"It keeps reappearing!" she muttered, jabbing at the same point again and again. Unsightly fingerprints were already appearing on the gorgeous display.
I stretched and bent down to reach my satchel, which was stowed underneath the front seat. I pulled out my Toshiba NB520 netbook and my iPod data cable. The throbbing in my temples matched the tapping of the lady's fingers on her tablet. I pressed the power button on the Toshiba and waited as openSUSE 12.2 booted up. I plugged in my headset in case I hadn't left the speakers on mute (KDE's desktop sound can be quite loud on the Toshiba Harman Kardon speakers).
"Can I give it a try?" I asked with a smile at the young lady.
She looked at me and then at my notebook skeptically - it sure didn't look like an Apple computer she probably thought. I reassured her with a wave of my iPod data cable.
She handed the iPad to me. I checked the name of the video app and then plugged the iPad to an available USB port. With PCMANFM, I navigated to the video app folder and showed her the list of video files.
"So, which one did you want to remove?" I asked, my head still a bit fuzzy.
"This one. And that one. My older brother does all this stuff for me. And that file. . . why does that keep reappearing? Can you delete that too."
I deleted the text log file too.
"It worked. How did you do that without iTunes?"
I gave her a lopsided grin, favoring the half of my face that wasn't smarting from the sudden onset of a headache. Most days, I would've done the whole "Linux evangelist" bit but I was too tired.
"So, what is it that you do?" she asked as I disconnected her iPad and handed it back to her.
I wanted to use my best MacGyver/Richard Dean Anderson voice and say, "I move around." It was much better than the real answer.
"I'm a . . . uhm . . . writer," I mumbled.
"A writer! Wow!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "So what do you write? Any Rowling, Clancy or R.R. Martin type of stuff ? Self-help? Textbooks? You look like a writer for children's books. . . not that there's anything wrong with that."
I should have answered scripter for the Amazing Spider-Man comic books in 80s.
"Uh...I'm a technical writer," I said slowly.
She looked at me as if she licked the inside of Michael Jordan's sneakers shortly after the Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship in 1998.
"You write manuals?" she said incredulously.
Official documentation, I mentally corrected her. I nodded.
"No offense, but no one actually reads those things, right?"
I shrugged and powered down my openSUSE desktop. Having lost interest in any type of conversation, she turned back to her iPad and started watching an episode of Arrow with Stephen Amell and his abs. That's me. Writer. Animal magnetism and smarts rolled into one package. Have to beat them off with a stick.
I pressed the recline button on my seat and put my baseball cap back on my head, promptly falling asleep.
Thunar in Fedora Xfce browsing an iPad
0 comments:
Post a Comment