12/14: Baby what?

[lisa]

Originally posted by Joe
I find that in my interactions with others, I seem to just get lucky, real lucky sometimes, and I wonder how. How did I get my job over a stack of 30 other applicants? Why did that cop just let me go without a ticket, when I clearly deserved one?

Interesting that you mentioned that one. While living in CA, I only got one traffic ticket, though I'd been pulled over three times...

Several friends brought up the possibility of my being "let go" becuase of my being female and my appearance at the time of each incident. A guy who I was seeing and was with me on one such event was actually angry immediately after the officer left my window saying "You just be careful and watch your speed from now on." (He was not angry that I had not gotten the ticket, just his "certainty" that he would have.)

Now, that particular incident, I tend to attribute to my being calm, pleasant and cooperative to the officer. I have learned that, if I have ANY idea why I was pulled over and don't intend to fight the ticket in court, it's best to just admit what I did. In fact, when I say the officer in question pull out of his speed-trap hiding place, I immediately pulled over and waited for him (not likely he was going after anyone else as the road was pretty empty).

When he pulled up behind me, he asked why I stopped. I explained that I saw him pull out, looked at my speedometer and realized why he pulled out and didn't think it made sense to make him chase me. We did go through the usual "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No, officer, I don't" routine but I did say "but I know it was faster than the limit" and he, of course told me an exact speed.

I still DO wonder though what the actual reason he didn't ticket me was. I mean, he was out there in a speed-trap, which usually means that they do want to ticket people. Add to that the support for my angy friend's theory that I was a bit dressed up with short pants on at the time (points that he brought up vehamently in the following few minutes), and I just don't know. Oh, I did NOT try (intentionally or unintentionally) the infamous "crying helpless woman" routine on him -- I was quite calm the whole time.

<shrug> Who knows? As Joe said above, sometimes you just get lucky in certain situations and don't know, for sure, why. Is it appearance? Gender? Usually there's no real way to tell in any specific case. Sometimes the favorer (in my example, the cop) probably doesn't even know why they "rule" in your favor.

Originally posted by jennofay


i remember a story david told me about him working somewhere...had to do with this...dont remember it though.

The story was this: I was doing some consulting work at Integral Systems Incorporated over the summer. They're working on a project and needed SAIC's expertise, so we were helping them out (for gross money, I bet). Anyway, there was this stunning female there that I would see walking around and whatnot. Probably 20, 22. Very young. Dressed very prep-like - nice shirt tucked into khakis with a long sleeve shaw-type-thingy over it. And there was this bit of a nerdy guy. Stupid looking glasses, goofy tucked in shirt, the whole nine yards. Now, he's pretty much proclaiming to be a computer genius when he's around her - they're setting this thing up. And he's just tossing out these terms in a way that any experienced nerd, such as myself, could spot his faking. So they're standing there in the same room as I (but it's a big room, and they're relatively far away) and he says something about "But yeah, I set up my own network at home." And this just sets her off. Not in an anger sort of way, but in a flurry-of-technical-terms way. She's like "Really? Is it 10Base2 or 10BaseT or 100?" "What brand of network cards do you like? I like Linksys because they're pretty well supported under most operating systems and they're also pretty cheap. But cards based on Realtek's 8139 chipset are generally pretty cheap too, and every OS has a driver for that." "Yeah, I had this problem one time, the NIC in my computer died and I had to swap it out, but I forgot to call the cable company and tell them about my MAC address change. It took me like an hour to figure that one out." You get the idea. She very obviously knew what she was talking about, and he was just standing there, stupefied, nodding his head. I thought it was funny 'cause he very obviously thought she had no idea what he was talking about (and therefore, that he could make it up) - he bought the stereotype. So I'm sitting there watching in amusement and he was looking like a tool. Man. I would pay money to see that again.

[juju]

It's my opinion that hot female programmers are rare. I know they exist.. i'm just saying that they're rare. So, when people treat you like that, it's not like a prejudice out of malice or anything like that.. it's just statistics. Hot female programmers are like 1% of the population of programmers (maybe higher..i'm still in school so I'm not sure.). Once they find out you're beautiful AND smart, most men will be thrilled to talk to you.

[Nic Name]

Originally posted by Joe

If you are odd looking, you will find that things just seem to go your way more often, for your entire life.

Well, that other critter is indeed a possum, and this lil' bastard is a Joey! And a whole bunch of Kangaroos is called a mob.

So, are they Australian ... or Italian?

[Joe]

"ood looking"? My bad. That was supposed to be "good looking", way back last year when it was posted. Probably messed up the entire thread.

"odd looking"? Now we're all over the road.