Edward Spurlock

I’ve been trying since December of last year to get back into school for tech writing Technical Communication. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put the tuition money together early enough in the Austin Community College registration period to get the classes I wanted — by the time bills were paid, other people had grabbed all the spots in the classes I needed to get started.

Yesterday was the first day of registration for the Fall 2008 semester, and I was able to register for the first two classes I need. Today was payday, so I’ll be able to pay for the classes I signed up for. WOO-HOO!!! I’m IN, baby!!! This is the first time I’ve been in school for years, so it’s going to be interesting.

I wonder what House I’ll be Sorted into? I hope it’s Ravenclaw…

Seth Godin reminds us about Snopes.com, a very useful resource for those of us with friends or co-workers who just…can’t…resist forwarding that “George Carlin” essay on being a “Bad American” or the dire warning to parents to look for the telltale signs of “Strawberry Quick” or “Jenkem” abuse in their youngsters. If you’re afflicted with a co-worker who just has to let you know that Barack Obama is a “radical Muslim” who was sworn into office with his hand on the Koran, Snopes has got your back.

On the other hand, if you’re a network admin and want to send your users a picture showing an IBM hard disk circa 1956 (yes, really) or the “Rand Corporation’s 1954 design for a home computer” (actually a Fark.com Photoshop contest from 9/11/2004), Snopes can help you out there too. Just the thing to make them appreciate their 15-month-old Dells when you don’t have the time or budget to upgrade them to the latest-and-greatest.

Snopes is not all sweetness and light, thought — XKCD.com has a warning about the dark side of Snopes.

One of my co-workers at my current job was fond of forwarding emails from his right-wing fellow travelers. The first one I saw had a link to video purported to be a Rube Goldberg musical instrument built from farm machinery — actually a segment from the first Animusic DVD. In the next couple of weeks, he followed with an anecdote about a Navy Seal who cold-cocks an atheist college professor and a “true” list of excuses offered by welfare applicants. His pièce de résistance was one comparing Bill Clinton to stereotypes of black men — probably the same email that got Harris County (Texas) District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal into hot water recently. My co-worker hasn’t been fired, but the warning he got over the Clinton comparison seems to have made an impression — he hasn’t forwarded an offensive email since then.

From the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) comes a podcast titled Breaking Out of Solitary Confinement: Networking Tips for Freelancers. Hosted by tech writer Caroline Kelley Klinger, the podcast is an interview with tech consultant Gabe Goldberg and writer Kristen King.

One of the skills needed by tech writers, bloggers, and podcasters is interviewing. The I’d Rather Be Writing tech writing blog has the Top 10 Worst Things SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) Say or Do.  I’d Rather Be Writing also has 10 Tips on The Art of Interviewing. The article references an article from the Poynter Institute — Some Useful Interview Techniques. Other articles from the Poynter Institute include The Bare Facts of Interviewing, The Zen of Interviewing, and The Interview as a Free-Form Art. Good stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin had links to some collections of blog posts about Internet Marketing, increasing blogging traffic, business networking, and the like. I’ll be pointing out some of the ones I like best in the next few days. For now, I’d just like to repeat the list for easy reference:

• Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007
  (techipedia.com)
• 47 Social News Websites
  (doshdosh.com)
• The Secret to Building a Popular Blog…
  (doshdosh.com)
• Are You Using the Right Content Development Strategy?
  (doshdosh.com)
• 16 Effective Strategies to Expand Your Blog’s Reach in 2008
  (doshdosh.com)

(Note: the last link in Seth’s original list goes to a DoshDosh post titled The Importance of Social Media Marketing)

The Colbert Report for January 22, 2008 featured writer Malcolm Gladwell, speaking about his recent New Yorker article about I.Q. and race. The second interview was with Ambassador Andrew Young, which was interesting due to Colbert’s personal connection with Andrew Young — Stephen’s father, Dr. James Colbert, negotiated with Young to find a settlement of a contentious hospital worker’s strike in Charleston, South Carolina, back in 1969.

Although it wasn’t mentioned in last night’s show, Stephen’s father and brothers Peter and Paul were killed September 11, 1974 in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212.

The show ended with a group sing-along of “Let My People Go”, in honor of the striking TV writers. Pretty weird, seeing Andrew Young and Malcolm Gladwell singing along with a gospel choir and Stephen Colbert.

If I were still working in IT and responsible for customer business networks, I would recommend blocking the handdrawngames.com domain, home of Desktop Tower Defense.

Desktop Tower Defense is a “free” online puzzle game — that is, it’s “free” if you don’t count the time or peace of mind it will cost you. VERY addictive — click that link at your peril! You HAVE been warned!

I first encountered it after reading Slate Magazine’s 2007 year-end game round-up, but I foolishly paid no attention to the warnings of those who had gone before me. After several long nights, I got through the Medium and Hard levels of the game, and didn’t look at the game again for several weeks. Last evening, I pulled it up again in Firefox, figuring that I had the addiction beat. I knew *I* could quit after just a couple of rounds — well, five or six at the very most…

It’s too late for me, but you may be able to save yourself. Block that domain at your router. And whatever you do, DON’T CLICK THAT LINK!!!

I’m a fan of Dancing With the Stars. Last season (season 5), Macy’s sponsored a weekly segment spotlighting a different dancer or choreographer each week — Savion Glover, Michael Flatley, etc. My favorite segment featured Wade Robson, who I’d never heard of but turns out to have choreographed for *Nsync and Britney Spears.

One of the things I liked best about Wade Robson’s segment was the catchy tune they danced to. It turns out to be the single “Hi” from an English electronica duo called Psapp — who I’d never heard of (which doesn’t say much — 48-year-old guys like myself are not usually up on all the new music).

Adults love to ask children idiotic questions so that we can chuckle when they give us idiotic answers. One particularly idiotic question we like to ask children is this: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Small children look appropriately puzzled, worried perhaps that our question implies they are at some risk of growing down. If they answer at all, they generally come up with things like “the candy guy” or “a tree climber.” We chuckle because the odds that the child will ever become the candy guy or a tree climber are vanishingly small, and they are vanishingly small because these are not the sorts of things that most children will want to be once they are old enough to ask idiotic questions themselves. But notice that while these are the wrong answers to our question, they are the right answers to another question, namely, “What do you want to be now??

Daniel Gilbert

Stumbling On Happiness