“Microsoft Corp. on Thursday reported a 17 percent rise in revenue to $9.18 billion for its fiscal third quarter ended March 31, compared to the same quarter a year ago.”

This is only part of the picture of course, but impressive, still! Just so long as my husband doesn’t see this headline. I’ll certainly be hearing that old phrase “you work for Microsoft for free”.

I know it’s a common dream for many – you walk into your class (high school? college) and there is a test and you suddenly realize that you have somehow missed all of the classes that semester and are wholly unprepared.

A few nights ago I had a new version of this dream. I had  to do two presentations at a conference. Both presentations that I had done previously. When I got to the conference, I realized that I had not spent one minute reviewing either talk since last time I had done it.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I am doing my DevDays talk again tomorrow night? heh

Thanks to Corey Gouker for not only blogging about this, but emailing me to make sure I hadn’t missed it!

The Girl Scouts have a website called www.GirlsGoTech.org and a t.v. ad campaign to go with it. They are trying to encourage young girls who are interested in tech to stay with it.

Forget Seventeen Mag , hooray girlscouts. There’s even an area to read about careers.

There is definitely a part of me that thinks – hey, let 12 year olds play – don’t push careers at them at this young age. But what’s the difference between the way we used to look at what it was like to be an astronaut or whatever when we were growing up?

Now they also need to educate adults abouto this too. I have heard a lot of stories about adults discouraging young girls’ interests in tech.

I never really knew exactly what the name of the law “CAN-SPAM” actually stood for. Thanks to Jon Galloway, I learned that the acronym stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing”

Oh, it has nothing to do with Canada!

But wouldn’t it have been better if they had worked it out to be “CAN’T SPAM”? Because that’s what the law (actually it’s an Act) is for – so that people can’t spam. Here are more details .

And if CAN-SPAM means the above, then does that mean “SPAM” refers to “Solicited Porn and Marketing?”

This is what happens when you try to think late on a Saturday night.

Sam Gentile posts that his 6 (or now 7?) yr. old son Jonathan just earned his orange belt in Karate. My nephews take karate and it has been an incredible thing for them at these young ages. They learn to focus at a young age, they learn about the reality of their strength and to redirect anger, aggression etc. My nephews are 5 years apart in age. The elder of the two, Josh, began taking Karate at the age of 7 (hmmm I think a different one of the martial arts – but the lessons are the same), my brother and sister-in-law were astonished at how careful he was with Zach as well as how much better he got in school and they attribute it to these classes. I’ve met Sam’s son, Jonathan. He is (naturally) a very bright and curious kid, so I can guess that he, too, is grasping these lessons pretty easily as well.

Elizabeth Grigg chimes in on recent discussions on Lora Heiny’s blog and here with a mention of what sounds like a fascinating book “Utopian Entrepreneur“.

Here is the description from Publisher’s Weekly:

Although Brenda Laurel’s start-up venture, Purple Moon (a company dedicated solely to creating software for girls) failed, she walked away from the experience with a cornucopia of knowledge about technology and economics. She shares those lessons in Utopian Entrepreneur, a guide to those seeking socially positive work in the business world. A stream-of-consciousness style and unique layout come together to present important messages, like “good research is never done,” “be a realist” and “pay attention to what you learn.”  Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

I’m doing my “ASP.NET Defenses and Countermeasures” session from DevDays at SUNY Binghamton on Monday night, thanks to coordination by Student Ambassador, Kenneth Weiss. The talk is in Science Library room 212 from 5-7 pm. Here is a page with directions to the university and a campus map. I discovered that there is some c-tech training in Advanced VB.NET and Advanced C# that week. I called the company and hopefully someone will get back to me so that I can suggest they tell their clients about my presentation.

MSDN even has events in Binghamton so there MUST BE .NET developers there. How on earth do I find them? If anyone knows, let me know. Thanks.

Seven Days is our local weekly very hip, a little lefty, Village-Voicey, Indie newspaper. It has a huge readership and is where I have been digging most of the recent job openings from.

I was a little surprised to see the cover this week. The issue is dedicated to gearing up for the outdoors, with spring here and all , this being Vermont and all.

Prominently featured in the cover art was an image that looks to me wholly inspired by a SPOT watch!

Peter Rysavy (TabulaPC and Spotlight on SPOT) assures me however that this looks nothing like a real SPOT Watch, but, it was good enough for me!

Though I have linked to the SevenDays site, I know that the image will be gone in a week so with deference to cover artist Stefan Bumbeck, who I believe is also a bicycling (road & mountain?) racer in our area, here is that image and a detail that I scanned (sideways).

Marcie points to an unfortunately titled article that has a lot of interesting discussion points in it. It is about the myths of why there aren’t more women in technology or why many of the women who are in tech are not visible.

In the  list of myths I found this amusing, though it is not the point of this post:

Myth #4: Technical women are unattractive, arrogant, and abnormal.

Even in the description of the Women who Code BOF that I am doing at TechEd, I have said “come see that you are not an alien!“ .

But the quote that sparked this post is in reference to the fact that Technical magazines rarely feature women – not as writes but as subjects. And the author says:

Thus, editors justify lack of coverage saying their readers (again assumed to be male) wouldn’t be interested in knowing about women in technology. It is up to the women’s magazines to cover these topics and personalities. This becomes a vicious cycle as the typical woman’s magazine covers what are considered “women” subjects like fashion, beauty, and family and leave IT to tech magazines.

What a GREAT idea! To have the women’s magazines, especially the YOUNG women’s magazines, like Seventeen, take a little time out from the latest navel revealing fashions (or is that passe already?) and write some articles to inspire?

Now that’s a little unfair of me as I am just assuming that that’s all these magazine are about. So let’s take a look, shall we?

The main menu doesn’t hold much hope, nor do it’s drop downs.

Okay what about TOC?

-Do you really understand your guy?
-What’s your perfect [bathing] suit?
-Who’s your perfect summer guy?
-Are you immature?
-What’s your theme song?
-Fashion in Hawaii
-Celebrity Makeup artist Interview
-Does your makeup bag need a spring cleaning
-Girl around the World – okay, this is interesting and a nice change from the above. An article on a young Israeli woman who, like many had to join the army after graduating high school.
-Interview of beautiful t.v. star
-Guide to entertainment

So , maybe I’m being unfair as this is what Seventeen Mag is all about. But, what a perfect venue to stick articles about “what I want to be when I grow up“. And have it be not just “fashion designer“ type jobs.

I dunno – I wonder what Lora’s nieces read?? Here they are playing with their tablets. Here is an article by Lora talking about her nieces’ inspiration. And here are the blogs of these young girls: Elizabeth, Birdie, and Kim. These blogs are a great model for Seventeen mag. Their blogs are a wonderful balance of girl stuff and tech! Not that Seventeen should only include tech. But it just would be so cool to have articles on women who inspire, beyond actresses and models.

The i.t. guys at one of my clients had planned to install the SQL Server 2000 demo last night. They did not download in advance as the client site has cable internet. However he said it took hours to do the download – and we know the reason – the patches.

I tried to get the updates on this box yesterday. It said “6 minutes remaining” for about 45 minutes, so I bailed.

Maybe today everyone’s busy with their taxes and I’ll be able to get my patches.