Happy Friday, everybody. I’m running out to go to a meeting about a meeting we’re setting up to discuss a meeting we’re having in December about upcoming meetings in ’08. But before I do, I thought I would send out a call.
Hey, Scott! You! The one whose iPod was stolen by the neighborhood children! The guy to whom I promised my old, Gen-1 iPod! You never got in touch with me so I could send you your prize. You think I was kidding? It’s sitting right here, waiting to go to you, jammed with all kinds of funky tunes. Hit the comment box at the bottom of this column. I WILL send you your iPod. I feel bad you don’t have it already. Come on. What’s the matter with you? You win something every day?
And you, Ed from Syracuse! I took some abuse when I awarded you a special, back-up iPod. People thought I should have given it to the sick kid in Bosnia or the guy whose wife had post-partum depression or something. But no, I gave it to you because of your lame, amusing story about your dead mother. Now where are you, when I’m fully prepared to give you one of my old Shuffles?
You’d be amazed at the number of things I have to worry about, from the sublime to the ridiculous. And yet more than once, recently, I have awakened at 3:00 AM with the nagging feeling that something remains undone, and after a few moments realized that what I’m obsessing about is this stupid, unfinished business of the unrewarded iPods.
So come on, Scott and Ed from Syracuse! Put me out of my misery and write to me. I won’t publish your addresses, if that’s what you’re worried about. So get with it. If you don’t, I’ll have to run the whole ferschlugginer contest again and find two new applicants who want my obsolescent technology.