DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Having a PowerBook running OS X has made me a Mac fanatic again. Last week I had a long list of software updates to purchase, and a long list of questions to find answers to, so I went to the best place in the Macintosh universe to satisfy both needs: MacWorld Expo.

Many exhibitors offer “show specials” — they sell their products at discounted rates at the expo. It’s not like I generally need an excuse to buy software… this is equivalent to giving free needles to addicts. But I saved enough in discounts to cover my admission fee.

I also got some important questions answered. This is a key feature of the Expo: many of the best software engineers in the community are working their employers’ booths. So are the company founders. Often, this is the same guy.

At one point I was in a conversation with one of the three-letter-title guys for a particular company, and I asked a technical question he couldn’t answer. He said he’d go get an engineer to answer the question. I didn’t want to put him to the trouble, so I said, “Hey, that’s OK; I can call your tech support folks tomorrow.” He paused for a second, and said with the air of a man admitting something that’s commonly known but not commonly admitted, “Er, you don’t want to do that.”

The best part of the Expo this year is that I did not contract any apparent disease.

The hygenic low point of the day came when I was introduced to a senior engineer from a particular company. I planned to pepper him with obscure and difficult questions (the type that the phone-support guys can’t even spell, much less answer). The engineer turned away to cough — a suspiciously wet Expo-style cough, indicating the incubation of foreign microscopic nasties deep inside his respiratory tract — and then he reached out to shake my hand, offering the hand he’d just coughed into. Insofar as I needed his help, I felt it would have been rude to refuse the shake. But I quarantined my hand until I could get to the restroom for emergency disinfection procedures. Ech.