Stuff That Just Works

When I travel between home and office now, I'm a lot more likely to take my iPad than a computer. Once I'm at the office, I generally rely on my laptop instead. It's an issue of convenience. When I'm out of the office, iPad is much lighter, and I can connect to my office pc remotely and enjoy "wire speed" access from it while it sits on the office network.

There are some things that an iPad isn't very good at, but for the most part it works pretty well. What surprises me is that despite Apple having been the first vendor to market with a viable tablet computer, there are still folks who try to berate the iPad as an overgrown smart phone. It may be, however that's part of the genius. By basing the device on the iPhone, the app store and the iTunes model came with it. The software for these devices runs much better on a custom phone OS than it would with, say, Windows 7.

Since its release, the iPad has generated over two billion dollars in revenue in a virtually uncharted market space. It's closest, most likely rival isn't due to arrive on the scene in the United States until November. By then, Notion Ink's Adam will have a very difficult time catching up.

Paradigm Shift

A lot of discussion has been given to the topic of what the iPad's role is. It is neither a phone, nor a laptop. Is it a device for which there is no place? Having owned an iPad for about two months, I'm of the opinion that the iPad is something new, unique, and paradigm changing. The interface is intuitive and fluid in a way that I have not experienced on my Android phone, nor any of my windows PCs.

HP Multi-touch all-in-one computers have promise but appear unable to deliver results. The machines come with large (22"+) multi-touch capable screens with all the computer hardware built directly into the monitor. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 OS integration is clunky and relies on the mouse driven paradigm. Take for example pinch-zooming. On either an Android device or an iPad, you can pinch to zoom in nearly any application. In most apps you can turn pages by swiping them to the side. Windows was never built for this kind of intuitive interface, so even the paint program I tried at Best Buy today failed to take advantage of the spacious multi-touch monitor on the computer.

The iPad, on the other hand, was built from the ground up with a touch interface in mind. This allows it to use gestures with consistency throughout the entire interface. Just as the mouse changed the way we think about interfaces, I'm convinced that the iPad will do something similar.

One of the complaints often voiced about the iPad is that it is a device with no apparent market space. That was true, however 3 million sales later, it appears that perhaps many of us were only begrudgingly staying in the laptop space anyway. As we prepare to head to the cottage this weekend, I wonder if there really is any reason to take my laptop to study. There is, of course. It's nostalgia.

BP, I don’t understand

Now that BP’s most recent attempt to stop the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has failed, they have decided to revert to a revised version of their doomed “top hat” idea from several weeks ago.  They indicate that the “top hat” will be ready in four to seven days.

I don’t understand.  BP is facing tremendous cost every day that the spill continues.  They started trying the current technique four days ago, and for weeks they must have been trying to figure out which trick is really going to work.  Given that the cost of readying multiple techniques at once pales when compared to the cost of the spill, wouldn’t it have made sense for BP to start working on the “top hat” weeks ago?  For part of this project, they need to cut the riser pipe, which I’m sure will take time.  Once again, though, couldn’t they have started trimming the pipe weeks ago?

Momentous

Be all you can be

There used to be this advertisement the Armed Forces. I think it was the Army. It went something like be all you can be. I think about that a lot. To me being all that I can be is not so much about raw achievement as it was in the advertisement as much as being as human as I can be. It's about humanity.

Being good at a lot of things is pretty easy. For example riding a bike or walking or even running are all pretty easy skills to learn. Even more complicated skills are relatively easy to learn. Things like mathematics or accounting. Sure, it's a lot of work but they're still easy to learn.

I'm not sure why I struggle with humanity.Perhaps learning humanity is a struggle because it's a personally challenging endeavor. In learning most skills we build ourselves up. In learning humanity we have to understand that we aren't great at what we do. We must stop and reflect on the fact that we might be bad people in some regards. Each of us has probably done a bad thing from time to time. It's personally challenging to believe that we don't need to be competitive. It's okay not to be the best at something. It's okay if somebody else has great ideas and does great things.

Conventional wisdom is similar to the Army commercial that I mentioned earlier. We believe that in order to be all we can be we must push ourselves to accomplish as much as we possibly can. Being good people is a challenge because in some regards it requires unlearning so many of those things that we spend so much time learning throughout our entire lives. Sometimes being a good person means letting someone else come in first place.

For Sale…

I came across this on a trip to the grocery store the other day.

Does the author realize that if Sarge’s testicles were removed instead of his ovaries, he might stop peeing in the house the other 20% of the time?

A champion’s offspring with no papers?  Really!  What on earth did the papers get used for, “medicinal purposes”?  Is he part Min-Pin, part Maui Wowy?  Perhaps they only had enough newspaper to potty train him for 11 months and they were forced to use his pedigree when they ran out?

If you give a moose a muffin…

By the time we got to Lansing this evening, Aimee was barely able to contain herself.  Finally, she blurted out “If they offer you a Citi card, are you gonna take that too?” 

Citi is one of my least favorite companies.  Let me tell you, I can hold a grudge against a company for a long, long time.  For the past fourteen years I have gone out of my way to avoid Quality Dairy.  In fact, I bet that I have only visited a Quality Dairy store an average of once per year for the past fourteen years.

Anyway, the source of my wife’s mirth began a couple months ago when I was smitten with Bluetooth.  First it was Bluetooth headphones, then mice, then an adapter for our home stereo system, and of course I eventually bought a used Bluetooth keyboard on E-bay.  $25 shipped.  It’s really slick, but once I tried it, I wanted to push the envelope.

Couchtop computing.  Sure, it’s much hyped (ever heard of a media center PC?) but is anyone really into it?  I tried it out, but I couldn’t see my monitor well enough to actually do anything.  That got my wheels turning.  I needed a larger monitor.  Something large enough that I could sit on the couch and compose Word documents in comfort.

While I was simmering on this idea, the Olympic games began.  I’m not into the Olympics, but I am into hockey.  The game last Sunday was not to be missed: The USA versus Canada.  The two super powers of hockey duking it out.  In my ignorance I thought I could probably pay someone on the Internet to let me watch the game on my computer.

I was wrong.  NBC kept redirecting me to Comcast.  Finally, I realized that if I wanted to ever see hockey on TV again, I’d have to bite the bullet and upgrade our analog cable.  It was such a frustrating realization that I nearly threw my computer.  Instead, I called Comcast and sullenly ordered the entry level digital package.

If you give a moose a muffin, he’ll want some jam to go with it.

My logic went like this.  If I ordered the cable upgrade quickly, I could still watch the final game on TV without getting smoked out at a bar.  If I was going to swallow my pride and buy cable TV, I might as well watch the game on a reasonably good TV.  If I was going to buy a reasonably good TV, it better be one that I could compose Word documents on while lying down on my couch.

Citi is one of my least favorite companies.  It’s right up there with Dodge.  And, ironically, Comcast.  By the way, I don’t care for television (hockey games excepted) either.  But there we were, driving a borrowed Dodge to purchase a super-size me television in time for a Comcast installation.

In case you’re wondering, they did not offer a discount if I put the purchase on a Citi credit card.