Monday, 21 June 2010
I’ll just dispense with the traditional “Man, been so long since I’ve blogged!” bit, if that’s OK with you, handful of readers. I want to post links to a couple of pieces I’ve written, to make sure my mom sees them:
First, I not only wrote the cover story for the latest issue of Isthmus, but am actually on the cover. Mrs. Josh says the picture doesn’t look like me, but that’s neither here nor there—what’s really important is that my friend and mentee KaAndrae looks good (and he does!). The story is about what it’s been like to mentor a 12-year-old young man for the past 10 months. And I’ll give away the answer now—it’s been deeply rewarding—but you should read the article anyway; I must say, I’m awfully happy with it. You might also consider becoming a mentor! If you’re in the Madison area, you could contact the program I work through at Madison-area Urban Ministry. If you live somewhere else, you can find a mentoring program in your area.
I’ve also still been blog-blog-blogging away through science fiction’s Hugo Award–winning novels at io9. This past weekend, I wrote about Larry Niven’s Ringworld and how, while it shares some striking similarities with Lost, there’s a defining thematic difference between the two stories.
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Monday, 10 May 2010
Hey, amigos—it’s been awhile since I rapped at ya. Anyway, by now all four of you subscribed to the blog have probably seen it already, thanks to Facebook or Twitter or carrier pigeon, but if not: I wrote a longish review of Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny for the latest installment of “Blogging the Hugos.” This is one of my favorite books ever, so I hope I did it reasonably proud.
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Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Quick note: On Monday, I posted about a bad experience at JCPenney. The experience has been unbaddened, and the post has been updated.
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Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Dr. Bob sent this along, and he is a Real Scientist (I’ve seen his office!), which just lends credibility to the proceedings. Anyway, the data contained in this chart are going to allow us to make so many new discoveries. For example, we may finally be able to pin down the elusive constant GGW, which is of course the number that determines exactly when a girl is about to go wild.
And then we can stop all those girls from going wild, obviously.
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Tuesday, 20 April 2010
…and now I am relaxing with a cup of decaf. I am going to tentatively deem my presentation a success, as I received a number of compliments and have retained all of my limbs.
Last night I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough material to fill the allotted time; as it turned out, I ran a few minutes over. I did my best to acknowledge it, though, and to hurry up and finish, so I hope no one was terribly upset.
If I had to do it over, I would spend a bit more time explaining what I wanted to talk about and introducing myself professionally. I’m afraid that in my eagerness to get to the content, I might not have made it 100 percent clear that the point of the content was to help businesspeople pitch themselves and their businesses as interesting subjects for newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio stations to cover. And I rushed through my own qualifications and background (although I don’t really think I needed to dwell on them, as long as what I had to say spoke for itself).
The other thing I would change is kinda funny: Before the meeting started, I told another MABC member it was my first time using PowerPoint and that the only thing I didn’t want to do was just read verbatim everything on the slide show, because isn’t that just the worst, when all you’re doing is saying aloud what a roomful of perfectly literate adults can read and comprehend for themselves? Naturally, I then proceeded to read much of the slide show verbatim. It’s very hard not to! I believe I provided some added value with my presence. Certainly the questions and input from other members were really fantastic. (On that note, many people chimed in with useful info, but Diana Mahaffey specifically mentioned Help a Reporter Out, a resource I’m linking to here and in the previous post.)
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