Harry Babad, Ph. D.
Staffwriter Commercial software
review, book reviews, shareware reviews, columnist, Assistant Editor
macCompanion Nickname doc_Babad
Real Job: 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 thehead 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+ year 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,
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.
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. Addicted to hard science-fiction, recipes, jazz and British mysteries, I go nowhere without a book. A jeweler, when not volunteering or consulting on waste management issues, I can be a few times a year, seen hawking our wares at various competitively juried arts and crafts shows and soon as I get my stuff together on a website.
Why write for macCompanion?
So I love the freedom that preparation of accurate, but laid-back reviews for macCompanion allows, including the editorial staff's tolerance of my occasion 'rants, raves and revelations' columns. Yes I'm verbose and write in a somewhat Germanic fashion, with readability scores of 17-20. I find writing for macC is a liberating blast. The need for balance and accuracy and balance is still there, but third person passive tense sucks. And I, monthly, get to play with new software toys and read great books, I'd not normally take the time for. 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! |
