Every time I come back to the States something different stands out for me. This time it has been the irony of “green” consumerism.

The local whole-foods grocery has a bulletin board that displays comments from shoppers. Here are a few comments from people who apparently don’t share my sense of irony.

And here are some of the “healthful” products for the “mindful” consumers:

Alas, nothing has been done to protect the vegans from themselves.

Based on my experience at 9 recent technology conferences, I can say this to Mac users:

• Give up right now and convert your Keynote presentation to PowerPoint.
• Put it on a thumb drive.
• Watch the setup people try and fail to get the projector to work with your Mac.
• Wait for the setup people to say, “Can’t you use our PC?”
• Sigh quietly and stick your thumb drive in their PC.

I have the correct video converter. My Macbook Pro has been hooked up without a hitch by some conference teams. But the majority can’t do it for whatever reason. This has been true at talks in Australia, the UK, and the US, so I can’t even blame any particular culture for Mac backwardness.

The quickest way to convert Keynote presentations to PowerPoint

Polish cookies that for some reason I always find in Turkish groceries

I knew from experience that fonts, arrows, and changes in opacity didn’t come out of the conversion looking at all good, so after some desperate experimentation fueled by an entire package of Polish cookies, I ended up with the following process, which has served me well ever since.

1. In your Keynote file, don’t use any transitions or animations. They don’t add anything, anyway.
2. Instead of building on one slide, put each build on a separate slide.
3. Use File > Export to export the slides as PNGs. You’ll get a separate PNG for each slide.
4. Open PowerPoint or OpenOffice (I use the latter).
5. Create a new presentation using the same dimensions as the Keynote presentation.
6. Create a lot of empty slides.
7. Drag each PNG from the finder onto an empty slide. The PNG should snap into place.
8. Flip through the slides to check everything.
9. Save it and you’re done.

You lose a little sharpness, but you save a lot of slide-tweaking time. You can go out for a relaxed Indian dinner instead of, say, sitting on the floor in an “artistic” B&B that has no usable tables or chairs, stuffing yourself with Polish sugar while muttering at your laptop and cursing Microsoft.

I’m in line for the metal detector. A female TSA officer tells me I “need” to remove my (not bulky) overshirt and put it in the bin, leaving me in just a soft t-shirt. Now that I’m halfway stripped, a male TSO comes up and tells me that I “need” to leave the metal detector line and instead go through the new strip-search scanner.

At the scanner I say I “need” to opt out, and I’m told to wait in an unmarked but apparently very special spot. I’m scowled at and pointedly corrected when I don’t instantly understand where I’m supposed to go. From the very special spot, I can’t see my things on the X-ray belt. After I complain, the TSO lets me move slightly to the right. Now I can see the bin that I think contains my laptop, but I can’t see my laptop inside. Other passengers are passing by and often block my view of all of my things.

A female TSO comes to give me the “enhanced pat-down.” Other passengers watch as she rubs my butt and breasts.

At the X-ray, another passenger begins to place an empty bin on the bin that contains my laptop. I want to leave the very special spot and stop her but I’m in the middle of being groped. Luckily she notices her mistake and moves along, but it looks like a dandy way to steal laptops.

When my grope is done and I’m allowed to collect my things from the pile-up they caused on the X-ray belt, I hear TSOs barking angry orders. They’re yelling at a little old man who they’ve put in the strip-search scanner. He didn’t empty his pockets beforehand. He doesn’t understand English, so they yell louder.

Not surprisingly, when it’s time for him to go to the very special spot, he also can’t find it, and TSOs angrily point and yell, “STAND RIGHT THERE!” He’s hunched, feeble, tottering, smiling in confusion, trying to obey these inexplicably yelling Americans. Finally a passenger who speaks French is allowed to approach and translate for him.

My grope was pointless — the whole security show is pointless — but the way they treated that innocent old man was beyond offensive.

The ACLU and other organizations have collected many reports of the TSA seeming to prey on weaker people, including the elderly and people with medical devices.

Now I avoid US air travel as much as possible, because participation in the system is too much like approval.

My first challenge came when I needed to go from Mérida to London. To get from Mérida to anywhere north, you need to change planes in Houston or Miami. Instead, I took a 4.5-hour bus to Cancún and flew direct from there. British Airways and a Mexican bus company got my business instead of US airlines and airports.

Now I need to go to Florida, the midwest, and DC in rapid succession. Amtrak or driving will be too slow, so it looks like I’ll soon be watching my government’s representatives humiliate strangers. What a nice welcome “home.”

The childhood experiences of entrepreneurs have been found to be difficult, characterized by poverty, insecurity and/or neglect and personal tragedies, such as parents’ divorce, a parent’s death, family financial difficulties and/or serious illness. Clinical studies of entrepreneurs suggest they are often affected by poverty, poor relationships with their fathers, strong controlling mothers, and feelings of rejection and remoteness, which result in hostility, guilt, anger and suspicion of people in positions of authority. Difficult childhoods are also posited to increase one’s self-reliance, which in turn increases one’s ability to cope with the risks and uncertainties of self-employment.

A study comparing managers and entrepreneurs has confirmed that managers and entrepreneurs do indeed tend to differ in their family background. Entrepreneurs have a much poorer relationship with their fathers than managers, greater identification with their work, more willingness to take risks, and a higher level of initiative and independence.

See the citations and lots more in the full paper by Judy Drennan, Jessica Kennedy, and Patty Renfrow at the link above.

A comment to the site reported that Chris had died after a long illness. The next comment said this:

I wonder what this American who hated America died of… such a pity, to die in a country far from anyone who may have loved him. Was it poor health care because he was where health care is not that great? Was it an incurable illness like Aids that one gets from not being careful with whom one has sex with? After reading Chris’s diatribe on how he hated
America I said to myself, ‘Well, great. We got rid of another discontent’. I am an American. I wouldn’t want to ‘live’ anywhere else but America, but I’d love to visit Mexico for the colorful places, people and history. I do hope all the malcontents like Chris will move off and take residency in other countries. God rest your soul, Chris. Bye.

Let’s review today’s patriotic lesson:

• If you move to another country, no one there will love you. You will be forever separated from love.
• If you don’t like US foreign policy, you’re likely to cause your own early death by careless behavior.
• The US is better off without people like Chris.

I use PDFpen, and I assume there are several other programs out there. Clients and I usually exchange PDF versions of contracts, so once it’s time to sign, all I have to do is open the PDF in PDFpen and drag my signature onto it. Then I email it back to the client.

What if they require a fax?

When clients fax me something, the US phone number they call actually belongs to Maxemail. Maxemail emails me the faxed document as a PDF attachment.

I sign the document using PDFPen and then “fax” it back by attaching it to an email addressed to Maxemail. In the email I tell the service what fax number to send the PDF to, and my client sees the document emerge magically from their fax machine.

What if they send me an actual piece of paper?

In the rare moments when I find myself holding a carbon-based form, my first reaction is to scan it. But if I’m on the road, I don’t have a scanner. Happily, I do have an iPhone 3GS with JotNot Scanner Pro. JotNot takes a picture of the document, makes the text crisp, and emails it to me as a PDF. Then I can sign it with PDFPen and “fax” it. This has the added advantage of giving me a digital copy for my files.

But is it legit?

Clients and I have been using PDF contracts without hesitation for years. Even the IRS accepts completely electronic signatures. For a list of laws to read for yourself, see the Wikipedia entry on electronic signatures.