In the last week, I've added several folks to the distribution list for this web log, so I'd like to step back and bring everyone up to date. In March I was laid off from my job as a manager at IBM. I started a web log as journal of my activity while I was out of work. This week I returned to work on a contract, meaning that I'll be working as an hourly employee for several months. I have recast this web log to record the goings-on as I return to work.

It's also important to remember what it is that I do for a living. Even those who worked with me weren't always sure. In brief, I am a technical writer, preparing documentation primarily for computer software products. I've been doing something like this for close to 25 years. In that time, I've also done related work, managing people, projects, and computer systems. At the core, though, I've focused on improving the way that a company manages its technical information to help its customers do their jobs.

Toward that end, I spend a lot of time on what may seem like peripheral activities: investigating new ways for technical writers to create, manage, and publish the technical information. Yesterday I was working on a particular problem (using Emacs for DITA authoring, for those of you who care about such things), when the senior manager of the group stopped by. I explained to him what I was doing. "How does that help us?" he asked. So I explained how this work fit into their process-improvement strategy. He seemed to buy it, because the discussion then veered off to a more general discussion of how the strategy was being developed and rolled out to the group. For me, it was a day of play that someone is willing to pay for. That's a good day at work.