Back in 1999, when the president of Nokia came to say hello to the Network Alchemy crew after Nokia had purchased us, I stood up at the Q & A with my Palm VII in one hand and the neat new Nokia phone they had passed out to everyone in the other. I said "I want this [the organizer] in that. [the phone]" Alas, Nokia was committed to Symbian, a different OS, and they would never ship a Palm phone. But the Qualcomm phone that did have Palm OS was reportedly a dog. I don't know why that should have been the case. It may have been due to PalmOS not being ready for cell phone management. Or maybe the integration of the two functions was done badly.
But this Treo, it's.. sweet. The integration of phone and organizer is well thought out. PalmOS 5 is a lot more powerful than older versions. Finally, the hardware is much more capable than the pokey old moto chips that ran the original Palm devices. For me, the combination of these factors means that the device is a spectacular success. For the first time in my geek life I have all my contacts and all my appointments synced up everywhere. This has always been possible, but I could never get in the habit of carrying an organizer everywhere I went. Now, I'm carrying a phone everywhere I go, which I'm used to doing. The organizer comes along for the ride.
The Treo 600 is a compromise, of course. It's bigger than a cell phone and smaller than an organizer. That means the keybord is tiny and fairly hard to use, So the Treo is designed not to need the keyboard, much. The device is bulky to hold up to your ear and to carry. But the speakerphone function works well, and I'm getting used to using hands-free for all other times. I carry the Treo in a holster on my belt. The phone is well designed for this purpose. It's stubby antenna serves as a key that fits a slot in the holster. Popping the button flap and pivoting the phone out of the holster can be done in one smooth movement. The reverse manouever is just as easy. So I can live with the design. But what makes me love the device are the games and the audio books.
Palm OS isn't nearly as cool as embedded Linux. I know because I own a Sharp Zaurus SL5500 on which I run Open Zaurus. It is very cool. Only, I never use it. Palm OS has been around for many years. That means that there are tons of software applications written for it. The ones that get me excited are the games, and Audible.
audible.com has a mind bogglingly huge collection of audio books for sale on the Internet. They are pricey, compared to paper books, but they are digital. That means I can listen to them nearly anywhere I am. Specifically, I can load them onto my Treo's 256MB SD card and listen to them while commuting, or driving across Kansas.
So I was pretty sanguine about the Great Plains when I set out on this trip. What had seemed like a big, bison blanketed barrier to my ancestors would appear to me as no more than a corn colored conglomerate, as I sped through listening to the Canterbury Tales or something. That plan seemed in good shape, as I ate up the miles from San Mateo to Winnamucca listening to "Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card.
I find that audio books are a great way to fill time while traveling. It turns out, I don't need to use much of my brain to appreciate scenery. I do need brain power to think about the scenery I'm passing through. But it turns out that my desire to do that is limited to particularly startling scenery. "Oh, the Bonneville Salt Flats. Salty. Flat. Very well named" is about as far as the normal run of my thinking goes. But "Hmm, mirage of birds sitting on salt flats appearing 30 feet in the air. How interesting" takes a good deal more of my attention. I just pause the audio at points like that.
Before I went to bed in the overpriced hotel room in Winnamucca that evening however, disaster struck. I'm not sure why, but the copy of the Audible Palm application on my laptop got hosed. When I synced my organizer, it screwed up my organizer's copy. Since the overpriced hotel room had broadband (which got about 160Kbit down) I was able to reload
But it got me thinking about technology. I'm a geek through and through. I have dedicated my life to technology. To me, technology is fun more often than it is frustrating. But in the middle of trying to rescue my Audible player, I remembered that technology is seriously not fun when you need it to work to get something done, and it isn't cooperating. This fact is what keeps me in demand in high-tech, of course. I am able, more often than not, to get broken software to work as intended. (The fact that this often involves changing what people do, as well as the software seems amusing to me.) But this always involves someone else's problems. For myself, I have a less demanding standard for the technology I use. Or, maybe I just design it better when trying to get it to fit my life instead of someone else's. I actually think it's a little of both. I have lower, and more realistic, expectations of technology. I also try to build software systems for myself that have well defined failure modes, each of which I can have a well defined response to. In the case of the Audible player on my Treo, I had allowed my expectations to exceed the reliability of the software system. I really like my audio books, and I was really counting on them to get me through the Great Plains. And I had no backup plan in case the Treo failed to play my Audible content. I could play it on my laptop in the car, but without power, the laptop would hibernate frequently, thereby shutting off the audio. And the laptop battery would give out quickly in any event.
I now realize that my Treo is a massive "single point of failure." If it stopped working on this trip, I'd be out of touch with work and my family. I'd also be a good deal less entertained and organized. This dependency on a single device is the natural consequence of my desire to have an integrated phone and organizer. I got my wish, now I have to live with it. But the audio books are worth it. I haven't had much time for recreational or self-educational (outside computers) reading in years. Audible has brought this back into my life.
I am not making this journey alone. With me is "Newt," my parent's terrier-like dog. I say "terrier-like" because his pedigree is uncertain. It's entirely possible that there's some bull-mastiff in there, though you couldn't tell by looking at him, or by observing his behavior. OK, so it's really unlikely there's any bull-mastiff in Newt's ancestry. It was just a figure of speech. There's no need to get picky about it.
Newt and I bonded early in his life. I took care of Newt while my folks took care of my father's mother. Then, as now, I kept house rather like a mongrel with no possible hint of bull-mastiff in my pedigree. Newt seemed to feel right at home in my studio apartment in Santa Cruz.
Newt is named for Newt Gingrich, sort of. He's also neutered, so the name could be spelled "Neut," but it isn't. It's just pronounced that way.
Newt is way spun. He watched his nice stable life in Tehama California get thoroughly disrupted as my folks packed and moved furniture around. Then he took a trip in the Honda, which he really enjoys. But this trip ended with my parents disappearing into a strange building. We drove away, never to see them again, as far as he knows. He was glad to see me, as usual. But he has since developed symptoms of separation anxiety. Tonight I left him in my hotel room to get some dinner. He basically freaked out. He was glad to see me again when I came back an hour later.
Another thing tells me Newt is not on his most even keel. He won't eat any of the nice dried or wet dog food I lay out for him. He ate a little chicken from my hand at lunch, and I saved a little from this evening's dinner, which he also consumed. But that doesn't amount to a lot of food. I figure this problem will take care of itself once he gets hungry enough.
Newt is a great passenger. He sits on his blanket in the back seat and dozes most of the time. I walk him in the morning, at lunch, once in the afternoon and as many times as it takes to get him to poop in the evening. That was three times this evening. Not eating has its drawbacks. Since he dozes through the day, Newt gets hyperactive at night. The walks help tire him out.
I'm on the road, delivering my parent's Honda CRV from California to their new home in North Carolina. I'm going to try to post at least one entry every day while I'm making the trip.
On the one hand, one of the great musicians of the 20th century, and the creator of soul music was gone On the other, we could now claim the really epochal passing of last week was not some old white guy who we despised while he was in office.
I actually felt sad at the passing of Ronald Reagan. The eulogies of the once and present powerful were correct in saying that the man had no rancor, and always had respect for political opponents as well as allies. The eulogies of Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney, in particular, were very moving. George H. W. Bush observed along with everyone else that Ronald Reagan never spoke ill of his enemies. Then his son, scorning the rostrum that all the other speakers had used, and mounting the pulpit in the National Cathedral, gave a barn-burner of a stump speech.
George Bush's speech sought to identify his policies with those of Ronald Reagan. His tone was partisan, thinly cloaked in the kind of holier-than-thou preaching you often hear from the religious right. I'm sure his words rang true to his political base, but to me they grated more than usual. John Kerry took two weeks off from campaigning, either from the practical realization that his message was sure to be ignored in the torrent of interest in Ronald Reagan, from genuine respect for the dead or both. But our President kept up the campaign, culminating in this shameful political pitch at the funeral service of a man incomparably greater than he.
John Patrick Diggins wrote an interesting op-ed piece (free reg. req.) in yesterday's New York Times about the comparison between Ronald Reagan's foreign policy and that of the current administration. Many of the people shaping current policy opposed Reagan's approach to the Soviet Union which they now extol in glowing terms, and seek to identify with. The conclusion:
"Mr. Reagan gave us an enlightened foreign policy that achieved most of its diplomatic objectives peacefully and succeeded in firmly uniting our allies. Today those who claim to be Mr. Reagan's heirs give us "shock and awe" and a "muscular" foreign policy that has lost its way and undermined valued friendships throughout the world.".
Hot off the presses at a local bar's mailing list, comes this:
A little fact that has been suppressed for over twenty
years is that there were actually two shooters on that
dark day in March, 1981, when it was almost Bedtime for
Bonzo. Buford Spleen, an unemployed pipefitter and television
addict, sought to assassinate the president because he had
the hots for Kristy McNichol. He had thought, perhaps
accurately, that the notoriety he gained from the shooting
would help him get into her pants.
Unfortunately for him, he was nabbed by the Secret Service
and quietly killed before the press got wind of any of it.
The same would have happened to Hinckley if his apprehension
were not caught on camera.
Now I know what you're thinking: a second gunman, big deal.
JFK got capped by two assassins and it doesn't mean a thing.
The only lasting effect of the grassy knoll has been to fill
up time slots on the History Channel during the month of
November.
That is indeed a valid point, but it does little to diminish
the far-reaching impact of the attempt on Reagan's life.
After the fall of Nixon and the rise of Anita Bryant, Republicans
and homosexuals were the two most disenfranchised groups in
America. But because of a perceived conflict with parties each
were loyal to (Republicans to fundamentalist Christians, gays to
Judy Garland), it seemed unlikely that a coalition between the
two would ever be formed.
All that changed in 1975 in San Francisco when a gay man thwarted
Sarah Jane Moore's attempt on President Ford's life. The
generosity of this gesture was not lost on the GOP, who immediately
started drilling glory holes into the men's room stalls of their
country clubs as a token of gratitude. In no time flat, leaders
from the two camps began to hold secret meetings to create a
blueprint for the future of America.
Thanks to Hinckley and Spleen (who were ironically both heterosexual
Democrats), the alliance was shattered. The Republicans put the
blame not on the two gun-toting underachievers, but on the protodyke
teases who denied them sex. "If those two little starlets were a little
more willing to lay back and enjoy it," one memo seethed. "Our Press
Secretary would still be able to sneeze without holding his hand
against his forehead."
In the end, ties were severed and the GOP moved headlong into the
homophobic morass it finds itself mired in today. One can only
think wistfully of what America could have been if Hinckley and
Spleen had gotten their respective nut.
-- dave
that's my story an i'm sticking to it