Category: Revelation

Today’s iPod discovery

I’ve had this iPod since April. (One thing this blog is good for is that I can use it to check on the petty details of my life.) All this time I’ve had it in an incase leather case, which puts a rubber membrane on top of the scroll wheel. That membrane kind of slows down the scrolling, so I usually use the new “Search” function because scrolling through however many hundreds of artists or thousands of albums to find the one that’s been running through my head all night is too damn slow. But today I took it out of the case for some reason, and something amazing happened. I was scrolling though the list of artists, and suddenly I got a gigantic “A” in the middle of the screen, and each tick of the scroll wheel moved one letter instead of just one album. Once I got to the first letter of the artist I wanted (Captain Tractor, btw), I paused and it went back to slow scrolling through the individual items. This is very cool – it really speeds up scrolling to where I want. Once again, Apple pleasantly surrprises me with user interface delight.

Now if only they’d make it so that going fast goes to scrolling through the first letters, then one quick pause and you’re in quick scrolling through second letters, and such.

Google gets their collective fingers out

Well, only four months late, but I finally got the check I’ve been waiting for from Google.

See:
Rants and Revelations » Oh Google, you are so devoid of any semblance of clue and
Rants and Revelations » Hey, Google for previous ranting about this subject.

I won’t rant about the fact that they only allow $30 a day for meal expenses, and my breakfast in the hotel cost more than that. Nope, I won’t.

Sniff, sniff. Good bye old friend.

My favourite airplane, our club’s Piper Lance, is up for sale on eBay Motors:

eBay Motors: 1977 Piper Lance PA-32-300R – Great Buy, Flies Often! (item 140161831797 end time Oct-14-07 17:00:00 PDT)

Personally I think the reserve is too high, but I think they’re just trying to find out what the market will really bear. It looks like the only bidders so far are dealers bidding less than half what it’s really worth, looking for a totally desperate seller, and we’re not there yet.

But the plane’s annual is due in December, and we were told last year that the engine probably won’t pass another annual, and there just aren’t enough club members willing to pay the surcharge to justify spending the money for an engine and prop overhaul. So this plane is going to get sold, somehow.

So good bye, old friend. I’ll miss your speed, your load capacity, and your outstanding interior room. But mostly I’ll miss the fact that it felt like a good solid honest plane.