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About altecocker
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Member:
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Howard Miller
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Epinions.com ID:
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altecocker
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Location:
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Tuscaloosa
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Member Since:
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Oct 17 '04
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Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 60
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Member Visits: 2,179
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Total Visits: 40,144
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About altecocker
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Taught psychotherapy, psychological/psychiatric diagnosis, psychopharmacology, Public Health (as adjunct at UAB) for over thirty years. Now in private practice and writing. Writing, as an amateur and professional has always been a love, hobby, part of my academic, professional and personal life. It is fun, therapeutic, and sometimes generates a little money. I dabbled in teaching a course in technical writing for a while, but it wasn't a very popular course. For one thing (despite a penchant for accumulating degrees and professions) it was presumptuous of me to teach so far out of my professional fields. For another thing, I am an unregenerate pedant. I actually demanded proper grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling. I also preferred the product to say what it intended and in a form that the reader could digest. Even professional and graduate students found these prejudices a bit harsh. So, with little regret from my students, but a touch of sadness from me, I went back to my own fields.
The discovery of Epinions has been my most recent joy, and the bane of my existence because I am devoting a lot of time that could be more profitably spent, even in other writing endeavors. It started because I had something that I thought was important to point out about a vendor. I had no idea that it could be so much fun or that it even had a prospect of generating any money.
I am happily married for more years than I like to contemplate. We had three wonderful adult children. The most indescribable tragedy befell us about a year ago. Our wonderful, bright, beautiful, kind, son, our youngest, died suddenly of a ravishing cancer at 23. Writing is now an even more furious distraction from this horror. We had been the most truly blessed couple possible for nearly forty years. We still have two wonderful daughters and take solace in that.
I have decided to share this in my public biography because it is the most dominant thing in my life (and that of my wife and daughters). I couldn't describe anything about myself that omitted that fact. We do, though, have a beautiful, smart, sweet, (but diabetic) granddaughter who contributes a great deal to the many positive things left in our lives.
Epinions has been a marvelous distraction.
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