Five

Happy Birthday to iPhone!  That's right.  Eighteen hundred and twenty five days ago today, Steve Jobs and those fine folks at Apple brought us the very first iPhone.  I received my first iPhone as a gift shortly after their introduction. Needless to say, I've never looked back.  Now, 3 of the 4 members of our family are converts.  No worries, we're working on my husband and that Blackberry of his is looking more and more inadequate every day. 

An Agenda

"Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are 

only as many days in the year as you make use of."

~Charles Richards

You might have guessed that I love a calendar.   A calendar represents so much promise.  


 And, I bet if you Google it there are lots of  great tools out there for scheduling and tracking days and dates, too.  Sometimes I lose myself in the calendar, wall planner and appointment planner sections of the office supply store.  I know.  I know.  I should get a hobby. Mostly I rely on my iCal, though I also love Google calendar for its sharing feature.  But here's a great online resource I use when I want to plan ahead and, heaven forbid,  print a set of calendar pages (like the entire summer) so that I can have a frame of reference for all our activities and appointments.  This is especially helpful when I need/want to spread adventures, trips and events out over a period of time.   


So, as you begin to organize the days, weeks and months of 2012 - happy planning.  

National Cell Phone Courtesy Month

I have a love/hate relationship with my cell phone.  How about you?  A modern convenience or incessant intruder?  I can't decide.  


July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month and I was thinking it's a good time to focus on a few important rules of phone etiquette.  I've culled the following from a couple of good cellphone sites.  For the most part, I've resisted the urge to editorialize since on occasion I have been known to engage in a few of these phone faux pas myself.  But on a few, I couldn't resist. 

1. Don't talk too loudly.

2. Don't hold inappropriate conversations in public.

In the last few years I have been witness to at least 3 or 4 separate one-sided conversations about weight loss goals and methods of birth control and their effectiveness.  Seriously.  

3. Don't interrupt face-to-face conversations to answer your cell phone.

4. Don't check your phone at the movies (or a Broadway show, a high school play or your daughter's piano recital, for that matter) even if you are just using your phone as a watch.  (see also #9)

Believe it or not, that little screen lighting up in a darkened theatre is a real distraction to a lot of us.  

5. Don't text while driving.

6. Don't text while talking.

7. Turn off your phone so you won't disturb live performances.

I was in church one Sunday when several pews in front of me a cell phone began to ring during the sermon.  The parishioner chose to ignore the incessant ringing until finally (and I kid not) the pastor said from the pulpit, "Why don't you answer?  We'll wait."

8. Consider your location before you answer your phone.

Number one on my list:  never answer your phone while you are in a stall in a public bathroom.  Seriously.

An Apple A Day

The Apple Lisa.  Check out that mouse!

Twenty-eight years ago today the Apple Lisa (an acronym for “Local Integrated Software Architecture” and also the name of Steve Jobs' daughter), the first commercial computer from Apple, Inc., debuted. 


It had graphical user interface (not sure what that is) and a computer mouse (do know what that is).  At the time, the purchase price was $10,000 (present day value - $21,000).


My first experience with an Apple computer was in 1984.  A guy name Larry in my Sociology of Business class charged me a dollar per page to type my papers.  As an English major, I made Larry rich (or I should say richer, because as the owner of one of the initial  Apple computers, he probably already had plenty of money).  

Fifteen or twenty dollars a week was a lot of money to a struggling college student but my Brother Typewriter and that little white pencil/brush eraser were far,  far inferior to his preliminary Macintosh and dot-matrix printer. 


Today, I’m a complete Apple convert.  

My 5 year-old iBook, my MacBook, my iPhone and my old Shuffle.  I have a new shuffle, but can't bring myself to part with this one either. 

My daughter calls Steve Jobs an" Evil Genius" and means it only as the highest of compliments.  "Evil" in that his company's products inspire a remarkable kind of acquisitiveness.


If you want to know more, here's an interesting article from Wired about it. Come to think of it, I think I'll access it on my iPhone!