Richard's Home Page

Hi, I'm not Richard. I'm Eric . . .

. . . and I'm throwing a coconut at Richard.

I am Richard; and I thank Eric for so gamely playing along as I somehow convinced his colleagues that I could carry on all of his Math Forum responsibilities -- and some of my own devising.

I help site visitors and subscribers get what they want; I edit a variety of the texts we author. Task by task, when at the office (and also sometimes when I'm not), here's what I do ...

• on demand

  as a webmaster, manage static web pages, battle linkrot, collaborate on new site projects, and analyze access_logs

  as list-owner, administer majordomo and Jive software to create, configure, and troubleshoot private and public discussion groups

  as a spam combatant, trawl those archived discussions for spam

  as a workshop facilitator, provide professional development opportunities for teachers

  as an administrator, run the Creative Writing Forum in collaboration with Drexel University's Writing Program

  as a Math Tools proto-facilitator, welcome new registrants

• every hour

  as approve, filter messages* posted via the web or newsreaders to public discussion groups that we own

  as usenet, handle bounced mail messages, subscriptions and other mailing list administration

• every day

  as a webmaster, respond* to questions and feedback we receive by e-mail*, sometimes even to constructive ends

  as a webmaster, follow up with people who've written us to research how they find our site*

• every week

  as a puzzle editor, offer editorial suggestions on future Problems of the Week* and think during Math Mondays (example thought: "How come we have these meetings on Wednesdays but call them 'Math Mondays'?")

  as a newsletter deputy editor, offer editorial suggestions for, cue up, and mail the Math Forum Internet Newsletter and the Math Tools Newsletter

  as researcher, review search engine query_logs to analyze our delivery of relevant starting points to site visitors and our spell-checking of keywords submitted to our search engine

  as list-owner, compile subscription statistics

  as an archiving subscriber, make web pages of B. Lee Clay's e-mailed Beat the Calculator mental arithmetic trick and Stan Wagon's e-mailed Macalester College Problem of the Week

• every month

  as a cybrarian-wannabe, enter math and math education web sites into the catalog database* powering our Internet Mathematics Library

  as a web page editor, offer editorial suggestions on the Internet Mathematics Library Hot Spot and other static pages

  as an untrained and meddlesome pseudo-programmer, update database code powering our listing of Workshops for Math Teachers

  asterisks (*) denote need for a secret decoder ring

I also assist the Math Forum's evaluators, for which I've developed the practice of concluding nearly all my business correspondence with "Let us know how this helps you."

For a less bullet-headed, more coherent statement of what I do at the Math Forum, as well as select "personal info," take a gander at my reply to a recent e-mail requesting my bio.

What's that you say?

• But surely, you've had a real job (and maybe some formal education) at some point in your life!
• Who have you been, and who shall you become?
• Buddhists don't have desires. What could I possibly get you as a gift?
• ¿Le gusta ir de vacaciones con un amigo?
• Please subject me to a rant about the world's game!
• Where do you live?
• Show me why you're an uncle
• Show me why you're a good uncle
• Be that way. At least let me see what background image you'd be staring at if you didn't have so many application windows piled up on top of it.

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