YOU are NOT Steve Jobs

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So stop using his image as your profile photo.

It started happening the day after Steve Jobs’s death was announced: the widespread use of Steve’s image as Twitter and Facebook profile pictures. It was mostly done by people who like playing follow-the-leader on social networks, the same kind of people who copy and paste Facebook statuses, the same kind of people who mostly retweet what others have already said because they can’t think of anything original that’s interesting enough to share. People who lack imagination, people who think they can best express themselves by copying what other “cool” people are doing and saying.

Six-Color Apple LogoAnd as one of the Apple faithful, as someone who bleeds in six colors — and has been around long enough to know what that actually means — I’m offended by the practice.

I’m especially offended by the fact that it continues, more than a week after Steve’s passing. If it isn’t Steve’s face staring out at me beside the mindless automated tweet of someone who isn’t Steve, then it’s Steve’s profile as the bite in a black Apple logo, a design only marginally less offensive, beside the latest Facebook copy-and-paste status update.

Yeah, we get it. You’re a fanboi and you miss Steve. But is this how you honor him? By abusing his image?

Do you think that’s what Steve would really want? To brand your social networking babble with his likeness?

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Your Poorly Written Communication is Not Cute

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Capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling — it’s pretty basic stuff.

I’m trying to determine whether some of the people who contact me via blog comments and email are illiterate or trying to be cute.

I’m a writer. I’ve been writing for a living since 1990. No, I don’t have a degree in English. And no, I know my grammar isn’t perfect.

I learned to read and write with everyone else in school back in the 1960s-1970s. We were taught to write using good grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. If we got it wrong — and yes, there is a difference between right and wrong for these things — we were penalized with bad grades. That became motivation for getting it right. Some of us learned better than others, but we all learned the basics.

Apparently, this is not the case these days. Take, for example, the email message I blogged about back in September, “News Flash: I am NOT a Helicopter Cost Consultant.” I quoted the full text of the email message I received:

as of this date if i were to buy a used R22 with approx a 1000 hrs on it how much would the total operating costs be per hour if i were to fly 100 hours a year including reserve money for future overhaul

Note the lack of proper capitalization (well, he got R22 right) and punctuation. The whole thing is a run-on sentence fragment.

Yes, I understood what he was looking for. And yes, I know that mutual understanding is the goal of communication.

But seriously: this email message leaves me wondering if this guy was asleep through elementary school or simply doesn’t care enough about the recipient of his messages to bother making recognizable sentences.

I got another one today, this time in comments:

i think it hard to become a pilot if it in book to study…………….

Ironically, this was posted on a blog post titled, “So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 6: Study Hard.” Was this supposed to be a joke? I didn’t find it funny in the least. And because it added nothing of value to this blog, I trashed it.

So I’m left wondering whether these people are:

  • Stupid. They just didn’t learn the basics in school.
  • Too stupid to care. They think it doesn’t matter.
  • Trying to be cute. They think that lack of capitalization and punctuation is unique and different.

As a writer, this failure to even try to write in decent English (or the language of your choice) pisses me off to no end.

I’m just wondering how these people survive in today’s economy and job market. I know that if someone contacted me looking for a job and couldn’t be bothered to communicate with something resembling good English, I wouldn’t bother to read past the first sentence fragment.

Lesson Learned: Don’t Update an iOS Device on the Day the Update is Released

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I learned it the hard way — and won’t forget.

Yesterday, I spent about 3 hours in an Apple Store. It was not pleasant.

It all started when, in preparation to update my iPhone and iPad 2 to iOS 5, I synced my two iOS devices. I got an error message. Thinking that was probably not a good thing before doing an OS update, I made an appointment at the local Apple Store — which is walking distance from our Phoenix place — with an iOS Genius. An hour later, I walked over with my iPhone, iPad, and syncing computer, a MacBook Pro.

The “genius” (and this guy definitely deserves his title put in quotes) looked at the situation and told me that because the error message appeared on my Mac and not on my iOS device, he couldn’t help me. But he could make an appointment for me later that day.

If there’s every a way to piss me off, it’s to tell me I’ve wasted my time and need to come back later in the day to waste more time. I gave him a lot of grief, which he deserved. It gave me a really good idea about the quality of management at the Biltmore Apple Store: it sucks. It was the first time I’d ever left the store angry, without my problem resolved.

I went back to my office and started troubleshooting on my own. That’d when the iOS 5 update was released. Since the problem had been resolved on my iPhone, I figured I’d update that. Things went smoothly — on our fast Internet connection, I was able to get the download in less than 15 minutes. But the upgrade kept failing.

So I showed up at the Apple Store again for my second appointment of the day. This time, they put me with a Mac expert. He listened to my problems, looked at his watch, and told me he had to go to lunch in 8 minutes.

What was I saying about Biltmore Apple Store management? Oh yeah. It sucks.

He started out by using Software Update to look for updates. I’d done that first thing in the morning and there weren’t any. But now there was — Mac OS X 10.7.2 — making me look like an idiot. He began the install and while it was working, left for lunch.

Another genius stepped up to fill his spot. I told her that since the process would take some time, she should help someone else. I’d try to resolve it on my own and let her know how I did.

I got the Mac OS update done and then tried again to update my iPhone. No joy. By this point, everyone was tweeting about server problems. I didn’t think this was server related, but when I realized that some kind of verification was going on and that’s where it was failing, I agreed that was the issue. I kept trying.

Connect to iTunesMy phone became “bricked” — completely unusable — with a “Connect to iTunes” image after the fifth try.

Now a small seed of panic began growing inside me. My iPhone is my only phone. It’s for personal and business use. It’s the only way I can be contacted by voice communication.

After trying a few more times, I talked to the new genius they’d assigned to me. (I hadn’t moved from my stool at the Genius Bar.) He tried updating from another computer. When that failed twice, he took it in the back of the store somewhere.

I sat with my laptop and iPad, researching possible solutions on the Web and Twitter.

After 20 minutes, he returned with my phone and some bad news: he wanted to replace my phone.

Now if he was offering to replace it with a factory new iPhone 4, never touched by human hands since leaving China, I would have gone for it. But he was offering a reconditioned phone. And I have terrible luck with previously owned devices. The idea of using a phone that once belonged to someone else — who may have dropped it in the toilet for all I knew — really wigged me out. I told him I’d keep trying.

He set me up with an Ethernet connection to the Internet and a power cord.

And I did. I kept trying updates and failing. While that was going on, I kept searching for troubleshooting tips. @singhpanther on Twitter suggested Lifehacker. I found “How Do I Fix My Bricked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch?” and worked my way through the instructions, including the DFU mode stuff. I kept trying updates…and failing.

All the while, people kept coming in with iPhone 4s showing the same “Connect to iTunes” icon I had. I counted about a dozen of these people, all looking lost and bewildered.

Finally, after spending a total of about two hours on that damn Genius Bar stool, it worked. My phone was recovered and working properly with iOS 5.

I don’t think it’s anything special that I did. I think I just managed to squeeze into the server queue at the right time for success.

By that time, the lunching genius was back at his place. I showed him my phone. “Got it working, ” I said.

“Of course,” he said smugly. “What do you think we were doing back there?”

You were doing nothing that worked, I felt like snapping back to him. After all, they hadn’t fixed it. They wanted to replace it and put it back on iOS 4.2. It was my perseverance and refusal to let them take the phone away that had resulted in success.

But as I age, I’m realizing that it just isn’t worth arguing with smug assholes like him. So I just got up off the stool and left.

What was I saying about the management of the Biltmore Apple Store? Oh, yeah. It sucks.

The lesson I learned from all this is this:

With millions of iPhones and iPads out in the world and a rabid user base that’s willing to wait overnight in long lines for new devices, it’s not a good idea to update iOS on the first day of its release. Wait a day or two — it’ll all go more smoothly.

And yes, iOS 5 is worth the wait.

Another Quick Groupon Story

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Another real-life story about Groupon users.

A friend of mine in Washington owns a small winery. It’s open two days a week for tastings. He charges $6/person and waives the fee with the purchase of two bottles of wine. For the $6, you get a 1-ounce taste of every wine he makes that hasn’t sold out. He had eight varieties; two were sold out as of mid August.

A while back, a hotel in nearby Wenatchee called him. They wanted to do a Groupon wine-tasting deal. Would he allow the people who bought their Groupon to have a free tasting? Other local wineries had signed on.

My friend didn’t know much about Groupon. But he’s a nice guy who wanted to help the hotel folks and he liked the idea of having more people come to his winery. He figured he’d reach new people and sell some wine. This was before three of his wines won awards at a blind tasting of area wines; before his wines started selling out.

They started coming without warning on a Saturday afternoon. Dozens of them. They soon took up all the seating in his tasting area. He called me for help. I put on some clean clothes and rushed over to help him pour.

We poured, they drank. They didn’t seem to have much interest in the wine. The seemed more interested in the list of wineries included in their Groupon. The more wineries they visited, the more free wine they’d drink. My friend sold one bottle for every three or four people who tasted.

One table of eight young women were there for more than two hours. I guess they figured that their Groupon had entitled them to a shady place to spend their entire afternoon. Collectively, they bought two bottles of wine. They left chewing gum stuck to the table.

Some people without Groupons didn’t stick around. There wasn’t enough seating for them. They didn’t feel like waiting.

This was repeated on the following two weekends. My friend had to pay someone to help him pour to keep up with the crowd. He lost money on every Groupon tasting. And he doubts the Groupon users will be back.

My friend learned a valuable lesson. As you might guess, he won’t be offering his own Groupon deal anytime soon.

First Dive, Last Dive

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I watch two skydivers plunge to their death.

It happened on Sunday, during our flight from Wenatchee, WA, to Phoenix, AZ. It was Day 2 and we were right at the end of our leg from Elko, NV, where we’d spent the night, to Mesquite, NV.

Zack was at the controls. Since Mesquite doesn’t have an AWOS or ASOS, he’d planned to overfly the field and check the windsock before coming in for a landing. I didn’t think there was enough wind to worry about it, but he was the pilot-in-command and I didn’t think there was any reason not to check the wind.

Until the jump plane made a radio call. He was at about 10,000 feet and climbing to release jumpers above the airport.

I called back and asked where the jumpers would land. After a second call, he replied that it was on the west side of the taxiway.

If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s loitering with spinning blades anywhere near where there might be skydivers in the air. I suggested to Zack that we just land on the runway (which turned out to be Runway 19), which would keep us clear of the jumpers. With the runway now in sight, he made his radio call while I scanned the sky.

For the first time ever, I spotted the jump plane high above us. A moment later, three dots appeared. I told Zack I saw them. He looked but couldn’t see them — this didn’t surprise me because they were tiny specks more than two miles above us. They disappeared from view. I kept looking while Zack concentrated on the approach.

We saw two chutes a few moments later. A third appeared high above them.

The two lower jumpers seemed to be heading right for the runway in front of us. One of them was spiraling around and around. I’d seen jumpers do that before so it didn’t alarm me — at first. But when he didn’t stop spiraling or change course a few hundred feet above the runway, I knew something was wrong. His companion peeled off toward the landing zone.

I wasn’t very surprised when the spiraling jumper hit the runway. And didn’t move.

I got right on the radio. “Mesquite Unicom, you have a jumper crashed on the runway.”

Through the corner of my eye, I saw his companion overshoot the landing zone. He appeared to land on the golf course just beyond the airport fence.

I looked up. The third jumper was floating down towards us.

I looked ahead. People were running out to the runway.

Flying at Mesquite, NV

Zack and I looked back toward the crash site as I circled around the south side of the airport. I had my GoPro “cockpit cam” snapping photos every 5 seconds and this is one of the images it captured.

I asked Zack for the controls and he released them to me. I swung hard to the left, away from the runway and taxiway and landing zone. I dipped the nose down, pulled pitch, and got us out of the way fast. (Later, Zack told me I’d probably scared the folks on the golf course on that side of the airport; I honestly didn’t even see them.) Then I circled around to the south and came in from that side of the airport.

The pilot of the jump plane got on the radio. He’d been descending from 13,000 feet and needed to land. “Is there a jumper on the runway?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Don’t land a plane on the runway.”

“I’ll land on the taxiway,” he assured us.

A moment later, we were on the ground in front of the fuel pumps.

I got out of the helicopter and let Zack shut down. There were a lot of people running around and I wanted to make sure no one ran into the tail rotor — not that there was much of a chance of that.

I couldn’t see much of the accident from my position and, frankly, didn’t really want to. All I knew was that no one on the ground was moving. That couldn’t be good.

Over by one of the hangars, there were too many kids. I hoped they hadn’t seen the impact. I hoped it wasn’t their mother or father or other close relative that had gone down.

When the engine shut down, I heard the sirens. Within minutes, there were three police cars and two ambulances there.

We fueled up. Someone who works at the airport helped us. We were all distracted, all wondering about the fate of the jumper.

The facts came to our side of the field slowly, brought by one or two people who had gone over to learn more. They were doing CPR. It had been a tandem jump. The first chute had failed and had been caught up in the emergency chute, causing that to fail as well. The instructor was dead. The woman with him was someone’s grandmother. It had been her first jump.

One of the ambulances left. The police were taking statements.

We were ready to go, but I realized that our unique view of what had happened might be of interest to the police. I asked the airport guy what he thought. He told me to hop into the golf cart and he’d run me over to ask.

It wasn’t until we were nearly there that I saw the body on the pavement. He was lying face up. A woman was kneeling beside him, stroking his face. From my position, he looked as if he were sleeping, wrapped in the colorful fabric of his parachutes.

I turned away. No one wants to come face to face with death on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

I talked to one of the cops. He told me to wait. I called Zack and told him to come over. I warned him that the victim was still there.

More news while we waited. The older woman was likely dead; they’d brought her to the hospital just in case she could be revived. A man who had tried giving her CPR had gotten blood on his mouth. I knew what that meant: serious internal bleeding.

They were waiting for the coroner before they could remove the other body.

A man and woman came by, obviously in shock. The man was supposed to go on that jump but had let the grandmother go in his place.

Eventually, the police came and gave us forms to fill out. They radioed our IDs to base and it was startling to hear a stranger say my name back over the radio. I wrote a concise report — much shorter than this — and handed it over. Zack handed back his. We walked back to the helicopter and started it up.

We talked a bit about it on the way south. I think Zack was more shook up than I was. But then again, it isn’t as if something like this is completely new to me. I think I’ve seen more than my share of violent death.

Postscript: I’ve always wanted to go skydiving. I joke that I’m waiting for my knees to get very bad first. Then I’ll jump before I get them replaced.

Has this changed my mind about skydiving? No. And it hasn’t changed my mind about waiting, either.