Technical Writer

Term Papers Are Coming Due, Students Beware

When I was a stupid kid, I wrote papers for the jocks at Frederick Community College who needed to pass their classes to stay on their teams.  I grew up, turned 18, discerned the error of my ways after being nabbed, nearly, taking someone else's final exam at the University of Maryland. The teaching assistant was too blinded by my flashing smile to gleam that I wasn't his student until the exam was lost in the pile in front of him. I high-tailed it out of Ellicott Hall and halted that line of business, but that foolish (at best) period in my life has left me with a skill.  I am able to discern when words not their own have been put on paper by the students of the Professor who married me (despite my confession to him of that bad monkey enterprise).

It's not always the text itself that gives them away.  I'll not forget the paper (such a delight to read) that turned out to have been a piece unchanged by a single word of a several years-old issue of The Economist, complete with poached footnotes. I downloaded the article and stapled it to the term paper, and the Professor returned it with neither grade nor comment to Missy, for such was her name. What gave Missy away?  Her signature on the cover sheet was crowned with hearts over the i's of her name.  The text?  Clear and concise, well organized, and probably peer reviewed, which I suspected was beyond the ken of the young student. The Professor gave the kid another chance. I married a good man.

Process Improvements for Those in the Knot Know

Alexander the Great got it right when he took the sharp edge of his blade to the Gordian Knot.  Sometimes it takes a fresh eye to solve an intractable tangle. Recognize that Alexander's strong arm could have been any extension of his will and intellect, but also that he was a warrior trained to succeed.

I thought of Alexander as I admired on the front page of The New York Times this morning an image of a PowerPoint slide that purports to represent the complexity of the path to peace in Afghanistan.
Now this is a knot worthy of vanquishing.  Here is the article link, 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp

and it is worth reading if you are a technical writer, although it was written not for us, but instead as an examination of how the limits of a software application impede free thinking and decisive action.  The article is about warfare, and the dull-headed representation of it in military briefings these days.  I write not really knowing this, but I can look at this slide and wonder what the heck, too.  Out there is a bright young Ender just waiting for her moment in the game, and she knows all about cutting the Gordian Knot.

The Little Tooth Mouse

It probably happens more often than we imagine, but once upon a time there was a little gray mouse whose dearest wish of the heart was granted by a fairy. It was a wish she had since she was a young pinkie in her parents’ nest.

“Why is Papa looking at the sky,” she wondered when the family’s picnic one early spring morning was suddenly interrupted in the fore-yard of their home.  Papa and mother dashed with their brood undercover, and a quick thinking house mouse scruffed the little mouse as she trailed behind.  When safely inside Mouse Hall, the little mouse listened as her elders whispered about the birds of the sky swooping and flying.  “Falcon is on the wing,” they said quietly to one another, not wanting to frighten her, but the little mouse heard their words.  What are birds, she wondered?

The days lengthened and the pinkies began to grow.  Their ears grew and they could hear the green grasses swish about them.  The mice grew elegant whiskers to feel the breezes as they lifted up to sniff the air.  Their beautiful gray fur grew into coats much admired in the family. 

The little mouse was outside a great deal in the summer and she watched the falcon in the rocks high overhead.  The bird had raised a family on the rocky ledges for generations of mice, and this summer, the little mouse had watched as the fledglings high above learned to fly.  The birds tumbled about on the edge of their nest, and their first flights were often falls caught at the last minute on the branch of a tree.  The little mouse wanted to fly in the sky, too. 

One evening at dusk as she was watching the birds as they gathered to roost for the night, she heard a flutter behind her, but it was was a fairy, not a bird.  “Why are you sad?” the fairy asked. The little mouse told her that she wanted to fly like a bird in the sky.  “But you are a little gray mouse, not a bird,” said the fairy.  The little mouse hung her head in sorrow.  The kind fairy said to the little mouse, “I will give you wings to fly, for I see that you are a special young mouse and perhaps you can help me.”

The fairy waved her magic wand over her head and in the evening light stars danced around the little mouse.  She twirled in happiness.  She felt lighter than air.  She lept up to dance and her toes did not touch the grass.  She could skim over the field as if she were the very breezes she played with as a child.  She returned to the kind fairy and said, “What can I do to help you?” 

“It is something you will like,” said the fairy. “I have given you wings and your own magic wand.  Each night you will watch, and when you see a child put a tooth under the pillow at bedtime, you will visit the child and save the tooth.  Wave your magic wand and leave in its place a silver coin.”

So the little Tooth Mouse began her work.  Before long, children everywhere began telling their parents at breakfast that they dreamed the night before that a beautiful fairy mouse flew to visit them when they lost their teeth.  The tooth would be missing in the morning, but a pretty treat would lie shining on the pillow.

What did the Tooth Mouse do with all the baby teeth she collected?  She built on a cloud a castle made of the pearly white teeth.  There is not a more beautiful castle than hers. 

If you lose your tooth and put it under your pillow the Tooth Fairy may come to visit you, but if you are very lucky, the little Tooth Mouse herself will come, and if it is a very beautiful tooth she will take it to her castle and leave you a present that is nice.  Her parents are very proud of her.

_____________________________________________________

French children are not visited by the Tooth Fairy.  Since at least the 1950s, they have been visited by the little Tooth Mouse.  It is well known that the Tooth Mouse lives in a beautiful castle on a cloud, and the castle is made of shining teeth. 

Marie-Paule told me the story, including the admonition that mothers give their children.  Clean your teeth carefully if you want them to be good enough for the La Petite Souris!

When children are very, very young, sometimes the little Tooth Mouse over-exerts and leaves a present that a sensible child knows is too large for her to carry, even given her magical powers.  My friend Nathalie said,

The mouse used to bring me a kinder surprise, which is a big chocolate egg with a surprise inside.  One day I asked my mum, how can the little mouse (as we call her) bring me such a big sweet since she is so small?  After that, she used to bring me the smallest things.

Warcraft and Unrestricted War

Should I download a 10-day trial of World of Warcraft?  I am surrounded daily by mages and sorcerers going at it against the Hoard.  It is likely that I would join the Hoard, judging from the comments over the cubicle walls--my colleagues respect its cooperative work.

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from my studies and began reading the now 11-year-old publication "Unrestricted Warfare," written by two Peoples Liberation Army colonels from "the younger generation of Chinese military officers," as notes the editor at the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which posted extensive parts of the piece at http://www.cryptome.org/cuw.htm . (FBIS also offers a downloadable, full PDF of the text at the site.) This is a gripping paper, so interesting and challenging that apparently it is used as a text in our military colleges. 

The premise of the thinking is that victory in war is never formulaic, yet victories have common elements that can support artful, intuitive strategy based on fields of endeavor that in the present transcend what we commoners understand as military operations.  We learn when a direct assault is effective, and when to take a position to evade yet neutralize the opposition's assault, as would a martial arts master.  We learn that the moment of decisive action may be positioned.

The authors proposed 11 years ago what is becoming part of the general understanding of the fronts of operations against an enemy.   The authors lay out historic examples and the affects of combining these elements. "We need only shake the kaleidoscope of addition to be able to combine into an inexhaustible variety of methods of operation," they write.  Here they are. 

Military	Trans-military	Non-military
Atomic warfare Conventional warfare Bio-chemical warfare Ecological warfare Space warfare Electronic warfare Guerrilla warfare Terrorist warfare	Diplomatic warfare Network warfare Intelligence warfare Psychological warfare Tactical warfare Smuggling warfare Drug warfare Virtual warfare (deterrence)	Financial warfare Trade warfare Resources warfare Economic aid warfare Regulatory warfare Sanction warfare Media warfare Ideological warfare

I can add that war can not be mastered but only directed because war becomes as living a horror as is raging fire poised to consume the force that unleashes it.  We use fire, but we are not its masters.  The same should be said for war.

The League of Red-Headed Men

The assignment was obviously temporary, but my friend was happy to accept a well-paid job for a far-away company that is riding out the tail end of a contract.  All around her are the sounds of staff adrift in their own boats:  Here an animated conversation between software engineers about their gaming avatars (the take away: even a sorcerer must travel with a healer) and there the keyboard clicking of industrious engineers composing websites for friends.  Other staff have been using 6 to 7 hours daily to search for new employment.  The problem?

The contract will not be renewed. There is, however, the inflow of income to the company by keeping positions filled on this contract for its few remaining months.  How does a tech writer fill such days that were not promoted as devoid of professional work beyond the initial swirl of a few technical white papers? 

One decides that one has been handed an exciting fellowship to spend three months in totally independent, well-supported learning.  There is CSS to learn cold, and Java scripting.  Why would one ever use a design software when there is a world of information on directly writing Web pages that if learned well is far more useful?  Lucky person.

Sweet But Boring Technical Writer

To inflict myself with guilt and observe how my inattention to this blog for the last year has affected my readership, I take a quick peek at statistics now and again to confirm that readers are still interested in my site.  If it weren't for my single article on Duncraig announcing its sale a year ago, no one except my one reader would ever turn to its pages.  Oddly, my average readership has remained unchanged, due to the Duncraig search that returns my page to the head of the results for "duncraig castle for sale."  

Noticing recently that someone had found a different location on my site through Google, I clicked on the link to the search results page to discover these sad little search words: "sweet but boring technical writer."  Lo! What site should appear at the top but mine!  How have I sunk so low?  I know that Google was not making a value statement, but perhaps I ought to take the hint and part my hair on the side, not down the center, for awhile.  Maybe a new white blouse. Damn.