Stories from the coffeehouse: Unexpected gifts

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One day I noticed a gentleman trying to help a mature woman with her computer.  He seemed frustrated that he couldn’t help her, and apologized.  Since I know something about computers I went up to her and asked if there was anything I could do.

“Oh yes, I tried with that gentlemen to get my computer online here but it won’t go online,” she said frustrated.  “I’ve tried to get this thing working for two hours with different people’s help, and I have to sent out my resume to a recruiter who contacted me today.”

“Well its your lucky day,” I said with a smile.  “Normally I charge $X to help out people but since your here it’s a freebie for you.  So let’s take a look.”

Her laptop was at least 8 years old and had a basic copy of Windows XP on it.  It was in poor shape software wise because she had good intentions but not enough experience.  She had loaded an anti-virus program that had some issues and that was contributing to the problem.  It was actually due to several issues, but after about an hours worth of work fixing that problem and a few others that contributed to it, it worked.  She was very diligent and took notes of what I did, and the software programs that I used to fix the issues.

“Oh I don’t know how to thank you!”, she said excitedly.  “Now I can get this resume to the recruiter.  I’ve been out of a job for 8 months even though I have a Ph.D.  The company that I worked at laid my entire department off, so its tough since I work in a special field.”  She explained it to me, and she was an advanced engineer with a ton of experience.

“I felt so stupid that I couldn’t get this thing to work,” she said.  “Here,” she said pressing a $20 into my hand.

“I appreciate the gift, but I told you that it was free.  I don’t expect anything from you,” I reminded her.

“I know,” she said, “but you deserve it.  I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Oh I’m sure you would have figured it out.”, I said.  “You were very good in being pro-active and installing things to protect your computer.”

She smiled and got busy and got to work.  I went back to my chair and continuing with my blogging for the day.

Almost every meaningful and life changing thing in my life has been a gift.  Not a material one like cash, but sometimes a gift of time or of the heart.

How do you create a mailing list on the Mac?

Apple – Support – Discussions – How do you create a mailing list? ….  J D McIninch has the answer.

n Address Book, note the “Group” panel on the left.

You can create a group by clicking on the “+” on the bottom of the panel, and populate it by dragging cards of people in the address book into the group.

You can also create a group in Address Book form the File menu, which gives you options to create a group, and “New Group From Selection” which is handy if you’ve selected a number of cards in your contact list.

Finally, there’s my personal favorite, “File > New Smart Group”. This is excellent because it permits you to create a group that’s made of cards meeting criteria that you specify. If you add a new card with the specified criteria, it’s part of the group. One thing you could do is create a group of people that, for example, live in your hometown… However, I’ve found it immensely useful to select cards based on a word or phrase in the note field (e.g., I have a smart group called Christmas Card that contains all people with the phrase “xmas card” in the note field). You can also make groups like “everyone that’s got a birthday in the next week” and so on.

If you want to send e-mail to a whole group, simply type the group name in the To:, Cc: or Bcc: fields in Mail. You’ll notice that as you type, the group name will appear in a drop down and you can select it. When you do, the group name will be replaced with all the individuals in the list.

Affordable iPhone gifts by Dr. Mac

Find some gifts here with some under $10!  Click here.

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Its a great list.  Most designers would love this stuff.  Click here to find out.

Top 10 iPhone Gifts and Accessories for 2009

These are some creative and fun items.  Perfect for the person who seems to have everything.  Click here.

10 Gifts for the Mac Switcher

Fun list of stuff.  Some of these are big item tickets but its a good starting point to consider.  Click here.