2013-02-08

Entry tags:

bad physics moments

Replaced or not, it's still a lever

So last week I noticed strange things afoot with the wall-mounted toilet in the bathroom at work. After a bit of running around (tightening the bolts is a good place to start, but chips of porcelain larger than a quarter falling off are not cool) they did discover not one, but two of them were cracked, and replaced them (with identical wall-mounted toilets).

I'm glad that the obvious problem has been solved, but wall-mounted toilets are still a poor decision from a physics standpoint.

My manager concurs on all this. She'd been meaning to say something about them (apparently they were creaking dangerously any time *anyone* sat on them) but it kept slipping her mind.

When, inevitably, the bolts loosen again, I will be ready and waiting to complain. Again.

Entry tags:

gender,
rants

Practicing rejection

So I was reading yet another iteration of the sad woman-in-tech-is-visible, woman-in-tech-is-harassed, woman-in-tech-complains-about-it, men-in-tech-say-mean-angry-and-afraid-things. One of the commenters presented himself as a man in tech who is on the autistic spectrum, is perilously afraid of interaction with other people (particularly women), and who becomes more petrified of accidentally doing or saying the wrong thing, being named-and-shamed, and bringing the wrath of the whole fucking internet down upon his head.

Now, I have sympathy for terror of social interactions. I can't even know what it feels like to be on the spectrum, because as far as I know, I'm not (I was just raised in a society so unlike mainstream for the first five years of my life, and I was unplugged from it enough subsequently that I felt like a very sad and angry Vulcan stuffed into a school of Earth children).

The situation described in the woman-in-tech's entry was an instance of targeted, malicious, knowing harassment that took easily tens of hours to prepare. There is no way that the person doing this was unaware that he was doing something deliberately mean -- whether just "for the lulz", or as revenge, there's no indication. This was not a chance encounter that could have been intended well but come off as creepy. Furthermore, it wasn't even a name-and-shame: she described the situation, but didn't try to identify the (pseudonymous) perpetrator, which she could have done. ( Read more... )