Geek

So a couple of weeks ago Earl and I were at the local casino for dinner and drinks and we decided to spend a little bit of gambling money while we were there. Earl went to do his thing in the Poker Room, so I took $40 and popped it into a nickel machine. Technically, I didn’t put the money in the machine because at Turning Stone you can’t do that; you put the money onto a card and then you pop the card into the machine and it keeps your balance. It’s kind of like an instant ATM card.

I think I’m digressing.

So I put $40 into the “Wheel of Fortune” game and a few minutes later my card balance was up to $360. It was at that moment that I decided to yank that card out of the machine and grab the cash from the nice lady in the cage.

Never one to let money just sit around when it could be used for some cool toy, then next morning I placed an order for a little gadget I’ve had my eye on for a while. Said gadget arrived today.

Introducing, The Brydge.

In case you’re not familiar with the ways of Apple, in the picture is my iPad 4 with a keyboard attached to it. The keyboard is made of the same materials as the iPad case and the cases of the iPad’s big brothers, the MacBook Air, etc. Through the use of Bluetooth wizardry, my iPad can now function like a laptop. This gives me the opportunity to write blog entries on the go again without having to try to fumble with the on-screen keyboard.

I’m a happy geek!

From unboxing to first use took less than five minutes. The only thing I had to do was swap out the shims on the hinge from iPad 2 mode to iPad 3/4 mode. These little rubberized guys hold my iPad in as snug as a bug and a rug. The hinges can take the iPad down to almost flat and with a hearty yank, I’m able to pull the iPad off the keyboard if I want to use it the way Steve intended.

The only thing that I have a slight struggle with is the size of the right shift key. If you have ever had the privilege of seeing me type in person, I am a really fast typist. Back in my heyday I could crack 100-105 WPM in typing competitions. Because of this, I’m really fussy about keyboards. The tactile response of The Brydge keyboard is amazing, but because the right-shift key is half the normal width of a regular right-shift key, I’m finding myself moving the cursor up a line instead of shifting the next key on more than one occasion. This is something that I will eventually get used to, after all, I’ve only had the keyboard out and functional for less than two hours, but my point is that it does take some getting used to. Other than that, I feel like I’m full speed on this keyboard, though it is slightly smaller than your average keyboard.

All in all, I wouldn’t say that this is a “must have” for the iPad but I would say that it’s pretty dang nice. If you’re looking for something that has the portability of the MacBook Air but still has all the goodies of the iPad, The Brydge is a nice companion to the full-sized iPad.

/geek-mode-off

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For those of you that are still whipped up about the death of Google Reader (I am still quite angry about it, don’t mess with my geek tools), my buddy Erik has found a fantastic solution that works brilliantly. It’s the bees’ knees.

Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably reading a feed of it, whether it be via a Twitter link, via Facebook or Google+ or by what is called an RSS feed. Many folks that follow blogs and the like via RSS use a service from Google called Google Reader.

Google announced today that they’re sunsetting their Google Reader service.

In the interest of trying not to use salty language, I won’t type what I said when I found this out. To say this is disappointing would be accurate. There are worse things in the world, but I keep up on all those blogs in the right hand margin via the Google Reader service. Using Google Reader, and apps that use the API, I am able to keep up on news from many sources and I’m also able to read the blog entries of many fellow bloggers that sit down and take the time to write out their thoughts in spurts that are longer than 140 characters.

By the way, I added a new blog to the blog roll today. Hello Tom Whittaker!

I’m bummed (but not about Tom’s blog).

Since Google has randomly decided to end support for Google Reader, and judging by the outrage on Twitter and the like, I’m not the only person that’s bummed, I begin to wonder what other services Google might kill in the future. Tired of supporting Gmail? Kill it.

Tired of supporting Blogger? Kill it. (That’d be hard for many bloggers, including the very popular Joe.My.God..

Tired of supporting Google Wallet? Kill it.

They’ve done the same thing with countless other products and quite frankly, Google is just erratic enough to make me stay solidly in the Apple/iOS walled garden. Apple might be thought of as evil by some, but at least their evilness is complete and solid.

Google’s mantra has always been “Do No Evil.” I hope that someday they live up that mantra. Because right now they’re failing at it.

So this is my first time publishing a blog post using in flight WiFi. I’m kind of excited about it. I’m flying Delta today and I’m finding this plane (CRJ700) to be quite comfortable, especially when compared to the Dash-8s I usually fly out of SYR.

I’m such a geek.

I’m a tech snob. This isn’t something to be described as a negative aspect of my personality, it’s actually something that I’m kind of proud of. With technology where it is today, I think that the right tools are available to do what the masses need to do. I also fully believe that if you’re going to embrace technology, you need to do it properly, with the best tools you can get your hands on. This is something that has taken me years to realize; saving money isn’t going to save you money in the long run.

About a year ago, when I found out that I was going to be on a more frequent work on-call rotation, it was suggested that I finally get a company mobile phone. I took this advice and filled out the appropriate forms and waited for the red tape to unwind itself a bit. Our company is aligned with AT&T, so I knew that my smartphone choices would be different than what I was familiar with on Verizon. I was fairly surprised when I was told that I couldn’t have a smartphone of anytime, but rather I had two or three choices of flip phones to choose from.

Oh joy.

I ended up getting some Samsung flip phone that is so poorly designed that I have never used it. I have never given out my company mobile number to anyone, not even to the company. Instead, I opted to get a Google Voice number, which I can then direct anywhere I want to direct it.

Now, I’m not wasting company funds. When I am officially on-call, the Google Voice number is directed to my personal iPhone and to the piece of crap Samsung flip phone. The latter direction is just so that I have something audible to startle me awake should I get a call in the middle of the night. The piece of crap Samsung flip phone sits on my nightstand and does nothing even mobile related. The moment I am officially off-call I power down the phone and shove it away in a drawer.

The piece of crap Samsung flip phone doesn’t hold a charge for longer than 24 hours. It beeps and burps and chirps randomly at all hours of the night. I don’t know if it’s some sort of audible notification stating, “my battery is charged!” or what but it’s annoying. If I pick up the phone like you’re going to make or answer a call, I always hit the PTT button on the side by mistake which throws the phone into some sort of warning notification hell telling me that my PTT is going to charge me something. I don’t even know what my PTT Is. There is a constant notification on my screen stating that I missed a call on the 29th of December, even though I have pecked at the keyboard to get beyond this notification countless times. And did I mention that my iPhone has a better battery life than this thing?

The folks at work were kind enough to provide me with a holster to carry the phone on my belt. Sorry ma’am, but if I’m going to carry a holster that size on my belt, it’s going to have a Glock in it and people are going to be impressed, not laughing uproariously at me.

Through casual observation at work, I have noticed that most of the folks that you would think have a company cell phone actually carry a personal smartphone instead, with their company number forwarded to their personal phone. Most of the time the personal device of choice is an iPhone. Smart choices for smart people!

Flip phones were quaint back in their day but it’s time to move on. I don’t care if it’s an iPhone or an Android device, but in today’s business world where you need to be connected, you need to have a device that isn’t on the cheap and is going to do the job properly. Especially when you’re part of the telecommunications world.

Guess what I’m not packing with me for my business trip today.

So I wiped out my Flickr account earlier this week. Before I did to, I remembered to back up all my photos and save them to my primary desktop computer, an iMac running iPhoto.

It was at this moment that I remembered that I had wiped out my iMac a few months ago and had never loaded my photos back into iPhoto.

I then panicked, thinking I had lost all of my photographs of the last ten years. It turns out I had saved everything on an old hard drive. I restored my iPhoto library successfully but all of this panic was a stark reminder that I need to get a backup solution back in place for our various computer systems. I checked with the budget department and was approved to purchase a Time Capsule for our Macinhouse. Off to the Apple store tomorrow!

I’m such a geek. And as a reminder of this, here is a restored picture of me from 2009 playing the part of Mr. Telephone Man.

So, aside from a complete flirtatious betrayal last fall with a Google Nexus 7, I have been an iPad fanatic since the days of the first generation iPad (it took me about six months to get my hands on the first one). Though on a couple of occasions I have tried to convince myself that I would be better off with a laptop, the truth of the matter is, I love the portability, the convenience and the computing power of my iPad. I take it everywhere and I use it for a myriad of reasons.

I love it.

When I went on my business trip last week I brought my iPad along for the ride. Since we were traveling in Canada, I felt a little stifled due to the lack of cellular data availability (US carriers have some of the stupidest cellular plans known to the world, and yes, I realize that is a ‘first world problem’) but I still brought it along, figuring I could use it in the hotel room. There’s something very nice about being able to FaceTime with your loved one back home. I didn’t think I would bring it along for the meetings that we were traveling for; I’m often the only one in a conference room with my iPad and sometimes I feel self-conscious about that. Besides, with the lack of data connectivity, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to access the documents I needed for the trip. So I printed what I needed and brought along my leather binder with a fresh pad of note paper.

Imagine my surprise when I sat down at the conference room last Thursday morning and came to the rapid realization that I was the ONLY one at the table without some sort of computing device. The vice-president that I was traveling with had her iPad 2, complete with a portable keyboard. The vendor representative had his iPad 3 and a Lenovo laptop. The others in the room all had some sort of Windows XP power laptops.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious of the fact that I did not have an iPad with me, I started fiddling with my iPhone 5. To compensate, I asked the host, “do you have a wi-fi hotspot for public use?” The vice-president was happy that I asked, though the answer was to the negative.

After the meetings and on our way home, I asked the VP if she liked her portable keyboard. She answered in the affirmative and that led to a lengthy discussion about iPads and Macs and the like. Outside of the building that I normally work at, it seems to be standard operating procedure to bring along an iPad or a laptop. The company is definitely headed in that direction and the culture of the company is following suit. In fact, the use of personal iOS devices is leading to Macs becoming much more prevalent throughout the corporation I work for.

I find this all very exciting.

So when I leave for the next round of business travel on Sunday, you know that I’ll have my iPad with me and that I will be ready to use it in the training seminars and at the meetings that I will be attending. To make it all the better, my Apple Bluetooth keyboard case will be arriving from Amazon today (yay Prime membership shipping!).

I’ll have to share a photo with the gentle readers.