Seven days of silence. It seemed like a simple thing to do. Sure, you get kind of used to speaking for the first bunch o’ decades of your life. But seriously, think about how many conversations you have silently these days. IM, email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter. You can be in a crowded room and the only sound is the clickity clack of thumb typing. So, no problem, right?

The major problem is your coworkers. Family, friends, they are easy. Just hand them the business card that says, ‘I took a vow of silence, suck it.’ and most will just nod and carry on. But try that on your boss and they won’t be your boss for long. And not because you get promoted above them. Now, if you have a cool boss, just give them the card or tell them beforehand. If your boss is a jackass, you may have to try something else. You can go with the sore throat, lost my voice, method. But that’s lying and we aren’t about lying here, but about being painfully truthful. So now, I will share with you how to keep perfectly silent around your coworkers and boss. It depends on two traits of most people.

One is people love to talk and two is that people hate, HATE, awkward silences.

So, here is the situation. You are in a meeting. The boss asks a question that you should answer. What to do? Say something? Pee your pants? Nope. Just wait! You will be amazed at how someone will ALWAYS say something or the boss will even ask someone directly other than you! People hate awkward silences more than anything. Now, if they are looking directly at you, this is what you do. Put on a puzzled-trying-to-figure-it-out expression on your face, stroke your chin and make a low humming sound, kinda like “Hmmm…” Then shrug your shoulders as if you don’t know and look at the person next to you or someone you think might have the answer. Then, just keep STARING right at them, they will cave. Trust me. Works every time. Then chuckle to yourself and continue your no speaking experiment.

Now I love Macs as next as the next drooling fanboy, but the new ads struck me as a little over the top. You know, the ‘PC. Easy as 1 – 2 3′ ads that are over on espn and nytimes. I’ll quote it at the bottom for those of you who have missed it.

So, since I had a shiny new MacBook in front of me, I thought I would write my own.

Mac. Easy as 1 – 2 3

1. Save money.
2. Save money.
3. Blow money and use your credit card since you’ll only have enough money saved right before they come out with a new model anyway.
4. Get computer.
5. Marvel at the shiny box.
6. Sit through annoying welcome video, hope to god your volume is turned down. Guess what, it isn’t.
7. Sit through pathetic ads for MobileMe.
8. Register computer, did you check the ‘Don’t send me email’ option?
9. Take a crazy picture for your account, make sure to use one of the special effects.
10. Remove bloatware from dock that is as long as the screen: Dashboard, Preview, Address Book, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, Safari, Garageband, Time Machine, System Preferences, iChat, iCal, iMovie, Spaces, Documents, Downloads.
11. Install updates (April 2009) – 368MB.
12. Restart.
13. Frozen update screen, clear update cache, start over.
14. Install updates (April 2009) – 4MB.
15. Install antivirus software.
16. Update antivirus software.
17. Install drivers for peripherals. Not needed! Well, as long as you buy an Apple product, otherwise, good luck, it may still work. Kinda.
18. Remove optional Apple products, GarageBand comes to mind, admit it, you’ve never even opened it.
19. Run Disk Utility, repair permissions.
20. Wait 2 hours for it to finish and tell you something you don’t understand.
21. Read online instruction manual. As if, Macs just work, no instructions needed.
22. Start making crazy movies to post to YouTube about the awesomeness of Macs.
23. Read this post on your shiny Mac, get flustered. Then calm down and admit to yourself all of it is true.

Here is the original ad
PC Easy as 1 – 2 3
1 Remove unneeded bloatware
2 Configure security settings
3 Download and install OS security patches
4 Restart
5 Download and install extra security programs
6 Restart
7 Download / install drivers for peripherals
8 Restart
9 Remove optional Windows components
10 Update new virus list
11 UpdateRun full system virus scan
12. Update new malware list
13. Run full system malware scan
14 Download / install application updates
15 Restart
16 Clean out system registry
17 Repair corrupt system registry
18 Defragment hard drive
19. Free up disk space
20 Scan disk for erros
21 run system file checker
22 Read online instruction manual
23 Cross fingers

So, here we are, at the end of our zen-like, enlightening journey to a state of no purchasing. Now, I that I have no need of money, I can devote myself to other things like world peace, etc.

Yeah, right.

This one is going in the failure bucket. I know, you want me to be like every other self help book out there that tells the story of some rich ass dot com person who gave it all up and moved to a farm to grow their own food. Well, good for them. For the rest of us, it isn’t really possible. My first problem was the wasps, and once I spent some money, it went downhill quickly.

The one great thing I learned is waiting a while after wanting to purchase something will get rid of about 75% of the stuff. I realized after a few days that I just didn’t need said item like I thought I did. Or, I fixed something that broke. Crazy, I know. But that is what this blog is all about. Booyah.

“Do not speak unless you can improve the silence” -Proverb

Words to live by, although no one actually does. If there is one thing we all do to much of it is talk. Or tweet. Or blog. Most people don’t listen to other people, the world, even their own hearts.

Wow, that was a warm and fuzzy sentence. Enough of that. The next little experiment I tried was that I decided to not speak for 7 days. I thought about going my normal 30 days, but that seemed a little extreme since I have family, friends, work and fellow commuters that continually need me to vocalize about something.

So I started with 7 days. Also,instead of lying and saying I lost my voice, I carried around a little card that said, “I have taken a vow of silence for 7 days, so suck it.” I didn’t think it would be that hard since I still have all the electronic communication methods.

Boy, was I wrong.

Damn bugs.

I had to go out and buy something. Wasp spray! I have a giant mess of them swarming all around building nests on the house and fence. So, I had to go get some spray. There goes my first buckaroos, 7 to be exact.

But other than that, I haven’t purchased anything but gasoline and food! No one is more amazed than I am. Someone did ask me to donate some money to a disease related charity, but I had to say no. Maybe next month.