Peace Day - September 21
RIP TJL
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
AskTog: How to Publish a Great User Manual
This is what I did/do/will do/have done for a living. Well, not necessarily write great user manuals, but you get the idea. This is a classic essay on what goes into good technical documentation - how you think about the user, not just an explanation of features.
AskTog: How to Publish a Great User Manual
AskTog: How to Publish a Great User Manual
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
hings Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age
A whole bunch of years ago, a friend remarked, "When Mozart was my age, he was dead for two years."
Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age
Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age
In Gardner, you remember
As many of you know, I was born in Gardner, a city of about 20,000 people in north central Massachusetts. Once a major manufacturer of furniture, its nickname is the Chair City. (Here is an overview of the city's furniture history.) When I was in college, I wrote a column titled Chair City Journal and gave my senior honors thesis the same name. I worked for a short time in a furniture factory. I still have a scar on the back of my leg from the time when I walked off the edge of a loading platform.
Many of the furniture factories are closed now, the businesses moving to the American south in the 60s and 70s. Half of the stores in downtown are empty. The list of departed businesses is long - Goodnow-Pearson's department store (where you could preview 45s in a listening booth) , Robillard's pharmacy, Newberry's, the Orpheum theater, a Rexall drug store, the A&P grocery store.
In the 60s or early 70s, a strip mall opened on the south side of town. One of the anchors was Rich's, a discount department store. The chain went under and the Gardner store closed in 1997. Yesterday's Gardner News carried this front-page, above-the-fold picture.
Many of the furniture factories are closed now, the businesses moving to the American south in the 60s and 70s. Half of the stores in downtown are empty. The list of departed businesses is long - Goodnow-Pearson's department store (where you could preview 45s in a listening booth) , Robillard's pharmacy, Newberry's, the Orpheum theater, a Rexall drug store, the A&P grocery store.In the 60s or early 70s, a strip mall opened on the south side of town. One of the anchors was Rich's, a discount department store. The chain went under and the Gardner store closed in 1997. Yesterday's Gardner News carried this front-page, above-the-fold picture.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The return of 'oop time
The temperature found its way to the 30s last night and will again tonight. It's time to bring the wood hoop up from the cellar, place it in the family room, and fill it with firewood. Done, done, and done. Some parts of the state had a stab of frost, but we're not there yet.
So, it's 'oop time, as in wood hoop, not basketball. We're only in the second week of football season. Last night, we went to grandson Mike's football game. Because his high school's new athletic field is not yet finished, the team had to play a home game in Gardner. They won. Mike scored a touchdown, although the newspaper credited the score to his brother, Matt. (They spelled our last name correctly. Go figure.)
We sat in the stands and alternately watched the game and the other show around us. We'd forgotten that, for high school kids, going to a high school football game is so much less about the game and more about all the other kids. See and be seen. Parading to and from the snack bar. The girls were wearing sleek, tight, colorful jeans and jackets, looking stylish beyond their years. The boys bounced around in over-sized sweats, alabaster gangstas from the exoburbs.
Researchers are reporting that married couples who don't have children at home are less likely to be involved with family, friends, and community than their single counterparts. (The Roman church has been using this point for centuries in their justification for clerical celibacy.) We've lived in this neighborhood for more than 25 years. There are just a handful of neighbors, fewer than 10, who would recognize us or we them if we met some place away from our homes. It's not that we're not nice people. Rather, we keep to ourselves because we like each other's company.
To have us, then, out past 10 o'clock on a chilled, blustery Saturday night is remarkable indeed, a change as noteworthy as the change of season itself.
So, it's 'oop time, as in wood hoop, not basketball. We're only in the second week of football season. Last night, we went to grandson Mike's football game. Because his high school's new athletic field is not yet finished, the team had to play a home game in Gardner. They won. Mike scored a touchdown, although the newspaper credited the score to his brother, Matt. (They spelled our last name correctly. Go figure.)
We sat in the stands and alternately watched the game and the other show around us. We'd forgotten that, for high school kids, going to a high school football game is so much less about the game and more about all the other kids. See and be seen. Parading to and from the snack bar. The girls were wearing sleek, tight, colorful jeans and jackets, looking stylish beyond their years. The boys bounced around in over-sized sweats, alabaster gangstas from the exoburbs.
Researchers are reporting that married couples who don't have children at home are less likely to be involved with family, friends, and community than their single counterparts. (The Roman church has been using this point for centuries in their justification for clerical celibacy.) We've lived in this neighborhood for more than 25 years. There are just a handful of neighbors, fewer than 10, who would recognize us or we them if we met some place away from our homes. It's not that we're not nice people. Rather, we keep to ourselves because we like each other's company.
To have us, then, out past 10 o'clock on a chilled, blustery Saturday night is remarkable indeed, a change as noteworthy as the change of season itself.
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