Brain Fries With a Side of the Bard
After a long day of technical word-herding I find myself sitting down again for a swipe at blogging.
But there’s a good chance that it’s not going to get posted in time, because as I’m writing this, my website appears to be down with a 502 error. Ang mga problema ko!
Ah well.
The writing I was doing basically consists of taking the various rules of civil and criminal procedure for both the Federal and State courts and creating lists of deadlines for when things have to be submitted, how much time is allowed to respond to this or that, a general idea of how soon a court will respond to one thing or another, etc., etc., etc.
I had anticipated submitting this information in table form. You know -
Action
Deadline
Filing a Lawsuit
Any time allowed under a Statute of Limitations
Which would be functional, get the information across, and be a lot easier to throw together in the word processor / spreadsheet combination of your choice.
Alas, no. Instead, I’ve got to write this out in narrative form, with headings.
5.3.2.1.2 Filing a Lawsuit
Filing a lawsuit may be done in the correct court at any time allowed under a Statute of Limitations (SOL). The SOL is unique to any given cause of action.
It’s a more difficult way to present the information, but if that’s what’s being required, I’m happy to do it. I have no opinion as to whether the information is easier to ingest and interpret this way. But it gives me a lot of respect for people who do technical writing as their main job. It’s a difficult thing, getting information across accurately and concisely. Mucho respect to those guys. Hopefully, this won’t read like stereo instructions (Beetlejuice reference).
It also is something I’m going to count towards my annual required Continuing Education, so that’s an added benefit as well.
Suffice it to say that for the last couple of days between the research and the technical writing involved, it’s been difficult to read or watch or enjoy other things. Right now, I’m looking at the entire run of Martian Successor: Nadesico, and I just don’t have the time to watch it yet.
But with all this writing, and while driving the kiddo home from tonight’s church activities (Candy Tasting Party! Which is fun and all, and I’m sure there was a gospel message there, sounds a lot different from what I used to do as a kid in our church activities). I was listening to “Do I Dare to Eat a Peach” – an enjoyable podcast by Dan Wells, author of Partials and I Am Not a Serial Killer, and his brother Robison Wells, author of Variant. It’s a fun, if occasionally rambly listen. The rambles, though, are half the fun.
Anyway, they were talking about the ten best books you’re supposed to read in High School, and the discussion of how to present Shakespeare to kids in high school came up. Essentially, one of them (or it may have been that episode’s special guest, a man whose name escapes me, but is occasionally known as “The Love Bucket”) said that Shakespeare shouldn’t be read so much in High School as it should be delivered as a performance.
Which I thought was a fantastic idea. Shakespeare is some good stuff. But if you’re trying to present that to kids who are unfamiliar with the language, are struggling to read regular English in some cases, and then give them The Bard? Well, those kids are going to struggle a bit with it. Reading will be slow, and leaden. And it has the potential to kill a kid’s potential interest.
Anyway, this will be late. After a quick chat with my hosting company’s tech support, it appears that for some reason (GLARE) AT&T has decided to block access to my hosting server. They’re working to resolve the problem. So YOU may be able to see my website, but I cannot.
Dagnabit.
