Back Home & Congratulations Mindy & Melissa

Personal, Pregnancy No Responses »
Aug 312005

I had a wonderful long weekend in Milwaukee, and a great Anti-Spyware Coalition meeting in Chicago. I’ll blog more about the weekend in Milwaukee tomorrow when I’m not exhausted. :)

Today brought EXCITING news!!! Baby Boy _____ Fox M. was born today! Mamamelissa had a long labor, arriving at the hospital at 7 pm yesterday, beginning to actively push at 5 am, and finally giving birth to a great big boy (8 lbs 15.5 oz) at 9:15 this morning.

Welcome to the world, little one! Mamamindy sounded mildly delirious and very happy when I talked to her tonight. And of course, we all can’t wait to learn your first name, including your tired mommies.

I have hit the point in the pregnancy where people can tell, just by a cursory look at me. The nice lady at the coffee shop in the hotel gave me a free breakfast this morning and tells me that I’m having a boy. And at the meeting, my former boss immediately asked "Is there news?" upon seeing me. Lil Smudge, your arrival is eagerly awaited, although as Jules put it, "in a good hour." (He put it that way in Hebrew, and of course, I can’t remember how it goes in Hebrew. But the point was clear — you’re eagerly awaited once you’re grown enough to arrive healthy.)

And now, the good hour has arrived for bed.

Posted by Liza at 10:30 pm

Blog curiousities

Weblogs 3 Responses »
Aug 262005

One of my favorite things about having a blog is looking at the visitor stats, particularly the referring pages.

Most of them are from my friends’ blogs, other pages in this blog, or blogs where I’ve left comments. I also got a bunch of hits from being quoted in the EFF blog-a-thon blog.

The most interesting ones are those from search engines.

I can click on the link and see what the search was, the other results were, and how far buried in the results pages I landed.

MOST of those are people searching for a book on which I’ve commented. For example, just after the release of the last Harry Potter book, lots of people looked for it in conjunction with the word "slut" — which I actually didn’t remember being used in the book, but it was and lots of people were upset about it. They found me because I’d also read and commented on "Confessions of a Recovering Slut."

The most common single search term is "liza" — and I usually turn up on the 6th or 11th or some ridiculous page of Liza Minnelli results. Another oddly common one is Google searches for Pat Skarda, a Smith College professor whose reading list I reproduced after seeing her speak at a Smith Club of Atlanta event a few months ago. Pat is very interesting — I wish I’d take classes with her when I was still at Smith. I might not have quit being an English major.

The most peculiar one of late was a Yahoo search for "pimping out my slut wife" — another result I think I can thank Hollis Gillespie for helping produce. I would have guessed that this post was the first time I used the word "pimping" but I must be wrong about that. And NOW I’ll get even more hits from frustrated seekers of porn.

I’m off for a long weekend in Milwaukee, followed by a short conference in Chicago. So I may not be updating as often as usual. But I’ll be back on Thursday at the latest.

Posted by Liza at 12:24 pm

Go, First Amendment, Go!

Law No Responses »
Aug 252005

Susan Crawford has a great post about a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision (pdf) that lets the website www.fallwell.com stay with the original owner, an open critic of right-wing religious leader Rev. Jerry Falwell.

I think this is a huge victory for the First Amendment. And I worry a lot about the First Amendment.   

I’ll let Susan explain further:

Among other things, the opinion makes clear that you need to consider
domain names in context — here, there was no question, once you got to
the content of the site, that you weren’t dealing with the "real"
Falwell.  And the opinion is rightfully skeptical of "initial interest
confusion."

(The idea behind "initial interest confusion" is that if you persuade a
consumer to follow your signage [domain name] thinking that they’re
going somewhere in particular that isn’t your site, even if by the time
of purchase from you they’re absolutely clear about what they’re
buying, something has gone terribly legally wrong.  Right — it doesn’t
really make sense.)

Posted by Liza at 9:57 am

I need help with my homework

Training and Development 4 Responses »
Aug 242005

Some of you know that I’m taking this very cool and funky class called Wisdom. It meets over the course of 5 weekends and one additional evening, spanning the year.

Right now, I’m having a really hard time with part of my homework for our next weekend, coming up in late September, and I need your help.

I’m supposed to be doing one (or more) anonymous good deed every day.

I am having a TERRIBLE time coming up with ideas that are actually anonymous, and that also don’t cost a lot of money. Ideally, I’d rather they didn’t cost any money. :)

There are no other rules about the good deeds.

Can you help me come up with some ideas???

Posted by Liza at 4:53 pm

Which Western Feminist Icon Is Jill?

Silly Internet Quizzes 1 Response »
Aug 232005

Jill and I are sitting here at our side-by-side computers, cracking up over this result:

You are Audre Lorde! You were one of the first wymyn to write love poems to other wymyn, long before it was safe OR cool. You put the "rad" in radical feminism, but somehow still managed to create a cult following in people who would never identify as radical themselves.

Which Western feminist icon are you?
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You see what I mean about the spelling….

And I have to admit, I never thought my lovely wife would score "you put the rad in radical" on anything. I guess you never know! :)

Posted by Liza at 11:21 pm

Which Western Feminist Icon Are You?

Silly Internet Quizzes No Responses »
Aug 232005

The surreal/angst thing can be helpfully managed by the occasional distraction. To that end, I found my favorite online escape, the Silly Internet Quiz.

Be warned, if you decide to take this one — the author is a big believer in non-patriarchal spelling. And I swear I’m not saying that because my result includes the phrase "you are the McDonalds of Western feminism." (I’m pretty sure that’s not meant as a compliment, although when you think about it, being that pervasive, successful, and influential sounds pretty good. Only 4% of the people who took the quiz got the same result I did.)

You are Gloria Steinem. You are the McDonalds(tm) of liberal feminism, though you used to expouse some pretty radical ideas, you ended up working the system. Because it’s easier? Maybe. But thanks for the only mainstream feminist magazine and for heading one of the most significant feminist lobbys in the history of the US. We wouldn’t be where we are without NOW and Ms., as much as some of us are loathe to admit it.

Which Western feminist icon are you?
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Did anyone hear Gloria Steinem’s "This I Believe" essay on NPR yesterday?

Posted by Liza at 3:43 pm

Slightly Surreal

Personal No Responses »
Aug 232005

I’m afraid I’m having a rather surreal week, particularly as it relates to work.

That makes it hard to blog, because I don’t feel comfortable publicly exposing what’s going on and what I’m working on, but I’m only thinking about OTHER things peripherally. (Except for food, which continues to be of constant interest.)

Here’s what I can say:

  • I think there will be a significant change to my day to day work, probably not in the next week or two, but in the next month or two.

  • How that change will look is EXTREMELY unclear. I think it is unlikely to be a bad change, and it could well be a very good change.
  • Tomorrow will be a Big Day where I get the opportunity to influence the direction of the change, which is good, but also means that I’m doing a TON of work to get ready.

    It feels like I’m standing on the diving board, and tomorrow is the day where I jump. Or that I might already be in the air, and I just don’t know it. Either way, tomorrow is a Big Day, and I’m nervous.

On the plus side, I shared why tomorrow is a Big Day with the rest of my work team, and everyone agrees with two things — yes, that sounds surreal, and it is happening in a context of some uncertainty for most of the team. I think it was very helpful that we got to talk about that uncertainty.

I hope that I’ll be able to blog about the outcome, but that isn’t certain. In any event, I’ll blog that things have stabilized, once that becomes true. Or probably when I think they’re about to become true. :)

Posted by Liza at 3:29 pm
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