11:33PM
The Brotherhood of Mac
So tomorrow I'm starting a big case and I want to give a print out of my Keynote to the judge with space on the side for him to take notes. It is never a bad idea to have the guy wearing the black robe go home with my Keynote in his briefcase while the other guy creates funny adjectives for me like "slick" and "fancy".
Anyway, I put a PDF version of the Keynote on a thumb drive and cruised into the nearest Kinkos to have them run it on their gazillion dollar color machine. After all that work, it needs to look pretty. The only problem was the Kinkos guy could not get it to print. He was surrounded with customers and invited me "behind the counter" to try and figure it out myself. For some reason the Kinkos machine was hanging up in the middle of the print job. They poor guy was swamped and he really didn't have time to help me. It is early December at Kinkos and that means the "Christmas Letter Gang" is in full swing. You know those Christmas letters, right? The one that explains about Uncle Earl's Lumbago and how Linus finally won the cow chip throwing contest? (Yes, there is such a thing as cow chip throwing.)
Well, I really need to win tomorrow so I told him I'd grab my laptop out of the car and re-create the PDF to see if that was the issue. He then shrugged at me . . . probably secretly hoping I just wouldn't come back.
Anyway, I went to the car and returned with my trusty Mac. That was when things changed for the better.
The Kinko's guy, demonstrating an instinctual Mac geekiness, popped his head out of the crowd of irate Yuletiders like a lemur on the first night of mating season. Suddenly the Christmas letters weren't so important. Turns out the Kinkos guy was part of "The Brotherhood." He explained he is a proud owner of a G5 and card carrying member of the Brotherhood of Mac.
He brushed aside the Lumbago gang like so much rubbish and came straight over to bask in the glory that is my MacBook Pro. We reset the PDF and I gave him a quick spin on OmniFocus and then we went back to the big Kinkos machine. Suddenly he had all the time in the world for me.
Turns out the problem was Kinkos' monster printer but we figured it out and in no time I had some beautiful color copies of my Keynote and a new MacGeek friend.
Never underestimate the Power of the Brotherhood.
Reader Comments (3)
great story. love your blog and podcasts for MacReviewCast. Elevates my opinion of the legal profession :-)
David.
All of us lawyers really aren't so bad. Having now practiced nearly 15 years I can honestly say I really like most of the lawyers I deal with. That is saying something considering most of my cases are litigation which means we are basically at war most of the time. There are a few knuckleheads though and the problem with lawyers is when they are bad, they are really, really bad.
Yeah, I agree. My son is a lawyer (well, he graduated law school and passed AZ and CA bar exams but hasn't started to practice law yet - he's in Germany teaching English) and so is my brother and my best friend.
I used to write a blog so I know just how nice it is to get comments.
I think your pieces are excellent and very welcome for this Mac guy.