'IT's' been a pleasure. (Letters: our readers respond).

THANKS FOR SAYING so many nice things about me ("Passion Nonpareil," PC FAB, March 2003). Yes, I approached my job with passion, originally as an IT (important things) reporter and later as a comic strip creator.

Important technological developments were all over the place when I started, and I felt passionate and privileged being in a position to inform a whole lot of readers about new and ITs like AOI, high-aspect ratio drilling, permanganate desmearing, plating additives, multilayer boards, dry-film laminators, turkey bag technology and a lot of seemingly ITs that turned out to be nonpareil duds. Late in the last century my passion was sorely tried when technological achievements started playing second fiddle to the more ITs of corporate mergers, IPOs and stock prices. Somehow, listening to a quarterly report of a corporation's earnings didn't thrill me as much as interviewing a laser inventor or a guy who knew how to make 101-layer boards. Then, on the advice of their patent attorneys, those kinds dried up, and I turned to the reliable comic strip to grab my readers' attention.

Was I being frivolous? No, serious. Most newspapers have at least a page of comics; even the Wall Street Journal has a cartoon. And while some comic strips are just fun, and others involve serious family problems, and still others semi-philosophical, every panel of every strip is populated with people or humanoid animals. Put together these ITs and it is clear that peeking in on the foibles and fears and fun other people are having provides the reader an islet of relief from that day's media hype. So, as you said, I became a PCB storyteller, and my stories were about the industry's people. The IT about this was that my stories were widely read, e.g., people used to say, "I open PC FAB to your Backboard, and then I go to the table of contents." Am I bragging? Maybe, but the IT to keep in mind is making your magazine consistently and sufficiently readable to grab and hold readers' attention from start to finish.

Now that I'm shed of the circuit board industry, my passion for work is being diluted by too many neglected ITs. Like the termites in the rafter, a leaking water heater, a 15-year-old granddaughter who looks 20, a 20-year-old grandson who behaves like a 15-year-old, a dog that never quits barking at strangers, a tenant who's late with his rent, a fence about to fall, a bunch of antiques I don't like, a wife who wants to keep working another four years, what to fix her for dinner tonight, the Padres, whether one of our daughters should go to Costa Rica with some jerk, a doctor's appointment I don't want to miss, and finding a worthy outfit for which I can volunteer to do ITs. And then there's my primary IT--finding out who was supposed to be taking care of ITs like these while I was busy working.

Jerry Murray

Ed.: Murray is the former West Coast Editor of PC FAB and Circuits Assembly.