The New Regime

The New Regime is going great. Since establishing it, there have been only two days where I have failed to write 800 words. But I wrote so much on the other days that I'm still ahead of schedule. Last Saturday I came back from my morning's writing with 1,387 new words under my belt and declared that I wanted to start playing World of Warcraft again. Just so I'd have a way to reward myself for days like that. So I did, and the really fun part is, we got Carter an account as well. So now I spend a fair amount of time wandering Azeroth with my son. It's awesome. We're like best buddies now—we've really bonded even closer in this last week.

So the writing:

89,641 / 120,000 (74.7%)

[Oops, I guess I already wrote about returning to WoW. Oh, well.]

How to treat your customers... and their kids

A couple weeks ago, my son dreamed up what an Apple smartphone might look like. (He was inspired by a billboard in O'Hare Airport advertising some Windows smartphone.) He drew a cool picture, and we put it in the mail to Apple. It was almost certainly less than two weeks ago that it went in the mail.

Today he got a letter back:

Re: Submission of an Idea to Apple Computer, Inc.

Dear Carter:

Thank you for your letter to Apple about your idea for a smartphone.

We're glad you are interested in Apple and our products and wanted to send us your ideas. We value innovation and creativity. And while we cannot review new product ideas sent to us from outside the company, we appreciate your wanting to share your ideas with us.

We encourage you to keep generating new ideas for yourself, your family and friends, your interests and studies or schoolwork. We know you'll be successful!

Very truly yours,

APPLE COMPUTER, INC.

(signed)
Mark Aaker
Senior Counsel
Apple Law Department


That, my friends, is class.