Howdy, I'm Katie Kearns. I've been hanging around on various tech writing lists (techwr-l, HATT, etc) for a while, though I think the past several years I've mostly just lurked. I'm currently working as a software engineer on an XML-based content system. I slowly gravitated to that job over the course of about 5 years or so, from being a technical writer.
My degree is actually in Molecular Biology, but after a year of grad school (I was aiming for a PhD in biophysics, but the situation just didn't work out) I moved out to silicon valley about 8 years ago to mingle with the other geeks. I've been using computers since I was six (yay VIC-20!) and it was so exciting to move out here and see all the tech companies I knew and loved. The weather and the beaches and mountains don't hurt either. ;) I ended up interning as a technical writer and stayed at the same company ever since, working on all sorts of different things, from admin to end user, printed guides, online-only guides, online help, interactive flash documentation, internal guides and training, and designing a propietary XML-based help system for one of our hardware systems. Now, like I said, I'm working on another XML-based system, mostly writing HTML, CSS, XSLT, and XSL-FO to display the content in various outputs.
While I'm not doing a lot of writing right now, I still want to keep up to date on the tech writing trends, since I'm on the team responsible all for the tools and processes our writers use.
I like reading (mostly online stuff these days, and science magazines), playing with my kids, astronomy (I haven't gone out with the telescope in a while, though), traveling (when I can... see "kids" above), computer games (when I can), hockey, and cooking. And yeah, I wish I never sold my C-64 either! I also always fantisize about getting back into science again, but I guess I'm taking the extremely long route back to it. ;)
-Katie
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