Thank you to everybody who responded to my post about the complete absence of women at the Chicago PUG February meetup on all three platforms where it was posted. While I understand that it is not an isolated issue but a part of the overall gender disbalance in IT, the lack of women in Postgres is striking compared to other IT fields. And even on top of that disbalance, it is even more pronounced at meetups.

During last week’s discussions, some people stated that going to any meetup or not is a personal choice, and there may be many reasons why people do not come. I completely agree with that, but I am leaving the discussion on “what are the benefits of attending meetups” to a future discussion. In this blog, I focus solely on gender disproportion.

Several commentators suggested providing daycare or allowing participants to come with children would…

On February 15, we had one more live meetup of the Chicago PostgreSQL User Group. I am very happy with how it went, except for one thing.
Positive things first, the attendance was at the pre-pandemic level first time after the pandemic! I would even say it was on the higher side of pre-pandemic attendance. The speaker was outstanding (would you ever expect less from Kirk Roybal?) There were a lot of questions during the talk and after the talk, and some people stayed after 8 PM. All of this was great, and I think that how a good meetup should look like, and that’s why we have live meetups.
However, there was one thing that I didn’t like. Look at the picture below:

I asked the audience how many people had female coworkers. At least two-thirds raised their hands. And then I asked: so where are they? Why didn’t…

For those who have known me long enough and heard me saying, “I want to do one more startup before I retire,” quite often, the title of this post would be at least unexpected. And I won’t swear by it. My life had taken so many unpredictable twists that the only thing I learned very well was “never say never.”

However, recently, I was saying something different: “I hope to stay with this company until I retire.” And once again, I won’t swear by it because life is unpredictable, but I started thinking about what changed my mind so drastically.
It is not only that I enjoy working with everybody in this company (I was fortunate to have wonderful co-workers everywhere I worked), but most of the problems I have to solve here.

A startup’s appeal is that you come to uncharted territory and build everything from scratch. There is…

Finally tried this recipe today, and it is delicious! Still unsure whether or not it’s too much work for busy me 🙂

Copying the whole recipe here:

ngredients:

• 2store-bought pie crusts, thawed
• 228 g.or 1 blockfull-fat cream cheese, softened
• 80 g.or 1/3 c. + 2 tbsp.black sesame paste
• 35 g.or 2 tbsp. + 1 tsp.milk (any fat percentage)
• 120 g.or 1/2 c.heavy cream
• 75 g.or 1/3 c. + 1 tbsp.granulated sugar (may use more if sweeter is desired)
• 6 g.or 2 tsp.cornstarch
• 5 g.or 1 tsp.lemon juice
• 4 g.or 1 tsp.vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, cream the full-fat cream cheese and sesame paste together using an electric beater.
2. Add in the milk and heavy cream and use a spatula to cream the mixture together until smooth. Do not use an electric…