Pequeña Erudita

Tillie has started going to a Spanish-immersion daycare. I'm hoping she might soak up some bilingual skills, though of course, it takes a little more than a few years of daycare to really be fluent in any language, hee, hee. At first, I had some fears that she might be confused or that we would not be able to communicate well with her teachers. After 2 weeks, I realize these were silly worries. Tillie is doing great. In fact, this weekend, she looked up at the night sky and said "luna" and "estrella"--her first Spanish words. I'm so orgullosa!

Chippin' and Dippin' (and Frownin')

The Flautist

Soft 'Bot Uprising

The robot army that I have been assembling just recently grew by one little quilted soldier. Sweet Miss Hazel Grazel's quilt is pictured below. I love how it turned out, though sadly, I am not happy with the photographs. It will look better, I am certain, when it is snuggled around the little princess herself. I am working on a very exciting quilt project right now--so exciting that I'd really rather not do anything else. Why do we have to work? Why do we have to clean our houses? Why do we have to run errands and cook and do our taxes and the dishes? Why aren't the robots doing these things for us? Actually, come to think of it, right now I have the dishwasher and the washing machine running at the same time. Whenever this happens, I feel like I live in the future. There are robots keeping house for me. What turn-of-the-century woman (the OTHER turn of the century, of course) would disagree with me?

MTV's Greatist Hits

Tillie rocks out.

A Woman in Computing History

[This post is part of a blogging pledge associated with Ada Lovelace Day--look it up if you need a little springboard for procrastination in the form of personal edification, hee, hee.]

Adele Goldstine (1920-1964)
In the 1940s, Adele Goldstine was one of a team of women who programmed the ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer. (In case you don't remember your computer history, this thing was a giant, folks--it took up an entire room and could do fewer algorithms than a modern pocket scientific calculator.) Goldstine also wrote the ENIAC's technical manual. Here's a little snippet:

"The basic electronic memory device of the ENIAC is the flip-flop. A flip-flop consists essentially of a pair of triodes so connected that at any given time only one of the pair can be conducting. When a certain one of the tubes is conducting (and the other is not), the flip-flop is said to be in the normal state; when the other tube is conducting (and the first is not), the flip-flop is in the abnormal state."

So, from what I gather, she wrote about abnormal flip-flops--something that sounds like it would give you bad blisters. (Okay, please forgive me--I am obviously joking to cover up my gross ignorance on the subject!)

Goldstine and her colleagues were called "computers," a job which entailed plugging and unplugging cables into the ENIAC so as to program it to crunch numbers. I'm not sure why this team was all women, but considering the lack of women in science and technology fields at the time, it is quite significant. Is it because the job appeared to an ignorant observer to be a simple telephone switchboard, a piece of technology women of the time were allowed to operate? I love the pictures of these gals in their 1940s work costumes, busily rewiring this electronic juggernaut:


[image from: http://www.hp9825.com/html/stan_frankel.html ]


[image from: http://ftp.arl.army.mil/ftp/historic-computers/gif/eniac4.gif ]

Here's a snapshot of them all in a car (Why in the trunk of a car? I do not know. Is that where they were stowed until it was time to get some serious work done?):

[image from: http://www.indwes.edu/Faculty/bcupp/lookback/hist-10.htm ]

Apparently, most, if not all of them, eventually married one of the male operators of ENIAC. Goldstine herself came onto the project as the wife of the lead administrator of the ENIAC's construction. Unfortunately, her husband's accounts of her input on the project were dismissive. I find it amazing that people could make any progress during this era of hideous racism and sexism. It is a testament to how smart and industrious Goldstine must have been to emerge from such oppression and disrespect and still make her mark on the history of technology.

Grapefruit Pie at Auntie Emily's

We stopped by Emily's house on a lovely Saturday afternoon and Tillie got to sample her delicious grapefruit pie. It is always fun to practice using a spoon!

Licking the lips between spoonfuls maximizes yumminess.

Another technique involves using your other hand to help the food go in the pie hole.

Eating pie is serious work:

Rose Colored Glasses

Tillie thinks life is just awesome in tinted specs.

Cuz We're Cousins

Cousins Raphaella and Tillie on Grandma's porch:

For scientific comparison, here's a similar picture of me and my cousin Meredith on a porch, though slightly older.

Finger Food

Now, I know I put that piece of sushi somewhere around here...where did it go? Tillie, have you seen it?

The Root of All Sneezles

Scott and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary last week. An infectious bout of colds all around and the painful eruption of one of Tillie's molars made it a sleepless and uncomfortable week. True, a bouquet of flowers and a steak dinner were requisite tokens of romance, but mostly it was the staggered napping schedules, towers of tissues used by all three of us, and family playground outings under drug-induced fogginess that made me feel that much closer to my sweeties.

Snacking on a park bench:

Tillie thinks she controls the water fountain:


Tillie and Scott play with a park puppy:


Sandbox doohicky fun: