Work Without Borders
First, THE STORE should be is up and running soon. You will be able to do most, if not all, of your Amazon shopping through this site. The generated profits will go toward, well, gas money so that I can get Gerard, Whittier, Battles and Tallent to “do what I said” in front of a camera.
Speaking of camera: The most recent Too Absent Production, Recycle Wars, a 15 min. short on the benefits and trials and tribulations of recycling, – and involving homages to The Natural and that George Lucas enterprise — It’s funny, but I won’t be able to release it here until (if) I garnered releases from the actors. So we’ll see.
Here’s something, from a blog entry by adam about working (and finally, leaving) at Apple Care:
The greatest challenge in technical support is matching the level of the customer. Some folks see windows, menus, and icons while others see their own little world with their own little names. For one fellow, the system still had lines of text. Line one was the menu bar, line two the window’s title, line three the toolbar, and so forth…
People didn’t like to be without their machine long enough to fix it, but didn’t want to live with it broken, either.
I’m going to be without my computer for a week?! It’s a business critical machine! I can’t be without it!
It’s a business critical machine, this portable. So that’s why you don’t have a backup of your data or a spare machine to use in the mean time. It, and all that’s on it, is just that important to you. You can’t run your business without it, and you have no way of replacing it should something happen to it, even temporarily. I understand. Go to hell.
It really doesn’t get any more dry than that.
As I am a go-to person for several friends and family members (Yes, Matt, you just slide it in the bottom) when it comes to Apple-ness, and since I seem to do it well.
AND since I am also otherwise (when Apple issues are not mentioned in the message/subject line) hard to reach for an occasional “hello” the question is sometimes raised/barked/snipily put: Would I work at/for Apple?
The answer is no. Beside the main reason that I simply don’t know enough, there is the bigger reason that it is just not what I am cut out for. I am not directed at mastery of anything. I have no desire to be masterful at anything.
Let me restate that, lest I sound like buddha (or worse, Bhodi). I forcefully, and with great and sustained diligence work to not have those urges. Sure. Everyone should. But the main thing is that I just am not inclined thus.
It is only today that I finally made a note of the steps to copy my bookmarks from Safari to Firefox. I’ve been doing this for years, but it is only today that I actually put the information into some kind of work-order so that it will be ready for the next time or query. That’s the simple fact: I have no love of workflow. Which is a romantic way of saying I have no stable workflow, or that I’m just scattered. And nothing would be worse than for me to stretch my Knowledge Base more into the direction of the sort of questions I’d get at a Genius Bar.
There are problems with that statement as well. For I’ve already learned way more than is necessary in order to run a website. I could be on Blogger or iWeb in minutes, as the ad-copy states.
But I don’t. I don’t want to be up and running in minutes. I want to tinker, construct, make drawings, sketches, and, (I hope one day, Nick,) even claymation figures as kinetic models. All in the hope of ingenuity or novelty.
Really, who wants to be “up and running in minutes”? Do you trust anything that takes no forethought or understanding on your own part? I know that this, in it’s extreme form, is an argument that people may use against Apple products. But most of those people are no longer worth debating. And they probably have an entire IT staff behind them, so they aren’t doing anything, either.
If someone does say that to you, the best response is to butter them up with: “Yes. You’re right. I find it much more helpful to have to enter my own IP address…” or “How’s clippy?”
Battles’ advice on focus is still the best I’ve received (all the better because it was couched in his inimitable, insouciant style: “what the hell are you wasting time on that 3/4 guitar, video equipment, software, computer stuff? You’re the writer, man.”
Yes, and the simple truth about “the writer, man” is that it is as far from the “up and running in minutes” teleology as George Bush is from actual conviction.
But I’m working my way back. I got athletic tape for my fingers, and a pound, both, of provolone and sandwich pepperoni (I pray to Demeter that the woman at Kroger pulled the skin off before slicing).
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