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Writing and Publishing

My Second Article Ever Published

I recently blogged about my first article ever published. This post is about my second article. But don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into a series. I have no idea what my third article was or where it was published.

Although I promised myself I’d never ever write again after my first agonizing piece, once I saw my work in print, I quickly forgot the painful birthing experience. A few short weeks later, I was again writing.

At the time, computers were emerging as accessible, viable tools. I took a computer class to learn Fortran. (A few years later, I worked briefly as a programmer using polyForth, but I digress.)

Without going into boring detail, I ended up using the College’s computer lab to write a program to do some number crunching to track down a radio station interference problem at work; it was an intense program.

This was in the days of mainframes; the computer lab assistant observed my program sucking up all the computer resources allocated to me—so he gave me more! Still it took a couple hours to run.

Eventually, I wrote an article about it called, “Computers Track Down Intermodulation Interference,” published in Mobile Radio Technology magazine. The editors even sent a photographer to snap some pictures, which they included in the article. This was all heady stuff for a wet-behind-the-ears techno-geek.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, the program worked great, but the reams of output brought us no closer to figuring out the cause of the interference.

At least I got an article out of it.

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Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

By Peter Lyle DeHaan

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, publishes books about business, customer service, the call center industry, and business and writing.