Writing
Here are some writing samples, arranged loosely by category.
User Guides are best viewed full-screen.
Complete Indexes
Because of the nature of Internet promotion, some of my writing appears in more than one place.
In fact, that’s the purpose of EzineArticles.com. I give other webmasters permission to reprint my articles.
Click on an image to visit the website.
Fiction
As I walked briskly along the corridor, no longer hindered by the poor lighting, I pondered the cruel fates that had restored my vision. My thoughts were clearer than ever; nowadays, the only mind I could seem to read was my own. I cursed the hit-and-run accident that undid the wonderful head injury I had “suffered” playing rugby at university years ago.
The Efficiency Expert
Angela was about to get her ashes hauled by Liam Moore. She didn’t know this, because it hadn’t happened yet.
In fact, young Liam wasn’t even born yet. None of this matters, because the fact is, if Angela hadn’t met Foley in the mail room on that fateful day, she probably would have gotten her ashes hauled by Liam’s uncle, Seamus.
The Oxmoronic Hydroponic Tubers
Humor
So, I decided to go to Yet Another Ground Floor Once-in-a-Lifetime Make Money Fast Pyramid Scheme. As I walked into the auditorium, I took note of several things.
First, the greeters outnumbered the guests two to one, and they appeared to be swarming, hovering and buzzing around the hapless visitors.
Second, a befuddled young man was fiddling with the audio-visual equipment. These were not good signs. Some old paintings sat on easels placed around the perimeter of the room.
Awesome Business Opportunity
She couldn’t place the accent; it was thick, yet, undefined.
Tasting the noxious brew again, Tilde Tittle decided the tonic had all the flavor of an undercooked umlaut and realized that she could never present such an inferior libation to her cavillous husband, Mark.
Grave Error
Marketing
Your marketing toolbox may seem to be complete.
However, do you have a game or two that you can pull out to brand your product or service?
Assuming your business does not actually focus on games, toys or similar niches, you may not have considered how you can leverage consumers’ demand for entertainment.
This article discusses the power, the pitfalls and the price of marketing with games.
Marketing With Games
Make Money Fast schemes abound. The gullibility of humans is actually a commodity. Scammers, spammers and scum-sucking bottom feeders trade shares of naïveté on the open markets of HYIP and AFF(419).
I tried to warn people but, I realize that the best way to learn that fire is hot is to fry your fingers. So here are some “hot tips” for you …
Swindler’s List
Opinion
Is opportunist a dirty word?
As with most things, it depends. The classical definition of an opportunist is one who adheres to the practice of adapting actions and decisions to expediency or effectiveness without regards to principles or consequences.
This definition, unfortunately, buries a gem of business commonsense beneath a mound of moralism.A more current and less flattering portrayal of an opportunist is that of a person flitting from one business opportunity to another, staying with each one only long enough to become dissatisfied with the lack of financial gain.
Opportunist – Which Type Defines You?
I skimmed “The Assault on Reason”, by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.
The introduction was disturbingly profound, given that he pinpointed my reasons for not voting [in 2004].
He basically states that democracy, as a form of government in the United States, has been derailed by the loss of two-way communication between the elected officials and the erstwhile well-informed citizenry.
Stirring the Stockpot and Digesting Gore
Philosophy
One of the biggest problems that plagues rational beings is debating on dual planes. The use of emotionally charged words invokes irrelevant images, which cloud the judgment and usually obscure any attempt to make ourselves understood.
A blogger known as Atlastorm wrote a provocative post in which he asserted that rape is part of the natural order of things. [The blog no longer exists.]On one plane, he is absolutely correct.
Fruitless Debates
From an early age, many of us are programmed to believe that certain things are hard to accomplish.
Whether it is the mastery of a musical instrument, writing poetry or shooting jumpers, we have been told that we lack the natural talent for such an endeavor. We have been admonished to set realistic goals.
We have been brainwashed into the cult of unfulfillment.
Deprogramming the Difficult
The world and the systems which define it are dynamic.
Change itself is a system. It’s called chaos.
Once we recognize that chaos is, in fact, orderly, we can begin to make sense of it and, more importantly, we can become “one” with the turbulences in our lives.
The process of recognizing, understanding and living with chaos is helped or hindered by our level of mutability.
The Continuum of Mutability
The Internet was designed to connect data. Users are not central to this design. They are merely consumers of data.
Think about a radio that has five presets for selecting stations. Nothing stops one listener from changing a preset. This is not a user-centric design. What possible benefit can be derived from making a user-centric radio? They are ubiquitous enough that any user can have his own radio!
In much the same way, access to the Internet has been commoditized to the point that people can have their own devices with which to interact.
Marxist Internet Propaganda
My goal for “Blog Action Day” is to awaken my self-awareness of the issues and factors concerning poverty. In so doing, I can move from Inaction to Action, contribute to the efforts to fight poverty and gain more respect for the challenges that face us all.
Poverty Inaction
Technology
Just like living a healthy lifestyle requires discipline, you must develop good computer file backup habits.
You already know you should, but here is why you don’t …
Back Up, You Writers!
RoboForm is a nifty program from Siber Systems that attaches itself to your browser and simplifies the login procedure that you encounter on various websites. If you have been using the Pro version of RoboForm, you can skip the Basics and wade right into the Road Rules.
Roboform: Road Rules for the Real World
I just finished Lesson #20 in Caroline Middlebrook’s StumbleRush Course, which teaches you how to use StumbleUpon, a wildly popular website discovery tool.
The course is split, with the first ten lessons being offered free of charge.
This review focuses on these free lessons.
StumbleRush Course is Critic’s Choice
User Guides
During the last eight years of my career at the Philadelphia Police Department, I wrote several User’s Guides and Training manuals.
For reasons of security, I can only share general portions of these guides.
After a year of quarterly update files that were delivered in a different format each time, I convinced my client that it would be easier for all of us if we used a WordPress CMS. She agreed and I developed an Online Directory.
The three-page guide that I wrote has been used successfully by two office managers and the owner herself.
WordPress User Guide
While temping at Comcast Digital Cable of Charlottesville, Virginia, I automated a weekly report that pulled in data from Oracle’s Hyperion database and exported it to a Microsoft ® Excel spreadsheet. I decided to document the process.
EADDR Statistics GeneratorView SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: databasesspreadsheetsgui… cleanupreportsimportexport)
