Back from Baltimore, and a Dubious Honour

Wel­come to 2008!

We’re back from an extend­ed Hol­i­day Sea­son vis­it to my broth­er and his fam­i­ly, my par­ents, and some social calls on both sides of the con­ti­nent. High­lights includ­ed see­ing my niece dance in the Seat­tle Bal­let’s Nut­crack­er for the sec­ond year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day din­ner with my par­ents in Bal­ti­more (includ­ing Spaet­zle, Green Beans, and Red Cab­bage — the theme was clear­ly Ger­man Cui­sine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!

Pam was able to swing north to Mass­a­chu­setts for a few days to vis­it with her broth­er and his fam­i­ly, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leop­ard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as dif­fi­cult as mine (once again tak­ing 3 attempts, and end­ing up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Sup­port Reps and ulti­mate­ly required a clean install, as well as us man­u­al­ly installing all appli­ca­tions and mov­ing all of his email accounts, doc­u­ments, cal­en­dars and address book entries — just as I had to).

The trip to the States was not with­out some cul­ture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to pre­pare for the dif­fer­ences). On our flights there, my seat com­pan­ions were con­stant­ly read­ing Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincin­nati, where I was able to get some Cincin­nati Chili at the food court, a del­i­ca­cy of my under­grad years), we were amazed at the throngs of sol­diers every­where, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the air­ports we were in. Reli­gion and the Mil­i­tary: not a great com­bi­na­tion for me.

I’m still recov­er­ing from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfor­tu­nate­ly, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the fol­low­ing week I’ll be in San Fran­cis­co for Mac­World Expo.

Speak­ing of things in Tech, my broth­er alert­ed me to a some­what puz­zling hon­our for our family:

Druck­er : next gen Win­dows Mobile smart­phone from Palm
Jan­u­ary 6, 2008 – 11:22 am 

Now that all of Palm’s flag­ship Treo 750 smart­phones have been upgrad­ed to Win­dows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look for­ward to 6.1. Engad­get reports that the next high end Win­dows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Drucker”. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:

• GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
• runs Win­dows Mobile 6.1
• 2 Megapix­el camera
• 1500mAh bat­tery
• 320×320 screen
• Blue­tooth

Druck­er, which will be a replace­ment for the Treo 750v, will be the first smart­phone from Palm that sup­ports WiFi. It’s also the first to match cur­rent Palm OS-based smart­phones in terms of screen res­o­lu­tion. Druck­er is expect­ed to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will prob­a­bly be avail­able first for Vodafone.

I have noth­ing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d prob­a­bly nev­er buy a phone using Win­dows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that inter­est­ed. I’m less and less sat­is­fied with my fre­quent­ly-crash­ing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for per­haps 12–15 years but it’s clear­ly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Win­dows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).