I looked at the few basic options, and as a fan of salted caramel ice cream, figured I'd just get a plain salted caramel.

Me: "I'll have a salted caramel."

Person behind counter: "Do you want salt on that?"

"No. Wait. I want the salted caramel."

"Right. Do you want salt on that?"

"It doesn't come with salt?"

"No."

"But it's called salted caramel. Why doesn't it have salt on it?"

"Some of our customers don't like salt."

"But it's called…ok. Yes, I'd like salt please."

She picks up a strange plunger instrument and depresses it several times on top of the froz-gurt. Fine salt comes out. It looks like table salt.

My friend and I went outside to sit. I started fulminating on the injustice of it. My friend pointed out that some people do, indeed, not like the salt.

"They should call it unsalted caramel, then," I retorted and took a bite.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Too salty."

Can you find them all?

.

.

.

.

.

• A knife is shown, not scissors. (A knife is the right tool; it's far easier to use and much safer.)
• Artichokes are flower buds, and the "leaves" surrounding them are properly called bracts (but definitely not petals, which are part of blooming flowers).
• The knife, as shown, could easily cut fingers underneath. (Okay, that's borderline. But it's not the right way to hold that flower bud safely.)
• The "petals" do not have one collective "tip": it should be "tips of petals [bracts]."

Who knew so much could go so wrong so briefly?

My favorite story from the show starts with when I landed at SFO. At baggage claim, I turned on Find My Friends, an iOS app that Apple released some months ago. I'd barely used it before except to test. I received a group temporary request that would let me see a bunch of fellow writers during the show. I accepted it, and shortly thereafter saw that my friend was in Brisbane, Calif. Now, the only reason to be in Brisbane is because you're driving somewhere.

I texted her to see if she (a Macworld editor) was on her way to or from the airport. It turns out she and fellow editor Dan were coming to pick up yet another editor, and my buddy, Lex. I knew Lex was arriving on Wednesday, but hadn't thought to ask him when. He was landing a few minutes from when we texted and his baggage claim was feet away. I walked over, met Ren and Dan, and then we met Lex.

I had a lovely drive into the city to my hotel, where Jeff Carlson (my Seattle pal) was there with his mom and daughter. Jeff and daughter Ellie were visiting his mother in Dixon, and Jeff and I were rooming together. I texted him that we were en route, so he delayed his mom's departure so I could see her. (I love his mom.)

We pull up and Jeff, Ellie, and his mom Susan come out, along with Adam and Tonya Engst, my friends and TidBITS/Take Control publishers from Ithaca, also staying at the hotel. Moments later, I meet Michael Cohen, a TidBITS editor who I hadn't yet met in the flesh. (Not everyone is in the picture.)

From there it was off to two different parties and then a staff dinner, which involved miles of walking in moderate weather. The next morning, I interviewed Susan Orlean on the Main Stage at the event, something that had been in the works for a while. We had lunch with a small group afterwards, and then I breezed through the day of meeting a million other people and roaming the show floor.

Friday and Saturday were also full of people, meeting longtime Twitter and email correspondents, more checking out the show floor, a brief visit to a Twitter friend at Twitter itself (a block away from the convention center), and three Macworld Live events on the trade-show floor!

Sunday morning, I rose not too early, walked to a BART station, went to SFO, and flew home. It was a busy and marvelous time. The show is such a mix of social and professional. A chance for me to meet up with friends and colleagues, and a mix of the two, and an opportunity for me to chat with some of the folks who read my work who aren't in the writing field.

More pictures here. Although I'm working in my basement at home, and that can sometimes be isolating, after four days of maximum contact, I'm happy to have a little respite!

I wish we could this every three or four months.

My first reaction to seeing Joe's list is always to say, holy mother of batman, how does he manage to get so much done?! I think of myself as a hard, efficient, and consistent worker, and yet I'm a piker next to Joe. I didn't move houses this year (nor have since 1993), have a baby, or travel much at all. Apparently, I'm twiddling my thumbs for 6 or 7 hours a day.

Nonetheless, Joe's exhaustive list (exhaustive to think how hard he works, exhausting to assemble) made me want to put a stick in the sand about my 2011. I'm much lazier than Joe, so I'm going to be much less detailed, too.

I'll start with the favorite things I wrote in 2011:

• This obituary of Dennis Ritchie received remarkable feedback, and I tried to write something a little lyrical about a man who quietly created the underpinnings of the entire digital world of today's ability to function.
• My friend Kim Ricketts died in April after a short, severe illness. i wrote about her ripple effect on the world, and even the way we discovered she'd died.
• This very personal item is about how I made new friends through Twitter, something I still find remarkable. Every time I meet someone I like and have gotten to know via that social network, I am stunned how much they are in person like they are on Twitter. It's unique to Twitter, where chit-chat shows your true self.
• Macworld let me write this crazy noir-like account of how Android phones didn't like Mac OS X software base stations. It starts with a redhead.

In terms of counts and amounts:

• 100 articles for the Economist.com's Babbage blog and one in print. I started writing twice-weekly for the blog in September 2010, and kept up the pace in 2011. It's relentless and fun. I write from 500 to 1,000 words on technology, typically where it crosses with culture. I also had a piece on computational photography appear in print. (This search will find you most of them. I appear with initials as "G.F.")
• For Macworld, I wrote about 70 articles, although about 40 of those were shorter iOS app reviews. I appeared on three Macworld Pundit Showdowns, but only won once.
• At TidBITS, I wrote about 40 articles. I also spent the year working on integrating our Take Control account management system with TidBITS so that we could manage our mailing list using the same accounts (done earlier in the year), and launched paid memberships in December.
• Boing Boing let me write for them ten times last year.
• This was also the year I stopped actively updating Wi-Fi Networking News as there wasn't enough traffic nor news to justify keeping it running. I now write the same stories (but fewer about wireless) for other outlets. I explained why I halted the blog in this article.
• 15-odd articles for The Seattle Times, where I've been first the then a Mac columnist for a decade.
• I published three truly enormous features (one split into two parts) at Ars Technica: on in-flight Internet service, on powerline networking for the home, and on using virtual private servers (VPS) instead of your own hardware.
• I usually write a lot of books. This year was a little lighter, or seemingly so. For the Take Control series, I updated three titles: iPad Networking and Security (for iOS 4), iPhone and iPod touch Neworking and Security (also for iOS 4), and Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network (for Lion and iOS 5). But that's only part of the story. An update to Screen Sharing (for Lion) that now incorporates the separate Back to My Mac book was finished and will be out soon, as well as an iOS 5 update to the Networking & Security titles that puts all iOS devices into one book. I also wrote about 15,000 words (maybe a third) in 2011 and the rest this month for a new title I'll announce later.
• I like to be on the radio, and I was on Marketplace Tech Report at least 10 times (they broadcast 200 episodes a year). I also appeared on Talk of the Nation Science Friday on August 19th, one of my favorite shows. I was on All Things Considered back in January 2011.

There were some good personal landmarks, too, of course.

• My children turned 4 and 7. They are magnificent, and wear me out with their total engagement in life.
• Lynn and I celebrated 14 years together, 9 of them married. Nice round numbers to come in 2012.
• I moved out of a shared office of six years when the lease ended, and set up a very workable standing/sitting desk and walking treadmill at home. So far, not insane.
• Rosanne Cash liked something I said to her enough to tweet it.
• I met my Twitter buddies Ayelet Waldman and Susan Orlean (links to pics) on their respective book tours this year. It was neat to meet after tweeting.
• We took a goddamned vacation in the summer. Lynn and I are bad at planning to take time away from the routine. We celebrated her folks' 50th wedding anniversary on the Oregon coast for about a week. We also visited my dad in beautiful Port Townsend a few times! 2012 resolution: more vacations.
• I made new friends, but kept the old. Some are silver, others gold. Still others, a mix of zinc, antimony, tin, and lead.
• I continue to be part of the regular crew for The Incomparable podcast, which is now hosted over at 5by5, a great podcast network. This is the most fun thing I do, quite honestly, getting together with new friends and old to talk about aspects of geek culture. It forces me to take the time to watch TV shows and movies, read books, and listen to music so that I can be part of the discussion. I was on an impossible 24 episodes in 2011, and was responsible for the unspeakable "Stephen Fry (Does Not Appear)" episode, as well as inventing the game that we played, "Fantasy Television Draft," a two-parter, that had us come up with characters from across all TV shows, and then create pilots from them. I also hosted an episode about Douglas Adams—our 42nd podcast, of course.
• I took a letterpress printing course in winter, and it was an incredible blast. It didn't yet inspire me to get my own tabletop press, but I have begun work on a proposal for a book about typesetting and type founding. If I were less busy, I'd have already started writing it! I gave an Ignite Seattle talk in August about letterpress's revival.

Okay, now I'm worn out just writing about what I did. I may have written 200,000 published words in 2011 (at least 60,000 for the Economist alone). I'm nearly at 6,000 Twitter followers, at which I think I tweeted 10,000 times last year.

Onward and upward.

Somewhere in my tweeting, a marketing person from MBT (Masai Barefoot Technology) got in touch and offered me a pair of shoes to try in exchange for writing about it if I felt it was a good fit. There were no other strings attached, and I reserved the right to return them (and say nothing) if I didn't think they worked.

As a reporter, I don't accept products, but this was offered to me personally, and I don't report on shoewear. (This is the officially mandated FTC blogger product acceptance disclosure, by the way!)

I've walked at least 20 miles in the shoes, and quite like them, but will need to walk a bit more before I can deliver a verdict. I'm using the Sport2 Men's shoe, which amazingly accommodates my 9 1/2 EEEE foot with very little compression (and no discomfort) new out of the box. I can rarely wear normal 9 1/2 anythings.

Walking in the shoes feels a bit like walking over curved surface—like walking on a solid orange-sized cushion. I can go for hours with the shoes without feeling worn out, which is great. I'm alternating with Tevas, which seem to have the right support to not stress my arch, which my New Balance shoes with custom orthotics do.

I have kept the MBTs as inside shoes, and haven't taken any long "real" walks in them yet. I'll write more as I have more experience with them.

It's a bromance movie for women about pals who suffer through mutual indignities and travails on the path to better friendship and enlightenment. I guess. I liked it. Melissa McCarthy is the absolute standout. Sometimes ridiculous, but quite remarkable.

My theory on this film's mix of genuine dialog among friends, gross-out scenes, farce, and romance is that competing teams of writers produced scenes nearly independently of one another, and then the director stitched them together into a chronologically plausible narrative.

On its face, you have a vulnerable woman, Annie (Kristen Wiig), whose boyfriend left her and had a business fail in an emotionally abusive sexual relationship with a guy who has no empathy towards others. The movie opens with the funniest sex scene I believe has ever been recorded.

Her best friend gets engaged, and this begins Annie's quick descent into madness. Annie has no filter and says anything that pops into her head, apparently, or does anything, no matter how crazy, that she gets angry or embarrassed enough to do. No human being could make it through high school or emerge as a functioning adult with the kind of behavior Annie engages in routinely, even though the movie attempts to show that's pushed towards in extremis action.

With a little fewer implausible scenes and no slapstick, this movie could have been a dreary Swedish film in which, at the end, the maid of honor walks slowly into a freezing lake as in a separate scene, the bride throws the flowers in the rain or some such.

Instead, it's a merry romp!

I did enjoy it.

I should note this film contains Frequent Film Gag #34, which is that if a scene is shown in a restaurant in a comedy, people later will have powerful gas, vomiting, or bowel movements. This movie is unfair to Brazilian restaurants.

The news that broke last about Adobe killing the mobile version of Flash for smartphones and tablets filled me with excessive schadenfreude. Adobe has beaten the drum for years that Flash was an intertwined part of the Web, and to experience the full Internet, you needed devices that would run it.

I didn't entirely agree, but I saw Adobe's point. Most Flash I interact with using a desktop browser is advertising (so I use a selective Flash blocker in my browser) or video playback. Flash is also used for interactive items, like embedded document viewing, information graphics that either run automatically or allow you to change parameters, or games. I rarely use any of those, but I understand they're in wide use.

The only time I felt deprived of Flash when using an iOS device was when trying to visit restaurant sites which inexplicably rely on Flash for simple things like displaying a menu, or other other tasks that are easily done in standard HTML. (Farhad Manjoo at Slate has an explanation as to why restaurants rely on Flash.)

As the iPhone and later iPad grew in market share, Apple's lack of Flash support but large audience to serve led to single apps that function as replacements for what you would otherwise access as a Flash app on a Web page. Those apps are often far more immersive, flexible, and stylish then the equivalent Flash player version, because Apple has requirements for how apps work and, to a lesser extent, how they look. I didn't need Silverlight (Microsoft's interactive technology) for Netflix, as I did on the Web, nor Flash to use Hulu Plus, the paid flavor of Hulu

Most video content viewed through Flash is already encoded in a format that can be played natively in Android and iOS, among other platforms, or that can use a simple viewer to access. Flash is a universal wrapper for video, but it's not per se necessary. It can also play protected content that's encrypted against casual downloading of the source files, and that's a reason Flash was used by television and other Web sites: to protect those source digital files.

On the desktop, Flash was a great supplement (which it remains to an ever-lesser extent), even if it drains laptop power, runs the processor hot, and crashes browsers. Why? Because before Flash-embedded video, which can run on every supported platform and browser, sites had to choose to encode in any of all of Windows Media, Real Video, and QuickTime formats (among others), and users had to have all those kinds of players available. For years, I mostly avoided playing video on Web sites because it invariably caused a problem.

Flash unleashed the potential of video by largely working the vast majority of the time. This led Web sites to feature more video, and made the Web a more visually interesting medium. (Netflix relied on Silverlight, which offered a similar advantage, even though it was much less used. I'd wager 95% of people who installed Silverlight on Mac or Windows did so in order to access streaming Netflix videos.)

Thus we should separate Flash's inability to deliver a consistent, battery-conserving, interactive, and fast experience on mobile devices which have less juice and less processor time available from why Flash brought the Web into a new era of multimedia. That time is aging out as native video playback support in HTML5-compliant browsers won't require plug-ins.

There's a battle still underway as to which video standard will predominate. Microsoft and Apple have backed H.264 because they have the paid licenses to allow that patent-protected format to be directly used in their browsers. Mozilla (Firefox), Google (Chrome), and Opera have other ideas, but it's unclear whether they will prevail or co-exist.

We may live in a split world in which H.264 is the format of choice, but it's delivered natively into Safari and Internet Explorer, while it's packaged inside of Flash (thus avoiding the issue) for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

But I will take a moment to chortle—not at Flash as such, but at Flash apologists. I've spent many hours over the last few years saying that Apple won't back off on Flash because it doesn't need to. There's nothing Apple needs from Flash to make iOS better. And the objections Steve Jobs raised in April 2010 were a crystallization of many concerns technical and strategic.

One of them, and one I've raised many times since, was the fact that Adobe never demonstrated Flash working on an iOS device. The firm could have at any time. iOS developers can create apps that run on their own equipment. Adobe could have done a roadshow, which is does to show off technology on a regular basis, and given briefings to reporters and others showing Flash running perfectly well on a variety of iOS equipment. This would involve no violation of Apple's terms and no jailbreaking. It did not do so. I'm sure Adobe had Flash ported to iOS; the performance could not have been good enough for it to want to show it off.

This was staggering because when versions of mobile Flash started to appear on Android and other devices, especially version 10.2 on devices with faster or multi-core processors, it performed seemingly reasonably well. Not embarrassingly, although it was still inconsistent in playing the highest quality video, in not being choppy, and in mapping touch gestures to mouse clicks. Still, it wasn't bad.

The real reason mobile Flash was killed wasn't performance, I'd wager. The reason was that while Google allowed its handset and tablet partners to include Flash (it lacks a competing product and likes to pretend it's "open"), Apple would likely never do so and Microsoft appeared generally uninterested in its new Windows Phone OS. RIM is in free fall and HP canceled its mobile devices, and that would leave most of the market for tablets and smartphones in Apple and Microsoft's hands.

If Adobe didn't refocus its efforts on providing developers superior ways to make HTML5 work on Windows Phone and iOS, some other company or companies would eventually produce the tools needed to steal those customers away.

The failure of mobile Flash is a failure to adapt more readily to provide the tools to designers and content producers to reach the audiences they're serving, rather than a pure failure of the technology. It's possible mobile Flash could never reach a point in which it was good enough to work at a level Apple would accept, but that's theoretical. Flash isn't the right answer for mobile video and interaction, and Adobe has recognized it was misdirecting its efforts.

The movie, in brief, focuses on three birders who compete (for no money, mind you) to catalog the most bird sightings (by eye or call) in a single year. One is the previous title holder; the other two are making their first attempts. Improbably, the gross outline of the story is true, based on Mark Obmascik's book of the same name, even down to the professions of the three birders and where they travel.

What I found odd about the movie was that it was struggling to be slapstick and stupid at times mixed with subtle emotional performances by Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Martin. A friendship between Black and Martin is underdeveloped, but genuine. Owen Wilson's character is a trickster, and overdrawn, but he and his current wife, a rather young woman, have some remarkable scenes together. (It's not a hackneyed film for the most part: I kept being surprised when I expected the same old clichéd moment, and the filmmakers brought a whiff of the real world in.)

The slapstick is quite half-assed. Jack Black is required to do pratfalls, but they're perfunctory, and then he's right back up to run out and find the birds. Gorgeous moments punctuate the movie, which clearly had crews travel tens of thousands of miles for location shots. And there are true shots of birds throughout. (The closing credits show, by category, hundreds of birds catalogued by the birders in the film.)

What I suspect happen is that they filmed a lot more nonsense with Black, including more physical comedy. When they edited the film, they realized that they had a quieter and more genuine story in the middle, and trimmed off more of the nonsense. There's still a lot of improbable characters and actions, but it's a truer film.

Now I need to read the book. Sounds like truth is funnier and more interesting than the lightly fictionalized version I saw.

Scene: Richard Stallman, dressed in corduroys, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hat, reclines on a lounge on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

Waiter: Sir, may I get you a drink?

Stallman: Many people assume that because I am traveling, I am having a vacation.

Waiter: Sir, this is a resort. You are on vacation.

Stallman: The fact is, I have no vacations.

Waiter: As you wish. Sir, would you like—

Stallman: It is very important for me to be able to transfer email between my laptop and the net, so I can do my ordinary work.

Waiter: There is complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi service that is included in the cost of your stay.

Stallman: If the network requires a proxy for SSH, I probably can't use it at all.

Waiter: Sir, I am not a technical expert, but I could get the front desk—

Stallman: If it involves loading a nonfree driver, I will refuse.

Waiter: I believe, sir, that the built-in adapter on most computers will work just fine. But I could ask—

Stallman: Until you have tested it, don't believe it!

Waiter: As you say, sir. Now, about the matter of a drink. Some beer? A cocktail?

Stallman: I dislike the taste of alcohol, so I don't drink anything stronger than wine.

Waiter: Ah, yes, sir, we have a wide variety of international—

Stallman: Wine is not very important to me—not like food. I like some wines, depending on the taste, and dislike others, but I don't remember the names of wines I have liked, so it is useless to ask me.

Waiter: Perhaps the house white?

Stallman: If you get a bottle of wine, I will taste it, and if I like the taste, I will drink a little, perhaps a glass.

Waiter: Yes, sir. Would you like some food to go with that, sir? Some guacamole?

Stallman: No.

Waiter: Olives?

Stallman: No.

Waiter: An orange or grapefruit?

Stallman: No.

Waiter: An entire hardboiled egg?

Stallman: No.

Waiter: Babaganoush?

Stallman: No.

Waiter (to himself): Perhaps some peanuts.

[Waiter is gone for a few moments while Stallman lies inert. Waiter returns.]

Waiter: If sir would just write his room number and sign.

Stallman: I cannot find my room key.

Waiter: Sir, are you even a guest at this establishment?

Stallman: The frustration I feel when I suffer such a loss is excruciating.

I am regularly asked to speak at events as far away as Hong Kong and Spokane. Because I live on only the money given to me by strangers in subways, I ask that you read the following before arranging for me to give a talk.

• My ideas are highly unpopular. So unpopular that I am asked to speak thousands of times a year. A security force of no fewer than ten (10) off-duty police or paramilitary officers is required at all times from when I arrive until you kick me out of your home.
• Hotels sometimes have many floors. This is contrary to the egalitarianism and flatness I have built my life around. I would like to stay in someone's home, preferably on the lower portion of a bunk bed. I sleep from midnight to noon and may not be interrupted in my sleep.
• On rising, I ask only that you do not look at me or speak to me, but have brought in a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast. Two of them. Every hour. Until the talk.
• Cellular phones allow individuals to be easily tracked by corporations and governments. I do not carry a cell phone, and am unable to work pay phones as every quarter contains a minute tracking device, and my fingers are too big. If I need to make a call, I will yank the phone from your hand, call the FBI hotline and make a bomb threat, after which I will hand the phone back to you and run.
• Please purchase a set of lovebirds for each visit, which I will consume right before leaving.
• I do not give talks.

However, an essay in today's Wall Street Journal called "Jeff Bezos of Amazon: Birth of a Salesman," compels me to comment on one aspect of the pervading myth of Amazon's creation and early years. You can read elsewhere about the truth behind other parts of the creation myth, especially in Robert Spector's fine and exhaustive look at Amazon's early years, Get Big Fast.

The part that got me was the door-as-desk myth, which has been cited since Amazon's founding as a way in which the company confounded standard business practice and was frugal during its very early startup days. This is a complete crock, and I would suspect that no one associated with the company, including Jeff, ever necessarily put forth a cost savings for these ersatz desks.

The door-desks were full-sized solid-core doors with four-by-four posts cut for each corner, and attached using metal brackets. You'll find accounts across the Internet that these were four-by-sixes, two-by-fours, or hollow-core doors. At least back in the day, I saw many of these desks made, and I can testify to their composition. (The hollow-core doors wouldn't have supported the weight—they would have cracked in places under the strain.)

In the very early days of the company, I'm sure the doors made more sense. They had very little room or time, and were trying to husband cash. Doors have a large surface area relative to most desks, and Amazon was in a garage and then a couple of industrial/warehouse spaces before they split the warehouse (down south of the viaduct) and the offices (in the heroin district of Seattle near Pike Place Market) before I joined.

I had met Jeff Bezos through mutual friends in 1995, when I was already running a Web development firm, hosting several companies, in downtown Seattle. He and I got along quite well, and I was always encouraging. My business was already profitable and growing, but I knew from the early days I didn't have the kind of entrepreneurial drive to embrace the risk—and sell myself—to turn the firm into something huge. I was looking for successful-boutique scale, and more or less achieved that.

I had lunch with Jeff in October 1996 when I was a bit in the doldrums about what I was going to do next with the business. He invited me to join Amazon, which I did. But what I remember most was, after lunch, walking into his office in the Columbia Building, and seeing a rack of blue colored shirts, his trademark at the time, and the door-as-desk. I laughed. I looked at the threadbare carpet and spartan furnishings, and said, "Investors must love this." He gave me his patented laugh.

When I joined the company, I saw the door-desks being built all the time. They hired people to build them. Back in 1998, a year after I left, Jeff told the Seattle Times:

"These desks serve as a symbol of frugality and a way of thinking. It's very important at Amazon.com to make sure that we're spending money on things that matter to customers," said Bezos, 34. "There is a culture of self-reliance. (With the low-tech desks) . . . we can save a lot of money."

The doors were expensive, built to an arbitrary height, heavy, difficult to move, and horrible for body health because of the bad ergonomics. That's when I started having to see an acupuncturist for carpal tunnel and related problems. And also note that these were exterior doors: moving a exterior door through an interior door frame with legs permanently attached is a tricky task. At the time, a slightly smaller desk (or even a study banquet table) would have cost 1/3 to 1/2 the amount and worked far better.

The myth was in place: the door-desk was part of the story about Amazon's creation, and it was part of what every visitor to the company's headquarters saw. It spoke of a particular ethos about spending and intent. And I will note that Jeff and company were extremely, but not unreasonably, tight with spending. Money wasn't spent on stupid things, either by executives or staff. (Later, the company probably wasted billions on setting up and closing down warehouses that weren't right for them until they figured out the formula for where they should be located and run.)

Jeff was and is a brilliant marketer. The marketing and perception of the door-desks was much more important than their actual savings to the company.

I like the class quite a bit. He talks about dharma in a non-religious context, and largely helps us explore the notion of why we cannot be present and how to overcome that through meditation and thoughtful self-awareness. There's definitely a bit of psychoanalysis thrown in there, but given that he is having us focus entirely on the present as expressed in the body (which has neither a past nor a future, but only its current existence), he doesn't ask us to find antecedents for emotions nor plan how to deal with them.

What I find most remarkable about the course, and which I didn't entirely expect, is how rapidly my brain and temperament has changed without me feeling as though I've gotten very far yet (of course) into understanding how to meditate in a thorough and engrossing manner. Rodney asks us to commit to 30 minutes a day in a particular fashion (essentially still, but comfortable, with a few postural suggestions) through the class. We also meditate about an hour or more within the two-hour class, sometimes with him giving dharma or metta talks.

I've meditated perhaps on 30 days since starting the class. I've only missed a night or two along the way. Lynn says she notices a difference. I have certainly softened in some respects, and I can summon the ability to center and present myself in the now much more than I could before.

Before I was a parent, I thought I had an infinite reserve of patience. It lasted quite a while into parenthood. But at some point, I lost that. I lose my patience. I get tired of endless wheedling and questioning and resistance by the boys, who are astonishingly great the vast majority of the time. There are time when I just want to say, "no, no, no, no, we're not doing that, the car is turning around, we're going home, that toy is going away…" All the poor tools in the parents' arsenal that don't solve more than a very short-term set of problems. Long term, they are no help at all. This lack of patience is entirely my issue; the boys are normal kids. They are not difficult by any stretch of the definition for kids their age. They are supremely easy in so many ways, notably going to bed without a fuss. (Seriously. They do that. Every night.)

The meditation has clearly helped me reach beyond those, sometimes to an amazing extent. I am much more peaceful inside my head and body, which is a great relief. As a damned intellectual and someone who makes his living sitting at a computer and writing or programming, I spent much of my time in my head, disconnected from the now. Rodney makes some lovely evolutionary points about how symbolic thinking is what led humans out of the savannah and into huts and skyscrapers. But that symbolic thinking doesn't have to rule us all the time. He seems to view his job as allowing us to choose to unlink our abstract selves, which are too aware of the past and future, and at will focus on the present and the real existence in which we find ourselves, but which is too often hidden.

It's obviously taking hold. I do find it is sometimes difficult to concentrate on my abstract tasks, however! The class leaves my head buzzing on Monday nights, and Tuesday morning I had what could only be described as a meditation hangover. This is a positive thing, in that I retained that sense of mental and psychic growth. But it was hard to look at a screen. To top it off, I saw my chiropractor Tuesday morning, and after such sessions, I often find emotions released and my mentality dulled. Tuesday night, I was a bit of a wreck, but, with Lynn's marvelous and constant support, emerged feeling better than I had in weeks about myself, my life, my choices.

Wednesday and Thursday were engines of productivity, and some long-running projects are coming to fruition. I love my work, but I also love developing a way to have non-work. (Play? Fun? Or just a space in which my brain isn't full of thoughts all the time.)

I am curious what another two weeks of class will bring, and then how I sustain this practice thereafter. I have long thought about meditation, and now I am in the now and doing it.

Steve made it possible for the technology that has allowed me to express my creativity for the last 25 years to exist. Nearly every stage of my life has been shaped by the existence of the Mac, and the software that ran so well on it.

I first used a Mac in 1985, when my journalism teacher, with great foresight, managed to get the budget to buy them to replace our ancient typesetting gear. I was the newspaper's (paid!) typesetter, and so she sent me home over Christmas break with a Mac to learn PageMaker 1.0. A remarkable thing on her part, and I thank Sue Barr forever for that. I had already been going down the path to graphic design.

When I arrived at college, I was quickly sucked into the waiting arms of a newly started weekly publication that grew over the next few years to challenge the daily paper, the Yale Daily News, which was the oldest continuously published college newspaper. They were using older gear for typesetting. We used PageMaker and Macs, initially in the college computer labs. (Apple had heavily courted colleges in those days, and sold Yale piles upon piles of Macs cheaply.)

In my senior year, I got a job at the university's in-house printing service, designing and typesetting, and took a full-time job after graduation running the imaging center there. I installed System 7 and troubleshot a million problems with getting output from QuarkXPress and PageMaker to a Linotype 300 imagesetter.

I remember excitedly finding out that Apple had an FTP site (ftp.apple.com, probably) and slowly, slowly downloading the System 7 installation disk images over the very very slow Internet of 1991.

From Yale I went to Maine, to take a job at the Center for Creative Imaging, which had 100 IIfx Macs, and which was a paean to everything creative in photography, illustration, and design one could do. Which meant, all Mac. A million great teachers and students passed through. Russell Brown. Jay Maisel. Matthew Carter. Paul Davis. John Sculley, who lived nearby, was there regularly. Many of my dearest friends came from a short time there.

I left Maine when the center started to falter (a long, long story) and moved to Seattle to take a job as managing editor at a book firm, which produced computer books about using PageMaker, Quark, and other products. Books about Macs and created on Macs.

While there, I started one of the first Web hosting companies (hosted on Suns, however) using Macs to design Web pages in 1994, with Peachpit Press as one of my first clients. I sold that firm to join Amazon briefly, but left and went into conference planning with my old book company boss, and then into full-time journalism. Writing largely about Apple and how to use its products.

I have been surrounded by Macs in the best and worst times, and thus have had Steve's indirect hand in my working and creative life nearly from start to finish.

Good bye, Steve. And thank you.

I thought I was asleep fairly fast—within a few minutes. Lynn was asleep immediately. It is a marvelous trait, and one that runs in her father's side of the family, and intolerable to those of us who sometimes toss and turn. As I was dousing the fires of consciousness, I was startled awake by a sound.

I couldn't immediately place it, as I thought it had happened outside. But I heard no further noise, and decided it must have been Lynn shuffling in her sleep in the sheets, even though as I looked at her she was in the same position. I got up, and looked out through windows to make sure no one was nosing about the house. Back to bed.

Then I hear Rex cough. Rex has a minor cold, and is on antibiotics for a secondary infection from about 10 days ago. But he hasn't been kept up with a cough, so that seemed strange. Back to sleep. Then I hear what I think is Rex crying. I get up, seemingly without disturbing Lynn. I quietly go into the boys' room.

Ben is sleeping in a plank position in which apparently less than 50% of his body is on his bed, perpendicular to it, and his legs are straight out. His pants legs are also rolled up. I rotate him back onto the bed and under the covers. I check out Rex who seems asleep and quiet. I rouse him a little, and he says he's fine. He doesn't remember crying. Assure them both. They're back to sleep.

By now, I notice flashing police lights painting the kitchen. As I think about it, I recall that while I was trying to get back to sleep at some earlier point, I had felt a deep bass rumbling. I go into the kitchen and can see the car parked in the lane in our two-lane arterial that runs on a T to the street our house is on, and I see a fire engine lumber off. I go to the front of the house, and see someone running down the street, but towards where the police are. A concerned neighbor? Not sure. It all seems under control, in any case.

Back to bed. I'm just drifting off when I hear Lynn breathing in an unusual fashion. In 14 years of sharing a bed, I can't recall her ever breathing in this way before. It doesn't sound dangerous, just odd. I leave her to her dreams. A moment later, she calls out for me, shakes me gently. She's had a nightmare. (I won't share it. That's too much insight into someone's private mind.)

I clutch her, reassure her, she calms down, and I tell her what's been happening over the previous 45 minutes. We wind up shaking with laughter, which dispels the demons of the night.

Finally, we lay back to sleep. Uninterrupted. The boys even let us sleep until a miraculous 8 am.

If you prefer your radio in written form, there's a transcript available (free, not like the olden days) on the Web.