scratchwriting.com

Web Designer, Webmaster, Project Manager

2009 - Present

The City of Clarksburg is tucked away in the hills of north central West Virginia.  Clarksburg (pop 16,743*) is the County Seat for Harrison County (pop 68,652*). Clarksburg is located at the intersection of two heavily traveled highways and the second busiest interchanges in the state; Interstate 79 and U.S. Route 50. Clarksburg enjoys the amenities of the largest city in the region with the advantages of a small hometown community.

In 2009, I was hired to redesign the existing website of The City of Clarksburg.  In June of 2010, I am happy to report the website has been made live.  Moreover, it appears I will be maintaining the website as well as training various department heads (e.g., Fire Chief, Chief of Police, Finance Director, City Manager, etc.) on how to get the most out of their new Joomla-based website.

This is a very exciting opporutnity for Scratch Writing, Inc. to say the least. 

Web Designer, Webmaster, Project Manager

2009 - Present

Established in 2007, UTEC represents regulated utilities that provide more than 1,500,000 West Virginia customers with reliable electric, natural gas, solid waste, telecommunications and water utility service.

UTEC’s objective is to inform and educate government and business leaders on matters of public policy; to create a positive business environment and enhance our ability to provide safe and reliable utility service to customers.

I was hired by UTEC in spring of 2009 to redesign their existing website and rebuild it on a Joomla-powered content management system. The site went live in Fall 2009.  I continue to serve as part-time webmaster.

Film Critic

2005 - Present

HauntedHouses.com is a website produced by The Web Network, a company based in Las Vegas.  I write film reviews for this website as well as the ocassional feature article on — you guessed it — haunted houses!  

I met the owners of this website, Tom and Julie Carr, when they were swinging through Western Pennsylvania on a Haunted House roadtrip which began in Los Angels, Calif.  We grabbed a bite to eat at The Harmony Inn, a real haunted house in Harmony, Pa.

Highlights of this experience include the following:

• Swinging through North Carolina's Outerbanks gathering materials, taking photos, and composing notes about many of the haunted light houses and sea faring legends that are famous in this pristine 170-mile long barrier island chain.

Click the folder above to print samples of my film reviews and articles for HauntedHouses.com....

Web Designer, Managing Editor

Jan. 2007 - Present

AcrossRoss.com (www.AcrossRoss.com) is a community webmagazine serving Ross Township, West View Borough and the greater North Hills area of Pittsburgh.  I created and launched the webiste in January 2007.  The site was converted to the Joomla content mangement system in the fall of 2009.  The examples here are from the legacy site only (i.e., predating the CMS-driven look and feel). 

Technical Writer, Webmaster

2005 -  2010

The Institute for Software Research (ISR) in the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science (SCS) is the focal point for research and education in Software Engineering (SE) and Computation, Organizations and Society (COS).

Within ISR, I worked as a technical writer from 2005 to 2010.  My duties included the following:

• Wrote and led the development of help manuals, user guides, process documentation, brochures and quick start guides for suite of organizational analysis software.

• Interviewed subject matter experts; assisted faculty in drafting book chapters and technical papers; interacted with software development teams; built datasets and network models.

• Served as department webmaster; custom coded pages, formatted images and text for website; communicated new software releases to various third parties.

• Updated social and scientific wikis relating to department research.  

Freelance Writer

1995 - 2005

For over 200 years, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been providing the people of Pittsburgh with breaking local news, sports, insightful editorials, national and global coverage, classifieds and countless helpful hints. Today, more people read the Post-Gazette than any other newspaper in Western Pennsylvania.

From approximately 1995 to 2005, it is nice to know I had a part in about 10 of those years.  As a freelance writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, my duties included the following:

• Suggested and wrote stories of local interest.
• Attended assigned school board and municipality meetings as directed.
• Interviewed local school board and municipality personalities.

Highlights of this experience include the following:

• Writing a feature on a popular local barber recovering from a heart attack.
• Co-authoring a front page story on the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act (a law about public disclosure of meetings).
• Writing a feature about a community symphonic band that has touched so many musically talented residents in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh.

Click the folder above to print these stories...