Saturday Night.

image

So Earl and I are sitting at the local Panera on a Saturday night. We are both using new Apple devices we purchased earlier today: iPad Pro with keyboard and Apple Pencil. This is the perfect setup for blogging. I feel inspired again.

To accommodate our gadgets and to make room for our food, we selected a table on the larger side near the area where food is put out by the kitchen. This used to be where people would come up when their pager went off. This Panera switched to the table runner service about a year ago; some customers still don’t understand how it works and they come up looking for their food. A couple of people seemed quite taken aback when the kitchen person explained someone would bring their food to them.

One woman came up to the counter complaining that her turkey-avocado-BLT had too much turkey and avocado. She just wanted a BLT. Earl and I muttered somewhat under our breath that she should have gone to Denny’s. This resulted in a judgmental comment from me that this area really needs a Waffle House. I’m sure many of the people here at Panera would enjoy Waffle House. I’ve been to Waffle House only once, in some random location along Interstate 10 in Louisiana, and I don’t feel the need to repeat the experience. Because that’s the way I roll.

With the purchase of the new iPads Earl and I decided to trade in our old iPads in Apple’s recycling program. We both received a rose colored gift card, which we promptly used for the new iPad purchase. Our salespeople Phyllis and Julia seemed to be knowledgeable about Apple products. They were happy to learn that I am a software developer by trade. I sometimes wonder if I frighten Apple salespeople because I left my fanboy pride shine from time to time.

I know, this is a complete 180º from the way I was talking a couple of weeks ago, but after trying other solutions, even with the bugs that are showing up in Apple’s software lately, they still provide the best fit and finish. If there’s anything close to “right” with the computing experience, I still find the best solution to be from Apple.

I have quite a few iPad Air 2 accessories to sell. I’ll probably list them on eBay, as the iPad Air 2 seems to still be quite popular.

I recently watched a review of a Ubuntu Linux based tablet that is suppose to effortlessly convert from tablet to full-blown laptop with the addition of a laptop and mouse connection. During the review the tablet, made by a company called BQ, crashed several times. That has to be very embarrassing. I know that on the couple of occasions that my software has crashed during a demonstration I have ended up being quite mortified. It’s unfortunate the people think software bugs are part of the norm. You wouldn’t accept your washing machine forgetting to fill with water once in a while or your hair dryer blowing smoke at your head, why do people just shrug their shoulders and go “eh?!?” when software screws up?

Strive for perfection.