Pretend Money

I suppose it's good that I look at part of our investment portfolio as pretend money, because it doesn't hurt as much when we lose a lot.

The pretend money I'm talking about comes from shares I won in a newspaper I used to work for. It's all done through an ESOP, so I haven't put a dime into the fund. Which is a good thing, since it lost 35 percent of its value last year. Now I know newspapers are tanking nationwide. I had high hopes that this paper, however, would continue to grow. Last year, we actually got about $1,000 in dividents from our ESOP shares. This year, we lost nearly $6,000. Thankfully that's not out of pocket. But it does hurt to see our retirement funds dissolving away. Worst news is that I can't cash out of this sink hole for another three years, given that I have to be vested for seven before I can bail out. Hopefully, there's some value still there when I can cash out.

It seems it's a good thing I'm no longer at the paper. They closed their Rexburg office earlier this summer -- that was the one I helped to open back in 2000. I didn't get to read the article when they announced the closure, so I don't know all the circumstances. But the yearly report from the ESOP shares paints part of the picture -- profits are down, and they were looking to cut costs. So it's a fair bet that I'd be out of a job right now anyway.

I don't miss newspaper journalism. The more I look back on that career, the happier I am that I'm not in it any more. Even the stuff I do for Uncharted, on occasion, brings back some pretty unpleasant memories that I don't care to relive, and that's even stemming from the kind of writing I enjoyed the most at the paper, the stuff that was actually fun to research and write.

Twenty-Seven Below Zero

It's cold outside, folks. When I left for work this morning, it was 27 below zero (That's 32 below, for you people on the Celcius scale). Fortunately, the truck started, though it asked "You're kidding, right," when I first cranked. The sun shines through the window, but it's one of those suns that says, "Truly, I am 93 million miles away today, where it's warmer."

It's cold all over. From Montana to Maine, it's below zero. Add to that the butt-puckering panic over worldwide stock market losses, and you've got a lot of people wandering around, whimpering like the radiation victims in "The Day After." Of course, these are paper losses. No one has come to anyone's house to pull money from piggy banks because the stock markets said whaa. It's not fun, mind you. Getting those end of the year statements showing losses in what paltry stocks my wife and I own was not entertaining. And it's likely to be worse come April. But we still have food. A woodpile to feed the basement fireplace. Gas for the furnace. To quote Gloria Gaynor, "We will survive."

I've been reading a lot about reading this week, mainly in this Frank Smith text for my, uh, which class is it now? Reading Theory and Document Design. A general mish-mash of a title if I've ever heard one. A nugget from this weeks' reading: "Written language (like speech) is transparent -- we look through the actual words for the meaning beyond, and unless there are noticable anomalies of meaning, or unless we have trouble comprehending, we are not aware of the words themselves." Pretty tricky thinking. We like to think we're aware of words, especialy those of us in the trade of wordsmithing. But perhaps, keeping in mind that people use words to get to the meaning behind them, I can become a better technical writer, if not a better blogger.

Just this week we've had a debate here at work on two procedures that I and another tech writer are working. We've spent a good two days tinkering with one step in both procedures, trying to get the wording just right. I tinkered with it a bit yesterday, and thought I had it worked out. Then I took it to our criticality safety guy, whose job it is to ensure that we writers retain the meaning in the words. I struck out. He explained the meaning, and I went back to work. Second time around, the wording got across the meaning intended -- which is good, because it's a pretty important safety requirement we have to meet. What I'ev enjoyed the most about this process the last few days is how collaborative it's been. We've had two people from crit safety, two tech writers and a safety analyst poking and prodding these steps. With each of us taking the meaning we had in our heads, tinkering with words, we were able to come to an agreement on what words to use to get the meaning across. And then I got hit on the head and forgot where I was going.