For example, I might have a dream where I come back to my parked car to find it totally gutted out and stripped clean of my property.  I’ll feel the pit of loss in my stomach.  A voice will say: “Looks like you left the doors unlocked, with all your stuff–even your laptop–in plain sight, and you parked in a bad spot.”

Here is where I take over:  “No, I would never do something like that.  This is obviously a dream, and it ends now.”  Then, I wake up.

Pretty nice, right?  Well, sometimes that backfires on “pleasant” dreams, too.

Take last night for example.  Perhaps writing last night’s blog post (not “viewable by public” just yet) right before I went to bed caused me to have a dream where I was “visited” by a ghost of girlfriend past.  It was actually rather pleasant—right up until my rational mind took over to remind me it couldn’t possibly be real and woke me up suddenly.

Sigh.

My subconscious emotional defense mechanisms are still at work.

Ugh. Not this. Not now, please. What crappy timing. I wince, but I try to look Ok: Straighten up, look strong, confident, in charge and in control. I am none of these at the moment.

“How’s life, Chuck? You doing Ok?”

I do my best nod and smile, but apparently what I mustered had “not so much” written all over it.

Coworker gets a little twinge of concern: “You Ok, Chuck?”

This time, with more effort, I manage to squeak a “Sure, I’m good” out of my mouth and give a much better fake smile. The coworker relaxes.

“Well, it can’t be that bad, I mean…you’re not cryin’, right?!”

I think to myself, “You should have been here yesterday.”

I say instead, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” The coworker smiles and leaves.

Sigh.

I’m now taking suggestions for a new blog title from those of you that are better with the creative than I. Leave it in the comments below. Thanks.

Dear Apple:

I would really like to have more granular control over my podcast episode
settings in iTunes.

For example, let’s look at the “The Classic Tales” podcast.  I want to keep all
of those episodes until I get around to listening to them.

However, for something like the “Wall Street Journal This Morning,”
a daily news show, I only want the most recent episode.  No one likes to listen
to last week’s news.

As it stands right now, I can have to choose between the two options for
keeping podcast episodes, and it’s the same settings for all podcasts
in my iTunes library.  I’m betting this is not a difficult feature to implement
and I’m also willing to bet I’m not the only one who wants this.

Thanks,

Chuck

So, after I finally write this out and just before I decide to post it here, I switch over to iTunes to check on something…and guess what?  Yep.  There are indeed episode settings for individual podcasts, right there in front of me.  Glad I caught it before I posted this and looked like a fool.  In my defense, I’m assuming this is a recent new feature that I had missed. I hope so, anyway.