My friends Chuck and Gaurav's start-up has launched.  I am very impressed by their business idea.  Basically Bill Monk is a service that allows people to easily share bills with one another.  You are able to keep track of money you owe other people, and money that they owe you.  The killer feature of this service is that you are able to do all of this from your cell phone so you can do it when you are out on the town. 

I think the coolest thing about Bill Monk is the possibility that it enables to remove guilt and/or stress about having to share bills with other people.  Let the sweet monk take care of it.

Start using it today!

https://www.billmonk.com/

My boyfriend Darwin and I have decided to go to Tokyo for Thanksgiving. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to visit Asia and get a feel for what Eastern civilization is like.  Tokyo can’t really be held up as the bastion of a different world because it is a global city in so many ways.  For that reason I am looking forward to also visiting some smaller towns around Tokyo.  I am also very excited to visit my friend Saiko in Yokohama about an hour from Tokyo.  I lived in Sheffield, England where I attended University of Sheffield with Saiko.  She was always such a great friend that made me laugh.  I learned a few choice Japanese words from her while I lived there, like “kso” meaning “I kill you”.  I am so glad we got reconnected through the power of the internet.  Saiko found the Microsoft article about me on the Japanese version of my group at work’s web site.  Since she couldn’t figure out what my work address was she sent a postcard to my parent’s address (which I had given to her six years ago when we lived in Sheffield).  My mom then sent me the postcard from Saiko but somehow it ended up inside my sister’s nursing magazine (that had a really freaky cover photo of an old man having his eye pulled out).  My sister and I were laughing about the sheer nerve of the cover when Saiko’s postcard fell out.  Its divine I thought, Tokyo is the place to be!

So what should we do while we are in Japan?  I think I will have to go to several Zen Buddhist temples so I can stay relaxed while all of Tokyo buzzes around outside.  I know Darwin will want to be visiting a lot of the technology centers of Tokyo which will be awesome for me as well.  The more lights the better!  Maybe I’ll try my hand at pachinko the weird Japanese gambling game.  Hopefully I will do better than at blackjack in Las Vegas.  I also will have to go out to some techno club while I am in Tokyo.  I know they have some wild ones and it would be especially great to see how everyone dresses in Tokyo when they go out.  Hopefully I’ll see some crazy manga stuff.

My story below isn’t really about me coming out to people explicitly but it highlights one of my preferred ways of outing myself.  Just by expressing a passion for gay rights many people make the assumption I’m gay.  Guess what, they’re right!  Woohoo!  Thanks everyone for sharing your stories they have been inspiring.  Every one of us is making a difference!

In school

I was taking a Theory of Computation course my senior year at the University of North Carolina.  The course’s main textbook had a picture of Alan Turing on the cover as he played such a large role in the theory of computation.  I remember the class had your typical smattering of college students, but I especially recall a few jocks in the class, who I quickly labeled as frat guys.  I remember on a few occasions hearing them call each other faggot in a derogatory way.  At the time I didn’t feel them important enough to spend my time engaging on the subject.  However onetime in the course, the professor was talking briefly about the life of Alan Turing.  He indicated that Alan Turing had been arrested for being a homosexual.  One of the jock guys in the class asked the professor how the police could have determined that Alan Turing was a homosexual.  The professor smirked and responded that they probably found him with a sixteen year old in a public park.  The class just laughed along.

I was very upset by the professor’s response but I didn’t want to respond immediately because I actually didn’t know how the police had determined that Turing was a homosexual.  So I went home and did some research in some books and got the real story.  I prepared a set of printed notes for the next time the course met.  I emailed the professor and let him know that I wanted to give a quick presentation to the class.  Of course the professor didn’t read his email so I had to grab him before the class and ask if I could give the presentation.  He said that would be fine and allowed me to present.  I gave a brief presentation of Alan Turing’s achievements, and the important role he played in assisting his country in World War 2 deciphering of Axis military correspondence.  I then went on to explain how Turing had been arrested for being a homosexual by police when he had actually called them to his home to report a robbery.  While explaining the details of his case, Turing outted himself not knowing that the police would focus on this detail and arrest him instead.  I then explained to the class how Turing, a British hero, was subjected to hormone treatments as part of a medical science experiment to help curb his homosexual tendencies.  I pointed out that the homophobia he experienced could have been contributing factors in his suicide by cyanide.

After giving the presentation I felt very good about what I had done.  The professor thanked me for taking the time to educate the class.  I was thankful for the opportunity to use a negative statement from my professor, in a positive way to impact the students in my class about an issue that was important to me.  I didn’t really attend the course much that year (more because it was a boring class than any personal vendetta), but I found it interesting in a different computer lab one day when I found myself sitting beside one of the jocks that had made a homophobic remark earlier in the year.  He told me that the professor in the class had on two different occasions pointed out how very sorry he was for the remarks he had made about Turing to the class.  The student told me that our professor made it clear that Turing was a great man.  It was cool for me that the guy I had labeled as a jock and a homophobe made a point of telling me this information.  Otherwise I might never have known if my little stand had made an impact. 

At work

When I started on my team here at Microsoft I made a point of including in my introduction that one of my passions was gay rights.  I didn’t have to say I was gay but many concluded that I was.  When the Microsoft HB1515 issue came to light I made sure to individually address my team about my discontent with how Microsoft had handled the issue.  I feel it is each of our own personal responsibility to make an impact on the lives of people that we are close to.  One by one we can change and educate people to create the world where we can all live as equal.