that I may never even know about that people were able to help me learn such great things and I want to pass that along to as many people as possible. If you want me to help you build a website, or fix a computer, I’ll be happy to help you; then you’d better be prepared for me to insist you learn what that involves. I pester friends to join me for tech events and to install Ubuntu. I’ve been known to get cross and drop a UTFSE on people.

I’m not proud of myself and my achievements (meager though they really are) simply because I am a woman in technology, it would be shallow to credit myself like that. I’m proud of myself because I was given the immeasurably valuable opportunity to learn and I have learned, continue to learn, and strive to share that learning. Women – Nothing and no one should EVER stop you from learning anything. When it comes to science and mathematics and computers, gender is not a barrier or an excuse (unless somebody invents a penis-powered computer, and man, that just doesn’t seem like a good idea). Get out there and just learn it. But if you ever need help, I’ll be right here.

Bonus round! And if you REALLY want to read about a woman who has made an actual impact in the field of science and technology in a noteworthy historical way, I suggest you look up Hypatia of Alexandria. UTFSE.

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