Illiterate tech writer?

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Written on Thursday, September 29, 2005 by Jessica

I'm working in our bug-tracking system, verifying fixes of bugs I reported. I'm horrified by some of my write-ups. In one, I wrote "behaviour" instead of "behavior" (too much Pride and Prejudice) and "affect" instead of "effect." I'm supposed to know better!

Katrina disaster victims

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Written on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 by Jessica

Hurricane Katrina has created a nightmare of a project for me at work. (I work for the leading provider of software to public housing authorities and housing finance agencies.) I'm having to summarize all the housing relief information being put out by HUD, FEMA, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and the IRS. It could be worse, though: I could be one of the victims.

Tag

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Written on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 by Jessica

The Rules:

  1. Go into your archive.
  2. Find your twenty-third post.
  3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
  5. Tag five other people to do the same.
The fifth sentence of my twenty-third post: Susan and I are both on diets, so when I have the urge to go down the vending machine, I have to tell her so she can stop me (and vice versa).

Regarding rule #5: I'm not popular like Sherri, so I don't have five blogging friends to tag. :)

Crappy software

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Written on Friday, September 23, 2005 by Jessica

One of my jobs as a tech writer is to write help for software. (Press F1 and ta da! --useless information appears.) I'm working on a new piece of software that is just terrible. The programer left out crucial cues to help the user know what to do. This guy no longer works for us. He now works for Microsoft. (I'm not kidding.)

Today's Google ads...

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Written on Friday, September 23, 2005 by Jessica

...are toothache and dentistry related. :)

(I amuse easily.)

101 things you might not know about me

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Written on Thursday, September 22, 2005 by Jessica

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Root canal was last Friday

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Written on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 by Jessica

I survived the root canal. It wasn't pleasant. Despite the antibiotics, I still had a raging infection, which made it difficult for the anesthetic to work. After an extra shot and about five minutes of sensation during the initial drilling, it finally soaked it. It immediately felt better, especially with respect to cold drinks and food, although it was still a bit sore over the weekend.
My regular dentist put on a temporary crown yesterday. My tooth hurts like crazy today, which worries me. It's not supposed to hurt except during pressure--that's what my dentsist and all the online sources say--but it hurts all the time, and it tingles a little, too. That can't be a good sign. The tingling several weeks ago is what first clued me into the fact that something was really wrong.

Me, I, number one (oh my, me, my)

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Written on Monday, September 12, 2005 by Jessica

I used to take antidepressants, but I stopped about four-and-a-half months ago. I have to say that being drug free isn't all it's cracked up to be. Not only am I depressed most of the time (more so now that the days are getting shorter), I'm also finding myself overtaken by inexplicable pangs of anxiety, which I don't think used to happen before, but I can't really remember. The idea of being dependent on drugs used to bother me, but not as much as feeling this way.