The iPad project, #1

Today I took delivery of an Otterbox iPad Defender case, and I bought a new iPad (64GB, Wifi + 3G). (But not from Amazon.) I’m busy restoring the backed-up data from my old 32GB iPad onto the new one, and at the same time I’m resetting the old one to virgin status.
All of this is in aid of a cunning plan, with a fiendish side benefit. The main plan is to transform my original iPad into an Augmentative Communications Solution for my lovely grandson Tommy, who has autism and other developmental disabilities. Custom ACS devices cost up to $7K, but a number of parents and teachers are having great success using an iPad application called Proloquo2Go. Of course Tommy can get a little wild, hence the ruggedized case from Otterbox. I’m going to spend the next couple of days setting things up, and then ship the system off to Massachusetts.
The fiendish side benefit involves my trip to England in December on the occasion of my mother’s 95th birthday. I’ll be staying at her house, which has no high-speed Internet access. The idea of spending a whole week “off the net” was too horrible to contemplate. (Don’t bother to try to convince me otherwise!) However it turns out that all 3G-enabled iPads are identical, and all are unlocked. So when I get to the UK, I’m going to buy a pay-as-you-go iPad SIM from Three (or similar), and I’ll be back in business. In fact I may use Skype on my iPad instead of a conventional mobile phone. (Anyone care to comment on how usable this is, and how much of my data plan it will consume?)
More anon….

The week's twitterings – 2010-10-17

  • Just arrived – early – at SFO for @Unitedairlines Family Day event. Airplane pull, Blue Angels… then dinner with #flyertalk airline geeks #
  • So why did both Rosberg and Kubica have wheels fall off? Same wheel nut supplier? Weird #f1 stuff #
  • “@Scobleizer: In 10 minutes it will be 10:10 am on 10/10/10. I need coffee.” Me too. Nothing here at SFO Long Term Parking… #
  • At the UA MCO at SFO – cool! http://yfrog.com/02b7sj #
  • The answer to the question is 87,000 pounds or 43.5 tons. #
  • First non-Blue Angels F-18 just took off… #
  • Airplane pulls are starting. That A320 moves quite easily…. My team's turn is in about an hour. #
  • The F-16s just took off at maximum afterburner. "No speed restrictions" from ATC, I assume! #
  • Waiting for the pilots…. http://yfrog.com/709c1xj #
  • “@lskrocki: Also…tweeting as a procrastination ploy.” I'll get back to you on that…. #
  • Attending my first Yahoo tech conference at Santa Clara Conference Center. Great opportunity to get a breadth-wise view of the company. #
  • Anyone know anything about using the iPad as an augmentative assistive communications device for kids with autism? ACOLUG looks interesting. #
  • Had to miss @adrianco's talk on #netflix on #aws because we're going to SJC to meet Hannah. But I doubt I would have got in to the DoJo…. #

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It pays to check up on things

My mother‘s 95th birthday is coming up in December, and I’m going to be visiting her in Oxford for a week. This morning I went ahead and booked the flights and rental car. I priced it out at several websites, and the cheapest was United Vacations. (I was committed to flying on United, because I need a couple of thousand miles to lock in MP Premier Exec status next year.) I wanted to arrive in London relatively early, and so I chose a SFO-ORD-LHR routing. Everything went through just fine, and soon afterwards I received the detailed itinerary.
Oops.
They’d booked me on UA906 connecting with UA931, which gave me just 40 minutes to make the connection in Chicago. We’re talking about Chicago in December, after departing from SFO, the airport with the worst on-time record in the US. On top of this, I was planning to check my bag through from SFO to LHR, and I was hoping that it would arrive with me.
On the other hand, the system wouldn’t have coughed up this flight pairing if it was out of policy, would it?
This evening, I decided to call United, and after wandering through a voice-recognition call tree, I got to an agent and explained my concern. “Let me look that up,” she said. “Nope, that’s wrong: you’re supposed to have an hour and 15 minutes for an international connection.” And in a few minutes she’d switched me onto an earlier flight, given me the same seat I’d had before (after confirming my preference), double-checked that the transaction wouldn’t trigger a change fee, and emailed the revised itinerary to me. I’m now on UA972-UA928 eastbound, and UA931 westbound.
Decisive, courteous, knowledgable [UPDATE: Or maybe not – see Cranky’s comment below.]: everything one hopes for in a customer service representative. Thanks.
P.S. I’m a bit particular when it comes to seats. In the northern hemisphere, I always go for a port window eastbound and a starboard window when I’m flying west. I like to look out of the window without getting blinded or fried.

Quote of the day: Kirk on populism

Bloggers of all stripes have been toasting or roasting Andrew Sullivan on the occasion of the (approximate) tenth anniversary of the Daily Dish. There have been some sparkling contributions as well as several powerful indictments (sometimes in the same posting), but I particularly liked this bit from Stephen Bainbridge:

Today, Andrew is leading the fight to oppose those who are trying to morph conservatism into populism. Russell Kirk wrote that “Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence.” [My emphasis-GA.]

United Airlines Family Day at SFO

What’s the best way of celebrating one’s 60th birthday? Especially if it’s on an auspicious date like 10/10/10. (Binary 42, cue HHGTTG.) OK, let me amend the question: what’s the weirdest way of celebrating? How about participating in an Airliner Pull?
I just got home from a very happy day at SFO. The occasion was the 5th Family Day at the United Airlines Maintenance Center. Subscribers to the FlyerTalk were invited to come along as Guests, and I signed up immediately. (I had actually signed up for last year’s event, but I was travelling. China probably. There was a lot of that last year.)

UA Family Day is more than just a corporate event. We’re in the middle of Fleet Week in San Francisco, and one of the highlights is the series of air shows by the Blue Angels. During this week, the Blue Angels are based at one side of the United Maintenance Facility. This meant that one of the high points of today was watching the beautifully choreographed preparation and departure of the Blue Angels, viewed from less than 100 yards away.

For employees and customers of United Airlines, pretty much everything is overshadowed the recently-consummated merger with Continental Airlines. The centerpiece of the static display was a Continental 737-900ER painted in the new livery of the combined airline. It’s very simple: they’re combined the name – “United”, in the same typeface used in the latest United livery – with the Continental colors, including the tail design. Many United employees were lining up to walk through the plane, and there was a ton of promotional material – from playing cards to backpacks, from t-shirts to luggage tags – emphasizing the “One Airline” theme.

The other highlight for me was the Airliner Pull. The organizers had parked an A320 in the middle of the ramp, and were giving various teams the challenge of pulling it over a measured distance as quickly as possible. I had signed up for the FlyerTalk team, and we got our chance at 1:45. I was actually surprised how easily the 87,000 pound (43.5 ton) airliner rolled when we all laid into the rope! I got a commemorative pin, which I added to my (paid and free) swag from the day.

After the Airliner Pull, and the departure of the Blue Angels, I went for the tour of the Engine Maintenance facility. But it was a very hot day, and I was starting to feel a bit like the little fellow in the next photo, and so I decided to skip the FlyerTalk dinner this evening and head home. Which I did.

You can find all of the photos from the day here in my MobileMe gallery. At some point I should switch over to Flickr, but not until I’ve found an efficient way to copy things.

The week's twitterings – 2010-10-10

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"…you haven't been paying attention…"

The media (blogosphere and MSM) has been discussing the latest Pew findings that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than most believers. Dan Dennett offered his explanation in the NY Daily News yesterday, and at the end he mentioned a phenomenon he’s been studying recently:

My colleague Linda LaScola and I are currently studying [pastors who no longer hold the beliefs they are professionally obliged to preach, but go on executing their duties], and when discussing our first pilot study of closeted non-believing (or other-believing) clergy, we often heard two jokes about the seminary experience that was part of the training of most clergy: “If you emerge from seminary still believing in God, you haven’t been paying attention,” and “Seminary is where God goes to die.”

The Character of Consciousness is (finally) here

David Chalmers just blogged that his collection of papers, The Character of Consciousness, has finally been published. It first showed up on Amazon back in 2007, and my email inbox includes a slightly testy exchange with David about the ever-changing publication date. Never mind. My copy should be here on Wednesday, and I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing it. I don’t agree with his somewhat “mysterian” views, but I’ve always felt that the best way to understand one’s own position is to read the best of the opposition, and David certainly represents this.
While I was ordering this book, I checked to see if Chalmers showed up anywhere else. He did: as an author of Mind and Consciousness: 5 Questions. This is a collection of essays by many leading lights in the philosophy of mind, edited by Patrick Grim. I hadn’t heard of it before, but ordered it immediately. Even if one has read some of the pieces before, a well-edited anthology can be an invaluable way of capturing the state of an academic debate.

Comfort food, synthesized

My ideal comfort food involves roast lamb and rosemary. Kate’s is probably pasta-based. Here’s my synthesis:

  1. Soften half an onion and two cloves of garlic (minced) in a little olive oil. Add a teaspoon of Italian seasoning half way through..
  2. Add a pound of minced lamb, 85/15, grass-raised. Chop with a spatula over a fairly high heat until it’s granular and cooked through.
  3. Add one can of roasted diced tomatoes, one small can of tomato paste, half a cup of chopped mushrooms, and half a cup of plain tomato sauce.
  4. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring regularly.
  5. Serve over fresh fettuccine, garnished with finely grated parmesan cheese. Pairs well with a South African Cabernet-Pinotage.