Musings

Store One: Apple Store. Test item: iPad Mini.

Niiiiice. Really nice.

Store Two: Microsoft. Test item: Surface.

A bit slow, nice screen. Kinda strange (for a Mac-person).

Store Three: Office Depot. Test item: Nexus 7.

Really slow (sales-dude said the system was overloaded—not a good sign); never loaded photos from this blog, just text. Screen fine. Text strange (as in different fonts) but readable. Map cacheing isn’t quite what we expected.

Take away….

I now know what it’s like to hold the Mini—I’d hold it from the side and use one hand by instinct, but that’s not the most efficient way; take a lesson: learn the two-handed cradle that’s best for phone-typing.

Posted at 6:48 PM | 2 Comments »

Tempted by the new iPad mini?

It’s 5.3 inches wide, and after fiddling with a ruler, I’m thinking that my hand doesn’t have a wide enough span for that to be comfortable to hold between thumb and fingers. I saw in the demo that some models were holding it on one edge. That sounds tricky too, as you have to avoid spurious contact with the touchscreen.

My thought is, hold one first if you have smaller hands and desire one-handedness….

Posted at 6:35 PM | 1 Comment »

We saw many, many specimens of rubber meeting the road today, as in deposited there…after degrading and separating from the tire they were originally part of. And, we felt these were fresh samples, as they were still in the lanes, and not yet marginalized by repeated traffic.

Posted at 11:05 PM | Comments Off on Economic costs of “the heat” extend to tires

I really like our simplehuman™ dish drainer.

Except. Except the fancy draining design (vaguely visible at left) accumulates…crud…and periodically needs disassembly and cleaning. Which is a pain.

I see they’ve redesigned the dish rack, but I’m guessing I’d still have the crud accumulation problem…. Maybe, just maybe, it’s mostly the water.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Simple chores (accumulate)

This beastie strongly prefers being an indoor cat, I’m convinced. Still…he train-watches.

In part, this is for you, Jeff.

Posted at 9:43 PM | Comments Off on Look both ways

I know these aren’t the only two pointy-bridges, but we traversed one northbound, and here’s the southbound one…effectively bookending our trip.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Bookend pointy-bridges

Sometimes you are lucky, and even when you are traveling between metropolises, you can take non-interstates, and find architectural gems like this bridge across…um, yes, the Ohio, right by the somewhat scary Rockport Generating Station, which WikiPee says has the one of the highest smokestacks (not cooling towers) around.

Farther up the road, we dined in a German sausage restaurant—thankfully, with a salad bar (three dollars extra, mam), and passed through the town of Loogootee. John hypothesized that the name came from a native term or phrase, and I, to be contrary, said, oh, no, it’s corrupted French. Which seems to be likely—ha! (Like I said, ya get lucky once in a while!)

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Carrier. Container. The side (shown here) and the top used different terms. Either way, you stack your devils if you buy one of these.

I didn’t.

Mental exercise: think back to pre-plastic days, when you had simple organic materials at hand. What did you do for containers? Most organic materials didn’t seal the way plastic does. What’s the impact of that? Submerging in salt water (think sauerkraut) or sealing in fat (a surface layer in a ceramic vessel)…that kinda sealed stuff. But a flexible plastic skin? Nothing like it. And…?

Now, eggs back in the day. Well, you could keep it at room temp, or hard boil it. I remember with great fondness boiled egg sandwiches we had the day long ago we toured Calakmul. Hit the spot!

Pardon for the wandering post; I could have…oh, never mind, I’ll save it to use in a day or two….

Posted at 7:02 PM | 1 Comment »

Distracted by Lion upgrade* to laptop (only) and bulbs preparing to bloom, I “made” this picture at 6pm and forgot to post it until later. Hrrrumph.

Early report on scrolling reversal: give it a few minutes and stop thinking about it and your hand-eye coordination will kick in and make the change.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Timing’s off

Mower and willow tree (I think) posing today in Piedmont Park.

Yesterday’s relatively early post managed to miss the big news of the day under this roof. Or, actually, the news was aborning, but I/we hadn’t realized it.

Some time around 5:30PM, shortly before I blogged, we had a power hit. Then, when I tried to restart my desktop, it…um…didn’t restart, but tried, and finally, appeared to be almost there.

Long story short, the Guru made a rescue mission to a computery big box store out in Gwinnett Cobb, and came back with a solid state hard drive. Or something.

Shortly thereafter, I fell asleep on the couch while the Guru performed drive-replacement surgery on my machine.

Angst reigned as it…um…wasn’t enough.

Early afternoon today, the Guru had a lightning bolt idea, updated Safari to the latest version, and all is now well. And my machine is faster, quieter, and, well, working properly!

Time Machine did its thing, I want to report. If you don’t have a leetle hard drive sitting next to your Mac with Time Machine running, well, you’ll get what you deserve. I lost maybe five minutes worth of work. And that’s all.

Posted at 7:12 PM | Comments Off on Love love love Time Machine (and the Guru’s diagnostic skills)