rtfm? me?

October 10, 2001

Today's Reading:
Autumn Across America by Edwin Way Teale, The Gilgit Game by John Keay

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

Recently, since I've been at Starship Startup, I've relapsed into eating lunch at my desk so I could work through lunch. This is not a good thing. Not only is it bad for my digestion (not to mention work addiction) but it also results in my handing to coworkers documents with salad dressing on them in addition to my comments. This is not a good thing. All those years of trying to learn to do one thing at a time and live in the moment and all it takes is 2 and a half months at Starship Startup before I not only eat at my desk, but I bring my laptop to the dinner table. This is definitely not a good thing.

So I set the iBook next to my tofu and portobello mushroom dinner, open it up, and press the power on key. Wilbur leaps from the floor directly onto the iBook and stands there on the keyboard while it powers up lecturing me in Wilbur-speak about not paying enough attention to him. Now, when I got this iBook last weekend it had Mac OS 9.1 on it. I registered it, set up all the Internet stuff, and so on. It was running 9.1 this morning when I used it to take notes at staff meeting. But now ... it's coming up Aqua! The welcome video comes on and tells me it will have me up and running in no time. What the __?

Wilbur gets off the keyboard and onto my shoulder. I look on in wonder as my virginal Mac OS X system tells me it can't do anything until I answer a few questions and register it. But, but, but... I'm sure I registered it! With no idea as to what's going on, I answer the questions. It finally lets me do stuff, but where are my files? There is nothing here!

I decide I'd really better eat the tofu and portabello mushroom with strange grains thing before it gets cold. I also decide that the Higher Power may well be manifesting as Wilbur to teach me a lesson about working at the dinner table.

After dinner, I boot the thing up again. It's still Aqua with no sign of my files. I poke around trying a few dozen different things. Still no 9.1 and no files. It slowly dawns on me that Wilbur discovered one heck of an Easter Egg. I laugh hysterically.

Eventually it dawns on me that if Wilbur discovered a key sequence to bring up OS X, there must be a corresponding sequence to go back to 9.1. Time to RTFM. Sure enough, there it is on the next to last page of the manual that tells you how to upgrade to OS X. I guess they never expected anybody to encounter it unexpectedly. They just don't know Wilbur.

What, me? Read the manual?

RTFM indeed.