“Suitable for All Ages?”

suitable

Are parents stupid enough to fall for labels such as this one? Especially when they’re on an arcade game where the object is to shoot and kill as if you were a member of the military?

army

I have no problem with these sort of game, even for kids such as my son Riley (12, pictured). But all ages? I don’t think so.

MacWorld Photo

A professional photographer was taking photos at MacWorld. I thought they’d be using these for promo for the conference but it mostly was a way for a photographer to take photos in order to make money. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it wasn’t really advertised as such.

In any case, this is my photo, for which I paid $15 to get the soft-copy of. As much as I think $5 or $10 would be a fairer price this is such a good photo of me I guess I can spring for the $15 for this one. You can also view a horrible close up as well as an iPod-style silhouette from the same session.

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Sigh!

I really enjoy my job as an Enterprise Community Manager. I get to help people use our company’s internal collaboration system while also thinking about ways to make it even better!  And overall most of the people I work with ask reasonable questions and have feasible use cases.

But there are some days that are not fun. Sometimes the question is… less than reasonable. Other times it’s something stupid that I do myself! In other case, it’s just an outside factor that has nothing to do with me or the people I’m helping/serving. Regardless… a bad day!

But no matter the reason there is always the same outcome. It doesn’t happen very often; maybe three or four times per year (and, it should be noted, hasn’t happened in months). But when that time comes there is only one thing you can do.

sigh

I like this photo that was taken with the webcam on my computer. The clenched mouth really adds a nice touch.

I Scored with the MacWorld Checklist!

One of the best parts of this year’s MacWorld Expo sort of happened organically. I had seen the wonderful post on Joy of Tech with this year’s MacWorld Expo checklist, and I thought it was amusing. Then, it was blogged about on The MacCast blog and on Justine Ezarik’s blog. So, it was a little bit in my mind – but as I was attending for only one day I didn’t think I’d try to “conquer” the list.

Then a funny thing happened. I started to see the celebs. And then I started to get really obsessed with completing the task. How’d I do? Really well, as you will see.

Here’s the 2009 MacWorld Checklist from Joy of Tech.

checklist-sm

I didn’t get photos of a couple of these. First was Merlin Mann, who I believe is the fellow in glasses in the bottom right next to Walt Mossberg. I’d met Mann a couple times and definitely saw him in passing while on the show floor.

Next, I did see Scott MucNulty when he did a presentation at the Peachpit Press booth. He wrote a book about WordPress and overall I already knew most of what he presented (which was a good thing, for me anyway). I didn’t realize McNulty was on the list or I would have taken a photo.

When I saw Andy Inhatko I did remember he was on the list. Here he is signing copies of his latest book. 

inahtko

Next up is another author, David Pogue. He always draws a large crowd to the O’Reilly booth and sadly I missed his Wednesday morning keynote speech. Next year I’m doing the Conference portion of MacWorld as Pogue has already agreed to do another keynote.

pogue

The celebs started coming fast and furious after this…

Chris Breen at the MacWorld Magazine booth.

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (in the black and white shirt, sitting on a stool).

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Now I realized I could really cash in with some of these people on the checklist. So, I checked Justine’s twitter account and saw that she was literally around the corner doing a workout (no, I don’t know what that means). When I came up to her and and asked if I could take a photo for my checklist, she laughed and said sure. This is Justine Ezarik with her buddy Karen. 

justine

Next, I headed off to the MacWorld Expo “Town Hall,” led by main man Paul Kent.  My suggestion for MacWorld 2010? Provide everyone with a Joy of Tech Mac Celebrity Checklist!

kent

After the Town Hall I headed off to the Podcasting Birds of a Feather gathering. Along the way, I saw a couple guys from MacHeads the Movie trying to pimp their showing of the documentary film. The checklist doesn’t name names and the guys I saw were kind of anonymous. So, I’m counting this. Another checkmark for my list!

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At the Podcaster gathering I ended up sitting right near a couple celebs. First is Don McAllister.

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Then I saw the man with the smooth voice. That’s MacWorld’s Chuck Joiner in the lower left near the stage.

podcasters

All in all, including the “non-celebs” on the list, I ended up seeing 15 out of 25 from the checklist. A pretty good job, if I do say so myself!Â