So, I'm sitting here in sunny San Diego (actually, it's cooler and cloudier here than it's been in Berkeley most of the past week, and boy, am I glad), sipping a freshly-brewed cup of Peet's coffee and surfing the web. I'll be here for a nice long weekend, we'll celebrate my sister's new Masters degree in high style, and I'll get to see some old friends to boot. Sometimes life is good, you know?

I got a small thrill the other day: I was on Apple's website, registering my new iPod. There was a blank for "occupation." I put down "writer." Wheee! I really can, without feeling funny about it, say that I make my living as a writer.

When I was a kid, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would always tell them I wanted to be a writer. Well, except for a brief space in 6th grade when I told everyone that I wanted to join the merchant marine, just because it scandalized my classmates, who all wanted to be rich doctors and lawyers. And there was a brief period in 8th grade or so when I wanted to be an astronomer. But mostly, I was going to be a writer, until I got to high school, when I began to have a firmer appreciation of the problems of trying to make a living by writing fiction (when I said 'writer', I meant 'fiction writer'), and decided that I was going to be a professor of chemistry.

It took me a decade to figure it out, but my five year old self had a better handle on my eventual career than my eighteen year old self. (I don't think my five year old self would be too put out by the fact that most of my income comes from technical and scientific writing, and not fiction. The key attraction for my five year old self was the idea that people would pay you just to put words on paper.)

Though really, people pay me to make Microsoft Word behave itself. And to proofread things. And to do library searches. And, every so often, to put words on paper.

So, yeah, I got an iPod. Y'all must think I do nothing but purchase consumer electronics devices. Really, I'm not normally this bad.

Back in March, when I wrote a grant proposal in 10 days, I promised myself I'd buy myself a new iPod with part of the proceeds from the job. I ended up waiting a while to actually buy the thing, because I was waiting for Apple to introduce the new models they'd announced, and because I couldn't decide what I wanted engraved on mine. Apple will engrave the back of the iPod with a line or two of text. I couldn't pass up this little bit of extra customization, but I couldn't decide what I wanted my iPod to say, either. The samples on Apple's site are all things like, "Dear Bobby - Congratulations. Love, Mom and Dad." Somehow, "Dear Me - You rock! Love, Me" didn't quite seem right. In the end, I settled for having my name engraved on it. Boring, maybe, but I'm unlikely to get tired of it.

So, yeah, the iPod is terrific. 10 GB worth of audio in a package about the size of a deck of cards. I got a little FM transmitter with it, so I can play it in my car, which means I can listen to audio books from Audible.com during my commute when I get tired of classic rock and NPR. I have enough music on it to drown out days of successive marketing meetings without repeating a song. My cubicle at work is next to the cubicle where marketing has meetings, which means that I can hear everything that goes on. Sometimes this is amusing:

Marketing Manager: So, the concept we want to get across to the customer is that the combination of [arcane scientific instrument thing] and [another arcane scientific instrument thing] makes our instrument better. So, what are some things that are better when they're combined?
[Long silence]
Marketing Person: Um, peanut butter and jelly?

But more often than not, it's distracting. Having an iPod to drown them out is a blessing.

Actually, that's the one thing I still haven't gotten used to about working in a cubicle - unless people make an effort to speak quietly, you can hear everything. This has its upsides. I've gotten useful unsolicited help from people popping into my cubicle saying, "I overheard you discussing your problem with X with so-and-so. Why don't you try doing Y?" On the other hand, when the laser printer in Marketing stops working, or someone in Purchasing calls their kids to make sure they've done their homework, I get to hear all about it.

Many people seem to have learned to screen all this stuff out, and I think I'm slowly learning to do that too.

Interestingly, one thing I can always hear very clearly, even if I've got music on my iPod and am deep in contemplation of a hardware manual, is my boss's voice saying, "There's an error in the manual we just got back from the printers." When I hear that, I freeze for a moment, and think, "Oh, pleasepleasepleaseplease, let it not be a manual I worked on. Let it not be an error that I should have caught."

It hasn't been, yet. In fact, so far, the mistakes have usually been the printers', not ours. It is, however, likely, that one of these days, a typo or something is going to get through on my watch. Hopefully, I won't overreact to the terrible blemish upon my honor as a technical writer that this will represent.

Well, I should go. Daniel's parents (who we're staying with) should be home soon, and they'll want to hear all about what I've been up to lately. Talk to you all later!!