I met keyne a long time ago, at a Usenix conference we both attended when I was working at Princeton. I remember thinking she was really neat, fascinating, attractive, and intelligent, and it was a terrible shame we lived so far apart and would quite likely never see each other again. We traded a little email over the years, at long intervals, and then many years later when I was living in Boston I saw some mail from her (I forget whether it was on a mailing list or personal to me) that implied she was in the area, and I was quite pleased.

She’s a mix of humanities geek and computer geek in a bit of the same way I am, and her interests overlap with mine to a very large degree. I wish I had more chance to “talk shop” with her.

It’s beautiful to watch her with her children. Parenting is a very hard job, full of difficult judgment calls, with very high stakes, and she does it marvelously, although I’m sure it doesn’t always feel that way at the time. (So does qwrrty.)

She’s a warm, honest, and genuine person. She’s another one of those people I trust in lots of ways. I don’t feel like she would ever shy away from telling me something unpleasant. I haven’t really used her as a confidant much, but I’d certainly feel comfortable doing so. I trust her judgment and her wisdom and her perceptions and her commitment, and I think the world would be a better place if she were running it. I wish there were more of her in my life; in fact, I sort of wish she wrote novels (or essays), so I could have some of her on my shelves.