RE: Tech writers are the new accountants

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Deborah Hemstreet recalled:
[...]>
 When I was first building a team of writers some time ago, a
> technical writing placement company sent me an interesting character.
He
> wrote quite well, only two problems, he only wanted to sit in a dark
> room with no lights on (only the computer light), and he preferred
> interviewing in his own office, with all the lights off. All the SME's
> would come to me and say, "what's wrong with the guy?" In the end we
had
> to ask for someone else... A small weirdness that no one was able to
> handle well. It turned out he was "allergic" to fluorescent lights. If
> we'd known from the beginning, we might have been able to make
> accommodation.

A recent series by a local TV news show observed that some people seem
able to tolerate office fluorescents, but get migraines from compact
fluorescent lights. Go figure.

I suppose that it might be as simple as distance. Four-foot and six-foot
fluorescent tubes tend to be used in ceiling fixtures, whereas CFLs are
appearing in a lot of table lamps.

On the third hand, the "expert" woman who was featured in the piece kept
waving this detector device that might have been some sort of RF meter
(but that wasn't made clear) and reporting field strength near each CFL
that she tried, but I didn't see her wave her device in similar
proximity to a standard ceiling-mounted long-tube fluorescent fixture.
Nor did I see her do any testing where her sensitive subjects were
placed as close to old/regular-style fixtures as they were to the CFLs
that reportedly brought on the migraines. 

Meanwhile, our goobermint (I'm in Ontario, Canada) has banned
incandescent bulbs for sale in just a couple more years. Non-CFL
replacements based on LEDs are becoming available, but at a cost of 50
or 60 bucks for a single "bulb", that's a bit steep. 

The Techwr-l tie-in would be related to work-environment and tools, I
suppose.

 - Kevin
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