Gracious Network Hostess

They say that on the Web, everyone's an author, but no one's an editor. I am an editor, so I'm pretty regularly, yet randomly adding text and pointers to this page and the pages below it. These pages started as an attempt to organize my favorite Web sites, as well as a way to share info with networked friends and colleagues. If you find anything useful or entertaining here, enjoy! And I promise that other than one particular link, this is a relatively pun-free zone.

Work

After 11.5 years at MIT, I now work at SpeechWorks International, Inc (SPWX). (formerly Applied Language Technologies). I started January 1997 as their technical documentation and training specialist. I write product documentation for our speech recognition libraries. And I helped my husband get a job here.

From 1987 to 1997, I was part of MIT's Information Systems / Support (used to be Computing Support Services) / Training and Publications Team as a technical writer. The group publishes award-winning Athena documents in HTML for distribution via the Web. I also taught a quarterly HTML Class for Windows users. (Windows is my third "language," after Unix and Mac.)

Schools

I graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which is located in the Triangle area of NC. Several other science and math schools are following NCSSM's pioneering efforts.
I maintain a list of alums with e-mail, thus my title. (Some of the alums have home pages. And we're finally getting the Alumni Association in gear, if slowly.)

I then graduated with a humanities degree from MIT in 1989. A favorite pastime at MIT is hacking. My husband also went to MIT.

And in 1996, I graduated with a master's from Northeastern. This is how I got into doing research via the Web.

Other

One of my passions has a few home pages of its own -- The Contemporary A Cappella Society of America, Primarily A Cappella, and Mainely A Cappella. My 7-woman group Faith in Action is seeing so much action, we now have our own Web page. We're becoming known around the Boston A Cappella Scene, and we even took the second runner-up spot in the 1999 Boston Regional Harmony Sweepstakes! My husband is one of our most faithful fans :-)

Michael Metzger and I got engaged July 10, 1999 (my parents' 35th anniversary), and had a beautiful wedding on November 13, 1999.

Here are links to random sites that were cluttering up my hotlist a few years back -- I haven't checked lately to how many are still alive.

Here are some other friends with home pages. Here are some photos of net-friends.

TLAs: CBD, CSA, DPI, FAQ, ICC, MJM, MTG, NIV, SFW, STC, and the SIPB (it's a TLA in Greek).

August is generally vacation month for me.

In August 2000, Michael and I vacationed in Maine with my parents. We took a Caribbean cruise in May with his parents and sister. We also traveled a lot of weekends August-October for weddings and my high school reunion.
In August 1999, Michael and I visited my folks in NC for a few days (wedding planning), and his folks in FL for a few days (relaxing).
In Aug 1998, I went with my parents to Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
Before that (1997), I deviated from my pattern and traveled to Budapest in mid-March. Photos are back and digitized, but not yet in a Web-compatible format.
Then before that (1996) in mid-August, I went to Paris for a week and took photos of European friends. I took photos of monuments, museums, and bridges, too.
In late August (1995), I took an Alaskan cruise with my parents. (I've neither written much or put many photos online yet.)
In early August, 1994, I took a road trip to North Carolina, via DC on the way down and Philly on the way back. We met lots of net.people in each place, and I have several photos available.
I grew up in a small town in NC -- but not that small! Actually, Reader's Digest ranked the Hickory-Morganton area (I'm from Morganton) the 10th best place in the US to raise a family. Thanks, mom and dad! (Boston was #9, so I'll stick around here for a while.)

The cats never go with us. They stay home to share a Big Mac.

October is always a good month to dress up.

21 May 2008