Sharing The Dream

It has been over two years since I last boarded a commercial airplane for a flight. Most of my recent travel has been by car rather than plane. I’m not certain why that is but I guess I just like the open road. I like the open skies too but getting on a plane has become so much trouble it almost isn’t worth it. Perhaps the flight will be more like what remember and I will enjoy it. I will certainly enjoy the landing.

Today is a much better day today. It is sunny and 74 outside with some light clouds and a cool breeze. It sure beats yesterday as we had heavy rain, hail, fierce winds and worst of all - no Internet. Verizon was down and so was my 3G on the iPad. The Edge network kept flaking out and GSRM was dreadful.

Yup, I’m a geek.

I have always been a fan of Star Trek. I don’t keep that a secret at all. I have attended conventions, met with many of the stars of the various shows and even have a uniform (or three). Now the iPad has a program called LCARS Reader and it is exactly what I have dreamed of. A functional program that actually looks Trek. It has feeds for news, twitter and RSS. You can lookup Craigslist items and share photos too. It is a nice diversion and looks really futuristic on the desktop.

Besides, it keeps all of my coworkers guessing.

I suffered my first iPad letdown this weekend when the device lost connection to the 3G network. After giving up and resigning myself to taking it to the Apple store nearby, it came back to life. Mind you this was two days after the thing had stopped working. I took it to the Apple store anyway. The genius was friendly but had no clue as to what had caused the issue.

Bummer.

I have a week long trip planned for later this month and I really don’t need this thing having a hussy fit when I need it most. I guess if you want cutting edge, you have to expect to bleed a little. I’d better stock some band-aids.

Today was a day of busy work. It didn’t seem like I accomplished all that much. There were a series of meetings, some discussions on what the next steps for our servers should be and few other technical issues that needed solving. Overall though, it was a quiet day. Couple that with a lack of sleep from last night and you start to feel drained and not all together with it. It sucks.

I’m planning an evening walk with a friend. I am trying to walk at least two miles a day each weekday morning but today was a bust. So we’ll try an evening walk instead when the weather cools down. Maybe we can bounce some ideas off of each other. That always seems to help put things back into perspective.

Some days the amount of work to be done is just overwhelming. No matter where I look there is more to do than there is resources for. Part of the work that a project manager should be doing is maximizing the amount of productivity that a group can achieve while keeping everyone sane and on track. this is a delicate balancing act that when it goes out of whack (and it will go out of whack) it is almost impossible to get it back on track.

Right now I am facing some major challenges to keep things running smoothly on the project I am working on even as the scope continues to grow. Perhaps this will settle in but for some reason, I don’t see it happening.

Sigh.

It has been just over twenty-four hours with the iPad and the device continues to grow on me. I have discovered a nasty issue with typing but that appears to be a problem with my typing and not the device. When I type, I tap a few too many characters with my thumb and this causes missed keystrokes since the iPad is a capacitive touch device. No signal - no touch happening.

This is a matter of my retraining my brain to type in the correct manner. If I had bothered to take typing in school, I just might not have this issue.

As for battery, the device holds up well. I finally have it in the charger taking it down to 19% over the day. Not bad considering I have not ever plugged it in before. The device just works for me. I’d like to see several improvements but for a first take, the gadget is great.

Today I picked up an iPad 3G edition. It is in the process of being set up so I can get to doing some serious work on it. First up were email apps and now I am working on WordPress and Twitter. This device is a game changer and is encouraging me to drive harder to getting things working again. Here’s to the possibilities.

Is it possible to work a business from only portable devices? I am about to find out as I will be getting an iPad soon to test that theory. Time to start a new blog cycle.

Today I had the opportunity to help with a flat tire. While it took longer than expected, I got to find out about some very nice a d wonderful people. It was a great experience.