Memorial Day 2010

Posted on May 31, 2010 by George Burgyan

There are always parades on Memorial Day. As well there should be. A lot of men and women gave their lives to protect the liberties that we enjoy every day.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

In this time of tea party strife, it’s good to remember to keep such words in our minds. Those men and women that we honor today gave the ultimate sacrifice for those liberties. We need to make sure we don’t shout down our countrymen just because they say something we don’t like. There are a lot of folks that I think are complete numbskulls, but I’d fight for their right to say their blather.

I hope that someone would stand up for me if that’s what it took.

We also had a C-130 fly over today as well. We were expecting another pass down the parade route, but the local air wing is busy and most of them are in the Gulf of Mexico applying dispersant to the oil. That combined with the inclement weather likely shortened the amount of time they can spent per location.

As an aside, from what I understand, the marching band all volunteered for this day, their school year has ended (or nearly so) and they aren’t obliged to pitch in today.

I’ll get off my soap box and cut to the heros that marched in the parade today. Along with some potential heros in the boy and girl scout troops who were in the parade as well.

View photos at SmugMug

You’re going where? On a motorcycle? Why!?

Posted on May 30, 2010 by George Burgyan

That was a pretty common reaction when I first started taking long rides on a motorcycle. People have gotten a bit more used to my wanderings but it still comes up for both me and Ennie.

I’ll add camping to the mix as well just for fun.

So, why a motorcycle? Why not a car? Why camping? They all relate to one another. It’s the same as why do people go backpacking/camping. Can’t you just drive to where you’re going? Why walk?

The little things are what makes travel on a bike different from a car. The subtle temperature differences as you go up and down rolling hills gets you connected to the environment around you. The sometimes unpleasant weather (not a problem if you’re geared up for it BTW) that makes the good times all the better. The 360-degree view of the world. The leaning into turns. Riding along looking over your windshield feels like you are flying over the road. On top of all that the very nature of a motorcycle forces you to be in the moment – it requires more attention to what you’re doing to make sure you stay safe. You don’t generally think of the random day-to-day issues while riding.

People always wonder about safety too. If you wear the right equipment then you’re a few steps ahead of the folks that ride around with shorts and a T-shirt. A good helmet is obviously a must. The rest of the gear is important too: armored riding suit, gloves and boots will go a long way of keeping you safe if the worst happens. Besides, it’s more comfortable riding when you’re not worried it might rain; a lot of the suits are waterproof as well!

The camping combined with the motorcycle forces you to figure out what you really need to take with you. It’s easy to camp with a Winnebago, you just cram all of your stuff in and hitch it up. On a bike (like backpacking) you need to limit yourself to what you need. On my bike I have roughly 120 liters of storage volume between the panniers, tank bag and other bags strapped to the bike. It sounds like a lot up until you think that even a relatively small car like a Honda Civic has easily twice that in trunk space (12 ft^3 = 340 l). And that’s not counting any of the space in the passenger compartment (think of food, purses, drinks, anything) which adds over 2500 liters more space. When you need to jettison items and luxuries you can figure out what you need.

An interesting difference between motorcycle camping and backpacking is what’s the limiting factor. When you’re camping, every gram counts since you’re carrying it the whole way. On a bike the thing that always gets me is size. While small thing tend to be light, some of the biggest things I need are also light. A tent is only three pounds, but it takes up a lot of space. Same with sleeping bags. Those things would cause any problem when you’re backpacking, but on a bike they’re harder to fit on for some reason.

Camping: It adds a lot of extra gear that you need to carry with you. The tent, sleeping bags, stove and other various items. Sure, it’s more work, but then there’s waking up in a tent in the woods to the sunrise and brewing a cup of coffee and just taking in the world around you. It’s things like that that makes it all worth while.

Orikaso foldable camping tableware – Preliminary review

Posted on May 29, 2010 by George Burgyan

Last weekend we went to Appalachian Outfitters just for fun to get prepped for our trip that’s coming up in a couple of weeks. One of the things we acquired is some of the Orikaso foldable tableware from Flatco Ltd. (I love that name!)

I’ve seen these around a number of times over the past couple of years and I’ve always been skeptical about how well they hold up to use — both the hinges and the overal durability with cutting on it and such.

I read a number of reviews online, both of the old snap-style and the newer “fold a tab into a slot” type. Overall everyone had only said positive things about it. In fact the folks over at Orikaso say you can even use it as a cutting board.

In any case, the store had them on a 35%-off sale, so I picked them up on a whim.

Of course I already have some camping tableware, so why would I get something new? Space. Like backpacking, motorcycle travel has a lot of the same limitations (with a twist). When backpacking the primary concern in weight above all else. If you need to carry everything, every gram counts — you feel it the entire way. On a motorcycle the biggest issue I run into is size. The panniers only hold so much. And when you have two people and gear for both space gets used up quickly.

The tableware stowed in the reusable envelope

The gear we had before was a set of polycarbonate plates and cups. Both take up quite a bit of space though with the flanges of the plate and the cups are a far worse with the handles and the overall odd shape. The Orikaso solves that by making everything flat. It’s also quite light tipping the scales at 330g (11.7 oz) with the envelope and 276g (9.7 oz) without the plastic sleeve. The whole assembly looks a bit puffy sitting there, but that’s just the folds somewhat pushing on the envelope a bit — it squishes down to almost nothing with any force applied at all.

Ready to go -- with the time I took to get it done

After getting it home the first thing I did was follow the directions and pre-fold all of the creases. Things start off stiff but after a few folds things loosened up a bit. The first time it took a little time to get things together. Breaking it down goes a bit faster.

The next concern was how hard it is to put together when in the field. Having put it together a couple of times before I started to get a knack for getting it set up. I timed myself folding it up — 2:58 to get all six pieces done. Not bad at all. Certainly it’s a bit slower than just pulling out the plates and cups, but not bad at all for how much space it saves. Putting it all away only took 2:18 to get it all back in the envelope. I think that’s quicker than trying to stow the plates and cups. All in all I think it’s pretty much even with the old gear.

One other cool thing is the cup has measuring marks. I wanted to check how accurate the markings are. They’re OK. One cup of water almost made it up to the “1 cup” mark on the glass. Not perfect, but good enough in a pinch.

So far I’m happy with them. I’ll report back when I’ve used them in the field.

View photos at SmugMug

Resourcefulness – Sometimes good, sometimes bad

Posted on May 28, 2010 by George Burgyan

Resourcefulness. It rants right up there with “Be prepared.” What the hell are you talkin’ about? While I’m talking about programming, it can apply to most anything that we do. There’s entire web sites devoted to kludges out there.

Most of us are pretty resourceful folks when it comes to getting things done. If there’s something that needs to get done we want to fo it. The problem occurs when something gets in the way. It could be as simple as not understanding the technology that you are using to as complex as not understanding the system’s design.

When people hit upon a problem that causes them to slow down there’s a continuum of reactions I’ve seen. On one end you have people that at the drop of a hat raise their hand and ask for help. On the other are folks that never ask for help. Those are both defective behaviors.

The question-askers, by never forcing themselves to think a bit, don’t want to grow what they can do. Not only that but they wind up annoying and slowing down the work of everyone around them. Learning something new requires a bit of work — abstract work — that a lot of people find uncomfortable. It’s rewiring your brain and twisting it in ways it’s not used to. It also requires practice — once you get out of the habit of learning, it’s frickin’ hard to get back to it.

The never-askers take things to the other extreme. They will find a way around the problem, dammit. All they have is what’s in front of them. If a hammer is the only thing in their mental tool-belt then the hammer will have to do; even if the job really needs a screwdriver. Because asking around to see if anyone has a screwdriver is bad. Why? I don’t know. I hypothesize that some people just don’t like to bother anyone, and some folks don’t want to come off as “weak.”

You have to deal with the problems caused by both anyway, the only difference is when you have to deal with it. The askers bug you right now. They don’t get out of your hair. They interrupt you when you’re working on.

But I’ll take that over the never-askers any day of the week.

The never-askers just put time-bombs in the code. Not intentionally of course. But they are still there none-the-less. Just because a question wasn’t asked, something new had to be invented. The perfectly good solution that might have been sitting under their nose was ignored. Strange solutions are devised. Hacks on top of hacks are written out of frustration. More insidious than that, a new pattern now exists in the code — someone might look at it and think “well, that’s the way it’s been done before, I’ll just go ahead and do the same thing.” And it multiplies!

The key, of course, is to try to manage programmers to the middle ground. First try to get something working. Then, if things aren’t coming together or it just doesn’t smell good, ask someone else. The same advice applies to both extremes — just different parts of it.

All of us have strengths and weaknesses in how we attach to problems. We all have different strengths and weaknesses though. We need to find a way for us as a team to use all of our strengths.

Smoky Mountains trip planning – Part 1

Posted on May 27, 2010 by George Burgyan

I’ve been doing some thinking about places that I want to explore on our trip in June.

One thing I want to do is the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It starts near Afton, VA and continues all the way until Cherokee, NC. Overall it’s almost 470 miles long. On our previous trips that would be well less than one day’s drive. Hell, that’s just a bit more than half of some of the days we did in 2008.

This year it’ll be two days!

The general though is we’ll head out on Friday night and aim towards Morgantown, WV. There’s plenty of hotels there so finding a room shouldn’t be too challenge. Day 1 mileage should be around 184 miles; just a tad over 3 hours. An easy ride by any accounts.

Day 2 we head to the start of the Parkway — a “direct” route is around 194 miles through West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Saturday might be a camping night if we feel like it. The 194 miles is just a bit over 4 hours of travel time so we might head into the park that night. If I had to make a guess we’ll get into the George Washington Forest and set up the tent, hike around a bit and call it a night.

The entire parkway spans 469 miles — while we could drive that in one day… why? On Day 3 we might camp half-way through the drive and do the rest on day 4.

Another thing I’d like to do is ride the Dragon because everyone’s done it. Yes, I’m a follower… whatever.

From here, we have another 5 days of wandering to get back home. What to do… Suggestions?

View Smoky Mountains Trip 2010 in a larger map

(BTW: Ennie and I might be adding more stuff onto the map — it’s a work in progress!)

Troubleshooting Tips: Time Warner + TiVo + CableCard + Tuning Adapter

Posted on May 26, 2010 by George Burgyan

Here’s just a simple post (I’ll keep it updated as I learn more tricks and tips) in case someone is having trouble with the mix of Time Warner Cable, Tivo, CableCards and Tuning Adapters (In this case a Cisco STA1520). I’ve had a few occasions in thepast year or so where things didn’t work right — Time Warner, to their credit, has been able to resolve all of them, but sometimes it’s been hard.

Useful Phone Numbers

General tech support: 1-877-77-CABLE
CableCard support direct line: 1-866-532-2598

Common Failures

8-blinks on the tuning adapter

Symptoms: The Tuning Adapter blinks in groups of 8 flashes. If you get to this point the TiVo can see the adapter but any of the switched digital channels are blank.

If you see the tuning adapter blink 8 times, then pause and repeat then you have the box in brick mode. From what I understand the initial programming lasts for around 4 weeks. If the head-end doesn’t ping the box from time to time it bricks itself. Tech support can hit the box and reset it and it’ll work for another 28 days or so then fail again.

Solution: This was solved by changing the provisioning of the tuning adapter.

A smart tech (forgot his name) came out and before he came in to replace yet more wires thought about the problem in his truck. On the phone with his supervisor they re-provisioned the tuning adapter and it’s been working great since.

Continuous blinks

This is a new problem that I just encountered today (5/25/2010). The TiVo was seeing the adapter like before but things were just screwy. I didn’t even bother checking the channels since I knew they’d be messed up. A reboot of the TiVo and adapter didn’t change things.

Solution: Tech support had me power cycle the tuning adapter. Before the adapter was fully booted (before the power button was pressed to turn it on) he sent a reset hit. After powering the unit on with the power button he sent an addressable and refresh hit. After this the LED came on solid and all was good again.

Continue reading →

Melt Bar and Grilled – Cleveland Heights

Posted on May 25, 2010 by George Burgyan

Last night we went to the new Melt over in Cleveland Heights. We’ve been to the Lakewood location a couple of times and had a wonderful time. It’s great that there’s a new location and it’s closer to us (we’re in Solon).

View Vec Blog – Food in a larger map

The first challenge is parking. Both of us grew up in the area, but neither of us had ever gone to this building. We’ve driven past it hundreds of times and never once saw any parking. Luckily on our way over I pulled out the iPad and saw some parking behind the building off Taylor. Most of the parking lot was full and it was metered parking for the most part… but if you keep going north a bit there’s some free parking! We don’t mind the extra 100 feet of walking for the free parking!

Size compared to Lakewood

One thing we were hearing mixed messages from people is how big it is compared to the Lakewook location. Overall I think they have a lot more square feet. The bar is substantially larger and there are more tables as well. The other place has more walls and is longer, but it’s a lot smaller in terms of actual space — though it might feel bigger just looking around though.

Walking in and putting our name on the list we were told that the wait is 1-1/2 – 2 hours. (!) We’ve been to the Lakewood one and they have the same issue so it’s expected. On top of that this is a new place and I’m sure that there are kinks left to work out with the staffing. (Also, a friend later informed me they had some kitchen issues earlier in the day which put them even more behind.) “But if you find a spot at the bar you can sit there — it’s full service there too.”

Pro tip: Sit at the bar if you don’t have a big group of people. We waltzed in and sat down. No wait. Nice!

Beer: Round 1

Great Divide Brewing Company Yeti Imperial Stout

I was drawn to this partially from the yeti connection to the Church of the Subgenius. That being said this is an amazing beer. They’ve added some espresso to the beer and you can taste it. The coffee notes blending with the chocolaty notes from the stout blend perfectly. It came served up in a small glass, not the standard pint, but it was plenty to keep me sipping for the next 40 minutes. The complexity of the beer combined with the super long finish made for a great drink. This isn’t a chugging type of beer.

21st Amendment Brewing Company Brew Free or Die IPA

This was En’s drink so I can’t comment too much except it is a nice clean IPA that has a good bitter citrus note up (orange pith) front and a good finish.

Soup: Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup

Mmm. We’ve had the soup nearly every time we’ve been to Melt before and it’s as good as ever. A thick and kinda chunky garlicky tomato soup with a good sprinkle of melted Parmesan cheese and slivers of scallions. It’s what an awesome marinara sauce would be if it were a soup. You can’t ask for more than that.

We would’ve tried the soup of the day, but they had already run out by the time we showed up.

Beer: Round 2

Breckenridge Brewery 471 Small Batch IPA

A good mouth-filling IPA with a bitter hoppy hit up front.

Green Flash Brewing Co. West Coast IPA

I can’t really comment too much about since this was En’s beer and I was too engrossed with my food.

Main course

Prime Time Prime Rib Melt (May special)

Slow roasted tender prime rib. Roasted garlic smoked gouda mashed red skin potatoes. Provolone. Zippy horseradish sauce and a hot, deliciously rich au jus for dipping.

It certainly lived up to the hype! The mix of the tender beef combined with the creamy cheesy potatoes and the provolone was amazing!

Chorizo and Potato

spicy mexican sausage, potato hash, sharp cheddar

I’ll let En give her review on her blog. I liked it, but then again I seem to like almost anything with chorizo. It’s like a good TexMex breakfast without the eggs.

Overall

I easily give it a thumbs up! For the amount of food you get it’s a good value for the money. Our bill came to $45, but that’s with two rounds of interesting beers and soup and leftovers for a few days. If we didn’t want the leftovers, we could have easily split a sandwich and called it dinner — neither of us would have left hungry. Not bad for $9 for an average sandwich.

The beer selection is great as well. Not many places have 32 different beers on tap from a number of quality microbreweries. Left Hand and Bells were both well represented on their comprehensive beer list. (In case you couldn’t figure it out, I am a big fan of good beers!)

The biggest question is do you want to go back. Answer: YES.

View photos at SmugMug

Harmful Interference

Posted on May 24, 2010 by George Burgyan

I was using my little handheld transceiver, an ICOM IC-91AD, to talk on one of the local repeaters and I started getting some odd noise that was starting to annoy the hell out of me. I was only able to use the radio in my office; anywhere else in the house had the noise problem.

After a while of this I started getting more annoyed.

Let’s go over some data points first:

I was getting interference on the W8OKE repeater on 147.015
More generally, it was using the FM mode on the 2m band (144-148mHz)
Sometimes the noise would “move” around on the band
The noise was only happening around my house
Sometimes it was worse than other times
The FM detect was always on when the noise was happening

Going by the book (quite literally, the ARRL book) we started to walk around the house to see if any part of the house was any worse than any other part. The answer was a disappointing “not really.” The next step is to go down to the breaker box and start switching off breakers to see when the problem goes away.

One by one I started to flip the breakers while Ennie listened to the noise. Eventually we narrowed it down to one one circuit. It’s the circuit I had hung the TED-5000 off of. That’s the problem, right?

The backstory behind the TED is that it’s a device to monitor the overall electrical usage of my house. It has two current-sense loops that clip on the main feed into the house and a couple of small leads to get power from both hot sides. The way the box communicates to the outside is by injecting a bit of data on the 0V crossing of the power. (It’s very similar to how X-10 does things) The data “noise” is then received by another box outside the breaker panel and that then talks ethernet to the rest of the house.

Now that bit of noise on the power line was my first guess at the cause. The power lines are an unshielded, unbalanced system that would act like an antenna for this. Problem solved. Right?

Nope. Even after unwiring the TED I still get noise.

Damn.

The only other thing that’s on that circuit is my shaver – a Braun 8995.

Unplug it and the noise goes away.

Maybe it’s an old power supply and something went awry in it. I have a spare from an older shaver. Switching power supplies (which this thing is) use high frequency switching to convert the input 120V to the required 12V. If something died there it’s conceivable that it could radiate some noise.

Swap and the noise went away.

For a few minutes. Damn.

Then I noticed that the shaver was in a test mode and a blue LED was pulsing in sync with the noise. Ah-ha!

It’s the shaver itself!

Now I just charge it and unplug it. No more problems. Though I wouldn’t mind getting a newer one that I don’t have to babysit.

You can listen to the noise on the video below:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpXrCFbzGEM

WebHost4Life – Turning the FAIL up to 11

Posted on May 23, 2010 by George Burgyan

You might have seen my original post about WebHost4Life stinking up the place. Amazingly they managed to up ante even more.

After I got my sites moved over to GoDaddy and things we stable I non-renewed my account with WebHost4Life. This happened on 5/11. The process to non-renew was confusing, so I did it twice. Afterward I got two emails confirming the non-renew. (My account was up on 6/13 so I didn’t want to jump through the hoops to even try to get a refund)

Confirmation email – 5/11

Dear George,

As you have requested, your “gburgyan” account at WebHost4Life
will not renew at the end of your current payment term. Please
note that, when your current payment term expires, your files
will be deleted, and you will not be able to renew domains you
registered with us. For full details, log into your Billing Console:

http://www.webhost4life.com/controlpanel/BillingCentral/AccountRenewal.bml

[stuff deleted]

We do hate to lose your business. If circumstances change, or
if there’s anything we can do to improve your hosting experience,
you can upgrade to to a full hosting account at any time by visiting:

http://www.webhost4life.com/product/catalog.bml

[stuff deleted]

Sincerely,

The WebHost4Life Team

WebHost4Life, 70 Blanchard Rd, Burlington, MA 01803

Now I want a refund.

Today I got an invoice:

Dear George,

We hope you’re enjoying online success and are pleased
with the service you’ve received from WebHost4Life.

A payment for your “gburgyan” account is due on 6/13/2010.

On this date, your account will automatically be billed for
the amount specified below. To avoid billing difficulties and
service interruptions, please take this opportunity to log in
and review your billing information currently on file at:

http://www.webhost4life.com/secureControl/EditCCInfo.bml

Please refer to the invoice below for payment information.
If you have any questions, please call us at 888-306-3780 or
submit a new request by logging into your Support Console:

http://www.webhost4life.com/member/sconsole/index.bml

Best wishes,
The WebHost4Life Team

****************************************************************
WebHost4Life Invoice
WebHost4Life, 70 Blanchard Rd, Burlington, MA 01803
****************************************************************

User’s name: George Burgyan
Billing name: George Burgyan
[address]

DATE: 5/23/2010
****************************************************************
PAYMENT NO.: 31948173
ITEM: WHL Migration Default Advanced
AMOUNT DUE: 167.28
DATE DUE: 6/13/2010
****************************************************************
Note: This invoice constitutes a payment notice for the
product/service mentioned above only. Other payments or services
are invoiced separately. Information on all products and
services for your account, as well as payment receipt
information, is also available at:

http://www.webhost4life.com/controlpanel/BillingCentral/billingSnapshot.bml

****************************************************************
If you need additional information or would like to change your
billing method, please please call us at 888-306-3780 or
submit a new request by logging into your Support Console:

http://www.webhost4life.com/member/sconsole/index.bml

****************************************************************

sys37inv(05.19.10)

Umm… what? What part of cancel is unclear?

At this point I want a refund of the unused term of my account (5/11 – 6/13) and written (i.e. non-email) confirmation that my account is canceled. What’s the odds they’ll do anything? I think it’s pretty low, but it’s worth a shot.

Next stop: The BBB.

In case you’re wondering, the new owners seem to the the issue. And also my target with the BBB complaint.

Company	Endurance International Group
Address	70 Blanchard Road – 3rd Floor Burlington, MA 01803

Also, I’m not alone in this. There are entire sites devoted to these idiot’s shenanigans.

Longer term iPad review

Posted on May 22, 2010 by George Burgyan

I’ve had the iPad for a few weeks now and played with it quite a lot. There’s a log of other reviews out about it, but here’s mine.

Why I bought it

I jumped into buying it at just about the last moment. I made up my mind to get one in the last few days leading up to the release of the device. By that point all of the pre-order units were sold out and the only way I was going to get one was to stay in line at the store. All of this begs the question of why I thought to get one in the first place if I wasn’t compelled to pre-order it.

As I was thinking about the last trip I went on up to Labrador I pondered how I used the netbook I brought along with me. I had an 10 running a pre-release version of Windows 7 to document my travels. It worked well, but left a few things to be desired. The biggest thing that I was missing was having real wireless connectivity. Of course I had WiFi, but that’s not nearly as good as just having ambient internet service.

The other thing I noticed was what applications I really wound up using. This really is the deciding point for me.

I used only three apps during the trip:

A web browser (Google Chrome in this case)
Microsoft Live Writer to post blog entries
Skype to talk to Ennie for free occasionally

Of everything I had with me, from a full Office suite and other productivity tools to a small install of DevStudio (just in case something major blew up back at home) I didn’t use a whole lot of software.

The battery life of the Asus was pretty much in line with what I needed — figure around nine hours of usage on a charge. All of that usage is on a 10.1″ screen with a mini keyboard for input. I wound up bringing along a tiny bluetooth mouse since Windows is fundamentally a mouse-based OS.

Overall I was happy with it, but the lack of internet access left me wanting.

Given how I wound up using it, I opted to give the iPad a try. I waited in line for the 32GB version. I quickly realized I’d be better off with the 64GB version and upgraded in short order.

So, what’s life like with the iPad compared to the netbook?

First off, it’s quite a bit lighter and less bulky. 1.394 kg vs .874 kg (3.07 lbs vs 1.93 lbs) measured with each of their protective cases. The iPad is noticeably thinner as well.

Both devices screens are glossy. The iPad has a glass screen while the Eee PC has a glossy plastic screen. The resolution of the screens are comparable, 1024×768 for the iPad and 1024×600 for the Eee PC. Neither of them are unpleasant to look at, but the iPad has a bit more “pop” to it. In broad daylight they’re both a bit hard to read with all the reflections.

From here out, I’ll just be talking about the iPad since that’s what this review is mainly about. I just wanted to give a bit of background on how I’m intending on using it and what filled that role before.

Usage

Having used the iPhone for the past two years, the iPad is very much like a huge iPhone. I was immediately familiar with how things worked. It’s very easy to use and very intuitive. A real benefit is when you’re using it in a non-computer place (like a restaurant) you look quite a bit less out-of-place compared to a laptop. It’s much more like reading a big book.

A key benefit of the iPhone that got carried over to the iPad is the finger-centric interface. For the typical use case — browsing the web — there’s no keyboard to get in the way. Neither a physical or virtual keyboard takes up any space. It’s easy to use on-the-go, holding it with one hand and flick-scrolling with the other. On the other hand any real data entry becomes a lot harder, though not harder than using the physical keyboard of the netbook.

“Keyboard”

A lot has been written about the virtual keyboard of the iPad. Interestingly, when I compared the key sizes between the netbook and the iPad the iPad had bigger keys. In fact it’s just about the exact same size and pitch as the real keyboard I’m typing on now.

The iPad has replaced my laptop when going to meetings at work too. (The fact that my crappy machine crashes when I dock or un-dock it gave me impetus to not bring my big laptop regularly) Using the keyboard for the past two weeks to take notes has gotten me used to the lack of feel from the keyboard. Overall I have the feeling that I’m typing at roughly 90% of my normal speed once everything has been taken into account.

Battery Life

Apple hasn’t been lying about the battery life. In a typical day’s usage, I’ve never scrubbed off more than 25% of the battery life. This typically entails around 2-3 hours usage with 3G at work and WiFi at home. Overall I’m impressed with how slowly the battery drains while using it. I’ve never had an instance where I could just watch the battery go down.

Apps

Here’s the apps I’m using on a day-to-day basis:

Evernote: Simple amazing note-taking with cloud storage
Dropbox: Cloud storage done awesome
Goodreader: Great little app to view all sorts of documents you have around
Kindle: Read my Kindle books when I don’t have my Kindle with me (a comparison for another day)
Instapaper: Save random web pages to read later. Works great to waste a bit of time if you need to
Weather Channel: Big and beautiful weather reports
Toodledo: Getting Things Done
Zinio: Read magazines without the paper
WordPress: Posting to this on the road

Travel considerations

The accouterments for this are pretty minimal and compact. The charger is tiny and you can use any dock cable you have with you. An added bonus is that many of the iPhone accessories work with the iPod as well. While not every charger works (or even computer USB port for that matter) the Belkin car charger seems to charge it without problems. As a bonus Ennie already has one in her car!

This is a bigger advantage than it might first appear. On my trip I had to kludge together a charger that can take 12V (from my bike) to charge the Asus. It’s not easy to come by. (eBay charger + an ill-fitting tip from Radio Shack + some electrical tape to hold it together) Having a full ecosystem of third parties supporting a device is a big plus!

I still need to get my hands on the camera connector. They’re in short supply but I’m not too concerned at this second.

Overall

I’m really liking this device! It’s not a laptop. It’s not a netbook. It’s not a phone. It’s something else. And I like it. It’s comfortable to carry around. Easy to use. Great battery life. Connectivity built in. Great for browsing the net and taking notes.

Overall I’m very happy with it!