About me
I call myself a "creative generalist." I've been designing and building websites since the mid-90s, when we used Notepad and Paint Shop. Before that I taught writing and literature at a university and wrote a lot of technical documentation. I've been the official "web person" and/or "word person" for dozens of teams and projects, and the one thing they all had in common was an effort to make things easier and clearer for someone trying to use technology to get a job done or learn something important.
I spent most of my career in the IT group at Texas Instruments Incorporated. From there, I moved to the non-profit world at Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Wherever I work, I turn my hand to what needs to be done.
Other random stuff about me
- Born in: Dallas, Tx (you really didn't think I was going to tell you the year, did you?)
- Biggest regret: Not realizing sooner that everyone is too busy worrying about themselves to pay much attention to me.
- Favorite book: Too many to list, and besides if I told you that here, what would we have to talk about?
- Favorite color: Eh, today, we'll go with green.
- I have forced college sophomores to write sonnets. I didn't grade on quality.
- I am immortalized in hate-graffiti in a scholarly journal in Willis Library at the University of North Texas.
- I have a fetish for office supplies.
- I know what the Oxford comma is and how to use it.
- Whole wings of my brain are dedicated to remembering the words of popular songs--even ones I don't like.
The official list of things I didn't know
Why Pygmalion?
The original Pygmalion story that appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses is a story of transformation, like much of the Metamorphoses. Pygmalion is a sculptor who becomes disgusted with women. He carves a statue of a woman out of ivory that is so beautiful and realistic that he falls in love with it. He offers the statue gifts and eventually prays to the goddess Venus, who is pleased with his devotion, takes pity on him and brings the statue to life.
What attracted me to the story was the skill of the sculptor and the happy transformation that occurs. My goal in my work is to exercise skill to bring about a happy transformation in the state of a client's website or documentation.
That and Pygmalion made me think of a flying pig, which always makes me smile.