Infinite State

Yesterday, while waiting with my daughter for our Genius Bar appointment, I was looking at one of the laptops on the table. The Ethernet cable seemed unusual, had a reddish glow emanating from it. Without thinking about it, I pulled it out to take a closer look and triggered a massive alarm. Beefy, serious security guys materialized on an intercept course. I threw my arms into the air in a combination of surrender and sheepish accomplishment.

The guards were pretty friendly once it was clear that I had no bad intentions. “Don’t pull them out,” was all they said with a half-smile and disappeared again.

So much for curiosity. Fwiw, the Genius did manage to get the reluctant DVD to eject with the help of a mysterious “white stick” he used to rearrange a few things inside the slot.

“Can I get one of those in case this happens again?” I asked.

You can guess the answer.

Turns out the plate in my shoulder is made of Titanium. Not clear whether it will set off the airport scanners, but I’m now carrying a little card from my surgeon to help explain if it does…

Guess I’ll find out the hard way the next time I get on a plane.

The answer was so simple, but until I stumbled on this wonderful little AppleScript I was constantly frustrated by the difficulty of just copying the full path to whatever you were looking at in Finder. Now I’m happy.