Jobless Near Seattle

[Bruce Conway <bconway -at- ISLAND -dot- NET>]

TECHNICAL WRITER & CLASSICAL FLUTIST (FLAUTIST?  FLAUTISTE?, etc.) SEEKS TO
BE OCCUPATIONALLY NON-DISENFRANCHISED IN VICTORIA, BC AREA

Thinking in a technical vein, and perhaps with a tad of euphemization,
(just for
the PC'ers who seem to live and breathe it) I would estimate that after not
paying
for March rent:

1. I would be required to leave my current place of abode
2. Give back the leased computer
3. Return the software
4. Hoof  the cats out
5. Grab my flute, go downtown and play CPE Bach's Sonata in A Minor 25
times for visiting American tourists
(some of whom could be technical writers, or Bill Gates - who visits here
from time to time
in his big white boat).

In the meantime, I shall dutifully complete my RoboHELP tutorials (for the
4th time) and hope that
my HTML Help project doesn't give me the WinFinger for the 4th time ("This
program has performed
an illegal instruction and will be shut down.").
Happens when I import an HTML file with lots of "bookmarks".

One would think the program, or the operating system,
would at least add something nice like, "Is this cool with you?"  As it
stands, we're stuck with
just clicking OK (or Details, if you're a hex addict).


In any case, anybody in Victoria, BC who has some bright ideas about
becoming
employmentally unchallenged, please let me know.  The whole email,
recruiter, answer
phone, maybe interview  - loop is
starting to look that Ping Pong game I (tried to) write in C a few years
back. Or, if you're
over from Seattle,  maybe you'd like to meet a real New Zealander living in
Canada
(with no job, but who can play the flute).

You buy.  And take me back with you.

Also, this is bugging me quite a bit, probably because I'm a buggar for
being bugged by buggy
writing, but, can anyone tell me what the exact meaning, or the approximate
meaning, of
"ontology" is?  I'll try not to mention names: In the following article, by
Dan Connolly, Rohit Khare,
Adam Rifkin (sorry lads) the word "ontology" and "ontological" is mentioned
often
enough to make one go scrambling
for the nearest Oxford.  I give allowance for the scorn that moderm
linguists heap on
dictionary makers (as being "prescriptivist" = trying to trap language in
the present a
nd not allow for change) and will assume
that the non-prescriptivists have not allowed the meaning of "ontology" to
change itself
overnight. I'm stuck with the World Book Dictionary right now, which if you
read the
list of contributors, reviewers, editors and other wordy-ish/linguist -
type people is a very
authoritative work and the meaning given there for "ontology" is:

ontology (on tol' e jist), n. the branch of philosophy that deals with the
nature of reality.

The other definitions (ontological, ontological argument, ontologist, ...)
all have to do with God and
reality.

Now, I know that technical writing is real, and reality is real (so I'm
told), but am I right in reasoning
that these learned fellows of XML-ology have perhaps misused the word
somewhat (9 or 10 times)?
Either that, or there's something pretty heavy about XML that no-one's
telling me about.

Before I hyperlink off to bed, here's the title of the article in question:
The Evolution of Web Documents: The Ascent of XML
by Dan Connolly <http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/>, Rohit Khare
<http://xent.ics.uci.edu/>, and ~Adam Rifkin
<http://www.cs.caltech.edu/adam/>
$Id: ascent-of-xml.html,v 1.83 1998/01/15 22:55:08 adam Exp $
In the World Wide Web Journal Special Issue on XML
<http://www.w3journal.com/xml/>, Volume 2, Number 4, Fall 1997, Pages
119-128.

Incidentally, I'm trying to avoid Vancouver - it's about the worst city
I've ever encountered in my travels (Europe, N America, Singapore, NZ).
Nice mountains. Bring plenty of umbrellas.  Any other ideas on the job
front would be welcome.  For instance, what is the market like in
Seattle, and what are the difficulties for Canadian Citizens in getting
across the border (I've read a previous post on this, but would
appreciate any other contributions).

Cheers
Jobless Near Seattle
P.S.  OK, I'll keep the cats....
Bruce Conway -Technical Writer,
Victoria, BC
bconway -at- island -dot- net


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=