cyborganic just installed a brand new spanking ginormous server, so a lot of stuff got moved around. but that is ok ... after all, the new server's name is "xanadu" ... how evil could it be?

but i was able to check my mail, since i could dial up into my netcom shell account, and telnet or rlogin to xanadu from there. xanadu. one hell of a nice place!

strangely enough, i received quite a bit of mail regarding this page over the weekend! and, even more strange, many of the letters were from male computer programmers, who were very supportive of my rants against sexism and racism in their profession. some of the letter writers even went as far as to say that they want the high tech world to be a much warmer and diverse place for their daughters.

which is cool, of course.

fortunately, many did not complain about the paucity of qualified female applicants.. an argument which irks me since i have seen so many men be actively recruited and trained anew before my eyes, and far less often, i suspect, are women actually recruited and trained in such a manner.

i do, however, have a new theory on the paucity of female applicants to higher-level positions.

often, if not most of the time, (and due to socialization, i might add), men and women view job listings differently.

if a woman is reading a list of jobs at a company, and if she views her experience and qualifications as minimal, she will look at the lowest level position on that list, which will undoubtedly be secretary, receptionist, or another administrative-type position. a man, however, viewing his experience and qualifications as minimal, will not even see the secretarial or administrative positions as options on the list, and instead will view "production assistant" or "editorial assistant" as the lowest level job.

and this, of course, is apart from their respective processes in evaluating their own experience or qualifications.

which leads to the unfortunate situation of having the men in an organization distributed in the higher level and higher paying positions, and the women distributed towards the bottom of the ladder, with fewer chances of quick advancement. of course, this does not always happen this way, but it is very rare that i am greeted by a male receptionist or that i have a male secretary answer the telephone when i call.

as my personal contribution to social justice, i have been encouraging all of my female friends to disregard completely the receptionist and administrative positions at the bottom of the list, and shoot straight for the assistant positions. and, in a few cases, both my friends and i have been successful in this endeavor.

on a different note, i was at brunch today with some stanford friends. as it turns out, a very good friend of mine from college, who also happened to be my law school roommate for a year (and is even linked twice on my home page!) put together two sgi deals at his law firm. how strange for us both that i now hobnob with the "client" (as opposed to the "attorney") side of things.

and, this, of course, is apart from the fact that the word "client" carries a very different connotation in the legal world than it does in the internet world.