Introduction

The Past

The Travel Journals

Vermont Snow Geese Trip Photos from October 2006

Festival of the Cranes Photos from November 2005 trip

From February of 1995 to 2001 I took a sabbatical from high-tech to use my documentation skills in new and different ways and to help out family members who were dealing with illness and death. Journal of a Sabbatical started in July 1996 as an online journal for sharing with friends my discovery that there is life outside high-tech.

I began 2001 asking myself: "Will I make it to 2002 without a return to corporate life? Will I find out what I want to be when I grow up? Will I grow up before my nieces do? Will the piping plover population ever get above the "endangered" level? Will Jaguar really live forever? How many species of birds will I add to my life list? Will Zsolt & István finish documenting the temperate zone conifers before they lose my excellent unpaid services to the siren song of high-tech big bucks?" Well, the siren song of the startup turned my head in July 2001. A mere two weeks after I started there, my little nest egg of stock that was supposed to take me to 2002 dropped 35% in one day and that turned out to be only the beginning.

So, no I didn't make it to 2002 without a return to corporate life, I still only want to be a technical writer when I grow up, the nieces have grown up but I haven't, the piping plover population on my little stretch of beach reached replacement level in the 2001 season, Jaguar died, the dendrologists still haven't finished the conifer book, and the startup came and went.

All this took place before blogging replaced online journals and personal home pages. Since then, the "personal" journaling has moved to LiveJournal and the piping plover stuff to Blogger.

My Blogs:

The Plover Warden Diaries: You guessed it, a blog about piping plovers! Really is there another bird that matters (well maybe snowy owl but only in the winter :-) )

captain peleg: The online journal on LiveJournal.

Writer in the Thick of It: A blog about working as a technical writer. Now that everybody from CEO to hod carrier to bus driver and beyond has to have a "personal brand" with a web presence in order to be considered for a job this became inevitable.