About

I’m a writer and I work as a communications manager in Portland, Oregon. I write about

• My last name is a little hard to spell.
• I had a piece called “Principles of Cost-Effective Candy Extraction” in McSweeney’s.
• Ragan.com profiled my sustainability communications work in 2008 in a story called “How to Sell ‘Green’ Internally“
• Stuff I’ve written for O’Reilly Media (That’s Tim O’Reilly, not Baba O’Reilly, or worse, Bill O’Reilly)
• I wrote a piece called “Growing Your Own” for Forbes ASAP. No, it isn’t about pot.
• I commute to work by bike as often as I can. Here’s a 200-word paean to bike commuting I wrote that won a prize in a bike commuting essay contest.
• I wrote about solar highways as part of my day gig.
• My attempt to write the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels (a.k.a. the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest) — anthologized in a book.
• The incredibly obscure academic book I coauthored a long time ago
• I wrote a newspaper column for four years. Many of my old columns are still online, thanks to the Internet Archive. See The Ethernaut page for more.

Even Less Important Info:

• Astrological sign: Pisces
• Enneagram number: 7
• Chinese birth year: Horse
• Body mass index: 22.82 (Note: I may not update this number very often)
• Favorite hockey team: Toronto Maple Leafs (I often feel the need to apologize for this.)
• Languages I’m in the process of forgetting: Unix, vi, French, Chicago Manual of Style

Selected anagrams of my name:

• Chat John Ow
• Act John Who
• Act John How
• Cat John Who
• Cat John How
• Hat Cow John
• Haw Cot John
• At Chow John

Recent biorhythm:

Numerological Data:

• Life Path: 11
• Expression: 1
• Soul Urge: 6

E-mail me: johnochwat <at> gmail