TechnoMom

The Geek Who Understands You

About Me

I’m Katie’s mother, Rick’s wife, Mémé to my grandkids, and a professional geek. Katie and I enjoyed a homeschooling adventure until Katie entered college, and I still feel a close affinity for home educators. I live in the metro Atlanta, Georgia area with Rick and our critters.

I inherited my distaste for all things that don’t work well from my father, Bill Roberson. In me, it has become a habit of imposing order on my environment, stopping the spread of entropy whenever possible, and setting up systems to spread serenity. Thus, I became the Enemy of Entropy. I thank my mother, Dianna Roberson (née Goss), for introducing me to the world of letters, words, and books. I’m also the Slayer of Red Tape Dragons and She Who Says What Must Be Said (especially when people don’t want, but need, to hear it).

I enjoy designing and stitching counted-thread needlework, knitting, crocheting, reading, singing, live acoustic music, coloring, science fiction and fantasy, and tabletop roleplaying games. I volunteer with BH Technology Group (formerly Bluehair Technology), empowering older adults to use today’s technology. I also volunteer with Atlanta Friends of Folk Music, a group for those who support and enjoy traditional and contemporary acoustic performing arts. Rick and I foster kittens who are too young to be adopted for Lifeline Animal Project.

I work as a Senior Customer Solutions Engineer for a B2B SaaS company. Detailed information about my work outside the home may be found on my resume. I also have some writing samples available there.

Someday I’ll write an actual biographical entry, but for now, I want to make it easier for old friends to find me by mentioning the names I have lived and worked under in the past. I was born Cynthia Lynn Roberson. My family called me Cindy, so really, really old friends know me as Cindy Roberson (I don’t answer to Cindy otherwise). My first husband was high-school sweetheart Scott Hall, so I was known as Cindy or Cynthia Hall for a time. Husband number two (and Katie’s father) was the late Wayne Armistead, so I was Cynthia Armistead for many years. I was briefly married to Paul Smathers and known during that time as Cynthia Smathers or Cynthia Armistead-Smathers. I was Sam Chupp’s life partner for 14 years. As of October 1, 2022, I am Cynthia Armistead Newman. I’m usually called Cyn. I was born in Gadsden, Alabama but largely grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and have spent most of my life as an Atlantan other than a few years in Dublin, Georgia (1990 to 1993 or so) and some months spent in Omaha, Nebraska in 2016.

Online, I’ve largely been TechnoMom since 1995, occasionally TechKnowMom, BellaMiaow, or FelisLunae. When I was on AOL, I went by CynthiaLyn, FlameOpal, or TLACyn (Tech Live Advisor Cyn). I also had a screen name for use in the Homework Help forums, but I’m not absolutely certain of what it was—maybe ProfCyn? TeachCyn? I’m the same person online and offline, under any name or handle.

I enjoy hearing from friendly people, so please leave comments or use the contact form.

14 thoughts on “About Me”

  1. Did 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…)

  2. It 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 🙂

  3. Hi 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

  4. Hey 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.

  5. I 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.

  6. Hi my name is Cynthia Armistead as well. What is your web site all about?

    Laters

  7. Thank 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

  8. Hi 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?

  9. Thanks, 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

  10. A 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!

  11. Hi 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

  12. Hi!

    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

  13. I’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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