Native Son,

I can answer your question about what a tech writer is. (You may have been looking at my profile?)

In a nutshell, tech writers are the people who write those confusing software and hardware (the actual machines) manuals that aim to show people how to use their new toys. Me, I write manuals and whatnot at Adobe (Photoshop, Pagemaker, etc.) for internal developers to understand what makes the software work.

Bruce