While I settle down from the throttling I got from my fellow Mac users over my recently announced decision to migrate to Windows 7, here’s a look at the no-less debate-worthy topics I’ve covered lately on Chicagosphere, my byline about the local blogosphere on the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow network:

An Interview with Journalist Blogger Laura Washington (Oct. 21)
One of Chicago’s few black women bloggers tells why blogs are key to the future of journalism.

Media Versus the Machine: The Southwest Observer (Oct. 22)
A community blog tries to cover a connected neighborhood famous for keeping its mouth shut.

Are News Exclusives the Meatball Sundaes of Web-Based Media? (Oct. 26)
Old PR and new technology don’t mix well. Why it’s time for the embargoed news exclusive to go.

Son of Chitown Daily News to Debut in November (Oct. 29)
Community blogster Geoff Dougherty takes another stab at online news…with a print publication?

Sustainability Optional in Chicago Community Trust Online News Grants? (Nov. 5)
Sustainability seems left by the wayside by the Community News Matters local news grant program.

Is OS Choice Important to Bloggers? (Nov. 6)
When you spend your day looking into a browser window, does your choice of operating system really matter?

Vivian Vahlberg Vs. The Usual Suspects: Why the “Community News Matters” Grantee List Is No Surprise (Nov. 6)
The Community News Matters program director says the recent local news grants were for “bridge funding.” The Chicago Community Trust’s president & CEO says they were for “sustainability.” Who’s right?

Related posts:

1. Last Word (for Now) on C-BOM Blog Sustainability Meetup
2. On Chicagosphere: Why the Sun-Times Deserves to Die
3. Lately on Chicagosphere: Conquering the World, Gay Pride, & Healthy Hotties
4. Mike Doyle Calls for Community Blogger Strategy Session on Outside the Loop Radio
5. Bottom(s) Up for Chicago Bloggers: Time for Our Own Summit on Sustainability

(Graphic: A riff on the unofficial piney logo of jailbroken iPhones–now including mine. Credit: iPhone Unlock.)

I didn’t expect my Wednesday post, I Am a Future PC: Why I’m Dumping Apple after 15 Years, to garner the attention that it did. In the past two days, the post has made the rounds of several Mac headline sites and generated a lot of heated comment debate over my decision to migrate from Mac OS X to Microsoft’s Windows 7. Many of those commenters were longtime Mac users who sounded like they were taking it personally that any former Apple fan would leave the fold. While I continue on my way out the OS X door, I’d like to respond to the commenters who let me know in no uncertain terms that they don’t agree with my opinions about the Mac platform.

Tough.

I could note that Macintosh is just a computing platform, not a religion, or a political stance, or a life-or-death medical treatment option. I could ask how my personal operating system preferences impact in any real way the lives of commenters who read my blog on Wednesday from many places thousands of miles away. (On Wednesday, alone, the post was read on every continent except Antarctica.)

I could point out that Apple’s requirement that Mac OS X run only on Apple-built hardware and desire for Mac users to run as much Apple-coded software on that hardware and hook as many Apple-designed peripherals to that hardware as possible eliminates choice. Sure, Apple’s applications and machines are closely integrated. Given the lack of hardware alternatives, though, they’d better be.

I could also point out that I don’t need anyone’s permission to change my OS. Numerous commenters told me they didn’t agree with my decision, my reasoning, my logic. They urged me to reconsider or at least make an argument that they found compelling. Reading these particular comments, it sounded like I needed the permission of the installed Mac user community to leave it. As if I was trying to leave a religious cult and the faithful were trying to keep me there, against my will if necessary.

But I think “tough” sums it up best. Before Wednesday, I spent several months shifting away from Apple software and over to a cross-platform or open-source software suite. In lieu of Apple’s branded Dock, software, and iApps, now I’m a regular user of Google’s web apps (Mail, Calendar, Office), Firefox, NetNewsWire, OpenOffice, DragThing, and Picasa. And I’m liking it. A lot.

Here’s where I’ve gone since Wednesday…

Linux in the Running
Several commenters suggested I give myself a wider base of comparison by trying out Linux as a potential replacement OS. So I did. I downloaded Sun Microsystem’s open source VirtualBox virtualization software, and the latest build of popular consumer Linux flavor, Ubuntu. Except for the pesky but common low resolution running in virtual mode, my initial reaction was positive. I hadn’t realized how much useful open-source software comes out of the box or is immediately available for download with Linux.

I did, however, find that I’m not a big fan of Ubuntu’s GNOME interface (one of the two main graphical user interfaces, or GUIs, used by consumer Linux builds.) So next I downloaded Ubuntu’s sister version, Kubuntu, which uses KDE, the other main Linux GUI. I think it’s a lot more attractive, but I won’t say that too loudly–the battle between GNOME and KDE users in the Linux world rivals the Mac-PC debate, and I think I’ve stirred just enough controversy this week. Besides, I haven’t yet gotten Kubuntu to play well with VirtualBox. Once I get it up and running alongside Ubuntu, I’ll spend some time trying both on for size, work-wise and play-wise.

Google Voice Rollout
Back in 2007 when I thought I wanted to move from my beloved Chicago back to my native New York City (thankfully, the urge passed), I signed up with Grand Central for an NYC-based virtual phone number to help easy my shift from city to city. Grand Central, of course, was the company offering “one number to rule them all” bought out by Google and turned into the nifty–and if you’re Apple, controversial–Google Voice service.

In my earlier post, I made no bones about wanting to shift away from iPhone and over to Google’s Android mobile phone platform. I maintain only a single phone number (it’s easier that way), so I knew a bridge number would make it easier to shift from carrier to carrier. Skype would have fit the bill, but Google Voice would work better. And lucky me, we former Grand Central users all got early access to Google Voice. (Please don’t ask for invites, I gave mine away on Twitter.)

So I laid down Google’s admittedly annoying $10 fee to change to a Chicago number of my choice and immediately contacted my friends, colleagues, and clients to ask them to ditch my old number (or as I put it, to please pet and feed my new Google Voice number and bury my old iPhone number in the backyard.) Boy, did I miss being a Grand Central user. I was happy to find most of the same neat calling features I remembered in Google’s version. Those features include visual voicemail which predated the iPhone, the ability to listen in on messages before I answer calls or to block callers permanently, and the ability to record separate greetings for different callers or groups of callers–those last three features, of course, nowhere to be found on an iPhone.

If only I didn’t have to use Google’s clunky, hastily created mobile web app to access the service from my iPhone. But, of course, I do, thanks to Apple’s ongoing, FCC-enraging refusal to allow a Google Voice app on non-jailbroken iPhones. (Can you see where this is heading?)

The Great Escape
If I was really walking away from Steve Jobs’ control over my computing life as I declared earlier this week, then I knew I had to put my money–or at least the risk of my iPhone investment–where my mouth was. Late last night, I boned up on jailbreaking procedures, read through the iPhone Dev-Team blog, downloaded the latest Pwnage jailbreaking software, and became a criminal in the eyes of Apple. All to load software of my own choice on my owned phone.

Though first I had to suffer through a common jailbreaking problem, the dreaded “1604″ error. Just as  iTunes was trying to restore my iPhone from the special .ipsw file created by the Pwnage program to, essentially, break the device free from the App Store, the error popped up and my phone sat there like a sad little electronic brick.

It took an hour to figure out the problem: insufficient Pwnage documentation from the iPhone Dev-Team. If your phone has not yet been jailbroken, the Pwnage program places the phone into a deep-recovery mode called DFU mode, like REM sleep without the rapid eye movements. Once there, you restore the phone yourself using iTunes, by option-clicking the Restore button in iTunes and selecting your new .ipsw file.

Of course, the on-screen prompting in Pwnage tells you none of that, so when iTunes launched and stopped Pwnage from putting my phone in DFU mode, I followed the few instructions Pwnage had already given me once more, proceeding to put my phone into Recovery mode–not a deep enough sleep, as it were, to restore with a jailbreaking .ispw file.

This helpful site will tell you that you need to put your phone in DFU mode, and this helpful site will tell you why (unlike Recovery mode, DFU mode blocks the iBoot agent from loading, allowing for the jailbreaking magic to happen.) But, really the iPhone Dev-Team could just have said that in the on-screen instructions in Pwnage. At any rate, another hour later I had a jailbroken, fully restored iPhone, with an icon to access Cydia, the independent app store for apps Apple doesn’t want you to have. (Mind you, jailbreaking doesn’t take away access to Apple’s own App Store.)

Long story short…well, too late for that. But the time and tedium of jailbreaking was worth it for one thing: the shiny, new, free GV Mobile app that now resides on my iPhone, downloaded from Cydia. It’s the best of the Google Voice apps that Apple removed from the App Store over the summer. It integrates with my iPhone Address Book and it works beautifully.

And it uses a phone number completely out of the control of Steve Jobs. I bet that just kills him.

Related posts:

1. I Am a Future PC: Why I’m Dumping Apple after 15 Years
2. The Great Migration
3. CrackBook Ho
4. Slide to Unlock…
5. Juiced Apple

(Graphic: Not your father’s Apple Macintosh. Daring desktop image included with Microsoft’s new Windows 7.)

UPDATE (11/6/09): This entry now has a follow-up: Jailbreak on the Journey from Apple, the continuing story of my migration away from Macintosh.

[Welcome to my readers from MacSurfer's Headline News, Applelinks.com, and Low End Mac. Don't hate--trust me, I'm as surprised at my decision as you are...]

I am a future Windows PC user and that is that. After a 15-year relationship with all things Apple, I’ve finally had it with the Steve Jobs “you’ll use your computer they way we tell you to use your computer” method of customer relations.

In June, I blogged about my effort to pare down my electronic lifestyle. In a bid to make it easier for my ADHD self to manage the sea of information in which I swim–or sink–on a daily basis, over the summer I did what most mere mortals dream of doing: I migrated to a single email address and telephone number. I dumped my Vonage number, along with Apple’s Mail and iCal programs. In their stead, I routed all my calls to my iPhone and let myself succumb to life in the Google cloud.

My past four months of being a Gmail and Google Calendar user have been transformational. The ability to manage my mail, appointments, and address book seamlessly whether on my laptop or mobile phone and sync most of those items in real-time made life a lot easier for me. It also made me wonder at length why I had to use third-party solutions to do so.

Sure, I could have paid an annual subscription fee to use Apple’s MobileMe syncing service. But that wouldn’t have changed the fact that Google’s web apps are more robust than Apple’s desktop counterparts–not to mention free. That got me thinking about all the times in the recent past I’ve felt hampered by Mac software.

Having owned about a dozen Macs in the past 15 years, I long considered myself a staunch Apple evangelist. But being a Mac user was a lot more fun before the platform became mainstream. Back in the days when the media was still placing bets on when Apple would finally keel over and die, there was a sense of camaraderie between computer company and user. Right up until Steve Jobs made silver the new beige, the almost holy triumvirate of Apple, Macworld magazine, and a largely professional user community vibrated with the sense that if we all stayed on each other’s side, computer miracles would happen.

What seems to have happened, instead, is that Steve Jobs decided to make the needs of occasional home users more important than the needs of savvier, longtime Apple adherents. Since the company began concentrating so wholly on attracting PC converts, Mac software solutions have turned into what in August Wired magazine termed good-enough tech. As long as college users could figure out how to play mp3s, soccer moms how to schedule car-pool days, and grandparents how to use email, Apple could garner more market share.

Apple’s solution to accomplish all this: creating a suite of closely interlinked programs that met the basic needs of average users–and not much more. Sure, those users might end up so deeply enmeshed in an Apple-only universe that they might never again consider living life without an “i” in front of it. But how else to keep them buying expensive, Apple-branded hardware?

Although I have long been a power user, relying on my Mac to work, play, and manage most aspects of my life, the above paragraph described me for years. Especially after the even more hermetically sealed iPhone hit the market. Sure, I wanted real-time, platform-agnostic control over my email, the ability to manage my own photo folders, and access to “un-approved” software on my mobile phone. But once you’ve drunk the Apple Kool-Aid, it’s really hard to yank the computer company’s weedy tendrils out of the firmament of your daily life.

Much as Apple likes to market itself as the answer to allegedly closed-minded Microsoft, to a regular Mac user, when it comes to using your computer it can often feel like it’s either Apple’s way or the highway. It’s one thing to regularly ignore the needs of users by releasing software and system updates that just as regularly break popular third-party applications and add-ons (back in the days of camaraderie–when Macs were still fun–this didn’t happen with such regular frequency.)

It’s quite another to tell users that if they try to put unapproved software on their $400 cell phones (via iPhone OS jailbreaking), you may render their phones permanently inoperable. For what reason? Spite? Control?

More likely, for the mere whim of it all. Earlier this year, the Times of London ran a rare exposé on the highly secretive Steve Jobs. After recounting that Apple tried to get the story killed twice, the article referenced multiple sources familiar with Jobs to come to one conclusion about him: that he’s a raging narcissist. The paper noted that Job’s likely personality disorder could be what makes him such a strong industry leader. Yet it could also explain why any use of Apple hardware or software not personally touted by Jobs or his lackeys at a press event ends up impossible to pull off without putting your warranty–or purchase price–at risk.

I’m glad Jobs finds using Macs exclusively in his approved, cripple-ware ways so fulfilling. I, however, don’t. The ease of use I felt with Google’s software solutions motivated me to perform an ongoing audit of all the Apple software I regularly use. I wanted to determine whether third-party applications might better suit my needs.

As it turned out, in almost all cases the answer was a resounding yes. Since June, I’ve dumped the hard-to-customize Safari and its overly-simplistic RSS reader for the highly extendable Firefox browser and the equally robust NetNewsWire. I replaced Pages (and Word) with GoogleDocs. I ditched the standard Mac application launcher and switcher, the Dock, for the infinitely more useful DragThing. And at long last, I retrieved my 15,000 photos out of iPhoto’s sealed library and put them back where they belong–in a hierarchical folder archive categorized by me and now ably browsed with Picasa.

I deferred to the ease and utility of iTunes. But that’s about it. I now have the most platform-agnostic software suite I’ve ever used on a Macintosh. And that got me thinking even further. If my electronic life has been rendered easier by such a significant shift away from Apple software, what would happen if I made the ultimate switch of all? But it’s not like I’m foolish enough to go near the universally panned Vista or the by-now aged Windows XP.

And then surprise of surprises, last month Windows 7 was released to rave reviews, including Wall Street Journal Mac fanboy Walt Mossberg calling it as good as Mac OS X. That pretty much sealed the deal for me. I loved being a Mac user when it felt like Apple loved me back. But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s feeling like I’m being used. In this case, I feel used by Steve Jobs who must assume that no matter how marginalized he makes longtime users feel in his cripple-ware quest to increase market share, they’ll always stick around.

Sorry, Steve. I’m out of the magic Kool-Aid. I no longer feel compelled by your patented reality distortion field to make your company any additional profit at the expense of the daily ease of use of my own computers. You know, the ones I paid for, own, and frankly have a right to use however I see fit?

In the near future I’ll install Windows 7 on my Macbook in a virtual environment to get up to speed on how the modern PC platform works today (after all, it’s been a long time.) Then, thanks to Apple’s 2005 shift to Intel chips, Windows 7 will become my main Macbook operating system. And if you hadn’t guessed by now, after that my next computer will be a PC.

My iPhone isn’t left out of my back-migration, either. Apple’s heavy-handed control of the applications I’m “allowed” to use on the device–not to mention two years of frustrating-to-nonexistent AT&T signals in major cities across America–won no points with me, either. I’m shifting my calls to a nifty, new, platform- and device-agnostic Google Voice number. That way, when I break my AT&T contract and buy a new open-source Verizon Droid, my callers won’t notice a difference.

But I sure will.

###

UPDATE (11/6/09): This entry now has a follow-up: Jailbreak on the Journey from Apple, the continuing story of my migration away from Macintosh.

Related posts:

1. Jailbreak on the Journey from Apple: My Continuing Migration from Mac
2. The Great Migration
3. CrackBook Ho
4. Bad Apples
5. Juiced Apple

An alternate version of this post appears on my Chicagosphere byline.

I’ve decided to call it quits as a Huffington Post Chicago blogger. A charter blogger at that–I was among those personally invited to scribe for HuffPost shortly before their debut in the Windy City in August 2008.

It was a good fit while it lasted. HuffPost bloggers aren’t compensated, but retain the copyright to their work which can be used in other places. So for the past 14 months, I’ve used my HuffPost byline to cross-post stories of civic interest that simultaneously appeared here in the pages of Chicago Carless. The large audience of the national content network gave those stories a wider reach than would have been possible on Carless, alone.

However, for the past several months, almost all content that I have published on Huffington Post Chicago–content that originated here on my personal blog–has been stolen and reposted on domestic and off-shore spam sites. From time to time that has happened with Chicago Carless, and in most cases I have been able to have the stolen content removed, usually by filing DMCA complaints with the relevant web hosts. It has happened rarely enough that I don’t find it too much of a nuisance.

However, in the past few months every single entry I have published on HuffPost Chicago has been stolen and reposted. I take my copyright very seriously and defend it vigorously–but I don’t have the time or the patience to follow up every HuffPost entry I publish with a DMCA complaint and the research required to file one. And, frankly, I’m tired of watching my copyrighted Chicago Carless posts infringed solely because I allow HuffPost to use them.

This would be made easier if Huffington Post Chicago defended the copyright of its bloggers in some way. However, the content network places the onus of copyright defense squarely with its scribes–even though my content is being stolen–and consistently so–from their servers, not my own. Given the longstanding controversy that continues to surround HuffPost’s practice of posting questionably long excerpts from third-party news articles–a form of content scraping–I don’t expect them to damn the irony and rush to defend the copyright of their own bloggers.

But they should. And while you can still manage to benefit from infringing scraper sites (see good recommendations here and here), I’d rather beat them than join them, thanks.

I wish the Huffington Post Chicago editors and bloggers my best, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to borrow their pulpit for awhile. However, I can only wonder how large a problem this is. I can’t be the only Huffington Post Chicago blogger being infringed on a post-by-post basis. Hopefully, HuffPost will look into the issue and offer its bloggers a better defense against infringement in the future.

It’s worth noting that in guidance given to its own copyright-holding bloggers, the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow blog network, where I have my online-media byline, Chicagosphere, also places the onus of infringement defense on bloggers. It remains to be seen whether this will pose a problem in the future for me or my fellow ChicagoNow scribes.

What does seem obvious is that copyright infringement (as in: cut-and-paste theft of entire blog posts) will only get worse as content networks like HuffPost, ChicagoNow, and their ilk continue to forge virtual publications from the work of modestly paid (or unpaid) online writers. Letting bloggers keep their copyright is cold comfort if a content network won’t to step in when their words are stolen–especially for bloggers who are monetizing those words in other venues.

I’d bet money on copyright defense for resident bloggers to become a touchstone issue in the not-so-distant future. That is, if content-network bloggers are actually paying attention to theft in the first place. Word to the wise content blogger: Google yourself. You may discover bylines out there you never knew you had.

Or wanted.

Related posts:

1. On Chicagosphere: OS Wars, Nonprofit Hijinks, Meatball Sundaes, Trailblazing Bloggers
2. Last Word (for Now) on C-BOM Blog Sustainability Meetup
3. Lately on Chicagosphere: Conquering the World, Gay Pride, & Healthy Hotties
4. My New Huffington Post Chicago Byline
5. On How to Hail a Blogger

(Photo: “I’m tellin’ ya’, dude, there’s still time for her to call.”)

“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before and they almost always call,” said Nick, announcing his decision to leave his number for our waitress. Overly Frank and I were less than eager to witness the passive-aggressive, likely-to-go-down-in-flames example of heterosexual courtship. We were more immediately curious as to why we were staring into yet another complimentary cookie sundae that had just been plopped on our table.

The same thing happened the last time Frank and I ate at R.J. Grunt’s, the mother restaurant of Chicago themed-eatery juggernaut Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, a week before. We assumed the previous free dessert was the work of the waiter who came up to us to say hi after recognizing us both from Bear411. This time, the host answered out quizzical gazes. “We bring cookie sundaes for every person who eats here for the first time,” he told us. “That’s why we ask if you’ve been here before when we seat you.”

That made sense. I’ve loved Grunt’s burgers and malts for years, but on our prior visit I remembered Frank telling the waitress it was his first time. This time, it was Nick’s turn to be a newbie.

“I knew you’d come in handy,” I told him.

“People say that to me all the time,” Nick replied.

I met the 25-year-old Cincinnati expat on the ‘L’ one evening in late June. He noticed I was using a 3G iPhone and came over to show me his 3GS. From zero to 60 words per minute in no time flat, he launched into an instant conversation about tech specs, how much he’d liked his first two months in the Windy City, and whether the Taste of Chicago was still open that day. I did my best to ignore his lack of a left hand while I tried to figure out whether he was coming on to me. Given his rapid-fire choice of subject matter, I had a feeling he was a fellow ADDer.

The quarter hour Nick spent trying to decide between two hamburgers at Grunt’s left little room for ADD doubt. “If you don’t make up your mind soon,” I growled at the 15-minute mark, “you’re gonna lose your other hand.”

“How did you lose the first one?” Frank asked.

“Bar fight,” Nick lied.

“Birth defect,” I said as I closed Nick’s menu. “But Nick likes to make up alternative stories to see what he can get people to believe. He had Chris thinking he lost his hand in a sword fight.”

“Sorry, guys,” Nick apologized. “I’m not usually so indecisive.” I’d eaten with Nick in restaurants before. How he managed to get that sentence out with a straight face I’ll never know. “It’s just that our waitress is so hot. Did you see her?”

The new boyfriend and I just stared at the Cincinnatian without saying a word.

“Oh, right,” Nick finally clued in. “Well trust me, she’s pretty.”

She was. Pretty busy. Pretty older. And if I bet money on these sort of things, pretty much out of Nick’s league.

Nick went on. “I’m gonna leave her my number.” You have to love the persistence of single straight guys.

“I thought you hated women,” I asked.

“Not all women,” Nick replied. “Just the ones who’ve burned me in the past and the ones who never call me back and the ones who lie to me. Like a lot of the women in Lincoln Park.” Nick hasn’t been a Chicagoan long enough to know the word, Trixies. “You know, social climbers. Back stabbers.” He went in for the kill. “Bitches.”

Frank opened his mouth as if to start speaking then closed it just as quickly. Like a carp coming to the surface to gasp for air, I’ve come to know it as Frank’s trademark expression for signifying speechlessness.

Nick went on. “Now our waitress, she’s not like that. I’m sure of it. So I’m gonna leave her my number. Not directly, since she’s busy here at work. But I’ll write it on my check when we leave.”

Uh-huh. Nick’s edgy, lovelorn diatribe seemed the verbal version of a crooked wig, so Frank and I just left it alone and continued with our dinner. I had a feeling Frank was hoping Nick’s ADD would kick in and he’d forget to pass his love note. I, on the other hand, sharpened my inner pencil and leaned in a little closer to Nick to make sure I took accurate notes.

When the unexpected dessert came, Nick didn’t let me down. He looked right at the target of his affections and asked, “Honey, can we have separate checks?”

“It’s not that I want a girlfriend,” Nick told us as he wrote down his name and number. “I really just want a relationship for the evening. It’s easier that way.”

“Do you think that’s all she’s going to want, too?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” Nick replied. “Fingers crossed.”

Frank and I wished him luck. “Now,” I said, “let’s get the hell out of here before she reads that thing.”

As the three of us headed up Clark Street back to Frank’s house, I had to ask. “So Nick,” I said, “what makes you so sure she’s going to call? You know, for my blog audience?”

“Hey, it’s almost always worked before,” Nick replied as if he were stating the obvious. “Sexy babes like that always want a piece of the good stuff.”

I didn’t have to turn my gaze in his direction to know that Frank was rolling his eyes. I continued to press. “But are you sure you’ve covered all the bases?” I had a reason for asking. I knew there was one small thing Nick was overlooking.

“Yes, all the bases, man,” he replied in the coolest tones he could muster. “All the bases.”

If it hadn’t been for Nick’s ongoing air of douchebaggery glee, I would have taken far less pleasure in my following words.

“OK,” I said. “But since the waitress didn’t actually see you write your number down…” I paused to watch Frank’s eyes light up. Nick still couldn’t see where I was headed. “…out of the three of us,” I continued, “how will she know you’re the one who left it?”

Nick’s face made an almost audible thud as it hit the pavement. “Well, um, wait a second…,” he stammered, before quickly realizing there was only one possible course for his reaction to take. “Oh…dammit!” he yelled into the Lincoln Park evening. “Dammit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“What are you gonna do?” I said to Nick. My question was meant as consolation, but he took me at my word.

“Well, do I think I should go back there and tell her it was me?” he asked. “I think I should go back. You think? Yeah, I think I should go back.”

“Don’t you dare,” Frank warned as Nick started to turn around. “Michael and I have to eat there, you know. Don’t embarrass us any further than absolutely necessary.”

“I guess all I need to do is come with a title for my blog post now,” I said while Nick smirked in my general direction.

“Give it some time,” Frank suggested. “I mean, I know you have your punch line now, but judging by the baseline of his actions thus far, aren’t you just a little curious to see what else Nick might be capable of before the evening’s over?”

“Well,” I said to them both. “If nothing else, I probably should hold off on the blog post until we see whether the waitress calls or not. It’s only fair to give Nick the benefit of the doubt.”

“No, man,” Nick moaned. “I totally screwed this up. She’s not gonna call. She’s just not. Fuck.”

“Now you don’t know that,” said Frank. “Actually, she might call. Didn’t your check have the free sundae on it? If the waitress remembers you were the new guy tonight, then when she sees the sundae comped on your check-”

Nick didn’t wait for Frank to finish. “Yes. Yes! It was on my check!” Nick exclaimed. “The sundae was on my check! Oh, thank God. That’s how she’ll know it’s my number on there. That’s how she’ll know it’s me! Hurray! See, man, all the bases! I knew it! I’m in!”

Nick hurried on ahead while Frank and I slowed down to shake our heads. And then the cherry hit the top of the sundae. “Oh my God, Frank,” I exclaimed. “He’s skipping.”

Frank and I let Nick have his moment. As time eventually did tell, we knew the waitress wouldn’t call, but no matter. We were too engrossed in the manic display unfolding before our eyes. As Nick continued to happily hoot and holler over an event that any rational person would never expect to come to pass, Frank and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe. After all, we knew we were listening to something never before heard by human ears.

The sound of one hand clapping.

Related posts:

1. Flight of the Trojans
2. Relatively Speaking Downtown
3. The Furious Kvetch at Benyamin Bissell
4. CTA Introduces “Bemont Avenue” on 3,000 Wrong Maps
5. Brown Line Bottle Blonde Blockhead

(Photo: Punxsutawney Phil’s life has nothing on the daily grind of the average ADDer. Credit: Business Pundit.)

Take my ADD, please. When my ADD sits around the house, it really sits around the house. I just flew in from Los Angeles, and boy is my ADD tired. Knock knock. Who’s there? ADD. ADD, who? ADD to you, too, buddy.

Life with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) can frequently be its own punch line. A lifelong neurological condition often badly misinterpreted as a mere childhood behavioral issue, it’s not so much paying attention that’s the problem for us ADDers. The real impossible dream tends to be stopping ourselves form paying attention to less important tasks so we can focus on issues of immediate importance.

Often we hear from colleagues, friends, and family that we should “try harder” to focus on the task at hand–after all, they tell us, when we really put our mind to our work, we zero in like a laser. There’s usually little headway to be made in explaining that no amount of trying harder can overcome a prefontal cortex wired to shut down the moment a task requiring executive thought functions occurs. Or that our occasional ability to hyperfocus on work is actually a symptom of ADD–the same symptom that more frequently leads us to watch Netflix, listen to iTunes, or play Xbox for eight-hour stints without coming up for air.

If there’s an immediate payoff in sight, we’re there. When faced with a boring task requiring us to order our thoughts or prioritize our work by time or importance, however…what did you say? I can’t hear you. Too busy watching my Blu-ray of The Devil Wears Prada over here, for the third time in a row. Too engaged in doing so to stop and change gears. No matter how critical the task I should be doing, much less how large the eventual consequences may be. After all, an ADD/ADHD-wired brain only understands time in terms of now or never. So unless those pesky consequences are going to happen in the next few minutes, my brain just won’t interpret them as mattering at all. Ever.

Those of you reading this with normal brains have absolutely no idea how to identify with the last two paragraphs I’ve written. Right now, you’re scratching your heads and wondering if I’m kidding. Meanwhile, those of you with ADD/ADHD are nodding in agreement. It’s a gap in understanding that often leaves ADDers feeling like we’re living in a separate world, without the vocabulary to adequately explain to outsiders the all-encompassing nature and pernicious tenacity of the disorder we fight on a minute-by-minute basis.

Recently, the popular ADD/ADHD memoir blog, Jeff’s ADD Mind, underscored this feeling of separateness known well by ADDers. A staunch opponent of the growing idea that ADD/ADHD is somehow a “gift”, in a post entitled, Adult ADD as a Form of Madness, blogger Jeff describes the way an ADDer can seem to live the same, unproductive day over and over:

“I’m beginning to see ADD as a mild form of madness: a sort of insanity that never lets up…Its ‘victims’ lead a maddening, Sisyphean life as they relive the same day again and again as if they were performing their personalized version of (the movie) Ground Hog Day…ADD assures that its victim’s life will ALWAYS be a series of do-overs, a series of attempts to ‘get it right,’ to try to ‘do the right thing.’”

Jeff notes that for every one battle ADDers manages to win against their symptoms, there are likely 10 other battles with less victorious outcomes. I agree. While I wouldn’t consider myself “mad” by dint of having ADD, there’s definitely a feeling of hopelessness that arises at the end of an hour, or day, or week when you realize you haven’t performed your most critical activities or fulfilled your most important responsibilities–even though you’ve spent every spare ounce of your energy and second of your time trying to trick, cajole, force, and otherwise do an end run around your brain to make yourself start and follow-through on them all, all the while reminding yourself of the consequences of failure at every turn.

The urge to blame oneself is great in such circumstances. The truth, however, is that ADDers are slaves to outside aids. If it weren’t for smart phones, electronic calendars, and email reminders, Ritalin and Adderall, or for the chronically uninsured–like me–fish oil, B supplements, and L tyrosine, we might never get anything done. As Jeff points out, even for all that technological and medicinal assistance, sometimes we don’t get anything done, anyway:

“It seems all one can do is accommodate oneself to this madness, acknowledge that there will be good days (even good weeks!) and bad days (and even bad weeks!)…It is tiring to have to always fight to put it back in its cage again and again so that one could lead a ‘normal’ life.”

Not all ADDers are built the same, of course. Although as sure as like attracts like, we do seem to gravitate towards each other. Without knowing it, regular readers of this blog are already acquainted with a few of the other ADDers in my life. Pastry Chef Chris. Sole Man Donn. Bartolobampo. My Cincinnati-expat friend, Handyman Nick. All of us experience the unproductive temporary madness of ADD in our own ways.

I tend to get wrapped up in distractions that last for days, even weeks at a time. Others in our group have a distractibility cycle measured in hours. Minutes even. Most of us have the ability to laugh about our symptoms. Some of us take meds. One of us doesn’t but really, really needs to. Another one of us pretends he manages his symptoms perfectly, while knowing perfectly well that he doesn’t.

And all of us would be at different, more advanced places in our personal and professional lives if we didn’t have ADD at all. Jeff bluntly covered that topic earlier this year in a blog past called, You Have ADD/ADHD and You Will Not Be Rich and Famous. Maybe not. But the occasional ability to meet a client deadline the first time I put it on my calendar instead of the fifth would sure have me feeling like a million bucks. Imagine that–an ADDer being able to successfully manage his time.

It’s madness, I tell you.

Related posts:

1. Pariah Intent
2. The Furious Kvetch at Benyamin Bissell
3. Equal and Opposite
4. The Tyranny of Now and Not Now
5. The Best Part About Having ADD

(Photo: Half of the Oak Park Metra ramp sprint that turned off a new rider on Tuesday night. Credit: Karla Kaulfuss.)

The following is cross-posted on my Huffington Post Chicago byline.

I give Overly Frank a lot of credit for deciding this year to sell his suburban tract house on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and relocate to the corner of Clark and Fullerton. Along with the move to one of the densest urban neighborhoods in America, the lifelong suburbanite also sold his car.

Speaking as a lifelong transit rider with no desire to ever learn how to drive, rarely do I encounter mobility bravery like that. After all, I’ve lived in this town for years. I know the kind of shenanigans the CTA is capable of. (For example, this, this, this, this, and this.) But ever since moving here three months ago, Frank has happily made his way around town on buses and ‘L’ trains with no regrets.

That’s a help, since he’s become a regular at my gang’s Tuesday night coffee klatsches at Lido’s Caffé in Oak Park, also known as the end of the line on the Green Line. Not once on our shared trips out and back have I heard him complain about not being able to drive the 12 miles from Clark Street on the North Side to Marion Street in the near west ‘burbs. In fact, it’s usually me grousing about the Green Line’s 14 stops between Harlem and my home station in the Loop at State/Lake. The trip may only take 22 minutes, but travel time is magnified when you’re sharing your car with a drunken crowd of youth fresh from a nighttime basketball game in Garfield Park.

Last night, I suggested we take Metra back home, instead. A couple of weekends ago, Frank had his first taste of Chicago’s double-decker commuter rail system when I dragged him to the Brookfield Zoo on Metra’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe line. He liked it. (Really, who doesn’t like comfy trains with bird’s-eye views and bathrooms?) So even though the evening was cold and blustery, it was pretty easy to talk Frank into waiting 15 minutes for an inbound Union Pacific-West train at downtown Oak Park’s Marion Street station.

I’ve taken the UP-West line home from there in the evening several times over the past two years and never had a problem, so I figured taking Frank on Metra was a pretty well-laid plan. Unfortunately, it went astray like one, too.

When we arrived at the breeze-swept, wind-chilled platform, a UP freight train was parked on the inbound track. That’s an ordinary occurrence I’ve seen before, and I said so to Frank and the drug-addled addict who came up to us to ask whether we were all waiting on the wrong track. I assured them both we weren’t. Either the freight will move in time for the commuter rail train to pull in, I told them, or Metra will make an announcement–usually well in advance–to await the train on the opposite platform. Unlike the CTA, Metra’s usually very good about making system announcements, so not to worry, I said.

As we shivered the time away to the 9:28PM inbound train, Frank suggested we wait in the platform waiting room to keep warm. It was a good idea. The waiting room was clean, and well illuminated, and heated. Oh yes, and for some inscrutable reason, locked. We could have headed down the long, narrow access ramp to wait in the main Green Line/Metra station area, but then we would have had to run back up the ramp to catch the train, with only the rumble of its sudden passage overhead to signal its arrival.

So we dealt with the cold and waited. As 9:28 drew closer, we expected the freight to begin moving away with every wheeze and whir of its stationary dual diesels. Frank was starting to get anxious about the freight’s continued appearance, considering that if we missed our Metra train, the next one wouldn’t arrive for another hour, forcing us back onto the Green Line that we were studiously avoiding. But I told him I’d never missed an evening train at Oak Park because of Metra not making a station announcement.

You can see where this is heading.

When 9:28 arrived with the freight train still standing on the inbound track, I told Frank to be on the lookout for a spinning white headlight down the track to the west–Metra’s trademark nighttime luminary signal. I suggested we wouldn’t see said light for another few minutes since the UP-West line tends to run a few minutes late after rush hour.

I was wrong. No sooner did the words leave my mouth then Frank and I turned to see the spinning light on the nose of a Metra diesel that was quickly pulling an inbound train into the station on the outbound track, with no announcement warning whatsoever.

All I had time to say was, “Run!” And in the next moment, two overweight men with little athletic preparation for doing so were sprinting down a 100-foot entrance ramp, up another, and along half a Metra platform, only to watch the sliding doors slam shut in our reddened, gasping faces. The Southern-bred Frank just stood there, incredulous. This native New Yorker, however, was pissed. Before the train could move off I ran to the nearest window with a conductor behind it and pounded on it for all I was worth.

Probably more incredulous than Frank at the site of a crazy person beating the heck out of the side of his train, I watched the crewman radio for the train to remain, then head to the nearest door to let Frank and me on board. When the doors opened, I told the conductor what had happened–Metra hadn’t made an announcement that the train was arriving on the wrong track, so we had to run to catch it.

Now, Metra blowing off the announcement was unacceptable. But what happened next was appalling. Instead of apologizing, the conductor–all six-foot height and three-foot dreadlocks of him–gave us a withering, dirty look and walked away without saying a word. He would repeat the same silent sneer when we passed him on the platform at Ogilvie Transportation Center at the end of our trip.

Another conductor took our money, listened to our story, and shook his head in sympathy. He didn’t apologize, either. But unlike the other conductor–not to mention the Metra employee who didn’t bother to do their job and make the station announcement–he did recognize that we were, in fact, customers and treated us with respect.

Frank and I didn’t say much during the 15-minute ride downtown. How could we? We didn’t really get our breath back until the Merchandise Mart was coming into view. As we rode the escalator down to the ground floor at Ogilvie, I apologized to Frank for having suggested we take Metra instead of the CTA.

I didn’t bother to say Metra usually doesn’t sneer at its customers so thoroughly, that its service tends to be quite good and its employees polite and respectful. I was still too angry to offer the transit agency the benefit of the doubt and Frank was still too annoyed to hear it. I also didn’t tell him I was going to file a complaint with Metra about our totally negative commuter rail experience. I thought that went without saying.

It didn’t. Later in the evening, I called Frank to tell him I wasn’t bothering to file a complaint. For all the recent crowing from Metra Chairwoman Carol Doris and Metra Executive Director Phil Pagano about the transit agency’s nifty new homepage, the site’s online contact form limits written complaints to 500 characters. Not words. Characters.

To me, that seemed a pretty severe restriction on the telling of a story involving a seasoned rider assuring a new customer that Metra never lets its passengers down, only for both riders to be given a one-two sucker punch by the transit agency. After all, arbitrary space limitations or not, some things don’t go without saying. Most importantly, that flagrantly ignoring your responsibility to inform your own customers of service diversions that could lead to them shivering in a 45-degree wind chill for an extra hour and then treating them with open contempt for daring to complain about it is a really good way to turn off of a potential new rider.

Not that I’m trying to speak for Frank. As we exited Ogilvie Tuesday night, he said it all, himself.

“Next time,” he told me, “I’m taking the Green Line.”

Related posts:

1. Frank Kruesi Watched CTA Turn Blind Eye to Safety
2. CTA to North Siders: Drop Dead (from Crowding) or Drive
3. You Can’t Get There from Here
4. Buh-Bye Now, Jeffrey Ladd
5. “The Shabbiest Metra Station in Chicagoland”