Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Kids today. They do new things at dizzying speeds. Sometimes it is a big waste of time, but sometimes it is quite productive. They are entering the work force in droves, so be ready.

Yesterday 6AM – I wake my son. He wanted to ask me something about headphones, so he left me a note the night before.

He is writing a paper in college about a piece of music. He had arranged to interview a performer who had recorded that piece of music. Pretty clever idea, something I never did in college.

He is going to do the interview over Skype – also pretty clever as I won’t have to pay for a long, long-distance call. He is struggling to find a way to record the conversation so he writes accurately what the performer says. Somehow a headphone splitter was one solution?

We find a Skype recorder online. It costs $15, but has a free 7-day trial. We download it. We need to test it. He runs upstairs to my iMac, installs Skype on it, and we test Skype and the Skype recorder.

Everything works, and I now know how to use Skype (yes, I am a little behind on some things).

It is now 6:15 AM.

We have

1. found just the right application
2. installed it
3. tested it
4. installed Skype on my computer
5. tested it
6. learned how to use the whole thing

in 15 minutes.

I needed to go back to bed and take a nap. A full day’s work in 15 minuts.