TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
If you can afford it get your own laptop.
Buy your own software.
Don't leave anything on the network without backing it up to your own disks
first.
Be ready to travel if only from one company to the next.
I'm a proponent of keeping your tools as portable as your brain.
An example;
I've spent hundreds of hours modifying and tweaking my computer. I have
maintenance procedures that run in the middle of the night. I have
FrameMaker add-ons that let me access variables from a static pick list
rather than floundering through the menus.
I have predefined tables with behavior I can predict. I have linked
templates and books that I designed to output the same content to fit any
target aspect ratio or document I want.
I have a special set of nested templates that let me create an entire
project in InfoMap blocks or in my own proprietary modules that parse
directly into a content management database. I could go on, but you get the
picture. If I walk away from that computer, someone else gets all that work,
or the computer gets wiped.
It is possible to use CDROMs to store the stuff and move it from computer to
computer, but frankly, some of the stuff is so interconnected that it would
still be a major effort to hook it back in.
I spent a long time putting my toolkit together. And it was MY time not the
company's.
Call me selfish, but if someone buys this workman, he brings his toolbox
with him and if he leaves the tools do too.
-Doc
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
David 'Doc' Lettvin
VerText
"Versatile Text for reusability and globalization" http://www.vertext.org
vox: +1.978.468.1105
fax: +1.775.248.0508
"Jeffrey Osier-Mixon" <jefro -at- mcn -dot- org> wrote in message news:163333 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> Question for telecommuters, particularly contractors who visit customer
> sites on occasion---do you use/prefer a desktop machine or a laptop with
> docking station?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Your monthly sponsorship message here reaches more than
5000 technical writers, providing 2,500,000+ monthly impressions.
Contact Eric (ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com) for details and availability.
Buy RoboHelp Deluxe starting at only $798: you'll get RoboDemo, the hot new
software demonstration tool that's taking the Help authoring world by storm,
together with RoboHelp Office. Learn more at http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
