Ada Lovelace Day – honoring my mom

Christmas at parent's house: an OLPC on top of another laptop.

I know this is late. I started it yesterday but did not quite finish.

March 24th is Ada Lovelace day, “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.” (http://findingada.com/about/) There are a lot of women in technology I could write about, but I am going to start with my first influence, my mom.

I first learned HTML because my mom learned it and encouraged me to do the same- and I got my first HTML coding job after she left it. She’s held several jobs involving programming and computers, but more than the jobs she’s always had a fascination with computers that she passed on to me.

Whenever a new technology comes out – most recently the iPad – people talk about subjecting it to the “mom test.” I laugh, because my mom is one of the most tech savvy people I know.

I can’t remember a time in our house when we didn’t have some kind of computer. I don’t remember all the different kinds we had, but I know my mom was the driving force in acquiring most of them. We had one that used an audio tape as its storage media- which enabled my mom to write a program that quizzed me on my spelling words using the tape to record her voice saying the words.

Today, mom always has the latest gadget- slingbox, android phone, netbook, and she hacks these devices to her liking. She listens to all the techie podcasts and uses open source apps. Most of all, she maintains an unrelenting excitement about the future of technology that I can’t match- but I know I can always check in with her if I want to know what hot new device is next on the horizon.

Whenever a new technology comes out – most recently the iPad – people talk about subjecting it to the “mom test.” I laugh, because my mom is one of the most tech savvy people I know. The test will probably change soon to the grandma test, and I’ll still laugh – my grandma’s a gamer.