Senior Technical Writer

Lois has written both training material and documentation for a variety of products ranging from simple end-user applications to large enterprise systems. She has developed and delivered specialized FrameMaker training for engineers at HP and designed templates for HP engineering specs. She has documented both internal and external APIs for a variety of products including several document/asset management systems, software modules used by OEMs in embedded Adobe PostScript printer systems, and the Adobe PCL print language emulator for Adobe PostScript systems. Her background in both English and Computer Science makes her especially effective at writing architectural and software specifications. She enjoys being part of an engineering team and contributing to improved product design as a result of her writing activities. She has found that coming onto projects she knows little or nothing about is an advantage, because in the process of questioning to gain understanding, she asks questions no one else may have thought to ask, and can more clearly identify the fundamental assumptions upon which the product design is based, resulting in clearer documentation and sometimes, modified product design.

Lois has worked on both UNIX and Windows systems and has programmed in Pascal, C, C++, shell languages, and Java. She has been a software engineer in the HP-UX lab at Hewlett-Packard, a technical training developer at Frame Technology, and a technical writer at HP and Adobe Systems. She is a long-time skilled user and rabid proponent of FrameMaker.

Lois came to technical writing through a convoluted path that included a Bachelor's in English/Education from Indiana State University in Terre Haute, a stint as a Jr. High English teacher and Sr. High science teacher in a rural Indiana school, an introduction to computers as a keypunch operator at Grissom Air Force Base in the 1970’s, an introduction to technology as a maker of precision optics at White Sands Missile Range, where she discovered that math and lasers were fun, and a second trip through college for a Master's in Computer Science at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Her transition from software engineer to technical writer began at HP when she realized that she had enjoyed rewriting the make(1) man page more than she had enjoyed maintaining the code.

When not working, Lois enjoys singing Gregorian chant and medieval and Renaissance polyphony with the Early Music Singers at Stanford, reading a wide variety of books, threatening to write her own, taking pictures, playing the piano and organ, and assembling jigsaw puzzles—Charles Wysocki being her favorite puzzle artist. Her roots being in the Midwest, she of course also loves to sew, crochet, and make pickled beets.