The Nerd Club(bing)

I love to dance. And by dance, I mean go clubbing. And by clubbing I mean, go to a club. By myself. And dance like a crazy person for about an hour. All the while hoping that everyone will just leave me alone.¹ It might seem odd, but I believe this behavior stems from me being a Geeky Mormon Woman. Even though it’s not exactly Geeky, and not all Mormon.²

So why do I love something that isn’t exactly native to my demographic? And why would my non-applicable demographic be the source of my non-demographic behavior? Well, see, Mormons have this thing where they throw dances for the Youth³ as a way of getting the boys to interact with the girls in some sort of semi-appropriate manner.⁴ In High School, I was unfortunately too nerdy for the Mormons, and too Mormon for most of the nerds, so interactions with boys weren’t exactly plentiful. And these dances were no exception. Since I wasn’t getting asked to dance a lot, I would get bored. And when I get bored I look for something to do. And I was at a dance, so I figured I’d dance.⁵

Dancing rarely looks cool when in freeze frame...

Fortunately for my dancing desires, there were a variety of songs played at these dances. They didn’t just play lame slow songs(the presence of which would sometimes force me to awkwardly ask boys to dance), they also played fast songs. Like YMCA and the Macarena⁶ as well as plenty of other 90s classics that I don’t know the names of.⁷ I really liked it when they played these songs, since you could dance by yourself, and thus avoid that whole awkward thing of dealing with boys. I’m never one to be content with mediocrity⁸, so I started experimenting with how to dance and how I could get my body to move in cool and different ways. And eventually, I got pretty good, and I got pretty confident. To the point that one of my good friends, who was actually a trained dancer, would often comment on how good I was.

So, If I was not a Mormon, there would not have been so many dances for me to go to,⁹ and if I wasn’t a geek, I wouldn’t be so awkward, and prone to experimentation. Thus the origin of my non-standard behavior.

This trend of going to dances and making up my own moves continued through college. But after college, I didn’t exactly feel like crashing college dances. I was all old and graduated with a real job making video games,¹⁰ so I didn’t feel like hanging out on campus anymore. But I still wanted to go dancing. So I decided to try out a *real* club. Cause that’s where adults go dancing, right? And I was an adult, right?¹¹

But these clubs are full of people that are not Mormon, and even though I’m now in Silicon Valley, I don’t think most of them are Geeks either. And honestly, that’s just a real big turn off to me. I went clubbing with a Mormon girlfriend of mine recently, and she made a comment about seeing who could get more numbers,¹² and my response was "what’s the point??" I mean, there were no Mormon boys at the club that I didn’t already know,¹³ and honestly, there aren’t a whole lot of guys that really look like my kind of Geek at these kind of clubs.¹⁴ So even if I just went on one random date with these guys that try and pick up on me at the club, I don’t think I’d really enjoy it. I probably shouldn’t admit it, but I’m kinda a nerd elitist...¹⁵

Even my examples of Nerd "superiority" are Nerdy.
So Meta.

So when I dance, I try to just be as into it and crazy as possible. Cause people don’t bother that crazy person. They let them do whatever it is that crazy people do. And usually, people leave me alone. And when they don’t, it’s usually either to tell me that they think I’m good, or to try and get me to give them some level of physical contact that I’m really not interested in. I like the former, because complete strangers don’t usually stop you in the middle of what you’re doing to tell you a lie. I could really do with out the latter, though.¹⁶

But good dancer or not, all I really want to do at a club is have some fun. And by fun I mean dance. And by dance I mean actually move and do some neat moves. And that’s how this Geeky Mormon Woman hangs at a club.

1 Odd, I know. Normal people go to clubs with others, or in the hopes of meeting others. But I think we’ve established that I am far from normal...
2 The Woman element I guess is applicable... Chicks go to clubs, right? I’m always too busy dancing to notice.
3 What all members from 12 to 18 are called, though you pretty much get treated as a Youth until you are married, no matter how old you are.
4 Cause you sure know they aren’t actually going to ask the girls on dates, even once they turn 16. They might figure out how to do this once they make it to college.
5 Odd, I know. Most people choose to talk or hide in the hallways when they are bored. I’m a rebel like that. And my rebel I mean awkward nerd.
6 The Macarena is cool. Ok, it was cool. Ok, it was stupid, but at least it got people dancing. But bow ties are still cool.
7 I’m not all that great with names and artists. I was singing along to the radio in a store recently, and a girl asked me who the artist was, and I had *no* idea who the artist was, or even what the song was called...
8 Are you really surprised?
9 Like almost one a month during the school year
10 Yes Grandma, that is a real job
11 Sometimes I still have to remind myself of this...
12 Just as a joke.
13 They came with us...
14 Maybe I’m being a bit pre-judgy, but I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting engineers. I think it’s their pasty skin, dark circles under their eyes and the carpel tunnel that gives them away.
15 I’m working on it!
16 Like completely do with out it. How are some men so handsy! And the handsy ones are ruining it for the ones that would be just content with dancing a little...

Wedding Numbers

So as a single Mormon¹ woman, I’m obsessed with my future wedding.

However, I don’t obsess about the same things that normal women might obsess over. Mostly because I’m a geek.

Yes, I do try and think of what cute ways I could include Portal in my wedding invitations, and I dream of how many hits the you-tube video of my incredibly geeky proposal will have, but there’s something involving numbers that I care about even more.

My wedding date.

I started thinking about this in the spring of 2009. My friend was getting married on 6/6/9, which I thought was pretty cool. So even though I was single, and didn’t really have any prospects,² I started thinking about cool dates to get married.

And that’s when I realized that 9/9/9 was like the most awesomest date to get married. Cause back in the ancient times of computer programming,³ programs would often use 999 as an escape character. So you’re escaping single-hood! How clever is that!

But I tend to be practical, and even though I really wanted to, I probably wasn’t going to get married on 9/9/9, so I started to think of other cool dates to get married. Initially, I rejected 10/10/10, because it is too close to my birthday. ⁴ But then it was pointed out to me that in binary 101010=42. If that’s not the most awesomely nerdy wedding date ever, I just don’t know what is. And if I have to explain to you why 42 is cool, well, so long and thanks for all the fish, the world is coming to an end.⁵

My friend wasn’t the only person I personally know that got married on an interesting day. My cousin got married on 10/20/2010. Again, it’s too close to my birthday, and comeon, 10/10/10!! But, even though it’s hard to argue with the awesomeness of 10/10/10, it was probably all booked up cause even if you don't get the nerdyness, there's been a strong trend towards getting married on n/n/n dates, so I applaud her ingenuity. Plus, extra points for using the first two digits of the year. That’s not easy to do.

Now we have to back up a bit here. Cause the awesome date I’d come up with for 2010 was earlier in the year. 3/21/10. Do you get why it's cool? Now this is going to really separate the nerds from the geeks. I’ll give you a hint, you need to reverse the order of the numbers. Give up? It’s the Fibonacci sequence! Yeah, I know, it’s pretty geeky and weird to like the Fibonacci sequence. But I’ve loved it ever since the days of MathNet.⁶ It’s pretty awesome all around, and useful, so you should probably like it, too.⁷

If you remember this, I think we need to get married, just on principle.

But as 2009 drew to a close, it became apparent that I was going to miss this mathematical day. Not to worry, I still had 3/2/11 to fall back on. And it was a more traditional representation of my beloved sequence.⁸

But now it 10/2011. And we’ve got no more binary dates. Well, 11/11/11, but that’s awful close to Thanksgiving, and 111111=63. That’s not very exciting. And I really doubt that I could find a boyfriend and get him to marry me in less than three weeks. That’s pretty fast, even for Mormons.

You could suggest 12/12/12, but that’s really close to Christmas. Besides, there’s no such thing as 2.

So I was about to despair. What could I look forward to now that all the interesting wedding dates have passed??

But then I remembered, the Fibonacci sequence goes on! And the next bit ends in 13! So 5/8/13 could be a very good date! It’s a bit more obscure, but it could definitely work.

And I completely forgot about Pi Day! The most sacred of all geek holidays. Second only to Talk-like-a-pirate day!⁹ And what’s even better, is we’ve got a special, extended edition Pi day coming up! 3/14/15! I’ve got plenty of time between then and now to find me a husband who’s willing to plan our wedding around an inane set of numbers.

And if it takes a really long time, we’ve also got 1/1/23, and an extra awesome mole day of 6/02/23.¹⁰ But I don’t want to tell you how old I’ll be in 2023...Lets just say, I’ll be well out of singles ward range.¹¹

1 Strike that, this is not limited to my culture.
2 Note: Wanting him back really badly doesn’t count as a prospect.
3 i.e. twenty years ago.
4 And who wants your anniversary to be close to your birthday? Then your lame husband is just going to want to get you one gift for both of them. And we all know the strength of your marriage can be measured by the awesomeness of the gifts your husband gives you for important occasions, and if he tries to double up, then you have to divide the awesomeness by 2, making his job even harder, so really, you're doing him a favor by spreading the gifting times out.
5 Ok, I do hope that there are some non-nerds aka, my family, who might be reading this, and they *might* not know about the answer to life, the universe and everything. But then again, even Siri knows that answer. Go ask her.
6 Duh Dun Duh Dun. Duh Dun Duh Dun Dun.
7 It also didn’t hurt that a guy that I had a crush on in High School thought that my Fibonacci sequence program was pretty innovative for using two variables for calculation instead of three. I thought that twenty line program with the peak of my genius for a lot longer that I should have. The funny things men do to you...
8 And by traditional I mean the way I learned it. Apparently kids these days like to start with 0. It’s hard to keep up with the trends sometimes.
9 I kid. I actually think this holiday is rather silly, and I can’t believe it’s been officially recognized. And by officially recognized, I mean large MMOs give you special drops on that day. Actually, I think that makes Pirate day officially more official than Pi Day. I think I’m going to cry.
10 Instead of 6:02 on 10/23. I think there’d be more Mole day celebrations if we ate moles.
11 Singles wards are special Mormon congregations for single members aged 18-30. Yes, Mormons want their young adults to get married so badly they corral them into their own world and don’t let them out until they are married, or full blown menaces to society.

Comeon Guys...

My mom tells me that when I was in preschool, I tended to play with the boys more than the girls. I would want to play on the truck on the playground, and the only other people who were doing so were boys. So I played with the boys.

Coolest thing on the playground

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life. I rarely even noticed when activities were being done by all boys. I remember daydreaming as a small child about things I would do when I was older. In church I used to daydream about the day that I would be old enough to pass the sacrament.¹ It didn’t occur to me that the only people doing so were young men.

So as I grew, I continued in my pursuit of things that I found interesting. Which tended to be dominated by men.

I was the only girl on my Science Bowl team in High School.
I was one of two girls in my Robotics club in High School.
I was the only girl in my Advanced Programming class in High School.
I was one of the few girls in my Historical Fencing club in College.
I was often the only girl, or one of two girls in my College Programming classes.
I was the only woman programmer at my last job in Utah.
I was the only girl in most of my D&D² groups throughout my life.

I am sure there are examples I am forgetting, because being the only girl is pretty old hat to me. To the point where I don’t always recognize it anymore.

Which is one of the reasons I hate having it pointed out to me.

Now I know that a lot of feminists think that “guys” is not gender neutral. But to me, especially when used in a casual setting, it is. Most of the time, people don’t make a big deal about it in my work or personal situations. However, when I worked at one of the larger corporate companies, I ran into questions about this all the time. Every time I changed teams, my lead would ask me if I was offended by the term “guys”, since he³ was used to using it in e-mail. And I would assure him that I wasn’t, and that I considered “guys” to be a gender neutral term.

As silly as I felt the question was, I preferred this method of it being brought up. They askedfor my input, and I gave it. But, the people above my leads would still stumble around this. I would be in a meeting, and the programming lead on my game, or the head of our studio, or somebody from corporate headquarters would be running the meeting, and he’d keep saying “guys” this and “guys” that. And then he’d realize that I was in the room, and that’d he’d been saying “guys” the whole time, and that he’d just done it again. So in an attempt to be PC, he’d try and correct mid-sentence with “guys... and girls”. To me, this is even worse that calling everyone “guys”. ‘Cause there’s nothing that makes you feel more valued than being called a “girl” in a professional setting. But that’s what most people default to as the feminine version of “guy”, unless you are channeling a southern slant, at which point you’ll say “gal”. And being named with a pronoun that is more appropriate for tiny cowgirls doesn’t sound odd or patronizing at all.

And while I understand where this behavior comes from⁴, but honestly, at this point, what’s being said? To me, it says “OH Look! There’s a girl here! Lets make her feel special and included by pointing out the one thing that makes her different from the rest of us and is completely irrelevant to her ability to do her job! Here’s a gold star for being a woman!” I swear, we might as well be singing the sesame street song:

One of these things is not like the others!
[And by not like the others, we mean super special and awesome for the special attribute that she possesses]
One of these things just doesn’t belong!
[We mean, one of these things is so super special and awesome that it extra belongs, and it’s special awesome difference should be pointed out as much as possible to show how super progressive and sensitive we are]
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others.
[And by not like, we mean actually kinda the same and special and different and awesome, and actually probably better, which is why we’re pointing it out!]
By the time I finish this song?

Elmo wants you to feel loved! And awkward!

Please. I’m a woman, not a sentient plant or alien. I’m not that much an an anomaly. I don’t need you to trip over your words to make me feel included. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. It really just makes everyone feel awkward.

That being said, if we’re talking about a professional job posting that is looking for a “cool software guy”, then yes, we should look for a more professional way to phrase that. And some more gender neutral language would also be nice. But we aren’t going to be able to shame people into changing their language into something that is foreign and awkward. Especially spoken language.

We’ve tried for a few decades now to introduce a new personal pronoun that is gender neutral. You know what happened? No one adopted any of them.⁵ Do you know why? Because no one can remember something that is super awkward or foreign to say. New words usual come out when there’s a new object or activity that needs to be named. Women aren’t new. Besides, we’ve already got precedence in our language to use the plural non-gendered pronoun “they” as a singular non-gendered pronoun. In fact, it’s now officially recognized as correct grammar to do so.⁶

So can we just stop with all the demands to use awkward words like “personkind” and “policeperson”. These are horribly awkward words, and no one is going to adopt them. If you want to use less masculine language, use phrases like “human race” and “police officer”. Those are phrases that already exist in our language. And that’s pretty much the only way you can adjust people’s language. You need to steer them from something that is gendered or offensive to something that is un-gendered or less offensive. Like the campaign to stop people from using the work “gay” to denote that something is stupid. You don’t need to invent a new word that means “stupid”, we already have a word for that. It’s “stupid”.

1 Kinda like communion, but it’s passed to the congregation instead of people coming up to the front. Oh, you don’t know what communion is? Neither did I. Just wiki it. Or better yet, just wiki “sacrament”
2 Dungeons and Dragons. Why did I need to tell you what that is? Aren’t you a Geek? If not, go wiki it.
3 Yes, all my leads were men. I was the only woman in the entire department. So all the leads were men. And even if I was a lead, I’d hardly ask myself questions in the third person like this. I’m not Elmo or Bob Dole.
4 They just retook the corporate training web course on PC language.
5 When’s the last time you heard someone say “phe” or “zher” or “mer”. Oh, never? Yeah, I thought so.
6 I overheard this in the Portal 2 commentary. Which is pretty much the definitive source on English grammar. Also apparently Shakespeare used they as a singular pronoun. And most of the rest of the English speaking world, but no one told my middle school English teacher that.

Hello World.

I am a Geeky Mormon Woman.

These three words are not usually used in the same sentence, much less to describe the same person. Though I’m sure I’m not the only one in existence. There have to be at least a dozen of us.

Even in that dozen, we tend to be Geeky in different ways. Most of the Mormon Women Engineers I know spend their nights and weekends in pursuit of different activities. Some do not actually have nights and weekends because their jobs and so stressful.¹ Some choose to train for and run marathons. Others put together Mario themed parties for their babies. I spend my nights sewing costumes based on the media I consume. My chosen activities sometimes make me feel unique, even among Geeky Mormon Women.

Mormons: The Video Game
Harness the untapped market!

Being unique is awesome, it makes you singular. Like Chell.² Or Abish.³ It can also leave you single. This can be a difficult state when one of your cultures has a lot of focus on family, and the other culture doesn’t understand how you can possibly get through your day without coffee.

However, I see harmony where others assume discord.

I intend to explore that harmony between the different things that I am. A Geek. A Mormon. A Woman. I hope to cover a lot of space where these overlap, and prove that there is a presence, where many assume there is a void.

This should be a fun ride.

1 Not a fun place to be, but a lot of us have been there.
2 For those of you who are not gamers, Chell is the heroine of Portal 2. She is the only surviving human in the Aperture Science facility and takes down a robot bent on her destruction. It’s a good game, you should play it.
3 For those who are not Mormons, Abish is a Lamanite woman in the 1st century BC. She is the sole Christian among the Lamanites until Ammon arrived, and she aided in the conversion of an entire nation. It’s a good story, you should read it.