February 2009

I just added your name to my spellchecker.  I love the Apple automatic spell checker.  It doesn’t just live in one program like Pages, or Text Edit, but seems to be globally unified throughout my system.  Like one of the little microchips tucked underneath my backlit keyboard is exclusively for checking my spelling.

My usual writing session begins with me opening TextMate, or some other bare bones word processing program.  I’m just tring to get out the thoughts.  I don’t care about left-justified, or a sans serriff font.  I just want to get all the thoughts out onto the page.  A sort of word vomit, where everything comes up.

After a typical writing session, I look back at the page, and see hundreds of red squiggles.  You can tell a writing sample is mine because 5.6 words per sentence are misspelled.  I don’t even try to correct them anymore.  I just ctrl-click on the offending word, and pick out the spelling I want to use.  

I then cut and past the entire post into my WordPress dashboard.  The spell checker works there too!  It’s amazing!  That little spelling microchip must have won every spelling Bee in the world!  How did they cram an Indian 5th grader into the tiny space in my laptop?

The way I type you would think I have 9 or 11 fingers.  Only a person with an odd number of digits could produce such horrific spelling.  When I handwrite, my spelling is perfect.  Yep, I still do a fair amount of handwriting.  I have always journalized, mostly in pencil in a Moleskine Plain Notebook Pocket.  I have a little row of them in my office, Tiny little black chapters of my ideas, life and travels.  I also send out a ton of correspondence via snail mail.  

What!  It’s Blasphemy for a blogger to use a stamp.  I’m sure there is a special Gulag that I’ll go to somewhere if the internet cops find out.  I just think it’s a nice touch to send out hand written thank-you cards when I get a referral, tip, or gift.  It lets you know that I got the gift, and tells you that I care.

Sadly, latest automatic system update failed to add your name to my dictionary, President Barack Hussein Obama.  Why can’t the nerdy programmers at One Infinity Loop give me an update I can use.  I’m tired of security updates, and system wide remote integration updates.  Give me something I can use in the next update.  A little freebie to show that you care.

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