Happy Birthday Frank Loesser

Today would have been Frank Loesser’s 100th birthday. Thanks to TCM for running the Heart and Soul documentary as well as How To Succeed, with the wonderful Robert Morse as a guest host for both shows. Tomorrow I will dig out Guys and Dolls. A great Broadway composer!

World Cup Injury Report

My company has a nice break area on our floor with a large TV hooked up to a satellite dish. In the morning hours, this area is full of people watching the World Cup games, but today’s USA v. Algeria was especially popular. I watched for a while, then returned to my cubicle with a little bowl of fruit which I was eating with a little plastic fork. Just as I was eating a grape speared with the little fork, a great cheer went up as America scored its single GGOOOOAAALLLLL of the game. Shocked by the roar, I simultaneously managed to stab the inside of my upper lip with the little fork. I now have a swollen lip, courtesy of the World Cup.

Go USA!

Hell

I am in DITAMAP hell today. I’d almost switch places with Tony Hayward. Almost, not quite.

Full Circle

In my time as a technical writer, it seems that the authoring of technical information has gone full circle:

1. 1985: Authored my first-ever deliverable in the vi editor with nroff markups.
2. 1987-1990: IBM’s Bookmaster, which grew from ISIL, again a markup language.
3. 1990-1992: FrameMaker on Sun! And some Microsoft Word (!) for shorter documents.
4. 1993-1995: Interleaf. I’ve tried to forget Interleaf.
5. 1995-2000: Microsoft Word and RoboHelp (WinHelp, no less). And FrameMaker, now on Windows.
6. 2000-2005: RoboHelp (HTMLHelp) and, alas, Microsoft Word.
7. 2005-2009: RoboHelp, Microsoft Word.
8. Today: DITA markup with the oXygen editor.  I like oXygen; I still miss the vi editor. Even so many years later, I find myself trying to use vi commands in word processors and other editors.

All that said, I love working in markup languages. WYSIWYG is good for many things, but I think it gets in the way of much quality technical writing. With markup languages, we are encouraged to focus on the meaning of the content and leave the appearance of that content to style files, .css, and other technology.

Judgement at Nuremberg

Just starting on TCM. TCM is making me quite happy this weekend.

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog, WriteAtWork from  WordPress.com. I’ll be talking about writing, politics, culture, and more.

Grumpy is Good

A new study indicates that people who are grumpy are better thinkers and decision makers. I hope to incorporate this information into my performance plan, which is due soon.