Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Back in 2002 at the STC Conference in Nashville I met two of *THE* gurus in the Help authoring world – my great friend Char, and MJ.

MJ lived in Nashville, and I spent some extra time at her house, getting some RoboHelp training from her, meeting her family, and generally hanging out and having a nice time (and some good food – she’s a great cook!). During the conference, we continued to meet up (as you do), and MJ and I kept in good email contact for a time. After the certified RoboHelp trainers got shafted by Blue Sky/eHelp as it was then, MJ dropped off the radar. She didn’t respond to emails, phone calls from concerned colleagues and friends, etc.

About 3 months later, just like a ground hog, she popped up again with an  explanation, then as quickly disappeared again. We knew she continued to live in Nashville with her family, but after no response, I guess her old colleagues just gave up. But at every conference, someone would ask if anyone had heard from MJ. No-one had.

So, what makes me write about this connection now? Well, I had a few spare minutes the other day and decide to clear out some old emails in my Inbox. I scrolled down to 2003 and started there – and one of the first I came across was MJ’s explanation for her disappearance off our respective radars.

That was the trigger to go a’hunting on Google! And within a few minutes I had found her – what she was doing now (still writing a lot, but not technical writing any more), her current website, etc., and I decided to email her to see if she wanted to renew the contact from a few years ago. Some hours later (morning for me), in my Inbox was a lovely email from MJ, and over the past week we’ve exchanged quite a few more. She has headed in quite a different direction – and it’s all good for her.

Without Google (or similar) it would’ve been much harder to track her down, so thank you Google for providing the mechanism that allowed two people to reconnect.

BTW, I never did get back to clearing out those old emails!

Some years ago I had the pleasure of working with Whitney – one of the best writers and editors I know. I had never met her, but we communicated well via email between our respective locations in the USA and Australia. Together we worked on a professional interest group’s newsletter and some articles, and I finally got to meet her at the annual STC Conference in Chicago in 2001. She was even nicer in person than she was in her friendly emails, so it was good to know that my gut feeling about her was right.

Anyhow, Whitney’s gone from being a lone tech writer to being part of a larger team on some important stuff for a military equipment supplier and I’ve followed her career with interest and a little envy! (though I’m not sure I’d want to be writing to MIL standards…) When I was in the US for the 2004 STC Conference, I stayed overnight with her, then we drove to Baltimore and spent a day meandering about that fair city’s harbourfront area prior to the conference. One of her passions is guinea pigs, and at the time she had 3 or 4 of them living with her. Very cute they were too – and surprisingly (for me), not at all smelly.

Despite working in a high-end tech industry, Whitney’s passion for her ‘pigs hasn’t abated, and she’s now involved in a rescue group, as well as writing about them on “Pig Notes” a blog/website she set up.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post… Whitney’s articles on guinea pigs have hit the top 100 articles (#78 as at today) on Squidoo, a website that caters for people and their passions.

Great job Whitney – and well-deserved.

… that’s what little boys are made of!

Our youngest nephew, William, turned 3 on Monday and all the family gathered down at his parents’ 50 acre farm near Yallingup on the weekend. We drove down to Busselton to my folks’ place on Friday night after work, went into town Saturday morning to buy him his present (a frog umbrella!), then over to Dunsborough to see a family friend’s fabulous new house that she designed herself, before arriving at the farm for lunch.

Everyone except Paul was there (he had some urgent business to do in Melbourne on Sunday… defeating Carlton). When we arrived, the older nieces and nephews and their respective boyfriends were out gathering large pieces of fallen timber for a huge bonfire on Saturday night.

As only a 3 year-old can be, William was momentarily enthused about the bike from his grandparents and the dragon’s tail from his sister, along with all his other presents. But he was most taken with the main present – a golden retriever puppy from his Mum and Dad.

“Jasmine” is 6 weeks old and JUST ADORABLE!!! She was only taken from her mother and siblings the day before, had to endure a 3 hour car trip down to the farm, and had 12 adults and one small child loving her to bits all day on Saturday. She is the cutest, sweetest little puppy, and was just so placid. She happily hung around our feet most of the day, sleeping and dozing, and generally being a very young puppy. Later, when we walked down to the orchard and then across to the dam, she scampered along through the grass following William – it looks like the beginning of a beautiful bond and a long friendship!

Of course, there was the obligatory sugar-laden kid’s birthday party fare – honey and chocolate crackles, caramel slice (like Nanaimo bars) and a snake cake covered in sickly sweet icing and sugar lollies! That’s why we needed the walk down to the orchard and the dam…

My sister and brother-in-law are doing a major extension to the farm house – a 12m x 6m ‘great room’ with a massive cathedral ceiling, super-wide verandah, and a deck you could hold a wedding reception on. It looks absolutely fabulous and fits well with the rest of the house. The view of it from the dam showed how well the design fit the landscape too.

My nephew took me for a quick zip around the farm roads in his new convertible Mini Cooper! That thing sure moves. My first-ever car – way back when – was a Mini… but it sure wasn’t made like these new ones. It didn’t cost the same either! In fact, the Minis in those days could hardly be called a luxury car, whereas today’s Mini Coopers fit that price category. (BTW, my Mini was a bit of a lemon – it used to die whenever it saw a puddle of water, even if the puddle was on the other side of the road!)

After a lovely day in the winter sunshine, we headed back to my parents’ place for a very light meal (ya think?) and to play “Jokers and Marbles”, a game we learned from the other branch of the family tree when we were in Michigan in April. Dad had taken my photos of the board we played on there, and made us a great board based on those photos.

On Sunday we headed back to Perth via Bridgetown. Popped in to the fortnightly Bridgetown Sunday Markets, but there wasn’t a lot left by 11:00am. Drove up to the property development – two new houses are coming along well, and the property we want to build on now has a back fence. Settlement is still not expected on this one for another month or so…

We had a light lunch at the Bridgetown Hotel and made a room reservation for October 21st, the day of the Blackwood Valley Wine Show and tasting. We’ll probably be down again in a few weeks as the AGM of the strata company is likely to be around August 20.

After picking up a couple of cases of cleanskins from the Wattle Ridge vineyard, and some fruit and vegies from the Fruit Barn in Donnybrook, we drove back to Perth listening to the Dockers beat Carlton on the radio. Yay – that’s four wins in a row!

A lovely relaxing weekend.

Australia has a Census every 5 years. Usual stuff. An army of census people deliver tonnes of census booklets to every household in Australia over the next couple of weeks, we fill in the forms on the night of Tuesday August 8, then the army of collectors comes back and picks up all the booklets and off they go for scanning and analysis.

I remember back in 1996 and again in 2001 questioning why they didn’t offer an online option for the census. 1996 would’ve been too early as the internet uptake was pretty low at that time and speeds were achingly slow compared to today, but it would’ve made a lot of sense in 2001.

Well, here we are – it’s 2006, and this year Australians will be able to take part in the census electronically! Cool!

On reading the FAQs on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, it looks like they’ve got the “I’ve already filled it in” situation covered (http://tinyurl.com/ehswq). So I hope it works well. It would be good to save a few trees and to get this data written straight to the database. Over time, this should not only save a lot of taxpayer money but provide more responsive feedback to city planners and the like as I’d expect that the demographic trends etc. will be available much quicker.