GuysBlog

Quotation on Life

guy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:51:11 +0000

Life is a long lesson in humility.: James M. Barrie

Nice ride

guy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:21:49 +0000

Just (about 15 min ago) had a Richter 5+ about 7 miles east and 6 miles deep. No immdiate damage to the house is visible. More motion than I felt in Loma Prieta. Just jiggly — not discernable wave direction. Ran on for 10-15 seconds.

“I’d like to reach a person, please….”

guy — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:28:05 +0000

So many companies have set up their incoming telephone lines with speech recognition options or button-pressing options. It can be very frustrating trying to reach a human. Now comes GetHuman, the “database” of magic codes that let you reach a live person. Let’s hope your bank, insurance company, credit company, and so on is listed here.

If it is not, and you get a voice recognition system on the line, swearing sometimes gets you to a human — even direct to Customer Relations. But if you are calling a medical facility, it just might get your call routed to the Psych Department.

Yeah, well…. no surprise here

guy — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:15:00 +0000

So long, Kurt Vonnegut

guy — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:50:11 +0000

Other bloggers are quoting deep thoughts by Kurt Vonnegut, who died April 11, 2007. These three caught my eye:

To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

There are more here and here and here.
Thanks, Kurt! (Tremendous coverage in the New York Times — registration required).

I’m no Leonardo, but…

guy — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:58:50 +0000

There’s a very interesting BBC website about Leonardo Da Vinci.
It includes a link to a “What kind of thinker are you?” test that says I’m both an “Interpersonal thinker” and an “Existential thinker.” Can’t argue with it….

Adobe is listening

guy — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:42:23 +0000

Adobe has a Tech Comm weblog. Transparently enough, its name is “Technical Communication” and it identifies its mission as: “This blog intends to provide interesting, useful info about Technical Communication, FrameMaker, RoboHelp and related issues.”
In today’s posting the product manager for FrameMaker, Aseem Dokania, proclaims Adobe’s undying interest in FrameMaker’s future and solicits inputs.

[Tip of the hat to Sarah O’Keefe, in Palimpsest.]

A different sort of articles for STC pubs?

guy — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:23:36 +0000

STC offers two glossy magazines with membership: Intercom (ten issues per year) and the quarterly journal, Technical Communication. The former contains society news and announcements and articles about the profession, while the latter seems aimed at the academic community and also has an extensive set of reviews of a lot of topical publications.

Many folks I know who have been technical communicators for more than, say, seven years have said that they find much of what is in Intercom to be aimed more at the beginning technical communicators, and they find the content of “TechComm” too esoteric.

What sorts of articles do you read in other publications (or on the Web), aimed at the more “seasoned” technical communicator, that you’d like to see in our STC publications?

What sorts of topics should be covered? Should we have more theme-based issues, in which most of the articles are on a given topic area?

Should, perhaps, book reviews move to Intercom?

What other ideas for our periodicals come to mind?

Way to go, D.C.

guy — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:42:05 +0000

For what is likely to be the only time in my life, an album I bought as soon as it was available has been voted “Best Country Album” of the year. The Dixie Chicks took five Grammy awards last night:

Record of the year - “Not Ready to Make Nice”
Album of the year - “Taking the Long Way”
Song of the year - “Not Ready to Make Nice”
Country album - “Taking the Long Way”
Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal - “Not Ready to Make Nice”

That disc, along with Dar Williams’ 2005 disc “My Better Self” and the new Norah Jones disc “Not Too Late” is spending a lot of time in my CD player and on my MP3 player.

Been too busy

guy — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:42:09 +0000

Well, I guess the templating will have to wait. I want to eliminate the monthly charge for TypePad and just keep this thing on my own domain using WP for free.

In other news, I have been busy adding photos of my own high school class’s 45-year reunion to its website, and have added two of the three outstanding memory books to my wife’s high school class website.

The former is mostly my design, while the latter is mostly my wife’s design and uses a lot more CSS and PHP. Now I feel a strong urge to redesign MY class’s site as well. Sure, in what universe do I have that amount of time. I’m just about to be involved in a redesign of my STC chapter’s website as well.