Palmist

After my ancient six year old Palm V bit the dust recently, I replaced it with a Palm Tx. Despite being nearly the same size and (at the time) nearly the same street price, the Tx is a whole different world. It has a large, bright, color screen rather than the Palm V's small, dim, greyscale one. The Tx has WiFi and Bluetooth. The Palm V had nothing. And so on. It's a very nice little unit.

Although the WiFi aspect is a cool toy, I just can't see using it a whole lot. I don't hang out in Starbucks or McDonalds, and the nearest broadband-connected computer in my house or office is always just feet away.

The most important factor in a PDA for me is a loud appointment reminder. Otherwise I would miss my entire day. Here is a list of things that I keep in my Palm:

• daily meetings


• phone numbers and addresses


• birthdays and anniversaries


• the entire text of Ulysses


• an English dictionary


• a chess game


• a calculator and unit converter


• my last 30 days of office emails


• pictures of my kids


• a list of every book I've read in the last 2 years


• a list of every book I intend to read


• a list of all my computer account names and passwords

I actually wrote a small review of the Tx for epinions. Anyone can do it. You just sign up and you can review anything from an SUV to canned tomato paste.
Jim on 11.23.05 @ 06:14 PM ET [link]

Old age is upon us

I was sitting around a conference table with some colleagues, waiting for a video conference to start, and we took a poll of how many of us could hear the 15.75 KHz flyback transformer whine from the TV. Nobody over 40 (myself included) could hear it. At some point in the last year or two this just disappeared. On the plus side, that's one less annoying noise.
Jim on 11.14.05 @ 04:21 PM ET [link]

Liquid Cereal

Yum. Liquid cereal. Yum.

But then again, you could argue that this is also liquid cereal.
Jim on 11.12.05 @ 03:10 PM ET [link]