Meade

Meade Kansas Demonstrates Changing Economy

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I hope regular readers of this blog will indulge me one more post about Meade before I get back to regular topics. This will sort of tie together the trip for me. One more subject from the trip awaits–our tour of the old Thompson homestead, but that will come later.

Meade Kansas, both the city and the county, has become a home away from home of sorts for me. I began making trips there in 1975, the year after leaving Rhode Island. Several times a year while we lived in Kansas City, less frequently during the nine years overseas and in North Carolina. Now, during our nineteen years in Arkansas we’ve made perhaps twenty-five trips to Lynda’s home town: mainly for holidays, funerals, and reunions. We haven’t done the tourist thing to Meade, maybe not ever.

I’ve come to know Meade fairly well. I can’t remember all the names of all the streets, but I can find my way to any place in town with no problem. I’ve spent time in the library and the courthouse, at the truck stop or the city park, and of course much time at Lynda’s home church, the Meade Church of the Nazarene. I’ve watched changes come to the city as an outsider and wannabe insider.

In 1975 Meade was 90 years old. It had a quaint downtown district that stretched along US Highway 54 and Kansas Highway 23, the crossroads that came to the town after it was built. A mix of brick and wooden buildings gave the town some character. A few were vacant, and some had changed tenants each time we went back. The economy was based on agriculture, and Meade’s 1800 people seemed reasonably prosperous.

At some point there was an oil boom. Farmers leased drilling rights to various companies, who brought in workers and drilling commenced. Several productive wells were brought in. About the same time the confined hog raising operations began in the county (none real close to Meade or the other communities). The population rose, they say, to around 2,200, though this may never have been at a census time.

Now, Meade’s population is around 1,600, based on a two-year old estimate. The recently concluded census may prove it to be somewhat less than that. It seems most of the buildings in the downtown area are now vacant or, if fitted for multiple tenants, and less than half the building occupied. So much population has moved away. One man told us that 90 percent of the high school grads leave the town. Ten years later some return to raise families in what they know to be a good, wholesome place. But there’s not much around to attract new families to the area.

Another part of the economic problem for Meade is the reasonable closeness of alternative markets. Dodge City and Liberal, cities of perhaps 30,000 each, are around 40 to 45 miles away. That’s close enough with today’s good automobiles and pick-up trucks, even with the cost of gas fairly high, that no one thinks twice about making a four or five hour shopping excursion to the place of greater choice and better prices. The technology of transportation has hurt Meade’s economy, to the benefit of Dodge and Liberal.

In the countryside, outside of the towns, I noticed one big change from prior years: much more corn is being grown. Meade County has always had a variety of crops. Winter wheat always seemed to dominate, but farmers also planted corn, milo, soy beans, sorghum, and probably others. The dryland farming of the past seemed to favor winter wheat, however. Now, everyone seems to be growing corn as the main crop, mostly irrigated corn. I’m sure the reason is to feed the expanding ethanol market.

You can’t blame farmers for growing what’s being purchased, or what appears to have a brighter future. We should worry though about all that groundwater being extracted, probably from the Ogalalla Aquifer. Again, technology is the driving force of the change, in this case coupled with public policy. The technology to make ethanol is now developed enough that it sort of makes sense with the government subsidies applied, and so the farmers are adapting.

Ethanol might be a temporary phenomenon, fueled by technological advances and public policy. But what about the changing demographics? It seems to me that is, to some extent, also a function of technology. The technology of good transportation to go back home fairly frequently. The technology of good and cheap communication to stay in touch frequently. The technology that allows the bigger cities to provide the greater mix of entertainment and jobs that lure people there.

I don’t know what the future holds for Meade. There should always be a town there, maybe about the size it is now. I hope so, and hope it thrives for many more years.

Meade, memories, miscellaneous

Something Special: Meade High School, Class of ’67

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This was the fourth reunion I attended of Meade (Kansas) High School class of 1967, my wife’s graduating class. We also attended in 1995, 2000, and 2005. Now some of you may ask how a class with year ending in 7 has reunions in years ending in 0 and 5 instead of 2 and 7. To explain I need to tell you a bit about Meade.
First you need to find it on a map. Look for southwestern Kansas. Find Dodge City, Liberal, and Garden City. Mead in on US Highway 54, about 40 miles southwest of Dodge, 39 miles northeast of Liberal, and about 60 miles southeast of Garden City, about 100 miles east of the Colorado border and 20 miles north of the Oklahoma panhandle. Notice on the map how the towns in this area are ten to fifteen miles apart. The dryland/irrigated agriculture of the regions does not need population centers with services closer than that.

Meade, the city, has somewhere around 1,700 people. It peaked at 2,200 people in past censuses, when agriculture boomed and oil drilling was in full swing. But 90 percent of their high school graduates move away. A few move back ten or twenty hears later to raise their families, and a few people move in in search of jobs, but not enough to replace those who die off.

With the small population, and with the largest graduating class ever being about 64 people, and with a total of 3,400 graduates in the school’s 98 year history, the Meade High Alumni Association decided to have all school reunions on the 5 and 10 years. They hold this on the closing weekend of the county fair. So all interested alumns came to Meade last weekend.

Lynda’s class had 61 graduates, and three “friends of the class” who for whatever reason left the cohort, making for 64 people associated with the class. Near as anyone can figure thirty-two of those attended some or all of the events. We drove in late Thursday afternoon, not knowing her class was holding a party of the early arrivers, so we didn’t attend that. We did attend the Friday evening party. It was supposed to be for the class of ’67, but there were people there from ’57 (kind of old and out of place), ’61, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, and probably ’69. All over town there were similar gatherings that evening.

Saturday was a reunion at Lynda’s home church of returning attendees, then tours of the old school, then a picnic at the park of the classes of ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, and ’69 (while other groups met elsewhere in town). Then a banquet and program that evening of all the classes, then an after-banquet party for ’67 that sort of fizzled (or started very late), then an ecumenical church service on Sunday morning. At each of the official or semi-official gatherings, the conversations lingered long. Heck, even the check-in on Saturday morning was a reunion, with small grouped engaged in animated conversations.

I enjoy going to these reunions, even though I didn’t attend that school and had met only one of her classmates before 1995. I sit back with the other spouses or significant others, and watch the interactions of the returning classmates. For a long time only two or three lived in Meade. That number is not up to six, so almost all of them are coming in from afar. The interaction is great. Every reunion someone returns who has never been to one before, and that person becomes a star of sorts as everyone tries to catch up. the men keep looking older in five-year chunks, and the women seems to change less, no doubt the chunks mitigated by applied colors and perhaps surgeries. The women all insist the guys take their caps off to see what they are hiding. The guys…make no similar request of the women.

This class of sixty-four has something my class of 725 doesn’t have: a shared school experience, and a shared community experience. They all went to the same grade school and junior high school, actually in the same building as the old high school. When someone tells a story about Mrs. Griffiths, one of the two 6th grade teachers, everyone knows her (even those who had the other one), and can appreciate the story. Everyone in the class knew each other well, and hung out with a large proportion of the class after hours. They shopped at the same grocery store, tormented the same elderly people, vandalized the same vacant houses, and played in the same woods.

In contrast, I doubt if I even knew a hundred people in my graduating class. I think not more than five others from my elementary school spent all twelve grades in the same schools I did, though many others spent more years together. Those shared experiences and relationships with the entire class is what I don’t have with my class. Maybe part of it is because it took me forty years to ever get to one of my reunions. Bit I knew very few of those at my reunion. Of the 79 who attended, I probably knew fifteen. I met about five or ten of my classmates for the first time, even though forty years ago we walked the same halls and hated the same assistant principal.

My class will never have that special bond that Lynda’s class has. It can’t have it. For all the benefits of growing up in a good sized city with a large school, the lack of shared experience is one of the unfortunate drawbacks.

Kudos to Meade High class of ’67. I hope you know what you have.
family, Fowler, Meade

Road Trip No. 2 is Over

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We returned last night from southwest Kansas, 1067 miles after starting. The main purpose for the trip was my wife’s high school reunion, but I scheduled much more around that. We had time with aunts and cousins. We visited two family cemeteries. We attended the old home church. We went to the county fair. We took late evening walks of more than a mile, after the temperature dropped below 90, and marveled at the clarity of the Milky way. We visited the hometown museum, which is much changed since I last went in it thirty years ago.

And we visited the old homestead where Charles and Zippy Thompson lived for thirty years. No, Zippy is not a nickname. I’ve often wondered why Isaac and Sarah Chappell named their second daughter Zippy Ellen Chappell, but they died about a hundred years before I knew her name was Zippy, who herself died in 1962, fourteen years before I married in. Lynda’s mom was with us for the homestead tour. In fact, she’s the main reason I wanted to make the trip. Well, I wanted to see it too. Thirty-four years of trips to Meade and no one ever suggested we try to find the place where the sod house was built into a hillside, and the spring house kept the meat and produce cool. No, the fixation was always on the Cheney family and the last stop of the wandering 49er.

But Esther had spent much time at her grandparent’s farm/ranch on the Finney/Haskell county line. She helped tend the vegetable garden, pick flowers, slept on a mat on the earthen floor, used the outhouse, and spent a rustic week of enjoyment with grandma and grandpa. Esther enjoyed the visit most of all, carefully stepping over a variety of critter holes, abandoned farm equipment, and building debris with her 85 year-old legs, and getting Texas tacks on her slacks, recalling what she experienced seven or eight decades previously. Lynda enjoyed it too. Her cousin Trish carried off a souvenier, an old over cover.

We also visited a scene of less happy memories, where my wife’s two aunts perished in the blizzard of 1948, the year before my wife was born. Esther and Faye, the two remaining sisters who were not with the others for that fateful car ride, showed where the car got stuck, where Louise’s body was found three days later at the bottom of a ravine, where Phyllis died, and where their friend Marvin apparently tried to make it back to the car but failed in hie attempt. That visit was harder than the other, which is likely the reason we never did that tour before. We drove that road maybe thirty years ago, but no one asked, “Where exactly did the girls die?”

One other unhappy but necessary visit was with Lynda’s cousin Bobby, from Cimarron. His 33 year-old daughter committed suicide a year ago. We talked with him a couple of months after it happened, but this was the first time to see him. He explained how nothing helped with the healing. I hope something we said did, though. Bobby keeps up the Cheney plot in Fowler Cemetery, and was driving down on Sunday to do so when we suggested we drive up to see him. So we met at Aunt Rosa’s house in Fowler and again at the cemetery. One lighter moment came when he pointed out that a man buried right next to the Cheneys was named Jerry Garcia. Bobby says he has a lot of fun telling people he mows Jerry Garcia’s grave, and they think him a celebrity of sorts. Not being a Grateful Dead fan that went over my head until Bobby explained it.

Many memories made, and recalled, on a good six-day trip, concluded by meeting up with other cousins at Baxter Springs, Kansas, as we returned home yesterday, and dining on old Route 66. May there be many more such times and trips.

Buildipedia, miscellaneous, Suite 101

New Gig, First Article Posted

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I arrived home last night at the usual time, anticipating a busy evening, and hurting greatly due to my rheumatoid arthritis. Clean-up of the basement from the hot water heater leak was on the evening schedule. That had consumed most of the at home hours Friday, Saturday, and (less so on) Sunday. I also figured I’d have to cook supper, as my wife has been “on strike” from cooking for a while now. Not on strike in the union sense, but just having no desire to do so.

I whipped up taco salad with ground turkey (low fat, of course). It had been a hot day, but a shower came up as I was driving home, and the brief dash from driveway to garage was through cooler air. I didn’t walk through the house, but put my portfolio and calculator on the kitchen table and went straight to work.

It was hot in the kitchen, but it’s supposed to be hot in the kitchen, so I paid no attention. Then Lynda said she was real hot. I walked across the great room to the thermostat, feeling the heat. It was 87 degrees, and the digital printout said “cooling on”. My first thought was that, during the hot water heater replacement, someone had turned off the wrong breaker by mistake and had never turned it on. But that was Saturday afternoon. Surely we would have felt a warming house on Sunday. I checked: all breakers on; inside air handling unit running; outside heat pump not running.

I went back and forth from stove top to various rooms in the house, opening windows. It was now cooler outside. About the time the taco salad was ready I finally remembered that our AC guy said that the first thing to do if the AC wasn’t running was to turn it off at the thermostat, let it sit a minute, then turn it on. I did so, and immediately that outdoor unit kicked on. Who would have thunk you’d have to re-boot your air conditioner? For 30 minutes I had visions of having to replace something on the AC, and they weren’t pretty visions.

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Not much really. I went to The Dungeon after supper and did my thing with the carpet shampooer, sucking up more moisture. Then I went to the computer and wrote a new article for Suite101.com, the first in a series on technical analysis for stock trading. I hope to write quite a few in this topic.

During the day I had worked with the editor at Buildipedia.com to put the finishing touches on my first article there, which was scheduled to be posted at midnight. As of 7:45 AM CDT it has already been read 33 times. That’s good exposure. I don’t think I can reveal how much I am being paid for this, but for on-line writing it’s a good amount, much better than the little I earn at Suite101.com. I’m working with the editor at Buildipedia on concepts for several more articles, perhaps as many as 10 to 20. Right now they seem hungry for feature articles, and I hope I can provide many. Here’s the link to the article.

content writing, freelance writing, Suite 101

A Few Thoughts About Internet Content Sites

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The battle is raging concerning the type of writing known as Internet content sites. That’s the type of site Suite101.com, where I write, is. The pejorative term applied to them is content mill or content farm. Some call them content aggragators. I think I’ll stick with content site for now.

Those who consider themselves journalists run down the content sites based on: low quality of the information provided; low quality of the writing; low pay for writers; lack of editorial input; and quick turn over of writers. Where are the editors, they ask, who will make sure the story/article is “balanced” and complete, and that the writing is good? Where are the fact-checkers, they ask, who verify that the information given is actually correct?

These are all valid concerns. I can only speak for my experience at Suite 101. Management there says that about 20 percent of those who apply to be writers are actually accepted. Articles are to be 400 to 800 words. Writing is to be based on SEO-search engine optimization–so that people can find the articles. Quality of writing is a secondary concern, but it is not ignored. Suite has no fact-checkers, relying instead on the writers to do it right. Suite is constantly advertising for new writers, and consequently have a lot of educational tools to bring new writers up to Suite style.

Suite does have editor input. I’ve had about 10 of my 106 articles either flagged for correction or had the editor make minor changes. But I’ve seen lots of other articles go by with misspellings, grammar errors. Some have poorly constructed sentences, and poor organization of information within the article. Suite 101 definitely has quality issues.

Yet, the site provides a service that seems to be wanted: information. Information that is easily found electronically. Information that may be shallow, but tells just enough that the reader goes away satisfied.

America has changed, perhaps not for the better, but it has changed. Writers need to change with it. Print publications will be with us for a while. Perhaps fewer of them, and maybe more specialized, but they will be with us. I’m not sure the average information reader really cares much about the quality of the writing. Sure they will notice horrendous grammar, but many other things an editor would fix for a print publication seem to be of no consequence to a reader.

Content sites–or maybe they would be better called “Information sites”–are part of the new information supply dynamic that is being tested through the search engine Internet. Whether this is a temporary thing while the world transitions from print info to electronic, or whether it is the future, I don’t know. I know that I’m trying it for now, with no plans on quitting any time soon.

travel

Home Again…

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…and back at work. We arrived home last night about 11:30 PM local time, 3535.8 miles after starting. I took a wrong turn in Pennsylvania that cost us 30 miles. We diverted for an Interstate highway traffic backup, also in Pennsylvania, which cost us about 10 miles. And we had another six mile diversion. So it should have been about 3490. I had predicted 3500, so not too bad.

It was a good trip, with many good activities. Not a lot of time to rest, except during the driving. And even some of that was stressful. We were driving just east of St. Louis during the rush hour, when the heavy storm hit. Radio reports said some roads were under water, Interstate 70 was closed due to water, and a building collapsed north of downtown. A lot of people pulled to the side or exited, but we plowed on, often at 25 mph. Rush hour traffic was gone. We stopped at a Flying J for coffee and a brief rest, and resumed at 6:00 PM. Traffic was light, the rain was then light, and we made good time the rest of the way.

We never did get to a Bob Evans restaurant. I enjoy going to them once during a trip, but the timing for supper never did have us near one of them. Another time I guess.

Well, it’s 8:00 AM here. I’ve been through 101 e-mails on the work e-mail, my boss wants to see me, another engineer wants to see me, and I just learned that another engineer quit while I was gone. The good news is that, despite lack of profitability, the company paid a one time bonus to employees last week. That’s what the boss wants to see me about. I good start to a short work week.

memories, miscellaneous

A Long, Long Time Ago…

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…in a galaxy far, far away, I was in high school. Cranston High School East, to be precise, class of 1970. We had our 40th year reunion last night. This is the first one I attended. Of a class of about 725 (numbers given last night ranged from 700 to 749) 79 came. That seems like a small number, but everyone said it was better than number 35.

I saw three people from the old Dutemple Elementary School. Macia, Roger, and Jimmy all went to the other junior high school, then we were reunited for the high school years. That went back a long way. Grace was there, who I went to church with (though different elementary schools), then jr. high and high school, so we went back a long way. I brought some grade school photo albums, and we got a kick out of looking at them.

Four of us from the old “A” division at Hugh B. Bain Junior High were there: Jane, Sharon, Jeanne, and me. That was fun to see them. Jane was in physics and science with me, and I had brought some memorabilia from that class. She had a great time looking at it. Ginny from that class was also there. She said she needed another drink before looking at what I brought, but never got back to it. Shawn from physics class was also there, I understood, but I never did see her.

Well, I may have seen her, but a lot of people didn’t look the same. Some I had become familiar with their present appearance from Facebook, so wasn’t surprised. A number of people look like a little older versions of themselves, but well preserved. It was casual dress for the guys. The women tended to dress up a bit more, and there was lots of cleavage showing. I told my wife and cousins this morning that I hadn’t seen so much cleavage since Bay Watch was canceled.

Some people I hoped to see weren’t there. Gary, Kenny, Bobby G. Art, Bobby F–all skipped it. And my three closest friends skipped it in favor of our Monday night gathering. Even with many gone, I’m glad I went. Oh, and it was good to see Barbara, whom I was in home room with for six years, but never in class together. That was a pleasant surprise.

So many there I didn’t know, so was meeting for the first time. How could I not know classmates, you wonder? Because there were so many, and I had the circles I was in and didn’t meet a lot of the kids outside of those circles. I was in band, and there were four of us from the band. I played football, and six footballers were there. I ran track, and four of us tracksters talked briefly. Of course, nowadays we’d run the 100 in times we used to have for the 440.

Will I go again? Who knows, but most likely not. They may not have a 45th, and ten years is a long time to plan for. I won’t say no, but possibly this was a once in a lifetime event.

travel

Long Distance Driving

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I fell in love with long distance driving right after graduating from college. Up to that point, growing up in Rhode Island and rarely ever leaving the state, I had little opportunity to drive more than about 45 minutes at a stretch. I remember driving to Hartford from URI junior year to see a football game at Central Connecticut, and once driving from Framingham straight to Snug Harbor, but that’s pretty much it. Maybe an hour and a half in a day.

So when I graduated and was to drive to Kansas City to begin my life as an engineer, I gave myself a week to get there, not knowing how many miles I would be able to drive in any day. I packed up everything I owned (except some books, which dad shipped later) in my 1966 Plymouth Valient, with its slant six engine, and headed west. I made a brief stop in Darien CT for gas. That was about 3 hours from Cranston, so I’d already set a personal record for driving.

The next stop was somewhere in central Pennsylvania, then Youngstown Ohio, then finally that night, after 13 hours and 30 minutes of actual driving time, I stopped in Mansfield Ohio for the night. I learned I could drive for long distances at a time. In fact, I loved it. Just me and the radio and the truckers and the pavement and whirr of the engine.

That’s where I plan on stopping tonight, driving in the opposite direction. Then on to Upton Massachusetts on Thursday. Looking forward to time with family and friends, some I haven’t seen for 40 years, one family member who arrived last May who I haven’t seen yet. I’m looking forward to it.

Oh, I found the high school memorabilia I was missing, quite a bit of it, almost all related to what we called “Howie’s Class”. Chuck and Joe will be interested in that. Gary, perhaps not as much. Don’t know if any others from that class will be at the reunion, but I’ll have it there just in case.

Spell checker won’t work, and not time to proof. See you all. May not post for a week.

Buildipedia, Writing

Time Short for Writing

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Yesterday I turned in my first article to Buildipedia.com. If accepted, and I feel confident it will be, it should appear on the site in a week or so. Payment is supposed to come in not more than a month. I can sure use the payment. And I’m looking forward to the next assignment…

…so long as they don’t give me too tight of a deadline. I don’t like to give much about my schedule on-line. I’m sure thieves/home invader professionals have set up Google alerts for the words “I’ll be away”, and then go after homes during that time and clear them out of all valuables. Yes, I’m sure these hoodlums have become quite tech-savvy.

But I’ll go ahead and say it. I’ll be away for a little over a week, on a 3500 mile road trip. I’ll attend my 40th high school reunion back in Rhode Island, visit with family, visit with friends, and maybe see my sister on the way back. This will be the first of my h.s. reunions I’ll have attended, and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m actually prepared to be disappointed in it, however. Our graduating class was about 700 people. Of those 80 some odd are on Facebook, and the report given on Facebook is that about 50 alumni will attend. Is it possible it will be that low? Perhaps that is only those from Facebook who are attending, and there will be many others. My best friends from school, who all live in RI, are ducking the main reunion in favor of a private get together of a few of us. Perhaps a lot of our class still live in RI, and for them the reunion doesn’t hold much interest. Or they’ve been to them in the past and they don’t feel the need to attend again.

Actually, I probably won’t attend again. High school was not my favorite three years, for a variety of reasons. College was much more enjoyable for me. But I want to see of those I haven’t seen in 40 years one last time. I can’t explain it, but I want to be there. I think that will satisfy me. There are fewer reasons to visit RI the older I get. Who knows when the next time will be.

I obviously won’t be on line much for the next week. I may work on some draft posts for this blog. I have five book review type posts to do, and a few writing ones. No shortage of things to write about, just little time. Still, if the opportunity arises, I’ll try to get on line and post an update. While I have few readers here, I want to give you all reasons to keep coming back.

Suite 101

Suite101.com – One Year Review

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I applied to Suite101.com on June 17, 2009, was accepted the next day, and posted my first article on June 21, 2009. By the end of June I had 10 articles posted, had less than 100 pages views, and a whopping 2 cents in income. So I’m going to transpose my effective anniversary to June 30, 2009. Having just passed a year, then, I thought I’d pull together some statistics. Here’s a summary.

Articles posted: 105
Page views: 68,033
Earnings from articles: $106.07
Earnings from contests: $101.00
Typical $/article/month: $0.15
Range $/article/month: $0.06-$0.20
Earnings /1000 PVs: $1.56

Even though I don’t like the way images load into this blogger template, I’m attaching several charts from my Excel spreadsheet. I hope they come out readable, though they never seem to organize themselves on a page the way I want them to. Each can be clicked on to get an enlargement. The first is a basic page view record with daily page views and 7 day running page views, the second page views per article per day. Both of these show the number of articles posted. The third is a revenue chart showing daily revenue, 7 day running revenue, and revenue per 1000 page views. The fourth is revenue per article per month, and the fifth is revenue per month.
These charts tell a story. First, that the amount of page views I’m getting has drastically reduced from a peak in November, but especially this last couple of months. Second, that I’ve never been able to figure out how to make money at Suite. The subjects I write in just don’t seem to generate much revenue. Third, that revenue is generally growing, not because my articles are becoming more popular with age, but because I’ve added more articles. Fourth that revenue simply hasn’t stabilized much; it’s still all over the place.
A year is a good time to evaluate whether this endeavor is a good use of my time. Probably not, but it’s something I mostly enjoy. There is a good community feeling in the Suite forums, and I’ve made friends there (Hutch, if you read this, may the Internet Force be with you). Possibly the 85,000 or so words I’ve posted in articles have made me a better writer and added in some way to my writing resume.
I’m going to keep at it, but at a significantly reduced rate than I did in my first year.
Now, time to post this and see how it all formats.

Author | Engineer