I’m behind on a few things, nothing major, and they’re on my to do list, waiting for me. But instead of doing that, I decided to take control of something in my life.

My hair.

And yes, I feel better.

This started when someone asked me what ‘Boom goes the dynamite’ meant, and I had to explain it was a catchphrase someone used to indicate what happens when everything goes wrong, and the dynamite in your hand blows up. They found that funny and since then, I’ve got a little following. Which amuses me.

Sometimes I have to explain things like why you can’t pronounce all acronyms like words. For some reason we have a ton of Three-Letter Acronym program names (aka TLAs). Pretty much everything is truncated to three letters. For example, we have a program called TOW which we call ‘tow.’ We have another call TOA that we call ‘tay’. FEE is fee and so on and so forth. Most of the time this is pretty safe. The Brits at my office laugh when we talk about DFR (called duffer) and we actually had to rename FAG because someone got mad about it. I wasn’t too surprised when they named the other programs. The problem we had was when they added a U to CNT. I had to explain why that was bad.

They’ve got some pretty awesome turns of phrases, though, many of which I’ve adopted because they just rock.

“Please do the needful.” — Any time you submit a request for a process, they tack this on. I love it. It’s polite and direct.

“Shooting my feet myself!” — He meant shooting myself in the foot, which amusingly turned out to be a phrase another coworker had never understood until about a day later, when he coded something, forgot about it, and freaked out when he tried to do something the old way.

“I am sitting here, shitting myself blind.” — This happened after I was explaining what ‘shit or go blind’ meant (someone heard it on TV). The problem, I think, was that earlier I’d explained why the phrase ‘I am sitting here beside myself!’ was funny but wasn’t quite the same as ‘beside myself with laughter’. Somehow we got a bit jumbled. The fellow who said this was mortified at first, but I told him it was so awesome, everyone would know what he meant, and he rocked.

One of the things we never do, by the way, is make them use fake names. If their name is Sundararaman, then we call him Sundararaman unless he asks us to call him by his nickname Sundar (he said ‘like Thundarr the Barbarian!’), in which case we oblige. After all, these guys are being expected to say our names, we should make the effort to use their names!

The guys from Mexico have it a little easier. I know enough Spanglish to remember their local idioms pretty quickly. And now that I’m learning French, my multitude of French friends are helping me understand things. Like “Je parle français comme une vache espagnole.”

I speak French like a Spanish cow.

And yeah, I kind of do right now.

Moo.

Yesterday was a big day for ‘Hey, is that a … It is! It FOLDS!’ bike. The security guards working at Transformers 3 (which filmed near my office) thought it was awesome. They’re working on another movie in the same location, so I got introduced to an all new crew yesterday, who were polite and interested. I have to say, the Transformers people were awesome. They caused a huge traffic jam, and since the light at their corner is long (minutes long, I timed it at 5 once), and it was really hot a couple weeks ago, they came out and gave water to pedestrians and, yes, me. Nice people!

But yesterday I did something I’ve not done in a long time. I took the Lake Shore Bike Path home. It was dark, and I have to say, I’m not super keen on doing that, but I could see packs of cyclists, so I quickly caught up to them and biked in a pack of women. I went with them to the end of LSD’s bike path, and then we all went up to Broadway, where we parted ways.

Biking LSD after dark is … interesting. I have lights, but not everyone else does, so you can’t always see people until ‘Oh shit! There they are!’ Also, a freakishly high number of people don’t wear helmets. If you don’t have lights, you really need a helmet, since the lamps on LSD are iffy at best, and you’re running a higher risk of not being seen. Also, a lot of people have dark helmets without any reflective bits. Again, people, if others can’t see you, you’re going to get hit!

While I rarely bike at night, I have a blinking rear light on the post of my bike, and a steady headlamp mounted (with velcro, I fixed it) on the handlebars. I would never consider riding at night without them, and frankly, I wear the helmet so that if someone ever hit me, I’d win the lawsuit (I’m not sold on their efficacy of protecting what passes for my brain just yet). I’m a fan of biking in regular clothes, but I have reflective stickers on my bike, and I’m planning to sew a strip of reflective cloth onto my shoulder bag (I have a reflective sticker on the back of my helmet already).

For those who kvetch that they don’t want silver on everything, did you know there’s black reflective stickers? CycleGadgets sells them for helmets and cycles, and they could all, easily, be appropriated for your bicycle! There’s also black sew-on reflective fabric tape (3M makes all this stuff too, by the way). Clearly there’s a market for this, though, and I’d like to see people come up with more reflective colors! Until then, I may paint my helmet with reflective paint, to say “Hey! Don’t hit me!”

As for LSD… I won’t be biking it after dark again unless I’m sure I have friends or a pack of women with me. It’s not well lit, and there are just too many psycho freaks out there.

Read all about it at DCU: The Source.

And have I mentioned how happy I am to be in the future where I can tell a website I want to pull a comic, and they tell my comic shop, who emails/tweets me to tell me if things are late? Yay for the future!

As a rule, I don’t save hate mail. Letters, emails, tweets, private messages and the like are all files in the circular bin. That’s the trash can, folks. The point is, while I dwell on my hate-missives as much as the next person with a healthy ego, I don’t save them. Sometimes I regret this, like when I think I should write a book about how these idiots harass and bully people, but really, at the end of the day, I want to wave my friends over and go ‘Read this! No, really! She’s serious!’ Thus this post is a little serious.

Over the last 15 years, I’ve been subjected to more trolls and haters than I could count. The Internet is permanently a high school lunch room, where people look down on you for no discernible reason, and shun you for even less understandable ones. It’s petty, vindictive, and because it’s on the Internet and you can’t see them, they feel it’s okay to say things they’d never consider saying to your face.

I feel the worst part is that since it’s the Internet, some people in the physical world (like your office) think that you’re over-reacting if you get hurt. I mean, have you ever considered telling your boss “I’m sorry, I’m having a bad day because last night someone online called me a ‘man faced dyke.’” And yes, that’s something I’ve been called. People seem to think that pain caused online isn’t real. They’re wrong.

First and foremost, if you’ve been attacked online, those feelings are ‘real.’ I don’t call them ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds, I call them ‘virtual’ and ‘physical’ for that reason alone. The virtual world, as fake as it can be, hurts you just as much as the physical world when someone’s a dick to you. Sadly, it took us humans a long time to understand that name-calling was as hurtful as a black eye, and I imagine it’ll be a while before people realize that virtual name calling is just as bad.

That said, we’re all going to deal with this, sooner or later. The first time, usually when we’re in pre-school and someone calls us a ‘poopie head’ is soul crushing. We’re children and have no idea what to do when someone’s being mean to us. I’d love to say it gets easier to deal with as you get older, but really what you get to is a point where you realize… they’re fucking idiots.

Seriously. If someone’s devolved to false accusations and name calling, there is nothing you can do to get a clue in their vacuous little brains. Real world example time. Today I was accused of sending someone death threats after I put them on a Twitter list of ‘hater.’ I use the list to keep track of everyone who’s attacked me on Twitter and it used to have a lot of people on it, but over time most of them have apologized and grown up a little. Right now, the one person left on the list (and yes, it’s a public list, I want people to be publicly shamed for their idiocy) decided to start bullying me again.

Now, I could block this person pretty easily, but I chose not to because that would just inspire her to make another account to use to harass me. And, truth be told, I find it pretty funny. I mean, I take what I do seriously because it deserves that level of attention. That doesn’t mean I give it the level of gravitas it deserves all the time (I used to sing ‘Oops I did it again’ when cleaning someone’s PC of a virus for the 10th time), but it does mean that when I commit to doing a thing, I give it the attention it warrants.

People tell me to ‘grow up’ or stop wasting my time, or a variety of that. They say I take my fandom too seriously — usually that comes when I tell them their rude comments aren’t welcome. And I let them. I don’t stop people from saying what they want on other sites, though I reserve the right to delete their posts from my sites.

Before everyone runs up to tell me it’s okay, that I’m an idiot for taking all this too seriously, I don’t really mind physical or virtual insults. I have a very healthy ego, and I’m pretty consistent when I tell people ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ in both the physical and virtual worlds. I don’t dwell ‘too much’ on these things, I dwell enough to try and learn from them. Do they have some measure of validity in the noise, or is it just ranting? Are there grounds for their vitriol, or are they just jerking off? I take the trolls and learn about myself from them.

Here’s how I handle trolls:
If they’re on my website, I delete their post and, if I think they’re a real person, email them and tell them why. I usually include a copy of their post and explain why I don’t want it on my sites. Sometimes this works, but most often people respond with more vitriol and hate, so I put their email, ID and IP in my moderation filter. Going forward, every post they make on my sites has to be approved before it shows up. If they escalate their hate-filled speech, I block them entirely and have any emails sent to the trash, unread. I no longer have to deal with them and I feel better.

If they’re on another site, I check the rules. Are they acting outside the rules? If so, yes, I report them. I don’t reply, I just report. If they’re acting within the rules, can I ignore them? Some forums, for example, have an ignore button. I use it. On places like Twitter and FaceBook, I use the block button and toss them out of my life. If I reply, I make sure I’m polite. I don’t argue, I don’t point out their fallacies. I do make careful use of larger words and take pains to double and triple check my grammar usage. Why? Because I want to be able to look back and go ‘I was a mature smart ass to the troll.’

It may not be the most honorable goal, but it’s mine. I never said I was perfect.

What I never do is try to reason or argue point-for-point with them. It’s, as my Southern in-laws say, like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. They won’t learn to act like a mature, thinking, reasoning person until they’re ready, and while they desperately need to hear what I would say, they would never listen to it. It would go in one ear and out the other. You have to get used to saying ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ and move on with your life because, frankly, they’re never going to get it.

So while I don’t keep logs or emails of these things, when someone does it in a public and open venue, I see no problem in sharing with you all just what sort of stupid I deal with in my free time. After all, I found it pretty funny. I give you Conversations between @L0rryP0r (Lauren Reeser) and @jorjafoxonline (Jorja Fox: Online) on Twitter (via Bettween)

I’m @jorjafoxonline.

You do not have the freedom to say anything you want on someone else’s website.

Was that clear enough for you?

When people say ‘It’s a free world! I have the right to say what I want!’ are usually referring to the two main types of Freedom of Speech. The most well known is the US Constitution’s first amendment. The other is the generic one the UN has. Now, while the Supreme Court has extended the full protection of the First Amendment to the Internet (see Reno vs ACLU), that still doesn’t mean you can say what you want on someone else’s website.

I keep saying this and emphasizing that I’m not talking about your website.

I have the right to blog whatever I want on my website (right here), provided I don’t violate the contract I signed with my webhost. I’m using their service to host this site, and I’m legally bound by my contract. They said ‘No porn, please.’ among other things, so while I could talk about porn, they’d probably shut my site down if I posted porn on this site. It works the same way with the newspaper and books. If you can find someone willing to take the flack for publishing it, you can write and distribute just about anything.

By that extension, I get to enforce my own rules on my website, provided they don’t violate my webhost’s rules. I can’t allow you to post porn pics here, because I can’t do it myself per my host’s rules, but I can say ‘And no pictures of baby elephants’ if I want to. This is usually where people jump up and say they can post whatever they want. And this is where I get a brick, hit them in the head and ask “Are you paying for this website? No? Shut it!”

See, I pay my webhost, and I have to follow their rules. You come here, for no charge, and you have to follow mine. It’s actually remarkably fair. I’m under no obligation to treat everyone the same. I have some people who are ALWAYS moderated before they can comment, and others who are free to comment anywhere. Basically, this is my website, these are my rules.

If that’s confusing, I’ll give you an analogy.

You have a party at your house and you invite your buddy Bob over. Bob acts like an ass. He doesn’t break anything, but he’s just annoying and you realize ‘I like Bob, but not when he’s acting like this.’ So you ask Bob to shut up or leave. Bob refuses. You tell him to leave or you’ll call the cops on him for trespassing. Bob leaves. Was any of that illegal? No! Not a bit of it! It’s your house, it’s your rules. It’s that simple.

When you post on someone else’s website, you are a guest in their house. If they decide you’re no longer welcome, they have the legal right to do so. And if you circumvent their blocks, it’s like breaking into their house. Which you would never do. So why are you doing it online?

Yes, there is a legal protection of freedom of speech and expression on the internet, but it’s just not the way people seem to think it is. The freedom to say what you want doesn’t mean you can say anything (there are clauses to censor hateful or otherwise intentionally harmful speech, in specific situations (see porn)), and it doesn’t mean you can say it anywhere you want.

Blaise Grimes-Viort wrote a great blog post asking Does free speech apply to Online Communities? While I learned a lot of the advice there by trial and error over the last 15 years, I wish I’d had a resource like that back then. Blaise rightly raises the most salient points to remember when posting on someone else’s site:

1. Online or offline, same rules
2. Protect your community at all cost

That second one, as a moderator, is really hard. It’s hard to be mean and ban someone, but it’s also hard not to get sucked into their drama. You can’t argue with people about these things. If you say ‘No baby elephant pictures,’ then that’s the rule and you must enforce it. Consistency is your mantra here. The other issue I’ve always had is knowing when to draw the line. “Here’s a teenaged elephant!” Okay, that’s not against the rules, but …

The people who frustrate me the most are the ones who clearly know right from wrong, understand the meaning of the law and it’s letter, but demand that you clarify, codify and otherwise delineate every single possible option and regulate everything. I want to hit those people with my brick a few more times.

I often write the following quote on my cube’s whiteboard “If you know what to do and you don’t do it, there you bloody well are, aren’t you?” You see, I have no illusions of the existence of common sense, or any faith that people will do the right thing for the greater good. I’ve learned that people will do that which seems right to them, and generally this isn’t a bad thing. But somewhere along the way, there’s this disconnect where people think that just because they think something’s right, they can do it anywhere and everywhere.

Keep your pants on in my house, keep your hatred off my websites, and yes, I get to decide if short-shorts are too short to be considered pants and if ‘you suck’ is hatred.

These are my sites.

My rules.

Live with it or go away. Make your own blog and post how much I suck there. I may not agree with you, but I will defend your right to do so with my dying breath.

That is freedom of speech.

Of note. I permit posting of images and links to baby elephants here. Also, I don’t have a brick. This is probably why.

Yesterday, however, the chain on my bike came off. Or de-spoked. Whatever. This happens from time to time, I’ve been told, and unless it starts to happen regularly, is not a very big deal. I found uot when exiting the train station downtown. I hopped on the bike and went to back-pedal, kicking the pedals to where I like them to start biking, when I realized I wasn’t getting the sort of resistance I was used to. I looked down and blinked. The chain was off the spoke!

I remembered, when I was young and had a beach cruiser you pedaled backwards to brake, the chain once fell off, and I remember my father telling me there was always a special link in the chain you could pop open to refit the chain. But I thought ‘There’s no way I should have to do that! If the chain could fall off, there must be enough slack to thread it back on!’

And I was right! Having thoughtfully packed a hand-towel, I pulled it out and began inspecting my bicycle. Sans internet, I was left to my own brain-power to deduce that the trick lay in putting the chain across the top of any of the rear sprockets. Then, very slowly, I man-handled the pedals so the chain clicked back into place. Less than a minute later, the chain was back on and my bike was working.

My hands? Well, after a solid 5 minutes of scrubbing at work, I still had some grease under my nails, but none on my clothes (hand towel, for the win!), so I decided it would just be a great way not to chew my nails for a day or so.

But today I feel like I’m learning new things that are really easily a part of my everyday life. It’s amazing how much my WordPress ‘free’ work has helped me in class, or my old MUSHing ‘free’ work with switches has helped me. Or … well, basically, all that fun stuff I do in my spare time? Really has made me smarter.

Playing games made me want to learn new things. Like ‘Well it’s great that I can use this command to shoot someone, but what I really want is…’ And with everything I’ve played (save my Wii), they’ve been Open Source code, so I was able to crack it open, study it, learn it, and run with it.

Not everyone can, but I did, and now, the college dropout no longer feels like she’s an idiot for not taking more computer classes, or finishing school. I feel like I just found a new way of learning which works for me. I feel very smart and very accomplished, even if a lot of this class is below my learned skills level. Mostly I’m using the class to learn how to use Visual Basic and Visual Studio. The latter is more important, as I’m supposed to be using it!

I’ve been ignored/dismissed/disregarded by peolpe (primarily consultant employees of Microsoft) for the following reasons:

• I’m female
• I have no degree
• I use Mac
• I like linux
• I’m outspoken
• I wear pants
• I don’t wear makeup
• I don’t drive (no longer true)
• I’m a lesbian (rare that I TELL a consultant this)
• I read comic books
• I play role playing games (which I’m told means I’m slutty apparently)

And yes. I have been told, to my face, every single one of those things.

I spend most of my life in happy ignorance that being any of those things matters to my competence. My office celebrates me as the ‘new kind of programer.’ The kind who gets dirty and solves problems with common sense, learning needed code as he or she goes. Basically, they like me because I’m smart and quick. So when I run into the person who says ‘You don’t need to be in this meeting because it’s technical’ …. I feel like I’m slapped.

My job is technical. My job is code deployment automation over 20 different code architectures and thousands of servers, from SunOS to Solaris, to Windows. I handle programs from Java JRE and MQ to .NET and even old DOS shell scripts. No one in my department is better with DOS than I am. In fact, I’d be willing to bet I can do more with a command line than most people at my office, and I’m comfortable with it. What I don’t know, I know how to look up, quickly, and I love learning new ways to do things better.

Making it worse for me is that I was raised by a dad who never once told me I was limited by gender. Once I read an Archie comic where Betty said ‘Name one thing a male baseball player can do that a female one can’t.’ and Reggie replied ‘A shaving commercial.’ I remember looking at that and saying ‘Gee, haven’t they heard of shaving legs?’ My dad laughed. I can think of a hundred times my dad said I was smart enough to do something, clever enough, skilled enough, talented enough (or in one memorable case, NOT talented enough). He was always honest and cared about me and taught me to be a gentleman.

Even in my youth, I knew he meant that a gentleman was polite to everyone. You hold doors open for everyone, you compliment everyone, you respect everyone. And yeah, he did teach me how to treat a lady, but he taught me how to treat a man similarly. Guess which lessons stuck? In my family, your gender was only a limiting factor in … You know, I can’t think of a damn thing where my gender limited me. Maybe in bathing suits or clothes that are specifically female (bras, unless you need a manziere). But that wasn’t limiting. After all, I didn’t need a jock strap.

So when I have these days, like today, where I bounce off that wall of ‘Oh, wow, my boobs make people treat me differently’ I have the urge to wear a low-cut shirt and then blind them with my innate brilliance. And no, humility is not one of my flaws. Yet another mark against me. Like a fish, I don’t think of the water around me. I’m used to being respected for my skills and not my looks. When someone treats me like a ‘woman’ and that’s different, suddenly my water’s gone and I’m gasping for breath at the insanity of it all.

Treat me like a human. With respect for my skills (either displayed or cited). Don’t judge the super made up woman as a non-technical idiot, and don’t judge the tomboy/fella girly pants wearing nerd as just a woman. We are, all of us, male and female and everything in-between, far more complex than you think we are. Be a damn humanist. Treat me, treat us, like people.