Hi-Tech 59 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Riding the rails

Denver has light rail. There are a lot of people who pooh-pooh this. Some of them think we should expand our bus fleet. Others think rapid transit is a goofy…

Denver has light rail.

There are a lot of people who pooh-pooh this. Some of them think we should expand our bus fleet. Others think rapid transit is a goofy idea, and that we should just expand our freeways to LA-size megaways (since that has, clearly, made LA traffic so much better).

I, frankly, think light rail is keen. I dearly wish it traveled somewhere along my commute, because I would ride it (as I rode the bus downtown when that was where my job was). The critics would note that it does not do so, and so condemn light rail as a profligate waste, a boondoggle, a passle of porkbarrel.

But there is value in symbols, and light rail, even though it does not solve all our ongoing transit problems (though the Southwest corridor has turned out to be far more successful than anyone thought, and I predict similar success for the Southeast corridor), is a symbol. It is a sign that we can at least give lip service to solving regional problems. It’s a sign that we are looking for alternatives to simply paving more roads to accomodate more cars and more people.

And you know what? People do ride the light rail. And when petrol prices climb even higher, more will ride it. And folks will bitch about short-sighted politicos who can’t wave their hands and make more light rail magically appear.

Such is progress.

Palm or Rim?

Hmmmm. That sounds vaguely … disturbing. What I mean is, I’ve been using a Palm Vx for the last year or so. And, much to my surprise, it’s become a…

Hmmmm. That sounds vaguely … disturbing.

What I mean is, I’ve been using a Palm Vx for the last year or so. And, much to my surprise, it’s become a regular accessory. When I walk out of the house, I make sure I have my wallet, my keys, my watch, my cell phone, and my Palm … and sometimes I forget my watch. I can keep my schedule, I can find my friends’ phone numbers, I can scribble notes … and always have it with me!

That having been said, my Palm is stand-alone. No modem or anything. And the stylus interface has some plusses for navigation, but sucks for text input (even though I use Graffiti faster than most folks I know).

A few weeks back, one of my peers in IT showed up at a meeting with one of the iPAQ Blackberry units — basically Compaq repackaging the RIM 957. It had all the basic PDA functions, it had ties into our company e-mail system through wireless functions (which worked better than my cell phone where we were eating), and it had a little keyboard (thumbs) interface.

And then another person in the company got sent one from our infrastructure group.

So I broadly hinted, “Oh, by the way, if you’re just giving them away …” And they’re going to send me one.

Now, the fact is, alpha geek that I am, no way I can actually carry two PDAs. So if I use the Blackberry, I won’t be using the Palm. But …

Upgrade angst. The Palm has a much broader software base. It’s worked well for me. I have all my PC synchronization set up, and all my utility enhancements set up. But the Blackberry has a keyboard interface, which may mean I can use it even more effectively. And it’s wireless. And the (rechargable) battery life is supposedly fantastic. I can get my office e-mail. But I have questions (from reviews I’ve since read) about how practical the e-mail thing will be (do I have to leave my desktop booted up? really?). And I’m not sure that the functionality of the utilities will be as good. And my Palm syncs with my preferred address book (PSA Cards), wherease the Blackberry will just work with my Outlook, which doesn’t help me any with e-mailing folks from the office …

*sigh*

Well, we’ll see. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Long day

Long day. Off to church in the morning. More about that some day. Then to our usual Sunday brunch at Le Peep. Katherine’s table manners continue to improve, which is…

Long day.

Off to church in the morning. More about that some day.

Then to our usual Sunday brunch at Le Peep. Katherine’s table manners continue to improve, which is nice. There are some ways in which I would not at all complain if she “grew up so fast.” Eating is one. The end result is another.

(I asked my Mom once how long it would be until I could have intelligible conversations with my children. She suggested 30 years as a good round number.)

Then afterwards, off to CompUSA to see if I could get a new D-Link USB wireless NIC. The PC Card version I have has died for unknown reasons. I’ve used the upstairs USB version with great success, but Margie is understandably annoyed when we can’t print any longer (it also has some affect on her dial-up to her office).

Well, CompUSA doesn’t carry the D-Link line in wireless. In theory, 802.11b-compatible cards/units should be compatible with each other. On the other hand, I’ve dealt with enough Ethernet equipment that didn’t work and play well with others that I don’t want to screw around with it. So I’ll mail order it.

Then off to the Nursery (Arapahoe Acres). I got a bug up my butt (metaphorically speaking) about dealing with the “New Side Yard.” This is the section of the side yard (western side) between the fence/gate and the concrete slab. I decided this Spring that I would turn this into garden yard, rather than the dirt, mulch, and haserei that had accumulated there. I discovered, after some digging, there was actually a sprinkler buried down at that end of the yard (and slowly leaking).

So we went to the nursery (which is a great place to buy trees, though we didn’t, though we will eventually). Picked up a nice rose, various shrubs, etc. Went home and started off at 2 p.m., with a 5 p.m. quasi-deadline — since the first thing I did was fix the sprinkler head, and the sprinklers were due to kick off at 5.

Disconnected the old patch of fence and moved it down to the end of the slab, doing a quickie connection to the fence there (not permanent by any means, but it should hold up to wind and weather, if not Jake). Started digging up dirt, distributing the mulch piles there, fixing the sprinker wire that the original installer buried all of two frickin’ inches below the surface, etc. Then planting. Then mulching. I’d have not made the deadline, but I overrode the sprinkler control and bought myself an extra hour.

Fortunately we have plenty of Advil.