This just in: Apple store employees continue to lend a hand during these troubled times. Yesterday we noted that the staff at the Mall of America location helped travelers stranded by the air travel ban by assisting them in using the store's Internet access to email their families, check on flights, and rent cars. And just now, faithful viewer The M@d H@tter pointed out a story over at The Mac Observer about how several members of our own Boston-area Apple Store Northshore team spent their time after the mall was closed down following Tuesday's terrorist attacks.

Apparently a bunch of them (together with some folks training for the Albany store) decided to go down and give blood-- which, while certainly commendable and a heroic move in and of itself, isn't much different from what tons of other people did. The story gets more interesting when the Apple store staff discovered that the Red Cross location where they were waiting in line had run out of water. Hmmm, now let's see... where are a bunch of Apple store employees going to find a ready supply of bottled water?

If you took that as anything but a rhetorical question, you're clearly unfamiliar with one of the many wonders of the Genius Bar: that Mac Geniuses will hand you a bottle of chilled Evian if you ask nicely. It's just one of the little touches that makes Apple's stores so special. (That and the imported Australian tile in the store's bathrooms. Classy!) Anyway, one quick round-trip back to the store later, and the staff had returned with twelve cases of Evian-- the store's entire supply. Problem solved. We've logged a lot of hours over there at the Apple Store Northshore, and those folks on the staff? Those are our guys, gender-neutrally speaking. We'd take a bullet for any one of 'em, and it does us proud to hear about them making a difference like that.

We'd like to include a special request that everyone think happy thoughts about ed. His full name is Ed Duffy, but his store name tag just says "ed," so that's how we know him. When Jack was at the Apple store with faithful viewer Nico a couple of weeks ago, ed did the epic dance number for Nico's blockbuster iMovie masterpiece, and now we've just found out that ed is currently in New York City with the National Guard Reserves helping out with the search and rescue mission. Come back soon, ed, and safely-- Nico's already working on a sequel, and we can't recast now!