Contrary to what one may think, technical writing can be fun. It is also challenging. Interpreting an engineer's ideas is no simple task. While I understand the concepts of programming languages - functions, procedures, fetch, let, and so on. I also have some understanding of Electrical Engineering. I know a capacitor and a resistor when I see it. But those aren't so important as understanding slot types. There's PCI, PCI Express, AGP, PICMG, and a slew of others.

Knowing the difference is important when you are telling a person where to plug their brand new, very expensive, expansion card into.

To view samples of my work:
You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view most all of these files, to preserve the formatting. Even posting the original MS Word files results in a formatting mess. In case you're not familiar with the Acrobat Reader, the pdf extension stands for Portable Document Format. A way for people to share documents of different types, without the recipient having to own the software that the document was created with.
If you have an aversion to installing unfamiliar software, I'm right there with you. But the Acrobat Reader, Flash and Shockwave players, and the Quick Time Player are all necessary 'evils' of web surfing. None of the ones I've mentioned are harmful to your PC, may already be installed by the manufacturer of your PC, and have no Spyware or AdWare at all.

You may find it surprising that all of the material is not of a technical nature at all. It is intended to make something technical appear simple and easy to use. The intended audiences are not technicians and engineers. Try reading some of that stuff, with complex equations and waveforms. That stuff will make your head spin.

And then there are manuals that are riddled with grammatical and syntax errors. I once had an employer ask me where is the 's' in equipment to make it plural. It took a while to convince her that there is no 's' in equipment to make it plural.

That being said, I've tried to make my manuals simple. Step-by-step, without a lot of extraneous explanation.
I believe that only the Pan Tilt Camera Controller manual would have some technical terms that are unfamiliar to the average layman. However, I posted it mostly to show my drawing and illustration skills.

Here's one I can't resist. This really happened. I was working tech support and the guy on the other end of the phone was telling me that the video capture card we sold would not fit in the first slot, closest to the power supply. This was a rule of thumb that had to be drilled into this person time and again. It took about fifteen minutes for him to tell us that it would only fit if he put it in backward. After some speculation, we finally realized he was putting into an AGP slot. Those were new at the time, and we weren't using them in our product, so I'll give him that. But, if he had just opened the manual for the motherboard instead of jumping onto the phone...

I have a lot of stories like that one. I once had a fellow tell me "Real men don't read manuals!" It was all I could do to resist saying something to the effect of "No, real men write them!"

If I had a nickel for every tech support call that went,

"Sir, just right-click on the desktop."

"Okay, just let me find a pen or pencil..."

I'd be as rich as Bill Gates.

There is more to be said, more to do with this page, but I must stop for a moment and, well, do some technical writing :-)