iPad is bearer of sad news

Here is where, and how, I learned of Steve Jobs' death.....

His was a life well and fully lived.

Working out the kinks, continued . . . .

It’s been a tough few days working the kinks out of the new iMac I bought at the Apple store during halftime of the Superbowl.

I think I’ve spent five hours with Apple tech support. I’ve come to know James and Doug, Burt and Bev. I have their numbers, they have mine. We are on a first name basis. We were from the start.

But after we clear up one problem, another crops up. I have five "case" numbers in Apple tech support's memory bank.

Right now, for the first time in my computer literacy, I’m writing on Apple’s very own “Pages” word processing program. I had been using my old 2004 Microsoft Office's Word, which I put through various upgrades after I got the new iMac.

It was still doing strange six-year-old things.

For instance, the Constant Contact program I use to put out my newsletter was was not formatting. It refused to cooperate with a 2010 computer trying to get by on a 2004 brain.

If I wanted to bump up a front size on CC's editing palette, nothing happened. Bold-face? No way. Ital? You must be kidding.

The Apple folks, who never kept me on hold — not once — and who spoke in good old Midwestern English, finally suggested I call Microsoft support.

I was put on hold with a message machine that repeated every 20 seconds (I am not exaggerating) that they were experiencing heavy call volumes and they thanked me for my patience — endlessly.

After ten minutes of this mantra, my appreciated patience ran out and I hung up.

I concluded that my upgraded 2004 version of Microsoft Word was the problem. I called the Apple store and they suggested that I try “Pages,” which is part of the Apple iWorks suite of applications.

I read several Microsoft Office versus iWorks entries on line. The reviewers seemed to give Office the edge but I kept thinking of James and Doug and Burt and Bev, and comparing them to Microsoft's “We are experiencing a heavy volume of etc.”

I bought iWorks, which cost about one-third what Office for Mac does.

So I'm writing these words with “Pages.”

We’ll see what happens when I go to post this ditty on Blogger. Will I still get the coding at the top of the post when I paste this? Will the metatags show up when I hit the “Publish Post” button.

Wish me well.

When this finally appears, I’ll let you know whether I made the right choice for decidedly the wrong reason.

I'm now in the Blogger program and there was no coding to delete at the top. A good sign. Here goes with the "Publish Post" button . . . .

Bingo. No metatags.

Thanks James and Doug and Burt and Bev. And Steve, as in Jobs.

Joe, Steve and me

Yesterday, Joe Lieberman, Steve Jobs and I all did the same thing.

We celebrated our birthdays.

Not together, of course, but as Pisces, we no doubt were swimming in the same birthday stream.

Joe and I actually share the very same day of birth back in 1942, making us both 67. I’m not sure what this coincidence signifies, except that neither of us seems the wiser for it.

Lieberman was elected vice president back in 2000 but was denied assuming office by five Supreme Court votes. He’s followed a circuitous path since. A super-hawk on Iraq and no longer a Democrat, he actively campaigned for John McCain last fall.

At times in recent years, I’ve thought of calling Joe to play my 2/24/42 birthday card.

“Joe,” I’d say, “we’ve been through a lot of years together. I think it’s time we compared notes….”

He has a lot more than I do. I’ve tried to keep things relatively simple. If I could share the virtues of simplicity with Joe, it might be worth the call.

Steve, 13 years younger than Joe and me, celebrated his 54th birthday yesterday.

I’m typing this post on one of his elegant machines. I’ve been an Apple aficionado for years even though I’m not one to bond with brands. I’ve made an exception of Apple. It’s part trust (these things are bullet-proof) and aesthetics (my five-year-old iMac still adds a splash of grace and class to my office clutter.)

I learned of Jobs’ birthday only yesterday, but now it’s fun to weigh whether the 2/24 connection mysteriously strengthened my 25-year affinity for all things Apple.

So, a day late, I wish both Steve and Joe well. Steve, whose health may have taken a bad turn, is in particular need of kind thoughts. And, say what you will about Joe’s shifting politics, I’ve always considered him a congenial and gracious guy.

So, Joe and Steve, here’s to us!

Choosing Lloyd Reynolds over Barack Obama

Three days before the election, on a hot Sunday afternoon, I faced a choice between Barack Obama and Lloyd Reynolds.

It was a choice that only Portland could offer.

I chose Reynolds, a Portland treasure, even though he’s been dead for nearly 30 years.

The legendary professor of calligraphy, handwriting and, ultimately, life, was as charismatic, in his own way, as Obama is before a throng.

While Obama spoke to thousands in Waterfront park, nearly 200 of us jammed into the First Unitarian Church, a dozen blocks away, to hear Reynolds’ students praise their mentor and inspiration.

Many of us were drawn to the event by an excellent article by Bob Hicks in Saturday’s Oregonian.

We were mostly a gray-haired, devote assemblage. Perhaps one-third, when asked whether they had been Reynolds' students, raised their hands.

Several spoke of Reynolds’ influence on them. Inspired by Reynolds, Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty went on to teach doctors how to write clearly — and safely. After at least 150 presentations, the two estimate they’ve taught between 4,000 and 5,000 physicians how to make their writing legible.

As one emergency room physician told Dubay, “You’ve probably saved more lives than I have.”

The highlight of the Reynolds’ event was Reynolds himself, as seen in an old OPB video clip of him teaching a on-air class. The clip lasted only three or four minutes, but in that time Reynolds made one telling literary reference and got in a dig at the emerging vocabulary of graphic design. “I hate the word ‘layout,’” he scoffed. “We 'lay out' corpses!” Letters and words should be alive, not dead, he scolded.

The audience, many of them members of Portland Society for Calligraphy, laughed and nodded at hearing their mentor and teacher again. In 1968, Reynolds founded the society, which began as the “Western American Branch of the Society for Italic Handwriting" but mercifully simplified its name in 1983, five years after Reynolds died.

But listening to the stories about Reynolds, it's hard to imagine that he died at all. The audience was alive with and enthralled by his spirit.

Turns out that the very screen I am writing on was Reynolds-inspired. Bob Hicks, in his Oregonian story, recounts how Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and present CEO, was briefly a student at Reed College and was moved by the Reynolds legacy on the campus and by the master calligrapher's celebration of the written word. Jobs studied under Reynolds' hand-picked successor at Reed, Robert Palladino. Early on in the development of Apple's computers, Jobs made sure that their screens reproduced typography that was crisp, clear and beautiful.

Sonic Sex on a Sweat Towel?

Something lurid goes on between the cord of my iPod Shuffle and the wires to my earphones after I throw them into my backpack.

There, in the dark, they co-habit for two or three days, the interval between my using them to liven up my treadmill stints.

I’m convinced a three-day orgy takes place right on top of my sweat towel and next to my water bottle.

How do I know this?

When I dip into the bag to extract them, they are hopelessly intertwined.

Okay, so I don’t exactly wind the cord around the iPod and I don’t coil the earphone wires. But then again, I do not jumble them up. And I definitely don’t tell them to be fruitful and multiply. (Steve Jobs has that covered.)

Nor could my own actions explain their tangled relationship. I leave the backpack to sit inert in our closet between workout days.

It must be something inside the bag making this happen. I’m thinking perhaps suggestive music in the iPod is inaudibly leaking out causing some kind of unrestrained conjoining. Any number of tunes in my iPod might be the culprit.

Or there could be some strange electrical discharge that draws them together. Science certainly has an explanation. Or maybe one of those “new creatives” knows the answer. I mean, they invented this thing.

I’ve thought of lecturing the devices on abstinence, or simply segregating them. You, earphones, you get the main part of the pack. You, Shuffle, stay put in the outside pocket.

But, call me permissive, it seems like a bother.

I suppose I’ll just let them play around, trusting that they are taking necessary precautions. Whatever those might be I’m sure Steve Jobs has taken care of them too. If he hasn’t, the worst that could happen is that one day I’ll open the backpack to find a nest of little miniaturized Shuffles, kind of like the ones Jobs now sells for $79 each.