Harry Babad, Ph. D.
Staff writer Commercial software review, book reviews, shareware reviews, and columnist.

hbabad at maccompanion.com

macCompanion Nickname doc_Babad

Real Job: jr. JOAT, author and consultant as well as Resident Iconoclast and Curmudgeon.

About Me

Starting with a "Lisa" and now using a Tiger powered G-4 Dual Processor Macintosh. I am a daily {sometimes all day} Macintosh user and shareware junkie {Ups - Collector.} as well as collector of recipes and science fiction. I also am involved in the acoustic music revival, by way of the 3 Rivers Folklife society articles http://www.3rfs.org and Seattle's Victory Revue for which I write an occasional folk-music related articles.

When I was a wee lad, I got hit on the head with the "Blarney" stone, so love to write about the things I enjoy.

Since my career limited me to "straight" talk, macC gives me an outlet to share my musing about the good, bad and ugly of our platform. As asked, for our local MUG, I also provide free help to friends on working with and extracting information from PDFs, FileMaker Pro and MS Word.

I've retired from a 25+ years career, in the Tri-Cities WA, as a lead scientist and at times, manager - where I was a lead nuclear waste safety and disposal chemist for Hanford Contractors and the US Department of Energy. I am now a part-time consultant in those areas.

I've also served stints in academia teaching and doing research; and in the private sector, manufacturing specialty organic chemicals, since the ca. 125 professional documents I've written were required to be very-very proper.

I have also recently co-authored two textbooks on things nuclear for an energy related foundation, and have branched out into writing easier to understand articles on energy for the average citizen.

Why Macs?

Ease of use, and the added challenge of using my professional worth to get my employers to allow me a Macintosh in all PC houses. "It provides the power to do the job without the clutter of DOS prompts or need for obtuse OS such as those used in WinTel machines." My worse Macintosh experiences were the learning curve in switching to Jaguar. My best; replacing Spotlight with EasyFind and HoudahSpot. Still put off – just chicken – switching to Snow Leopard.

A self described long-time "folknik," I have served on the boards of several music and dance related local nonprofit boards, as well as those associated with his profession as a chemist and nuclear waste expert. Addicted to hard science-fiction, collecting recipes and cooking, classical jazz and British mysteries, I go no where without a book or three. I recently retired for a second time, from a small business of being a craftsman-jeweler. When not volunteering professionally, or consulting on waste management issues, I volunteer for local arts and entertainment organizations.

Why write for macCompanion?

So I love the freedom that preparation of accurate, in-depth but laid-back reviews for macCompanion allows. This includes the editorial staff's tolerance of my occasion 'rants, raves and revelations' and Responsible Mac’ng columns. Yes I'm verbose and write in a somewhat Germanic fashion, resulting at times in purple prose with readability scores of 17-20.

I find writing for macC is a liberating blast. I’m hooked; I’ve written between 250-300 articles since the founding of macC and in its predecessor eZine MacNut, as well as supporting our local user group newsletter. The need for balance and accuracy and clarity is still there, just as in my scientific documents, but third person passive tense sucks. …And monthly, as an added bonus, I get to play with new software toys and read great books, which I'd not normally take the time to do.

Thanks macCompanion! If folks don't enjoy my articles they can read one of the dozens of other great articles written by the macC staff. I enjoy the too few occasions I get to co-author things with my fellow companions, and hope to have more occasions, for these guys and gals are truly great people!