Finding Relations

I am in a good mood today and I'm making you, the reader of this post, a promise. Here it is. I will answer this prompt prior to the end of this post:

So who [of the Big Bang Theory characters] do you relate to the most? 

To answer that prompt, here's another question for you. Where were you yesterday and 24 years ago?

I was at 200 5th Avenue in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for a job interview at Network Data Processing (NDP). A friend of ours had gotten drunk at our New Year's Eve party on 12/31/1994 and told me all about how great NDP was, which is where he worked. Long story short, my interview was at 8 AM and before noon, I had accepted a job offer from John Millard - I was hired for my first technical writing position on the same day as my interview. These are the companies I have worked at as a technical writer:
NDP
Jordan Systems
Quintrex
the Unnamed Hellhole in southern Iowa
Pearson
University of Iowa, which is where I work now. I spend my workday adding my experience and expertise to two major projects: Disaster Recovery documentation and Knowledge Management.

When I have worked as a technical writer for 24 years, 1 day. My personal plan is to work another 17 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days (6255 days) here in this department. If I do that, I will reach 20 years of service at the University of Iowa. I will be 66 years, 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days as my 66th birthday will be 12/4/2035, but I would need another 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days (115 days) to reach that 20 years of service milestone.

Over the course of the last 24 years, I have met and gotten to know many fellow technical writers through the Techwr-L list. Tony Chung is one such technical writer - this is his website that I've browsed in the past: https://tonychung.ca/. I know that over the years of my technical writing career, I've corresponded with Tony off-list. I don't know when we have or how often - it's just one of those things I know and you should accept my statements without question! 

It was on Friday, 2/8/2019, when Tony referenced The Big Bang Theory in one of his posts to Techwr-L. His comments about one of my favorite sitcoms prompted me to send Tony an off-list response. I included some links to Youtube.com videos during which Sheldon gives other characters instructions. That IS technical writing - my technical writing jobs have always been about software documentation, which involves a lot of writing instructions that instruct a user how to complete a task within software. While my current two projects are not directly tied to writing software documentation, there is a possibility that I may be able to do so . . . but it's too early to speculate on the likelihood of it happening - it COULD happen, it probably SHOULD happen, but I don't know for certain WHEN it will happen. Regardless, for the majority of the last 8767 days, I have earned a paycheck through working as a technical writer.

Which leads me back to Tony's email and my reply on Friday. I included 2 links (embedded for your convenience). First, there was Sheldon giving Raj instructions:

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And then there was Sheldon giving Penny instructions:

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I really chuckle when I watch that video because it includes this classic line from Penny.

All of that brings me to today. When I got to work today and checked my Techwr-L email account, I read Tony's reply. I immediately began to compose a response, but stopped myself, pasted the original draft of my reply into this blog post and started constructing what you have read to this point. To tie the conclusion of this post to the opening, it was Tony's prompt that caused me to spit these 774 words into this post. Here's my answer:

1. I am not exuding self-confidence (Leonard)
2. I hear a lot of fancy words that people might think I understand but I sometimes don’t but I’m hesitant to call attention to that (Penny)
3. I have a deep affection for comic books, super heroes, Star Wars, and other beloved franchises (Sheldon)
4. I was never a ladies man (Raj)
5. I had a somewhat overbearing mother, though not nearly as overbearing as Mrs. W, and I also married the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met (Howard)
6. I am not usually “thought of” when my friends are constructing plans (Stuart)
7. I am tall (Bert)