New Tech Night Owl Live interview: Take Control of Mac OS X Backups–recording no longer available (December 17, 2004)

Well, that’s it. The bags have been packed, the out-of-office replies activated, the cat taken to the sitter’s house. We’re off in mere minutes for our long-awaited trip to Patagonia! Stories and pictures in the new year.

New TidBITS article: The Evolution of Scrolling: Reinventing the Wheel (2004-12-13)

As if rescuing chickens were not enough, I’ve just had yet another of those surreal experiences that seem to make my world go around.

Morgen is the Development Director for a nonprofit organization called Death Penalty Focus, and for months she’s been planning a major fundraiser that will take place this evening: a comedy event called “Stand-Up for Justice.” Several big-name comedians are participating. Actor Mike Farrell (Providence, M*A*S*H), who’s the president of the organization, will be acting as emcee, and will be joined by a number of other V.I.P. guests—including M*A*S*H costar Loretta Swit.

So yesterday Morgen called me from work in a panic to ask me if I could do her a favor. Would I be willing to be a chauffeur? I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so she said, “We need someone to pick up Loretta Swit from the airport and drive her to her hotel.” The whole notion that a mere mortal should perform such a task was difficult for me to accept, but I agreed.

And so I did. The trip was completely uneventful; Loretta was perfectly nice, and that was pretty much that. I have had only a few close encounters with celebrities in my life, and I don’t really grasp the protocol and etiquette appropriate for interacting with the rich and famous. I’m not one to be star-struck, and I have no interest in autographs, pictures, and the like. I just want to be sure I don’t make a fool of myself or cause offense, and I think I succeeded in that.

Plus, now Loretta Swit can tell all her friends that she met that famous author Joe Kissell. “He was very down-to-earth,” she’ll say. “If I hadn’t known he was famous, I would have thought he was just an ordinary guy.”

New review: Review of Take Control of Panther, Volume 1 by David Weeks at MyMac.com, with a 5 out of 5 rating (December 2, 2004)

New TidBITS article: Choosing Backup Software (2004-12-06)

I’m happy to report that my fourth ebook, Take Control of Mac OS X Backups, is now shipping.

When I began writing, I fully expected it to be a quick, easy, 50-page book. Many weeks later, I found I had to leave out a fair bit of interesting material just to keep it under 100 pages. But I’m pleased with the result; it’s the only reference of its kind for Mac OS X. My goal was to cut through all the confusion and marketing hype about backup software and hardware, giving readers sane, helpful, and comprehensible advice on how to keep their data safe. If you’re a Mac OS X user, I think you’ll find the book extremely useful—and a bargain, too, at $10.

Although writing Take Control ebooks sometimes requires me to put in long hours and late nights, I find this writing some of the most enjoyable and rewarding work I do. Compared to my other current sources of income, these ebooks generate the best ratio of reward to effort. I’m looking forward to doing several more in 2005, most notably a Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) edition of my Take Control of Upgrading title, which was extremely popular around the time Mac OS X 10.3 Panther was released.