About Cyn
Posted by Cyn
Cynthia Armistead is Katie’s mother, a disabled person, an activist on many fronts, a writer, and an unabashed geek. Katie and Cynthia enjoyed a homeschooling adventure until Katie entered college, and they still feel a close affinity for home educators.
She inherited her distaste for all things that don’t work well from her father, Bill Roberson. In her, it has grown into a habit of imposing order on her environment, stopping the spread of entropy whenever possible and setting up systems to spread serenity. Thus, she became the Enemy of Entropy. She thanks her mother, Dianna Roberson (née Goss), for introducing her to the world of letters, words, and books. Cyn is also the Slayer of Red Tape Dragons, THE Mommy, and She Who Says What Must Be Said (especially when people don’t want, but need, to hear it).
She enjoys designing and stitching counted-thread needlework, reading, singing, coloring, live acoustic music, science fiction and fantasy, and tabletop roleplaying games. She misses dancing and other, more active pursuits, but is working her way back to them!
Information about Cynthia’s work outside the home may be found on her resume. There are also a few technical writing samples in that section of the site. (There are, but the WordPress install is wonky, and the webmaster needs to make time to fix it.)
Someday she’ll write an actual biographical entry, but for now she wants to make it easier for old friends to find her by mentioning the names she has lived and worked under throughout her life. Her family called her Cindy, so really, really old friends know her as Cindy Roberson (and she doesn’t answer to Cindy otherwise). Her first husband was high-school sweetheart Scott Allen Hall, so she was known as Cindy or Cynthia Hall for a short time. Husband number two and father of her daughter Katie was the late Wayne Armistead, from whence came her current last name. She was briefly married to Paul Smathers, and known during that time as Cynthia Smathers or Cynthia Armistead-Smathers. If she ever changes her surname again, it’ll most likely be to something that has nothing at all to do with any husband or her father. She has lived in Gadsden, Alabama and around Atlanta, Georgia for most of her life.
Online, she’s been TechnoMom since 1995. When she was on AOL, she went by CynthiaLyn, FlameOpal, or TLACyn (Tech Live Advisor Cyn). She also had a screen name for use in the Homework Help forums, but isn’t absolutely certain of what it was — maybe ProfCyn? She’s the same person online and offline.
She enjoys hearing from friendly people, so please leave comments!
14 Responses to “About Cyn”
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Cyndi Says:
February 21st, 2007 at 12:26 amDid you used to be on IRC on irc.warped.net?
I knew a technomom there and was curious if it was you. (I was simply “blue” there…)
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cyn Says:
February 21st, 2007 at 12:38 amIt sounds sorta familiar, but my memory is terrible! Any idea as to about what year that would have been? I haven’t done any kind of live chat much in the last decade or so.
I’ve run into the name “Blueinatl” somewhere, I know, and my ex-husband had a friend out west who went by Blue
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Great Blistering Barnacles Says:
March 16th, 2007 at 1:20 amHi Cyn.
Thanks for leaving the comment on my bog and thanks for reading it. It’s nice to get feedback now and then and to know that it is being read.
About your question regarding combining the two blogs; My experience so far has been that blogging, journaling, reviews and so on takes up much more time that people think. It’s not just as simple as sitting down for ten minutes and writing a post for the day, you have to think about what would be interesting, write it, edit it, rewrite parts that just don’t work and so on. Having multiple blogs doesn’t really help as it just makes it exponentially worse.
That is why I, have decided, at least in my case to abandon multiple blogs and consolidate things into one place. Even then it sometimes is a battle for time and energy. I wish I did have more time to spend on it but I have to be happy with going through phases where I can get a lot out and then run dry for a while.
I’ve added my email addy to this so if you feel like mailing me, feel free.
Till later,
Johan -
alyshia Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 2:16 pmHey there — Fell upon your site and enjoyed my visit very much… I can relate to much of what you’ve written about. Thanks for sharing your life. All the best to you and your family.
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Conrad Says:
June 12th, 2007 at 6:48 pmI found your blog through Avanoo. Very interesting stuff, and I have just read 0.01% of it! Please keep up the quality of your posts. It is so difficult to find quality people and material online.
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Cynthia Armistead Says:
July 9th, 2007 at 5:04 pmHi my name is Cynthia Armistead as well. What is your web site all about?
Laters
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Yngona Desmond Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 8:21 amThank you for visting my blog Cynthia; likewise, I have enjoyed reading some of your comments here. Please feel free to contact me directly regarding Heathenry. Plus, if your profile is correct, you live in GA, so please consider joining the Georgia Heathen Society at yahoo.
… Yngona
yngona@yahoo.com -
cyn Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 12:13 pmHi Cynthia! This site is about all sorts of things, because I have many different interests. I’m working on making it easier to find everything, but there’s material here about parenting, homeschooling, relationships in general and polyamory in particular, homemaking, spirituality, some of the music I enjoy, some books and television shows I recommend to others, even a few artists I really like. You can also find links to needlework pieces I’ve stitched, and some that I’ve designed, and some health information. There are links to my other sites, and my family’s sites, and friends’ sites too.
Do you have a web site?
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cyn Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pmThanks, Yngona
Yes, I’m in Georgia. I found your site because of a post you made on an Atlanta mailing list. I’ll consider joining. I learn best by reading, and I am homebound. Is there a decent book that you recommend to beginners?
Thanks

Cyn -
Laura Says:
October 6th, 2007 at 12:07 amA bit ago I found some needlepoint designs titled “rainbow chalice”, “queer pride” and “have it all”. But now I can’t find them on your site. Do You still have them? If so can you email them to me or repost them on your site? thanks!
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cyn Says:
October 6th, 2007 at 9:48 pmHi Laura! I moved the patterns over to Heartsong Handicrafts a while back. They’re just plopped there at the moment, but I really do mean to set it up more nicely one of these days, and add more patterns. I should put more pointers on this site so that people can find the patterns. Sorry about that!
If you have an idea for something in particular that you can find, let me know and I’ll try my hand at designing it
Thanks!
Cyn -
Joe Says:
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pmHi!
I saw that you posted on the “Post Avatar” plug-in website about a problem you were having with error messages talking about header issues. I wonder if this was ever resolved? I am having the same problems at my website and would love to hear how you fixed the problem.
Thanks!
Joe -
cyn Says:
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 pmI’m afraid it wasn’t ever resolved. I was able to deal with it until the most recent WordPress upgrade, but then I started having error messages all over the site if the plugin was enabled. I can only hope that the author will put out a new version that works with the current WP release.
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Joe Says:
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 pmWhat a shame. I might have to disable this plug-in now. Oh well!





