I love this excerpt from a blurb I just read about Oprah:
| She said a rich friend once asked if she felt guilty as they were returning from Africa.
Winfrey said she told her friend, “I do not know how me being destitute is going to help” the less fortunate. She said when she got home, she went to sleep on her designer sheets. |
You go, girl.
I edited all day today, and met Fran, a colleague of mine (and an experienced IBM editor), for lunch to pick his brain about a few things related to the IBM Style Guide.
I’m editing IBM product publications, such as books, online help, contextual field help in windows, etc. and by the end of the day, I’m :
This is my favorite sentence encountered during today’s editing:
| Includes a nonce (random bits used for the purpose of obfuscating the element) in the token. |
After lunch, Fran taught me how to use our printer/copier/fax machine to scan the documents I edited into a PDF file, and then e-mail that PDF to myself.
This is a gold mine as it solves two problems:
- Creating an electronic copy of my (hand marked-up) editing comments, and
- Easily communicating my editing comments to the writer, who works in Santa Cruz, California.
Life is good.
I didn’t win the STC Scholarship Essay for $1,000 to attend STC’s 53rd Annual Conference in Las Vegas, May 7-10, 2006. Here is the “rejection slip”:
| We were all very impressed with your essay, John. It was a very hard decision and I wish we could have given the scholarship to all of you. I’ve forwarded the announcement to Sarah Warren to pass on to the chapter. |
The official announcement:
| STC Carolina is pleased to announce that Kimberly M. Williams of the N.C. State University chapter of STC is the winner of the annual student scholarship. It was a challenge to choose and we would like to thank all of the candidates for participating. We look forward to working with everyone as excellent technical communicators and members of STC.
For more on the scholarship, see http://www.stc-carolina.org/about/scholarship.shtml. |
Kim is good people, and pretty, too. I’m glad she won, and sent her a congratulatory e-mail to that effect. Her response was very gracious:
| Hi John!
Thank you! I had no idea whether anyone else had applied, but it is lovely to be congratulated by you. Have a great weekend, |
It’s always nice when good things happen to good people.
At somewhere around 8PM, I guess, my home phone rang. The Caller ID flashed my own name, which I found a little startling.
Passing thoughts that fired through my mind:
- Did I leave my cell phone somewhere, and whomever found it is calling me? No, that’s not my cell number.
- 8168, 8168. I don’t know anyone with a number ending in that.
- Is this another person with my name in Raleigh that got a call of mine, and is now calling me?
- I often get e-mails for a guy at work that has the same name as me, and sometimes his calls. Is it happening at home now, too?
- I’m calling from within the house.
I pick up, “Hello?”
I continue, “Hello?” [Pause.] “Hello?” [Pause.] “Hello?”
Click. I hang up.
About two minutes later, it rings again, same ID.
“Hello?”
“John?” a woman asks. It’s my mother.
Now I notice the area code, and it all makes sense. Her cell phone is under my name.
I don’t think she’s ever called me from her cell phone, and even if she has, I didn’t think cell phone numbers showed up on caller ID. Oh well. They probably do now, as the technology moves forward.
I met Joe-Joe and Kevin (av8rdude) at Flex for Trailer Park Prize Night, which was pretty uneventful.
One nice surprise was that George was bar tending. Such a sweet, sexy man.
It got hot as a mother in there (and not in a good way), and they had to have been over the maximum occupancy limit in that place.
Evidently, a lot of people are off work tomorrow.