Kirsten Mortensen's blog

Late last night, after a negotiating a harrowing technological labyrinth on and off for several days, I managed to upgrade to the latest Wordpress version on my golf blog, Golfolicious.

It shouldn’t have been hard. I’ve put up a half dozen WordPress sites at this point; for the installation, my preference is Fantastico, an application deployment tool bundled with many hosting services. You pretty much click a button and you’re done. Even better, when it’s time to upgrade, you can use the same tool.

My Golfolicious WordPress instance, however, wasn’t originally installed using Fantastico — so I hesitated trying to use the tool to upgrade.

I could have done a manual upgrade, but the instructions published in the Wordpress codex were long, complex, and included steps that I would have had to research further to fully understand.

Finally, I hit on another idea. I own the .net and .org versions of the domain name, as well as the .com. Maybe I could install a current version on the .net, transfer my theme, posts, and comments over, and then point the .com to the .net when I was done?

Call that plan B. Plan A, executed only when I’d done enough research on Plan B to satisfy myself that it was viable, was to try Fantastico.

I did. Didn’t work. Broke the site. Took me awhile to backtrack enough to make it somewhat usable again.

Plan B, OTOH, worked like a charm — particularly since the WordPress Wizards, my heroes, have built in handy import/export tools that make it extremely simple to transfer posts & comments between blogs/URLs/host servers.

Is there anything they haven’t thought of?

I heart WordPress!

And while I’m at it, I also heart Hostgator, my hosting service. Their chat tech support staff are awesome. They are patient, they are cheerful, they take the initiative to do a little extra research if needed to make sure an issue is resolved satisfactorily — my experience with them has really been top notch.

So thanks for all your help as I wrestled through that upgrade, Hostgator!

Now I need to catch up on golf blog posts. I put one up after I finished the upgrade last night — post about a late June trip to play a couple of courses at the Turning Stone resort. Scroll down to see my photo of a wild turkey :-)

Okay, some of these kinds of forward-by-email jokes are kind of lame, but this one is spot-on — it HAD to be written by someone who actually knows rural Upstate.

Some of them really zinged me — just spot on: 4, 10, 22, 24, 36, 43, 45, 51, 61, 64.

And of course, 30. Because even after years of being gentrified by Rochester ‘burb living, I am proud of having Chenango County roots — I have a better grasp on reality for having grown up there, if I do say so myself :-)

Enjoy!

1. Your idea of a traffic jam is 10 cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway

2. “Vacation” means going to Syracuse for the weekend

3. You measure distance in hours

4. You know several people who have hit deer more than once

5. You often switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day

6. You stay in your house most of the summer because you aren’t used to the heat

7. You drive at 55 mph through 10 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching

8. You see people wearing hunting clothes at social events

9. You install security lights on your house and garage but leave both unlocked

10. One of your neighbors constantly has bonfires

11. You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them

12. There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at the supermarket at any given time

13. Your idea of a huge party is one with lots of cheap beer and some people you go to school with

14. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled in with snow

15. You think sexy lingerie is silk pajamas from wal-mart

16. You know 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, cold, construction

17. It takes you 2 hours to go to the store for one item even when you’re in a rush because you have to stop and talk to everyone in town

18. At least 6 people that you see a day have beards and stains on the front of their shirt

19. Cows are just part of the scenery

20. You or someone you know has a car that sounds like a big truck and can barely make it 20 miles yet no one says anything about it.

21. At least fives times in your normal travel day you will pass or be passed by a beat-up, old ass car that has had an attempted pimping out, such as a brand new oversized spoiler on a rust covered trunk, spinning HUBCABS, or everyones favorite, the performance exhaust on a car running on barely three cylinders.

22. You know that the phrase, “Goin up ta,” applies to going north, south, east, or west, up or down in elevation, and pretty much any other way you can travel.

23. The smell of freshly spread cow manure doesn’t bother you.

24. Its perfectly normal for your life’s aspirations to be working for the county.

25. Getting “dressed up” means tucking your shirt into your jeans and putting on clean work boots.

26. Holloween costumes are always designed around a snowsuit and winter boots.

27. You appreciate the delicacy known as Croghan Bologna, and serve it at all social gatherings.

28. On the same platter as the Croghan Bologna is a selection of flavored cheese curd, which you also love.

29. You know damn well that the verizon guy didn’t walk through your town going, “can you hear me now” because reception is, at best, limited.

30. Your proud of your redneck-ness and where your from.

31. You can name everyone you graduated with.

32. You know what 4-H is.

33. You ever went to a party that was held about 20 miles down a deserted dirt road.

34. You used to drag “main.”

35. You said the ‘F’ word and your parents knew within an hour.

36. You schedule parties around the schedule of different police officers since you know which ones would bust you.

37. You never went or thought about going cow-tipping.

38. School gets canceled for a sports team going to State

39. You could never buy cigarettes cause all the store clerks knew how old you were.

40. When you did find someone old enough to buy smokes for you, you had to drive down country backroads to smoke them.

41. You never missed a Homecoming parade.

42. You still go home for Homecoming.

43. It was cool to date someone from a neighboring town.

44. You had a senior skip day.

45. The whole school went to the same party after graduation.

46. You can’t help but date a friend’s ex.

47. Your car is always filthy from the dirt roads.

48. You think that kids who ride skateboards are weird.

49. The town next to you is considered “trashy” or “snotty” when it is just like your town.

50. Getting paid minimum wage is considered a raise.

51. You refer to anyone with a house newer than 1980 as the “rich people.”

52. The people in the big city dress funny then you pick up on the cool new trend two years later.

53. You bragged to your friends because you got pipes on your truck for your birthday.

54. On Fridays, anyone you want to find can be found at Main Street or the Dairy Queen.

55. Weekend excitement involves a trip to RiteAid.

56. Even the ugly people enter beauty contests.

57. You decide to walk for exercise and 5 people pull over and ask you if you need a ride.

58. Your teachers call you by your older sibling’s name.

59. The closest “cool stores” are at least 45 miles away.

60. The local phone book has only one yellow page.

61. You leave your jacket on the back of the chair in the
cafe, and when you go back the next day, it’s still there, on the same chair.

62. You don’t signal turns because everyone knows where you’re going, anyway.

63. You call a wrong number and they supply you with the correct one.

64. You have to name six surrounding towns to explain to
people where you’re from.

65. Driving to the party on a four wheeler is quite normal.

66. The town population increases by one-third when the universities go on break.

67. When somebody says “Thats billy fucillo HUGE” you know exactly what they are talking about

68. You laugh your head off reading this because you know it’s true and then forward it to everyone in your address book, which is actually half your town.

I have been mulling this video, linked by Instapundit the other day, in which Glenn Reynolds interviews Margaret Flowers, M.D., co-chair of the Maryland branch of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Flowers seems, at first gloss, to make a pretty convincing argument. The gist of her case is that the current system is too complex and onerous. There are some 1300 different health insurance companies. Processing associated paperwork costs physicians’ practices $70,000 annually. Because insurers are trying to make a profit, they are inherently inclined to short patients on care.

A single-payer system would simplify the process for both doctors and patients, she says. She also says Medicare reimburses physicians at rates that are roughly on par with reimbursement rates of private insurers — the implication being that physicians would earn just as much if we extend Medicare to all Americans.

Since it would be a public system, you’d dispense with issues related to profit motives.

The flaws in her case are some of the same ones I’ve made here before.

A biggie: centralized systems are more vulnerable to corruption.

And while Flowers insists people will still have the right to choose their doctors, etc., what they won’t have is the right to opt out of health insurance  — and paying for it — altogether.

I do sympathize with her in one respect: doctors aren’t really in the driver’s seat when it comes to the patient/insurance/physician relationship. The insurers are.

That seems to me to be the fundamental issue.

If physicians had more power, they could “force” insurers to cover expenses based on the physicians’ evaluation of patients’ needs. They could force insurers to standardize their paperwork. Etc.

So here’s what’s interesting.

Physicians’ ability to band together and advocate for themselves is limited — by none other than the federal government.

Specifically, the National Labor Relations Board, as described by this 1998 article from Physician’s News Digest.

The critical issue for physicans is that only employees can unionize, and depending on the situation, the NLRB often classifies physicians as supervisors; if they are independent contractors they are also denied the right to organize.

So there you have it. Flowers, like everyone else, realizes there’s a problem. But she has failed to ask the right question. Therefore the solution she’s proposed is trapped in the deep dark confines of the proverbial box.

Perhaps physicians should look instead at the Labor Management Relations Act.

Maybe they should advocate that an 80-year old law be updated (repeal is probably too much to wish for!) so that it better serves the American people.

I mean, think about the last time the topic of insurance came up between you and your doctor. He/she feels completely helpless, right?

That isn’t right.

So why not upset the status quo by actually challenging it.

The exact opposite of handing even more control over to Washington.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Okay, this lesson will probably end up being the shortest, because it’s the one that interests me least ;-)

But I have to include it I suppose, even though most of what I’ll post here should go without saying.

1. Know your audience — and write to it. If you’re targeting executives, for instance, make sure the content is written to a suitably high level. What does your audience care about? How will the story benefit them? Mess this up, and the piece is a waste of your time — and everyone else’s.

2. Lucid organization. This ought to be a no-brainer, but I’ve seen case studies that fail miserably on this count, so I’m including it. The content has to follow some kind of logical structure. Don’t expect a reader to follow points that jump back and forth in time, for instance, unless you explicitly explain that you’ll be jumping back and forth in time (and why). Speaking of which, a timeline is probably your best structural fallback. Case studies are stories — they’re narratives. Pick a point at which the story began, tell that first, then tell what happened next, etc. (I nearly always conduct my interviews using that framework as well, incidentally — it helps with content organization as well as content communciation.)

3. Style guidelines. Most larger corporations will have selected a particular style guide (AP most likely) and will expect you to adhere to it. If not, suggest that they do. Then follow it.

Okay. That’s enough for now. Notice that I didn’t mention grammar, because I’m going to tackle that in a dedicated post. Ditto for sentence structure.

I think Lesson 2, however, will discus “the case study lodestar.”

Can you guess what that lodestar is?

Update: Click here for installment #2.

Here’s a thought to chew on: the larger/more centralized the government, the more unwieldy the laws.

As per this excellent piece by Richard Fernandez, who in turn riffs off Mark Steyn’s observation that “Thousand page bills . . . are the death of representative government.”

I can’t imagine holding a Congressional seat and voting on bills I haven’t read or don’t understand. But it’s a routine occurance — you can bet on it.

Yet another reason we need to bring Washington to heel.

We learn by doing, and something I’ve been doing for over 15 years now is writing customer case studies.

Clients I’ve worked for know that I’m good.

They can tell by the quality of the finished product.

But what makes a particular case study “good”?

I’m willing to bet not many people can answer that question. Not beyond the obvious. “Grammatically correct.” Stuff like that. Ho hummity dum.

But I can.

In fact, when I started jotting down some ideas on this topic, I was surprised at how much I do know — and by how much I’m able to articulate.

How could this surprise me, you ask?

Well, I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but for me the act of writing takes place on the thin film that separates awareness from . . . whatever it is that’s down there below awareness. It isn’t an act of intellect; it isn’t something I control.

Sometimes I can feel ideas as they begin to organize themselves “down there.” More often, that thin film is essentially opaque — whatever is going on below is hidden.

As ideas begin to break up through into my awareness, I sometimes catch glimpses of them. Sometimes the impression is visual–not pictures, but abstract shapes. More often the sensation is kinesthetic. I’ll get excited about something or pulled toward a particular idea and suddenly it shapes itself into words.

And I start typing really really fast :-)

I write in bursts for this reason: when things are ready to come out, they come out in near-finished form. (If I try to write before they’re ready, the writing itself is more cumbersome; the process is forced; the draft will need more rewriting. Sometimes even to the level of re-organization, which is particularly tedious, bleck.) (Which isn’t to say that I sit around waiting for “inspiration” or some such My Little Pony nonsense. Just that there is a gestation period, no doubt about it.)

Anyway. My goal here is not to write a long post about me or my Creative Process ;-P

My point is, this all happens really really quickly. I make “decisions” about what I’m going to write and how I’m going to write it, but the decisions themselves don’t have time to become verbalized.

Yet they are “decisions.”

Some are specific to the particular piece I’m writing. I might choose a particular word because the customer I’ve interviewed uses it; by overlapping the story’s vocabulary with the customer’s, I’m making it more his/hers — I’m also adding a note of authenticity to counterbalance the marketing messaging that is also part of the recipe.

In other cases, the decisions I make are more general — they relate more to the craft of writing customer case studies than to the specific piece.

Generally, I don’t need to document those decisions as I make them.

Ergo, I don’t pay much attention to them.

But if I slow down and think about it, I can verbalize them.

I can also turn them into tips :-)

So that’s what I’m doing. And I’ve got ten of them. (Miraculous how tips tend to show up in groups of ten, isn’t it. Nothing to do with how many fingers I have, I swear.)

I’ll post them here over the next few days as I find time to write them out.

Back soon!

We do! We do!

The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are saying Congress must make major changes this year.

Isn’t it nice to know that Congress and our President are complying with the wishes of the American people lobbyists representing wily wealthy special interests?

Do click and read, because the article traces exactly why those groups want “reform.” Big surprise: their motives aren’t particularly altruistic.

I’ve held off blogging about some of the assertions being tossed around about the House healthcare bill. I wanted to wait until some of the dust had settled.

But I see that Investor’s Business Daily is standing by a claim it made last week that the bill would “outlaw private insurance.”

IBD, facing challenges from folks who say it overstated this point, has been busy checking its claim since it first ran that editorial.

It’s confirmed that the claim is correct.

Private insurance would no longer exist, because all insurers would be required to operate within a federal government-controlled health insurance “exchange.”

The government, through an unelected health choices commissioner, will set premiums, dictate benefits, determine deductibles and establish coverage. Exchange participants will be required to insure anyone who asks to be covered and to accept all renewals. [Republican Rep. Paul] Ryan believes the weight of the mandates will mean only five or six providers will be able to survive and sell coverage in the exchange.

Washington Dems are claiming that this “exchange” will be a health insurance market. But as the article states,

A true market is the sum of the voluntary choices of consumers and sellers acting on their own, free of government coercion. A market cannot be created or managed by one man or woman, or a team of bureaucrats, even with the help of a large staff by Washington standards working around the clock.

Anything that is primarily steered by the hand of the government rather than the price signals that free markets so efficiently process on a daily basis would be an agency of the state.

I am sick to my stomach about this bill.

Yes, people get sick, they get hit upside the head with huge medical bills, and that’s an awful thing.

But to think that this administration uses our fear to corral us into a healthcare system it alone defines and controls –

A system that will decide what kind of care we will get, which procedures and therapies are “approved,” which are banned.

It’s a nightmare.

How is it that a country that prides itself on personal freedom is prepared to submit to such a nightmarish power grab?

When did we become such sheep?

Only I’m not sure which one. Anybody know?

Definitely Cerambycidae, based on the body shape, showiness, length of the antennae, etc., but this particular one’s not in my copy of Petersen’s field guide to NA insects, and I can’t find a pic of it on the ‘net, either . . .