Today is Ada Lovelace Day! (Who is she? Check it out here.) Everyone is encouraged to blog about a woman who is excelling in tech today, and I had to participate. Anything to promote women in tech. It’s a topic I’ve blogged about a few times, and one that I know I’ll blog about in the future.

It wasn’t easy to pick just one outstanding woman, but I thought I’d highlight Dr. Karen Panetta. I first found out about her when researching The Nerd Girls, and boy is she a great role model for any woman wanting to be an engineer!

[She is] Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University and Director of the Simulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University. She was the first female electrical engineer given tenure in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

…

Dr. Panetta is dedicated to promoting women in engineering and has created the nationally acclaimed “Nerd Girls” program, where undergraduate engineers research renewable energy topics and serve as role models for younger students. This program is aimed at breaking down the barriers that prevent women from entering the engineering disciplines and bridging the gap between attracting girls into engineering and sustaining them through their engineering curriculum.

She has a long list of accomplishments, board memberships, and research awards. Including “five awards from NASA for “Outstanding Contributions to NASA Research” and “Excellence in Research”.

But to me, her work with young women entering engineering is just as impressive. Women need strong role models, and with the low numbers of women in tech & science fields to begin with, people like Dr. Panetta are in short supply.

Technorati tags: ada lovelace day, women in tech

I’ve been very lacking in the post department lately. This morning, in lieu of a long huge rant, I’ll just say that Bill O’Reilly is an asshole and wins douchebag of the week. And it’s only Tuesday!

What will you be doing tomorrow? For those of us who are math geeks, we’ll be celebrating Pi Day! What is that you ask? It’s a holiday in the funnest sense, celebrated on March 14th generally, and at 1:59pm specifically. Get it? 3.14159 You can even get more specific by saying 1:59:26

What people do on Pi day can vary, but mostly it involves pie. The coolest thing I’ve seen looks like it will be happening in Boston. Rebecca at Skepchick is having a pie fight!

To celebrate Pi Day (3.14), we’ll gather at exactly 1:59pm in Boston Common to smash pies ever so gently in one another’s face.

BYOP! Despite the Boston Cream Pi pun, you are encouraged to bring light, fluffy pies with delicious whipped filling in equally light disposable pie tins or paper plates. In fact, one might even be tempted to fill a paper plate with Reddi-Whip and go with that. MMmmmm.

If anyone has some Pi Day activities they know of happening in OKC, let me know!

Technorati tags: full of fun fridays, geek, pi day

Well, it’s been two months since I announced my intentions of running a half marathon at the end of April. I’m more than half way to my goal, and I have to say that so far it’s going pretty well! I’ve added a widget to the right side bar, which shows my last 5 uploaded runs at the Nike+ website. (Although do note that most of the time I don’t upload my weekday runs until the end of the week.)

My progress? I’ve gone from running 2 miles a couple of times a week at most, to running 4 times a week with two days of cross/strength/pilates training thrown in. My long run this week will be 6 miles. That’s almost half the distance I need to make it, and I’ve got just about 7 weeks to go.

If there’s anyone planning on running at Redbud next month, I’ll be there for the 10K!

Update: Here’s my post on the Redbud Classic and here’s my post on my half marathon. I finished both!