In case you didn’t realize it already, I’m kind of weird

A List Apart just published the results of their 2007 Web Design survey. In it, they surveyed almost 33,000 web professionals. A few things I found interesting...

16.3% of respondents were female. (~5350)
About 25% of respondents were web developers (~8300)
Of those 8300 web developers, only 7.2% were female... leaving us with slightly under 600 female web developers. Of all the web professions surveyed, web developers have the smallest percentage of women. So based on this survey, less than 1% of people in web professions are female web developers.

As most of you who know me already know, I'm kind of weird... but I guess this survey just confirms that. =)

emily != email

I'm a web developer. I spend a lot of time writing code to make web sites work. Sometimes that involves making sign up forms, or newsletter-sending-modules, or I-need-to-change-my-account forms. For example:
First name:
Last name:
Email address:

Plus a bunch of back-end code to actually process that data, etc. Anyway, moral of the story: I type the word "email" a lot. The other day at work, I was filling out a form like the one above, to test it. And in the "first name" field, I was meaning to type "emily" but "email" came out instead.

Bet you guys didn't consider that when you named me, did you, parentals??

jobs

There are some really cool jobs out there... and some really not-so-cool jobs.

Cool job: web developer for CHANGE design group, a design company in Chicago that works primarily with faith-based organizations and does a good job of it.

Not-so-cool job: PowerPoint Creation and Design position. Job requirements include the ability to make RAW graphics & symbols (Like triangles, squares, and circles) inside the presentation with a coherent work flow. The ability to integrate pictures into the frame and overlay text where appropriate.
Also on the not-so-cool list: jobs that subtly mention in the job descriptions things like "flash banner advertisements" or "HTML emails" (aka spam emails....)

Don't worry, I'm using the discernment skills that I learned from my college education and not applying for the not-so-cool jobs...

Today it begins

Today, I'm actually going to begin, in earnest, looking for a job.

Maybe by writing that down, I'll stop procrastinating and actually do it this afternoon when I get out of work. Maybe.

I'm bouncing between excitement and eager anticipation, and hesitation to move on beyond my comfortable bubble.

I’m blue

At work a few months ago, I had to take a "discovery profile" personality/work style test. My boss gave me a packet today with my results. It assigns you a color... blue is my dominant color (reforming observer) but red is close behind, so I think that means I'm really purple. Well, this profile goes into detailed descriptions of me. Some of it is kind of humorous... and perhaps true. For example:

"Emily uses her thinking to run as much of the world as she can"

or this

"Emily is the conceptual problem solver, intensely intellectual and logical, exhibiting flashes of creative brilliance."

Watch out for lightning folks... I have flashes of brilliance. =)

And now for the not-so-accurate, but still amusing bit:

"Emily prefers quiet (mostly true) and may develop ingenious ways to make herself invisible (hah!), particularly when she is called upon to take part in social or gregarious interaction (right...)"