Updates to «Salad Days»

005/codex-005.tex

@@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ If you want to donate financial support for the creation of this zine (and all t
 
 A long time ago my stepdad had created a successful business screen-printing t-shirts. He had been in the music business (there is a long story here, but it doesn't fit in with this zine) and he realized he could make more money if he printed and sold his own band shirts.
 
-At some point, my parents decided to try to replicate this success. As, at the time, the sure key to success was to have a website and I got roped in, because a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had uploaded some HTML files to a free web server and told them "look, I made a web page!"  They immediately assumed I was an expert and knew everything about putting a business online, and that I could build a web page that would have us making millions of dollars in mere weeks.
+At some point, my parents decided to try to replicate this success. As the sure key to success at the time was to have a website and so I got roped in, because a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had uploaded some HTML files to a free web server and told them "look, I made a web page!"  They immediately assumed I was an expert and knew everything about putting a business online, and that I could build a web page that would have us making millions of dollars in mere weeks.
 
 This was not the case, of course. What I learned was this:
 
@@ -199,15 +199,15 @@ This was not the case, of course. What I learned was this:
 
 The useful things I learned from that experience were how to be really good at HTML (and without CSS, you had to be really good at copy and paste), how an FTP client works, and that cPanel really sucks. (If your webhost uses cPanel, \textit{you} can do better, and your webhost \textit{should} do better.)
 
-That business died after three or four orders, which was probably a good thing. But it did set me up with some usable skills when I went back to college. I started substitute teaching once I had enough credits to qualify for that, and so decided to create a website as soon as I could as a marketing tool. And thus, \texttt{mrodle.net} was born. 
+That business died after three or four orders, which was probably a good thing, but it did set me up with some usable skills when I went back to college. I started substitute teaching once I had enough credits to qualify for that, and so decided to create a website as soon as I could as a marketing tool. And thus, \texttt{mrodle.net} was born. 
 
-Unfortunately, it did not live long. I had seriously underestimated how much money was required just to exist and when it came to putting gas in the tank \textit{or} paying webhosting fees, it was an easy decision. One of those things was helping me make money and the other was not. Something had to go, and so the website went. (Fortunately, it was so short-lived that \texttt{archive.org} never caught wind of it.)
+Unfortunately, that site did not live long. I had seriously underestimated how much money was required just to exist and when it came to putting gas in the tank \textit{or} paying webhosting fees, it was an easy decision. One of those things was helping me make money and the other was not. Something had to go, and so the website went. (Fortunately, it was so short-lived that \texttt{archive.org} never caught wind of it.)
 
 As it turns out, the education community is not as progressive as they would lead you to believe. Having a website wouldn't help me find substitute gigs. Only being a good substitute teacher would help me do that. Who knew?
 
-Anyway, I kept trying. The educational-industrial complex was pushing ``Web 2.0''\footnote{which was basically social media, but also included blogs} really hard. I did make another website (\kref{https://kjodle.net/}{kjodle.net}, which survives to this day) and my webhost at the time offered a one-click install of WordPress which at that time was pretty much a blogging platform and little else. So I clicked on the ``install'' button, wondered for a moment what I had done, and suddenly, \textit{The Big Bad Book Blog} was born.\footnote{\kref{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}{bookblog.kjodle.net}}
+I kept trying. The educational-industrial complex was pushing ``Web 2.0''\footnote{which was basically social media, but also included blogs} really hard. I made another website (\kref{https://kjodle.net/}{kjodle.net}, which survives to this day) and my webhost at the time offered a one-click install of WordPress which at that time was pretty much a blogging platform and little else. So I clicked on the ``install'' button, wondered for a moment what I had done, and suddenly, \textit{The Big Bad Book Blog} was born.\footnote{\kref{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}{bookblog.kjodle.net}}
 
-As a newly minted English teacher, I enjoyed having a place where I could talk about all the books I'd been reading. But as a nerdy computer person, having a WordPress blog made me really itch. 
+As a newly minted English teacher, I enjoyed having a place where I could talk about all the books I'd been reading. But as a nerdy computer person, having a WordPress blog made me really itch. It offered…\textit{possibilities}.
 
 It wasn't just HTML and CSS, for a start, which were the only two technologies I knew how to use to create a website. Rather, it was PHP and JavaScript, with a MySQL database attached. And while I was happy with the theme I had chosen, I was not 100\% happy with its appearance. I began tinkering under the hood, which WordPress requires that you do in a rather particular way. I had to level up, so that is what I did. I threw myself into the world of PHP, JavaScript, and WordPress child themes.
 
@@ -215,15 +215,15 @@ It was tough work, but I enjoyed it. At this point, I was pretty much substitute
 
 I eventually got to a point where I could create not just a child theme, but also fully blown themes for WordPress, and plugins to boot. Again, tough work,\footnote{I had not yet learned about Git, which would have made all of this \textit{so} much easier. Hence my enthusiasm for Git and the inclusion of a Git primer in this issue.} but very, very satisfying. 
 
-I was having problems finding work as a teacher (so many other people decided to get into teaching at the same time, so the market was saturated) and I thought that maybe I could become a developer. Why not? After all, I knew that I could learn whatever I needed to, as long as I set my mind to it.
+I was having problems finding an actual teaching job (so many other people decided to get into teaching at the same time, so the market was saturated) and I thought that maybe I could become a developer. Why not? After all, I knew that I could learn whatever I needed to, as long as I set my mind to it.
 
-It was a happier, sunnier time, after all, despite the recession—at least if you knew something about ``coding''. I put that in quotation marks because it is a fuzzy word with fairly nebulous meaning. After all, I learned ``coding'' at the age of twelve by programming a TRS-80 in BASIC.\footnote{TRS-BASIC, to be precise} I doubt that anybody now or in 2010 would hire me on the basis of \textit{that} particular skillset.
+It was a happier, sunnier time, after all, despite the recession—at least if you knew something about ``coding''. I put that in quotation marks because it is a fuzzy word with fairly nebulous meaning. After all, I learned ``coding'' at the age of twelve by programming a TRS-80 in BASIC. I doubt that anybody now or in 2010 would hire me on the basis of \textit{that} particular skillset.
 
 But I did try. I did some freelance development work for WordPress. I had learned how to make child themes fairly easily, and got a fair amount of work from people who wanted to customize their blogs, but had neither the time nor the skill nor the inclination to learn the skills required for this. Was I making enough money to pay the bills? No. Was I making enough money for a cheap, greasy pizza and a six-pack on the odd weekend? Yep!
 
 I was happy with that level of success and wanted more, but there are only so many hours in a day. I didn't have the time to learn everything I needed to know (I admit that JavaScript still eludes me) and I certainly didn't have any more money for coursework or marketing at that point.
 
-Plus, I had just graduated with an English degree with the goal of being a teacher. I was still substituting in the hopes of landing a teaching job, though, so I taught myself how to use Moodle\footnote{which is a terrible name really, and one of the main reasons why software development and software marketing should be completely separate circles in the Venn diagram} even figuring out how to make some simple plugins for it.
+Plus, I had just graduated with an English degree with the goal of being a teacher. I was still substituting in the hopes of landing a teaching job, though, so I taught myself how to use Moodle and MediaWiki and a few other ``Web 2.0'' technologies.
 
 And…it got me nowhere. Summer came, and I was out of substituting work, so I signed up with a temp agency, specifying that I was looking for second-shift work only. My thought was that if I could finagle a teaching interview, it would be during the day and so I wouldn't need to take time off from work. Also, assuming that I \textit{couldn't} find a teaching job, I could sub during the day and keep the second shift gig as a way to ensure I wouldn't starve.
 
@@ -233,7 +233,7 @@ What I didn't know (and what the agency also didn't know) was that this company
 
 I've never had a job interview take such a dramatic turn before (which was the first of many red flags—in retrospect this place looked like a May Day parade in Leningrad) but the things they laid out—paid time off, a retirement plan, health insurance (including vision and dental)—were too much to resist. I pushed my tongue against a sore tooth and agreed to take the job. We all shook hands and I left, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into. 
 
-Quite a bit, actually, as it turned out. I thought I might stay a year to get caught up on some things, and then try to get a teaching job again, but the educational-industrial complex is a jealous god who does not trust people who walk away, so the longer I stayed away, the less it would be possible.
+Quite a bit, actually, as it turned out. I thought I might stay a year to get caught up on some things, and then try to get a teaching job again, but the educational-industrial complex is a jealous god who does not trust people who walk away, so the longer I stayed away, the lower my chances of returning.
 
 I ended up staying with that company for almost six years, despite the fact that I gave notice on three separate occasions. In retrospect, it was a terrible experience (and the subject of an entirely different zine) but I learned a lot. (The main thing I learned was to never work for a small company with no HR department where the boss is also the owner.)
 
@@ -247,17 +247,17 @@ So where am I?
 
 I work as a data reviewer for a contract research organization in the pharmaceutical industry. That means that drug companies send us samples of their products, and we test them for things like assay, impurities, appearance, disintegration, etc. People who majored in chemistry run the tests and I sit there and look at their procedures and results and make sure that everything was performed correctly, that the math is correct, and that the results are, indeed, valid.
 
-In theory, I'm an analytical chemist. In practice, I'm a botany/English major with a fondness for computers who spends the day with his nose buried in Excel spreadsheets. A \textit{lot} of Excel spreadsheets.
+In theory, I'm an analytical chemist. In practice, I'm a botany/English major with a fondness for computers who spends the day with his nose buried in Excel spreadsheets. \textit{Lots} of Excel spreadsheets.
 
 Except that I also used to design websites, so my spreadsheets are easy on the eyes, color-coded, and logically oriented—that is, they take you through the analytical method in a step-wise, chronological manner. In other words, we look at standard concentrations first, and then our system suitability tests, and then the actual tests. Every cell is also labeled, so it's clear what goes where.\footnote{For a visual depiction, see \kref{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IFUYg9IUgI}{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IFUYg9IUgI}.} My boss admires them and I am justifiably proud of them. After all, these aren't just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill spreadsheets we're talking about here.
 
-My spreadsheets are so beautiful that when my boss got a glimpse of them he immediately placed me in charge of mentoring new data reviewers, mostly so that they could see what my spreadsheets look like. And I get it. I worked really hard to make spreadsheets that are understandable not just to me but to everybody because we may have a corrective action come up at some point and we need to be able to see how we arrived at the results that have. So yep, I strive to make all my spreadsheets consistent and understandable to someone who has no familiarity with them. 
+My spreadsheets are so beautiful that when my boss got a glimpse of them he immediately placed me in charge of mentoring new data reviewers, mostly so that they could see what my spreadsheets look like. And I get it. I worked really hard to make spreadsheets that are understandable not just to me but to everybody because we may have a corrective action come up at some point and we need to be able to see how we arrived at the results that have. I strive to make all my spreadsheets consistent and understandable to someone who has no familiarity with them. 
 
 \fbox{\texttt{tl;dr:} I'm \textit{really} good with Microsoft Excel. }
 
-But it's not satisfying work. It pays the bills.\footnote{Well, barely (and by the time you're reading this, probably not actually), after the recent fit of massive corporate price gouging—I mean, er…inflation.} It's not exactly the hind end of science, but it's close. (I once worked in a lab that did non-clinical testing\footnote{That is, rats and mice. Lots and \textit{lots} of rats and mice.} and believe me, \textit{that} is the hind end of science.\footnote{Science actually has many hind-ends. This is but one of them.}) I'm not really doing science; if anything I'm just a science accountant, making sure the books balance. It's boring—\textit{really }boring—and more than a bit mind-numbing. 
+But it's not satisfying work. It pays the bills.\footnote{Well, barely (and by the time you're reading this, probably not actually), after the recent fit of massive corporate price gouging—I mean, er…inflation.} It's not exactly the hind end of science, but it's close. (I once worked in a lab that did non-clinical testing\footnote{That is, rats and mice. Lots and \textit{lots} of rats and mice.} and believe me, \textit{that} is the hind end of science.\footnote{Science actually has many hind-ends. This is but one of them.}) I'm not really doing science; if anything I'm just a nerdy science accountant, making sure the books balance. It's boring—\textit{really }boring—and more than a bit mind-numbing. 
 
-Considering that my entire job exists to help keep the drug supply safe\footnote{Well, the \textit{legal} drug supply anyway.} that statement may sound frightening or even disturbing. But it's not really. You \textit{want} this job to be boring. When it's not boring, it's generally because something has gone wrong, and and this is one of those industries (like nuclear energy or air traffic control) where you really \textit{don't} want things to not be boring.
+Considering that my entire job exists to help keep the drug supply safe\footnote{Well, the \textit{legal} drug supply anyway.} that statement may sound frightening or even disturbing. But it's not really. You \textit{want} this job to be boring. When it's not boring, it's generally because something has gone wrong, and and this is one of those industries (like nuclear energy or air traffic control) where you really \textit{don't} want things to \textit{not} be boring.
 
 The irony is that I took this job because I \textit{knew} it would be boring. My last job had been so nerve wracking that mentally I was completely spent by the time I got home and creating anything at that point was damn difficult if not impossible. I figured that if I had a job that was boring where creativity was not encouraged (that is, we have a procedure, so just stick to the procedure) I could store my creative juices during the day the and use them during the evening to create things.
 
@@ -273,7 +273,7 @@ Creativity is the same kind of thing. You can't save up creativity so you can us
 
 I've since come to view creativity like a river—it has to move to do anything. It can move boulders and it can sift the finest silt. It can carve a valley through a plain or it can split mountains. It can nurse the communities around it and it can serve as a way for them to get from one place to another.
 
-Dam a river and it does not become a lake, it becomes a prisoner. It is not content with its lot. It constantly seeks escape. And when it finds it, it will give some small warning but then it will completely and utterly destroy that dam.\footnote{See \kref{https://damfailures.org/case-study/teton-dam-idaho-1976/}{https://damfailures.org/case-study/teton-dam-idaho-1976/} for a good example of this.} 
+Dam a river and it does not become a lake, it becomes a prisoner. Not content with its lot, it constantly seeks escape. When it finds it, it will give some small warning but then it will completely and utterly destroy that dam.\footnote{See \kref{https://damfailures.org/case-study/teton-dam-idaho-1976/}{https://damfailures.org/case-study/teton-dam-idaho-1976/} for a good example of this.} 
 
 That's what I've been doing with my creativity. I've trying to dam it up during the day and then release it in the evening. But it doesn't work that way. You can't hold back creativity. You can't divide it up, hour by hour. You can't parse it out drop by drop. Using your creativity doesn't mean that you use it up. Rather, creativity, like love, can only be multiplied. Creativity just leads to more creativity. It's not a zero-sum game.\footnote{I wish people would realize that our economy—which is not a natural thing, but a thing completely invented by humans—does not have to be a zero-sum game. Just because somebody else gets something they need does not automatically means that I get less of what I need.}
 
@@ -285,25 +285,25 @@ Given all that, I need to find myself in a place I was back when I was a kid—a
 
 Those are the two things I have always been. I don't mean those two trajectories revealed themselves to me when I was in college. I mean that I knew these thing when I was eight or nine years old.
 
-I have always scribbled. I got a hold of a manual typewriter at the age of eight or nine (I am fairly certain it was an old K-Mart model—I know for sure that it was blue and that I found it in our attic) and never looked back.\footnote{I'm pretty sure it looked like this one: \kref{https://gallery.kjodle.net/picture.php?/628/category/76}{https://gallery.kjodle.net/picture.php?/62\\8/category/76}.}
+I have always scribbled. I got a hold of a manual typewriter at the age of eight or nine and never looked back.\footnote{I am fairly certain it was an old K-Mart model—I know for sure that it was blue and that I found it in our attic, and I'm pretty sure it looked like this one: \kref{https://gallery.kjodle.net/picture.php?/628/category/76}{https://gallery.kjodle.net/picture.php?/62\\8/category/76}.}
 
 As for the teaching thing, I'm not quite sure. I've always enjoyed learning things and knowing how to do things and sharing that knowlege with other people in the hopes that that might change their life for the better.
 
-Long ago, I realized that information is just data—which you can get from encyclopedias and dictionaries (and these these days the internet if you know where to look). But knowledge is information \textit{in context}, where it's part of a whole that helps you understand how the universe is put together and how it works. Most people think that teaching is just about providing information (no doubt a result of our over-reliance on worksheets and scantron sheets and Bush II's policy of ``no child left untested''). And that is unfortunately what a lot of teachers do—they force feed kids information, which most kids retain just long enough to regurgitate on a test and then promptly forget.\footnote{Although some of it sticks with us—Mr. Rex insisted that we would need to know the definition the ``mercantilism'' to succeed in college comes to mind. Oddly, the last placed I was asked for that definition was on his final exam. (I've written about this in a different zine. See \textit{just13} \#2 at \kref{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}.)}
+Long ago, I realized that information is just data—which you can get from encyclopedias and dictionaries (and these these days from the internet if you know how to look). But knowledge is information \textit{in context}, where it's part of a whole that helps you understand how the universe is put together and how it works. Most people think that teaching is just about providing information, which is no doubt a result of our over-reliance on worksheets and scantron sheets and Bush II's policy of ``no child left untested''. That is unfortunately what a lot of teachers do—they force feed kids information, which most kids retain just long enough to regurgitate on a test and then promptly forget.\footnote{Although some of it sticks with us—My high school social studies teacher Mr. Rex insisted that we would need to know the definition the ``mercantilism'' to succeed in college comes to mind. Oddly, the last placed I was asked for that definition was on his final exam. (I've written about this in a different zine. See \textit{just13} \#2 at \kref{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}.)}
 
-Good teachers provide that context. They provide information along with the context and then guide their students through the process of building knowledge out of those. If you can figure out the information and figure out the context and know how to weave those two things into actual knowledge you'll always be able to figure out any task, any role, any job. You'll be able to do anything you set your mind to.\footnote{I haven't even talked about wisdom yet, which is knowledge tempered by experience. And I don't want to discuss it, perhaps mostly because I lack it.}
+Good teachers provide that context. They provide context along with the information and then guide their students through the process of building knowledge out of those. If you can figure out the information and figure out the context and know how to weave those two things into actual knowledge you'll always be able to figure out any task, any role, any job. You'll be able to do anything you set your mind to.\footnote{I haven't even talked about wisdom yet, which is knowledge tempered by experience. And I don't want to discuss it, perhaps mostly because I lack it.}
 
 That was what I loved about teaching—that if I were allowed to do it right I could empower people just now but for the rest of their lives. I once answered a question in a job interview that when it comes to teaching of course I take the long view. The kid I'm teaching today might be working on my brakes in ten years. The kid I'm teaching today might be doing heart surgery on me in twenty years. This is not selfishness. The kid who is working on my brakes is also working on lots of other people's brakes and the kid doing open heart surgery on me is obviously not doing this as a one-off.
 
 The point is that human existence is a tapestry. We're all connected, like it or not, to other people. That tapestry has a lot of holes in it (thanks to war, disease, capitalism, etc.) so of course most of the time we can't see a direct connection to some other people simply because it isn't apparent. But we are all connected nevertheless, whether directly or indirectly. Our choices and our actions have effects that we cannot predict on people we cannot even see, sometimes because they don't exist yet.
 
-That is what teaching was about for me—showing kids that they are part of a rich tapestry and that it's okay if they can't see the entire thing because \textit{none} of us can.\footnote{I would like to carve out an exception here for someone like the Dalai Lama, but I think he would be the first person to say that he can't see everything. He can merely see further than most.} The important thing is knowing that you are part of something larger than yourself and to know how to reach out to others when you need help and knowing how to respond to others reaching out to you because they need help. That was my mission as a teacher. I suppose that now, it's my mission with this zine.
+That is what teaching was about for me—showing kids that they are part of a rich tapestry and that it's okay if they can't see the entire thing because \textit{none} of us can.\footnote{I would like to carve out an exception here for someone like the Dalai Lama, but I think he would be the first person to say that he can't see everything. He can merely see further than most.} The important thing is knowing that you are part of something larger than yourself and to know how to reach out to others when you need help and knowing how to respond to others reaching out to you when they need help. That was my mission as a teacher. I suppose now it's my mission with this zine.
 
 It's also why I am not a teacher or now and never will be again—because there is no fucking way that any part of that can ever be converted to a multiple choice question that can be graded by running a scantron sheet through some 1970s-style technology.
 
-Fortunately there there's a sweet spot in all of that that is small but doable. That sweet spot is technical writing. I actually did a lot of technical writing in my last job.\footnote{One of the best compliments I've ever received is that a former colleague who also left that company and eventually went back to it told me that she could ``see my hand in everything we do'' which is a great compliment, but after all, I \textit{literally} wrote the book on that place. She wanted me to come back, but nope, there were reasons that I left, and they haven't changed.} I took my current job because I was led to believe that it would include a lot of technical writing. The amount of technical writing I've done so far as zero. If I wiped my ass with all the writing I've done I would have shit all over my fingers.
+Fortunately there there's a sweet spot in all of this that is small but doable. That sweet spot is technical writing. I actually did a lot of technical writing in my last job.\footnote{One of the best compliments I've ever received is that a former colleague who also left that company and eventually went back to it told me that she could ``see my hand in everything we do'' which is a great compliment, but after all, I \textit{literally} wrote the book on that place. She wanted me to come back, but nope, there were reasons that I left, and they haven't changed.} I took my current job because I was led to believe that it would include a lot of technical writing. The amount of technical writing I've done so far is zero. 
 
-Technical writing—that is, writing instruction manuals and work instructions and translating what the chemists and engineers wrote into something that regular people can understand—is what I need to do do because it lands smack dab in the middle of this Venn diagram:
+Technical writing—that is, writing instruction manuals and work instructions and translating what the chemists and engineers wrote into something that regular people can understand—is what I need to do because it lands smack dab in the middle of this Venn diagram:
 
 \begin{center}
 \scalebox{0.7}{ %  begin scalebox
@@ -316,7 +316,7 @@ Technical writing—that is, writing instruction manuals and work instructions a
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (0,4) {Things I'm Good At};
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (0,-4) {Things People Will Pay You To Do};
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (4,0) {Things That Don't Bore Me};
-	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (-4,0) {Things That Don't Make Me to Sell my Soul};
+	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (-4,0) {Things That Don't Make Me Sell my Soul};
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (2.7, 2.7) {Teaching};
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (-2.7, 2.7) {Something I Like Doing};
 	\node[align=center, text width=2cm, scale=0.9] at (2.7,-2.7) {Writing};