I’d like to address this to the lovely woman (and her understandably quiet, seemingly embarrassed husband) who took little screaming Junior to Wild Oats in Lexington, Kentucky on Saturday.

Dear Mother -

No, I did NOT roll my eyes at your child. Had I rolled my eyes at anyone, it would have been at you. My sister tells me that I exude disgust without the need to roll my eyes and that I’m terribly transparent. She’s probably right. My apologies. Obviously, you misconstrued my total disgust with eye-rolling. I’m not sure how that happened.

However, having a child in a public place that screams at that decibel rate and in that particular key (I think it was a high c, although no glass actually shattered), is not ok. Perhaps you have been led to believe otherwise. I can understand that you may have been instructed incorrectly at some young impressionable age, but you are surely old enough to know better by now. If not, you may want to seek professional help.

To yell at me, “There’s no reason to roll your eyes, he’s just excited!” does not eliminate your responsibilities to others (many of whom WERE rolling their eyes, BTW) who must share the public space with your adorable child. Did it not occur to you that it was strange that you had to blurt that well-practiced line so quickly while Junior was taking a breath before screaming again? He nearly cut your mini-speech off with his tireless squeals.

At what point did it become ok for your child (or anyone else) to invade the sanctity of my personal space in such an offensive manner? The old adage about your freedom to swing your fists stopping at the edge of my nose also applies to my ears and your precocious child’s vocal cords.

I would understand if it was a sudden outburst and you scrambled to educate your child on how to be a better, more sensitive individual and a more pleasant member of society. Instead, you opted to condemn those of us who were surprised by your incredulous incapacity to even recognize a problem. Let me tell you a little secret…  just because your child wants to be the center of your attention and your world does not mean that he should automatically be thrust into the spotlight in ours. There, I said it. Believe it.

I realize it’s old fashioned of me. I realize that I’m not “cool” with the new trends toward lenient parenting. I’m an old fogy. That’s ok. I can live with that. I actually like that my own young daughter’s mouth physically dropped open in disbelief as your child expressed himself.

But if you had not been so quick to jump — if you had not had that comment a little too “at the ready” — perhaps you may have noticed the entire fresh produce section stop in their tracks and turn to stare when Junior demanded center stage. He truly is hard to ignore. Bravo for you!

If you want Junior to be the center of attention, you might try for a more subtle approach. Perhaps a talent or a skill. Maybe he will be an amazing adult… but somehow I think he may need a little more guidance than you are obviously willing (or able) to offer.

Do him a favor, do yourself a favor, do the rest of us a favor… discover a better way for him to claim his fame. And, if you can’t control his abuse of other people’s eardrums, leave him at home. In fact, why don’t you stay home with him and properly adore him at close range and in private?

Your husband appeared to be mannerly … maybe he could do the shopping.

note: photo courtesy of morguefile.com, artist: xenia.

YOUR ebook library now showing on your iPhone

There are many things that the iPhone is, but there were a few nagging things that the iPhone wasn’t. This holiday weekend, while helping my father set up his iPhone, I found a few of the missing pieces.

First and foremost is a decent and FREE ebook reader. I wanted one that would permit me to read the classics AND my own library of ebooks. Enter the winner…

Stanza - you can pick it up in the apps store and you can go to Lexcycle.com and download a desktop version for your PC or Mac. It even handles Kindle formats! I’ll be playing with it more later, but I wanted to share it with any of my readers who have been seeking a quality ebook reader.

Pages turn with a tap in either direction (or a finger-swipe) and you can adjust the size of the font without being required to scroll left to right on the iphone to read the lines. It breaks them for you automatically.

It’s a sweet little app that allows you to download free books from a sizable online library when you are out and you can personalize the contents on your iPhone by adding your own if you pre-plan enough to load them up before leaving home.

And did I mention it was free?!?!

Sending Instant Messages on the iPhone

Another missing piece was a good multi-platform IM manager. Enter Palringo - Vocal Instant Messaging.

Granted, the lack of background apps on the iPhone are a pain for this type of “always on” platform — but I’m just happy to have a non-web-based app with which to shoot off a quick note to my clients/peers/family. I tried a couple of the earlier attempts, and found them sadly lacking. This one seems to be solid, responsive and pretty as well. I’m still playing with all the options.

Taking Notes on the iPhone

I’m less than impressed with the notepad that Apple ships with the iPhone. It takes forever to find and load my old data (and it’s not that I have tons of pages, I only have two or three entries at any time). I wanted a note taking app that would take my info in whatever format I wanted to use — typing, scribbling, voice, whatever.

Wishes do come true… YouNote (in the Apps Store) gives me exactly what I need. I only wish I could get these out of my iPhone and onto my desktop or sync them with a web app so I could use them on my Mac too. I’m just now discovering this little app, but I’m already in love. The drawing feature using a fat finger, produces an impressive thin, responsive line. Bravo!

More Cowbell… errr… Games!

As far as games go, I’ve discovered a few cool ones this weekend as well. Check them out by name at the apps store:

• Hanoi - great ancient (classic) puzzle. Free.
• Asphalt4 - Not free, but worth the bucks (and I have NEVER liked driving games). I just wish the iPhone was actually the steering wheel, that would be even cooler.
• reMovem free - This one is terribly addicting. Pop all the bubbles to clear the board. Curse when you get down to one lone bubble. Rinse. Repeat.

Enjoy!

I was in a generous mood, so I figured I’d share the ones that were cool enough that it made me go ‘ohhhh!’ outloud. Since I don’t notice when I do this, I rely on my daughter who immediately comes in from her desk (using any excuse to escape her math sheet today) to ask me what I’m ‘ohhh-ing’ about.

1. The mouse DOES have a right button! I’m going to copy my email from my friend Bron Robertson’s son here, hopefully it will help others with this frustration. Never occured to me to look in preferences on this, it really didn’t:

Hi Angela,

Basically I read your blog about the iMac and you said how you can’t right-click without using the command key/two hands. This really annoyed me when I first got my iMac about a year ago, but I figured out after about half an hour that it’s really simple to change.

I assume you have the mighty mouse (as you got your Mac recently or at least more recent than me and I have it) as opposed to the old one. With the mighty mouse there are four buttons even though they’re covered so it just looks like 1. There’s a left button, a right button, a middle button under the scroll wheel and the side buttons on either side which you squeeze. As a default factory setting, and I don’t know why this is, Apple assign both the right and left buttons to do the same thing. In order to assign it a new function, you need to go into the setup, go to ‘mouse and keyboard’ I think it’s called (I don’t have my Mac here and can’t remember exactly) and then assign buttons on the mouse.

There’ll be an aerial view of the mighty mouse in the middle with arrows coming off. Just to give you an example, The controls I’ve assigned to my buttons are: ‘click’ for the left button, ‘command click’ for the right button, and ‘show all running apps’ for the side squeezy ones. For a click on the middle button/scroll wheel, I’ve assigned the ‘alt tab’ function you’ll probably be familiar with from Windows, just as a quick way of cycling between programs.

Hope this helps, all the best.

Josh

2. Clicking the title bar on any window twice makes it minimize. This saves me an enormous amount of stress while trying to get used to the controls on the Mac’s windows being on the left, rather than the right. Now, maybe there is some way to set a preference to have the sides swap, I don’t know. But, if I’m going to stay with the Mac I want to just learn the standard layout for this OS. (Also, using the options button and the double click on the title bar will shrink everything down to the dock at the same time. Nice!)

3. Keeping my desktop clear. I was searching for a program to do this last week, before I found out that it’s an easy fix using the preferences in Finder. Just go there and click on the general tab and uncheck the boxes you don’t want to see on your desktop. Keeping Finder in your dock means you can see all the disks hooked up to the Mac with a single click. I also changed the preferences on where my downloads reside. Since there’s already a downloads folder, I created my own “Repository” folder and put a shortcut on the dock. Using these two tricks keeps my information close and my desktop is clutter free!

The podcast is only a few minutes long - I keep about 6 months worth on my iPhone at all times. It’s not a daily offering, but it’s close to daily. It usually gives a couple of fantastic quotes, a biography of a writer and sometimes even a short poem.

If you would like something interesting to listen to on your way to work, or when standing in line waiting, check it out on iTunes. It’s supported through brief advertising statements at the beginning/end and is brought to us by American Public Media. (You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by visiting The Writer’s Almanac Website.)

Worthwhile way to spend a few minutes each day.

I no longer have music, videos or audiobooks on my iphone! Yesterday and today (despite an all-night synch attempt) I have been stuck with an iPhone that is JUST a phone. I’m hating this, and according to reports online, it will be sometime in September before this is fixed.

If anyone knows of a place to download iTunes 7.7 for Mac OSX (or if anyone has their old copy of 7.7 still hanging around), please let me know. I’m desperate!

I just watched a video which covered many of the things I’ve been contemplating lately. I’ve always been an identity protection freak. I have been guilty of making a scene in public when someone tried to demand my social security number (when I knew it wasn’t necessary) before offering me a service or looking up an account.

I’ve been a freak about other things too…

When the education system wasn’t up to snuff, I pulled my kids out and educated them myself. If a store didn’t provide me with the service I needed, I walked out and spent my money (even if it cost more) elsewhere.

All of these things did little to change the system, the situation or the environment.

Mostly they just changed me into a skeptic (usually a pissed-off one) and complicated my life. It seems that nearly everything I did served only to make life harder. Some were worth the added complication (like my children), but most were not worth the price they exacted from my time, my tranquility, and the quality of my life.

I’ve recently decided to quit trying to change the world.

I’ve quit trying to control my environment. Instead, I’ve decided to only avoid being controlled. That may sound like the same thing, but it’s not. Trying to control other individuals and situations is always futile and is usually rude. Refusing to let others control you is difficult but possible and it doesn’t have to be anti-social.

First, I have to determine “what is me?”

Is my personal information “me” or is that only a series of labels people/companies/entities put on me? Are my thoughts “me?” Is my video collection and taste in media an identifying marker of “me?” — and should I remove my information from Pandora? Is how I’m spending my time this second me? Is that information “private” or is it something to be shared on Twitter? Are the people who are my friends private — or do I add them to Facebook? Where I go and what I do… is that something my iPhone should be allowed to track? A couple years ago, I’d say no to all of the above. And, I would have said it loudly.

Is my journal me? Are my musings (like this one) private thoughts, or should I blog them? Am I communicating and being more open (the way I like my software and the way I’d like my government to be) or am I divulging my own personal details to a degree that I’m too visible? Will I regret the new level of transparency I’ve started to adopt?

I’ve spent much of my life jousting windmills in the name of freedom. I’m tired. Even more important, I’m not sure that what I thought I was gaining is achievable or even desirable. And isn’t this how societies change… with broad, sweeping apathy following exhaustion? I think we are there.

Exhausted — politically, philosophically, personally

I’m not interested in being militant for its own sake (that’s the game for a much younger person… been there, done that… and I was in the minority even then. Most of my generation (at least the ones I knew) were sheep in their youth. Quiet sheep. I’ve always been the odd one for fighting the wind, pushing life uphill and raging against the machine.

Balancing my love of autonomy and communication with my passion for technology and “connectedness” has always been a saga of personal oxymorons. Determining how much I do is promoting my own freedom (the freedom to not struggle and fight everything in life) vs. selling my freedom (by accepting things that once let loose into the wild cannot be recaptured) is taking up too much of my mental energy.

View the Video

And, although the video on the Next 5000 days of the Internet is interesting and follows many of the positives of the connected society, it also screams the downfalls (even if the presenter doesn’t seem to notice.) And, Mr. Kelly? The word you are looking for (the replacement for the words “the one”) is “Borg.”

That is all. Rambling rant over… and out.

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The Script Doctor

WickedBlog went a little “dark” for a couple weeks while I got my collective *ahem* stuff together and made the transition from the long-held WickedWordCraft.com to my new, more narrowly focused and less “freeflowing” site, WickedWriter.com.

I could no longer juggle all the things I was trying to do with my life — business and personal. So, after a couple months of spending every spare moment (and some that weren’t really spare), I’ve revamped things.

I’m no longer offering marketing services or tech support or the dozens of other things I offered incoming clients. I have a few (literally a handful) of long-term clients for whom I will continue to offer the services they have come to expect, but any new clients I accept will be those seeking writing services.

I have a great network of RemoteProfessionals that I can call on to provide the other types of services any client may need. It’s an enviable network to have and I’m going to use it more thoroughly.

I’m a writer. It’s what I do and what I enjoy most. It’s where I shine and where I find my bliss.

After all these years of advising clients, I’m finally following my own advice. I’m trimming down, niching hard and doing only what I really enjoy. I’m no longer building my business… it’s built. I’m no longer interested in making more and more money — that is no longer my definition of success. I just want to make “enough.”

What pleases me most now is the concept of having more time, not more money. They say you can either have time or money, but you can’t have both. I disagree. I think you CAN have both — as long as you are balanced and reasonable in how you define wealth, how many “toys” you need to be happy, and how well you spend the time you have.

So, welcome to my new philosophy!

I’m keeping WickedBlog to do what I’ve always done — write about everything under the sun that intrigues me. My business site is ALL business and is all about the business of writing. If I’m not working for clients, posting to my blog or networking online, I’ll be spending my time enjoying my life, watching my youngest become a young lady, sleeping more than four or five hours a night and maybe even getting some much-needed exercise. (Hey, it could happen!)

I’ll be posting regularly here on WB now that the new site is finished. My old site will be taken down September 1, just shy of the six year mark of doing business under that name. And next year will mark the TENTH year since I started offering services online. TEN YEARS! That amazes me.

I’ll still be practicing “Wicked WordCraft”… I’ll just be a WickedWriter while doing it.

Or go here to watch it on TED.com.