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.
Driving Miss Loretta
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.”
Take Control of Mac OS X Backups
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.
Hands-Free Phones
I get annoyed as everyone else at people who use cell phones inappropriately—you know, during movies, while driving, or what-have-you. But lately I’ve been noticing an increase in one particular inappropriate use that baffles me. Yesterday, I got stuck in a waiting room for some time with a guy who simply could not bear to spend one minute in silence. He made and received calls continuously for at least a half hour, cutting deals, making plans, and basically involving everyone else present in the running of his business. He spoke that strange dialect MBAnglish on his phone, which in itself is quite annoying. But what truly baffled me was that because of the “hands-free” headset he was wearing, he had to use both of his hands to talk on his phone.
Here’s the picture: There’s an earbud in your ear connected by a thin cable to your phone. Inline, about six inches away from the earbud, is the microphone. Gravity and human anatomy being what they are, this microphone, left to its own devices, will hang inconveniently far from the wearer’s mouth. So everyone I’ve ever seen using one of these contraptions holds the microphone up to their mouths with one hand, while carrying the phone in the other. Thus: the two-handed “hands-free” phone.
Somehow, no one seems to notice the irony in this, the fact that you could simply ditch the headset and in so doing free up at least one of your hands. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people using these devices in this way, and I just don’t get it. If your hands aren’t free, then it’s not “hands-free.” But it seems that in some bizarre way, the users of these devices are convinced that they make it easier to talk on the phone, when in fact they make it harder.
Surely some of the blame rests with manufacturers of “hands-free” headsets, who should realize that the mouth is not located on the side of the neck. But people keep buying the things, so there’s little incentive to stop making them. On the other hand, a good bit of the blame rests with users, who would probably (in some cases at least) be pleasantly surprised to discover that the little microphone will actually pick up their voice just fine even if it’s not right in front of their mouth.
There are, of course, any number of headset designs that position the microphone closer to the mouth, many of which are even wireless. And you can set up most modern phones for voice dialing, enabling your cell phone to remain safely tucked in your pocket the whole time. Your hands could be free, they really could. But you have to take the first step. Let…go…of…the…microphone.
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