No Middle Name

People keep asking me, “So what do you DO at your new job?”
I send email. LOTS of it. There are about 70,000 members that receive our enewsletters (3 of them), letters, and announcements. Then there are a whole bunch of people who we would like to become members who have signed up for free access to the magazine site. In exchange, they gave us their email addresses and told us we could mail them. So we do.

The big thing I was working on last week was promoting the Breakthrough of the Year issue and online coverage, which included a video and podcast. It is available for free at: http:www.sciencemag.org/sciext/btoy2005/

I sent out the email announcement to members and non-members (Hey, who doesn’t want free content? Especially when it’s relevant to you.)

I also created banner ads that are running on the websites of the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Yahoo! News. I made one that blinks, just to annoy Herb.

Spanish language post

At Slashdot

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Originally uploaded by Alisonchilla.

Collapsing on a bench sounded like a good idea to me too. Three days of Christmas is fun, but a lot of present-opening.
For Christmas I got:

• An iPod Nano – whee! Photos and songs in the smallest thing ever. I am pleased. I have also found the They Might Be Giants podcast, and am enjoying.
• Work clothes. Because now I have “blue jeans days” given to me as a privilege, not a right.
• The Maxx comic books – was missing a few from my collection. Er, more than I thought, actually
• A Russian babushka knicknack. Mom, what WERE you thinking?
• Strunk and White, Elements of Style – the illustrated version
• Candy, books, jewelry, and a CD or two

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Originally uploaded by Alisonchilla.

When I went home for Christmas, my first-grade cousin Chad showed off his newly decorated room. Go Sox! Had to have been a ton of work for my uncle, who sketched the whole thing out on graph paper, then did the paint job himself. The lights glow in the dark, and the scoreboard is done in chalkboard paint so you can keep score with the game. One of the windows is adorned with the numbers of retired players, the other with the pennant years (velcroed on so they can make room for future wins, of course).