Why the Chicken Crossed the Road -- USAF Interpretation

Colonel: Successful crossing, well planned and carried out in accordance with my directives.

Chief: About time that thing worked; hope the Colonel's finally happy.

NCO: Changed two wings, a beak, and removed a bad egg, and the silly thing still can't fly!

2nd Lt: Look at the pretty bird!

(there's more in the extended entry) more...

Posted by: Ted at 06:19 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Sometime between now and July 3rd, NASA's newest Earth Orbiting Satellite (EOS), AURA, will be placed into orbit.

The Aura spacecraft won't be alone in space during its planned six-year mission.

Once aloft, Aura will trail the Aqua spacecraft in a formation flight pattern to make comprehensive climate observations of the Earth. In 2005, the cloud-watching satellites - CloudSat and the CALYSPO - are expected to fill in the gap between the two EOS spacecraft, with the French-developed PARASOL satellite to join them in 2006.

Mission scientists have dubbed the five-spacecraft formation the "A-train," in which each spacecraft passes over a region 15 minutes after its predecessor and takes data that can ultimately be combined into a complete climate picture.

Posted by: Ted at 01:59 PM | category: Space Program
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I have never seen a single episode of The Soprano's, Sex in the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, American Idol, Survivor, or any reality show other than one episode of The Amazing Race midway through it's first season.

Posted by: Ted at 11:01 AM | category: About Ted
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Got my hair cut yesterday, which isnÂ’t a big deal, but it got me to thinking about barber shops and haircuts.

(in the extended entry) more...

Posted by: Ted at 10:20 AM | category: Boring Stories
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For anyone interested in rockets, missiles or space-related information, check out Jim Ball's Scale Data Library. This site is an incredible resource in and of itself, but when you see the links he's collected... wow!

Posted by: Ted at 05:52 AM | category: Rocketry
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Fortune Cookie Maker

McDonalds Sign Generator

And lots more too. Thanks to J-Walk Blog for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 05:42 AM | category: Links
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Hoping to learn more about undersea volcanoes, scientists sent a camera-equipped submarine down to take a look. They got more than they bargained for, witnessing a deep-sea eruption.

Posted by: Ted at 05:16 PM | category: SciTech
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Iraq isn't Vietnam all over again, but there's more in common with WWII than you might realize. Check out this interesting piece from Alan E. Brain (posted at The Command Post too).

Posted by: Ted at 11:48 AM | category: History
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Congrats to the Lightning. Normal sleep patterns shall now resume.

Posted by: Ted at 05:39 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Really. A dirty cartoon with nudity and sexual content. In the extended entry. more...

Posted by: Ted at 05:26 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Rates on federal student loans have fallen to around 3 percent — a 35-year low. Even better, students can lock in those rates, potentially saving thousands of dollars by ensuring their payments won't increase even if interest rates do.

But a proposal in Congress could shut down the party. The measure would end the fixed-rate option, making all federal student loans issued after July 2006 subject to variable rates. Repayments would then rise and fall each year in sync with interest rates.

Posted by: Ted at 01:02 PM | category: Square Pegs
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In the extended entry. more...

Posted by: Ted at 06:19 AM | category: Square Pegs
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Mark Oakley of Rocket Man Blog has spent the last couple of months moving and getting into his new job as chief propulsion engineer for TGV Rockets, one of the companies going for the X-Prize.

Things have settled down for him enough to resume blogging, and I'm looking forward to interesting times ahead. Stop by and welcome him back. Who knows, maybe we can work a deal for a 'bloggers discount' on trips into space?

Posted by: Ted at 06:11 AM | category: Links
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Knife Throwing 101, courtesy of Iron Bear over at Who Tends the Fires.

This is one of those things that is on my "everyone should know" list. You do carry a knife, right? At the very least, a Swiss-army or Boy Scout pocket knife should be part of your daily kit. Something larger and defensively-oriented should be in your car. And you should know enough about using it to be a credible threat, because nothing is more frightening than facing someone who obviously knows how to use that knife in their hand. And at some point, that might mean your only good option is throwing your knife at the target. Iron Bear has the best advice possible on the subject.

Even if you don't stick or cut your target, throwing a knife can have benefits. I'm assuming here that you have a backup like another knife, you don't throw your only weapon in most situations. The first benefit is pretty obvious, most folks will flinch if a knife is coming their way, probably a lot too, and that's a hell of a distraction. Use that distraction to get away, or to prepare for the disabling move you're going to win the fight with (like hosing him down with pepper spray). Also, since you don't lob or toss a knife - you throw it hard - another benefit is that even if you hit your target with the hilt of the knife, it should feel like a Randy Johnson fastball, and he's going to take a moment to do a quick check and realize that the blade isn't buried deep. Again, get away or use the time to win the fight.

Like many skills, accurate and effective knife throwing isn't technically difficult, but it takes time to develop the ability, and more time to practice and keep your skills sharp.

Guys, impress the ladies. Ladies, impress the guys and remember: nothing says "no" like a woman who can perform an impromptu vasectomy from across the room (that's 'Dad' talking, by the way).

Posted by: Ted at 05:59 AM | category: Links
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1 I used to carry a very small, girly pen knife (the blade was all of an inch long) on my key ring, but I had to surrender it going into a courthouse for jury duty and into the Reagan Bldg. for a meeting. Finally I decided I didn't use it enough to warrant the hassle.

Posted by: nic at June 07, 2004 01:28 PM (JijW0)

2 Ted,
I must disagree in part. While knowing how to use a blade is a skill I woudl recommened to everyone I think you went a little overboard:

"...nothing is more frightening than facing someone who obviously knows how to use that knife in their hand..."

Really? I take it it's been a while seen you've seen Raiders of the Losr Ark?

It's good to have a knife. Pepper spray - eh, I don't really think it's that effective unless you just use it to make sure your food is hot enough.

But the most frightening thing for an attacker to face is not a knife, but a firearm. The bigger the hole in the barrel the more intimidating it is.

Sure, a guy or girl with a knife can cut you up pretty good if they know what they're doing but that requires some physical effort at the time (as well as mucho practice beforehand) & it also means they have to get close enough to reach you with their arm. That means there's a chance that the one person will be able to disarm &/or defeat the other person who has the knife.

With a firearm the amount of physical skill reuired is not anywhere near that of the knife. Most people can be shown in an hour or two how to be just as effective with a firearm as most cops are. Add to that practice once or twice a month & the person is more or less ready for anything short of a fire team.

Think about this, if a 6'2" 220 lb. guy tried to attack Mookie, do you think he'd be more scared of her having a knife or a .357? Firearms do something that no other weapon can do - it negates the physical advantage the strong & highly skilled would have with their bare hands or a contact weapon. If you face someone with a knife there's always the chance (proportionate to your skill level) that you can get close enough to take the knife away &/or defeat them.Even a well thrown knife won't instantly incapacitate someone (unless you get really really lucky). Not so with a firearm.

Knives are cool things to have & be able to use, but they are not an adequate substitute for a firearm.

Posted by: Publicola at June 07, 2004 05:18 PM (Aao25)

3 Uh... I agree with the firearm thingie...

But I want to learn to throw knives! I always have. Daddy! PLEASE!

hehe. I'm super hyper spastic today.

Posted by: Mookie at June 07, 2004 05:21 PM (ZjSa7)

4 Mookie,

Learn to do both.

Posted by: Publicola at June 08, 2004 01:15 AM (Aao25)

5 Thanks, Ted. ;]

*reads up at Publicola* 'Cola, I don't think I said anywhere in the linked article that a knife - thrown or otherwise - is a substitute for a firearm. And I'm trained with edged steel. For that matter, a firearm isn't a cureall. I've seen a few dead men who thought pulling a gun was a magic wand that made you invincible, and found out the hard way that it didn't.

Rule of thumb: a Shotgun trumps a handgun. A handgun trumps a blade. Cold steel and training are better than martial arts. Martial arts are better than untrained bare hands.

And all of the above are useless without mindset and attitude. A gun without mindset produces what in technical terms is called an "Armed Idiot".

All of them: guns, blades, hands are tools. Throwing, disarms, knife technique, knowing when to run, and knowing how to perform a double-tap are skills. Tricks, performed with tools.

Armed begins and ends between the ears. ;]

Ted's correct on the psychological thing. Cold steel has a visceral effect on a lot of people, even trained people, that other weapons often don't. It doesn't operate on a logical, rational level.

Counting on that visceral effect is the domain of a fool though - the man or woman you're dealing with may not be one of the ones it affects.

Posted by: Ironbear at June 08, 2004 01:32 AM (W7+oD)

6 Ironbear,

To be honest I haven't had a chance to wade into your post. (been meaning to but damned if the senate isn't about to get interesting - & I hate it when they get interesting). I was only commenting on Ted's post, not yourn.

My point wasn't that any firearm is always 100% the end all be all of solutions. I was merely making a long drawn out reply to Ted's saying that "...nothing is more frightening than facing someone who obviously knows how to use that knife in their hand..."

While I agree with damned near everything you said (well actually everything but I didn't want to sound like I was trying to cozy up to ya) the thing I disagreed with was Ted's assesment of what's "...most frightening..." I'll grant that anytime I've seen a blade in someone's hand it had one of those "visceral effects" but not quite as bad as when someone had a gun.

So a blade in the hand is frightening yes, but not most frightening. That'd have to go to the sound (absent the sight - makes for a much more dramatic sequence of thoughts) of a good old fashioned pump shotgun being cycled. Next would be looking down that .75" bore. & so on.

But don't mind me too much - some senators think that we need more gun control & are acting on it so I'm probably a bit crankier than usual.

Posted by: Publicola at June 08, 2004 07:20 AM (Aao25)

7 Nic, I’ve learned to not be ‘automatic’ about taking the knife. It’s there on a day to day basis, but I’ve gotten pretty good at anticipating when having my knife will be a problem (airport, etc.).

Publicola, you are absolutely right with most of what you say, but I still think that the average person will be more frightened by a knife. A knife is personal, and at the gut-level people will imagine pain and wounds caused by stabs and slashes, whereas a gun just puts a vaguely-conceived hole in you. I’m not talking about the reality, I’m talking about instinctually. Everyone has had a paper cut, and knows that the small, almost invisible slice stings like the dickens. That’s a tiny taste of what could happen, and the imagination takes over. Few people have experience with gunshot (or similar) wounds, so there’s no frame of reference.

Personally, I prefer what Dad used to call “Iowa knife fighting” – a .45 in one hand and a big ol’ Bowie in the other. First: “POW”, then walk over and stick ‘em while they’re laying there.

Mookie, like Publicola suggests, if you want to learn to throw knives, you should also learn to handle a firearm. I’ve already mentioned it to Mom.

About the pepper spray, I’ve been tear-gassed for real during military training, and it’s some nasty stuff. I assumed that pepper spray was a milder version, but is it really diluted to the point where it isn’t effective? To my mind that’s even more dangerous than being unarmed, because you can have a false sense of security.

I think everyone has touched on a main point – personal defense should be multifaceted. Carrying a handgun is good, having a knife as a secondary defense is better, but on top of all that, the best method is to keep a clear head and know realistically what you can and should do every step of the way. And that includes knowing when to get the hell out of Dodge.

Thanks for everyone's comments and thoughts, this is great!

Posted by: Ted at June 08, 2004 07:43 AM (blNMI)

8 Ted,

pepper spray varies. That's why I don't have much faith in it except as an emergency seasoning. Some people will be instantly incapicitated at the first whiff, others will get really pissed of with no other effects.

You could say the same thing about a knife or a firearm: that not everyone will automatically stop trying to hurt you when you use one on them. There are plenty of examples of a person receiving a mortal wound but still having enough motivation to harm the person who just killed them.

But this is mucho exaggarated with pepper spray because of its non-lethal nature. It more or less tries to stop someone by making the person feel bad. Like I said on some people it is very effective but it's not a sure enough bet in my book to be reliable. Soem sprays are more effective than others in general, butneither is as effective as a well used knife, baseball bat or firearm.

Tear gas is a different creature than pepper spray & odds are your exposure to the former in the military was different than any real world situations involving pepper spray. Were you in a closed building that the set off a few tear gas grenades in? That's much different than someone trying to hit you in the eyes with a spray or stream from a few feet away in an open parking lot.

In certain national parks where carryig firearms is verboten the gracious public officials recommend a peper spray made specifically for bears. Most locals who are asked about it explain that the bears prefer their tourists seasoned. I'm sure it has stopped some bears from time to time but no way am I going to trust a little can of something that I have to shoot directly into a bear's eyes when there are perfectly good howitzers available. Ditto for humans.

what pepper spray can do in most situations is distract an attacker for a second or two. That gives you time to act on another plan. If the pepper spray incapicitates the person then you have more time. But knowing my luck if I relied on pepper spray as anything other than a distraction device (for that I could use a can of over cleaner with the same if not better effect) I'd pick the one person who rubs jalepeno's in his eyes & snorts crushed red peppers to try it on.

I really gotta look up "brevity" in the dictionary cause all I'm tyring to say is that no, I don't trust pepper spray or think its effective enough for self protection. Well, unless you know your attacker has an allergic reaction.

Posted by: Publicola at June 08, 2004 05:46 PM (Aao25)

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Ronald Reagan was everything America needed as a President at that time.

Posted by: Ted at 08:46 AM | category: Politics
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My usage of punctuation and the other doodads of writing is rather cavalier. I'm sure I use a dash when a semicolon would do, and vice-versa. You may cringe that I throw commas around like a cop writing tickets to meet his quota. Consistancy? Hah! I will damn well italicize whenever I wish, thank you. And I never met a convoluted sentence structure that I didn't like. It should be obvious to all that I hated, Hated, HATED those fiddly bits in English class. But I think the message gets across, which is what it's all about, eh?

I am fishing for comments curious about this. Does my writing make you grit your teeth?

Posted by: Ted at 10:48 AM | category: About Ted
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1 Not at all!

I was actually paid to be an editor at one time in my life (which you'd never know by my sloppy writing), and there's a lot more to communication than comma placement. You are very clear, you have a conversational and relaxed style, and I feel like I know you.

Posted by: nic at June 05, 2004 03:29 PM (16A49)

2 Huh? No way.

If someone can tell what I meant, and it was typed in a relatively English-like format, then I generally hope that they'll let it go without comment.

As I always say, "You must have known what I meant, otherwise you couldn't have corrected the punctuation".

Posted by: Patton at June 05, 2004 05:24 PM (cLlFA)

3 My use of punctuation is pretty haphazzard, too. I just try to make it look like it sounds and everything usually works out.

And I think your writing style is superb!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at June 05, 2004 05:42 PM (0Vz8o)

4 Thanks.

I'm serious about the feedback, good and bad, so don't let me commenting kill this thread. Anyone?

Posted by: Ted at June 06, 2004 08:31 AM (ZjSa7)

5 Rules?... Ther are rules to these little marks I throw around?... Not being a major fan of "correct" punctuation myself, I'd say you're doing fine. Everything always seems clear, and that's what really matters, no?...

Posted by: Tim at June 06, 2004 09:54 AM (CDV4y)

6 Well, for the most part I agree with the earlier commenters. Your writing style is clear, and as a rule the syntax, spelling, and punctuation isn't all that wince-worthy.

But watch out for the attitude, bub. I don't see it yet, but it's easy for it to slip over into "f* you, gomer, I'm in charge around here, and if I make what looks like a mistake it's because I'm *important* enough to define what's correct."

Spelling, punctuation, and syntax are redundancy, extra bits in the datastream that help to disambiguate errors. One can argue about this or that detail, and a lot of them are just finicking, but overall they're useful if not absolutely necessary, just like the checksum on an IP packet. Saying that you can ignore them with impunity is taking the bean-counter approach: those bits are expensive, don't use so many of them. Which is fine until the channel gets noisy, or some more subtle concept needs to be transmitted, whereupon said bean-counter is terribly disappointed that mistakes get made and nothing is done about it.

Yeah, a relaxed attitude is OK, but think of it this way: the Arabs don't normally put all the vowels in their words, because they're "extra" marks above or below the script and they get lazy. The difference between "virgin" and "raisin" in Arabic is one vowel...

Regards,
Ric

Posted by: Ric Locke at June 06, 2004 08:30 PM (s6nvi)

7 I knew my degree would come in handy for something! (not that i've got it yet though, only just finished my first year and have got 2 left)

*ahem* from my point of view a blog is your way of putting information across. I know personally i write as though i were speaking and therefore it comes across very chatty. I believe you may also do the same, but ina slightly more structured way. Bear with me, i'm getting to the point! Written speech and spoken speech follow very different sets of rules. What is ok in speech looks "wrong" in writing and similarly if you were to talk with "perfect" grammar you'd sound like a weirdo!

So, this brings me to my point. Your writing is a reflection of your speech, therefore your grammar and punctation reflects that you use in everyday life. It's not as if you have to submit this to an English teacher. If you did they would go through it with a red pen saying "too chatty", "what does this mean?" & "why have you done this?" and they would then re-edit it until it is no longer a piece of work that contains a bit of you.

We understand everything because you right for us. Don't worry about your use of punctuation. If however youa re that concerned I have a very boring book on syntax and another one on morphology you could borrow.

Ah the wonders of English linguistics... how i love my degree!

AxXx

Posted by: Lemurgirl at June 07, 2004 04:50 AM (YcruH)

8 I don't see anything wrong with it either. I usually am very conscious about the way I write because English is my second language but I don't want to sound (or read/write) like it. My problem is spelling. I agree that your blog is more like a speech rather than a term paper and therefore it's not really important if you use punctuation right. I always have (even at college) put commans where I "felt" there should go.

Posted by: Blogeline at June 07, 2004 01:19 PM (O27QY)

9 I like your style. Once you know the rules it's okay to break them. I scored absurdly high in English and I know the rules, but I often choose not to follow them because what you're writing is makes a big difference.

I do a lot of business writing and follow rules to the letter, but on my blog--pshaw!

If you've never tried it, type a few lines from a great novel into MS Word and watch it destroy the beauty and pace. Especially writers like Hemingway who knew how to craft a sentence.

Besides, creative punctuation is used on many blogs to illustrate timing.

All that aside, great job.

Posted by: Paul at June 07, 2004 04:03 PM (qdpUa)

10 Umm, Ted, you misspelled "consistency," so I completely missed the point of your post.

Not.

Seriously, your writing style is great, and you make fewer spelling and punctuation errors than most bloggers. My job is all about words, so I am usually a pretty tough critic (although I usually reserve my harshest criticism for fellow lawyers). No complaints here.

Posted by: John Lanius at June 07, 2004 04:21 PM (YVul2)

11 Thanks everyone, the input is appreciated.

Posted by: Ted at June 08, 2004 11:09 AM (blNMI)

12 Nah Ted, your writing doesn't make me grind my teeth. Well, not any more. At least not since most of them broke...

ha!

Posted by: Wind Rider at June 08, 2004 02:54 PM (VjGI/)

13 I read blogs for content, unlike my "Paco the Angry Hispanic" who keeps correcting my grammar (for the record, it's Shawn doing it). Really fucking annoys me to be corrected in public. Anyway, I'm off topic. I think you're a damn good writer, you present clear and interesting concepts, and so what if there's an errant comma here or there? Much better than having perfect grammar and nothing to say. ...

Posted by: dawn at June 09, 2004 02:08 PM (9B1bj)

14 The comments I get on my writing style amuse the hell out of me. I LOVE exlamation points, italicizing & frequently putting things in parenthesis (just love to set things apart)!! In other words, I write like I talk - animated, frequent asides and often off-track.

Posted by: Fierylynx at June 22, 2004 04:29 PM (/G779)

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Nobody specifically asked, but I'm all about anticipating your needs, so I'm pleased to point you to a random surreal phrase generator that you can put on your sidebar!

Thanks to Chicken Soup for the Vegan Soul for the link, which I can't find again on her site, but my post-it note iPAQ says that's where it came from, so I must believe me. Or forever be lime. How surreal.

Posted by: Ted at 10:33 AM | category: Links
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Hi-dee-ho esteemed guest, it's movie review time! Since I seem to have driven my old readers away in disgust picked up several new semi-regular visitors, let me tell you that I adore obscure and crappy horror movies. Then I bore you to tears write all about 'em here, because that's what I do. If you'd like to see the rest of the Rocket Jones "Cult Flicks" category, click here.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching several movies, but for this post I'm going to review just three.

Let's start out with a question: when someone says "Argentina", do you automatically think "horror movie"?

Me neither. How about "mad scientist monster movies?" No? Hmmmm... ok then: "cheesy sexploitation movies?" Ding ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!!! Argentinian sexploitation sci-fi horror. How cool is that?!?!?!

Screwing around aside (no pun intended), the story here is that a mad scientist, the Curious Dr. Humpp, has his monster (we know he's a monster because he has a blinking light in the middle of his forehead) kidnap various people in order to have sex with each other. Among the victims are a lesbian couple, a group of orgiastic hippies, a stripper, and so on. According to his evil plan, he then uses aphrodesiacs and "electronic control of the libido" to coerce them to have frequent sex, after which he extracts the "blood forces of sex" from them. The title of this post is one of his dramatic lines from the movie. Of course, not all goes according to plan and even the evil talking brain in the jar on his desk can't help much.

Believe it or not, this movie is better than it sounds. The production values are reasonably decent, the acting isn't terrible, and even the dubbing is pretty well done. According to what I've dug up on the web, several extra sex scenes were added to spice up the movie for release in the US, so if you fast forward through most of the nudity and softcore you'll actually be watching the movie as the director originally intended, making it more of a morality play and less of a schlock flick.

Next up is a double feature DVD from Something Weird Video: The Toy Box and Toys Are Not For Children.

The Toy Box is just plain odd. Equal parts horror, sexploitation, science fiction, and acid trip, this is a flick that works best if you just hang on and enjoy the ride without trying too hard for understanding. If you insist on storyline, then "Uncle" throws parties where people act out fantasies to get rewards from 'the toy box'. That's about as distilled-down lucid as you can get with this movie, and even that falls way short of the actual twisted happenings.

Winding up this odd threesome of odd movies is Toys Are Not For Children. Looking for a one-word description? "Disturbing" fits as well as anything else. A young girl grows up obsessing about her father, who was tossed out of the house by mom. In a bizarre series of events, she gets a job in a toy store, gets married (unhappily), and then finds happiness by becoming a hooker. She eventually does have a reunion with her daddy, and it's hard to imagine things going any more badly than they do. Although still considered a 'sexploitation' flick, this movie is more a psychological study, and there is actually very little nudity.

So there you have it, three twisted movies, each deemed worthy of your time. If you're into that sort of thing, of course.

Posted by: Ted at 06:24 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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A Rat to English dictionary.

Somehow, I think Victor and Nic already knew about this. They probably contributed.

Thanks to J-Walk Blog for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 12:40 PM | category: Links
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I asked about PDAÂ’s back in this post, and got plenty of good advice and ideas in the comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.

I wound up getting an iPAQ Pocket PC, model 1945, and so far I love it!!! Originally developed by Compaq, now the iPAQ’s fly under the Hewlett-Packard banner (my parents both retired from HP – Yay!). This is a true PC, shrunk down to pocket size.

The 1900 series of iPAQÂ’s are the low-end of the line, which doesnÂ’t mean a damn thing when you look at the features built in. The processor is as fast as the two year old PC on my desk, and thereÂ’s as much on-board RAM as my PC too. The iPAQÂ’s run the Windows CE operating system, which was a positive thing in my eyes. They have MSWord and Excel built in, so I donÂ’t have to convert files to and from a proprietary format like I would have had to if I'd have gotten a Palm. It also has Internet Explorer, Outlook and PowerPoint built in. The color screen is small, but clear and bright and sharp. It's also oriented in portrait mode rather than landscape, so some programs rearrange things to make better use of the space.

Besides the PC-style software, there's a very nice Contact List function, which is like a super address book, the ability to build to-do lists - called Task Lists - including setting alarms to remind you before tasks are due. Appointments and calendars are easy to set up and use, and you can check your schedule by the day, week, or month, plus there's a built-in perpetual calendar.

And that's not all. The "notes" function reads your scribbles to jot quick notes or draw a diagram, and a simple one-button voice recorder lets you save verbal messages as .wav files.

Plus - yep, there's more! - the 1945 has built-in bluetooth wireless technology. I'm not entirely up to speed on bluetooth yet, but it's similar to WiFi and allows you to automatically connect to other bluetooth devices, like a cell phone, to access the internet, email or another PC.

A single expansion slot is available for Secure Disk media, and besides memory cards (generally costing a little less than fifty cents per MB), there are many other attachments such as true WiFi cards, digital cameras, GPS modules, etc. Some of the other nifty things available are "real" keyboards and even solar panels that will power your iPAQ if you're working outside.

Input can be done by either tapping out on a little virtual keyboard on the screen (which isn't as horrible as I thought it might be), or there is handwriting recognition software already installed. The best option, especially if you have a lot of input to do, is to type it into your desktop PC and then transfer it to the iPAQ.

The iPAQs are designed to be used with your desktop PC as a team. By hooking up the included USB cable, you can synchronize the two, which will update both PCs with the most recent versions of data from each. Battery life is supposed to be about four hours of actual use, but I haven't come close to that because at home and work I keep it plugged in to the AC converter (included), which also keeps the battery charged.

I picked up a copy of "iPAQ for Dummies", which I highly recommend. It's not all applicable for my situation, and a lot of it is stuff I'd already figured out on my own, but it's full of simple explanations and suggestions for ways to get the most out of the iPAQ.

I've discovered several resources online for downloadable programs. There's an awful lot of freeware and shareware, and even professional titles range from a few bucks up to about thirty dollars. The iPAQ has an active user community on the 'net, with forums where you can post questions and receive help quickly. An example of the freeware available are programs that allow you to turn your iPAQ into a programmable universal remote. Yes, it'll work on TV's and VCR's, but also on slide show projectors and presentation media controllers.

One of the freeware programs I've loaded onto my iPAQ is the eBook Reader from Microsoft. I've never tried eBooks before, but to my surprise I really like the implementation. The text is far more readable than I anticipated, and there are a few really good libraries of free eBooks to download, besides the popular bestsellers and such you can purchase from Amazon (among others). You can add annotations and bookmarks and attach notes, kinda like writing in the margins as you read. It's pretty neat.

So what am I reading? A lot of the free volumes are classic literature, like Shakespeare. I've read some Edgar Allen Poe, am currently enjoying Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and I have Percival Lowell's Mars on deck. In the future there will be some Sherlock Holmes, John Carter of Mars and Tarzan, and others less mysterious and adventerous. I'll find the links (they're on my home PC) and post them in the near future for anyone interested.

Two warnings about these electronic beasties. First, you'll only get out of them what you put into them. If you make it a point to use it consistantly, then it'll be more useful to you when you really need it. Which means you have to remember to have it with you. It'll take some time to get all your information entered and organized the way you want it, but it's worth the effort. This is no different than using a paper-based system like the Geodex or Dayrunner.

Second, buying the iPAQ is only the beginning of the expenses. You'll almost immediately want to buy a case for yours, to protect it. There are thin plastic overlays for the screen, to keep you from scratching it up as you tap (same as a mouse click on a PC) and write on it with the stylus. I haven't needed to yet, but they sell spare stylus in multipacks, so apparently they break or get lost easily. And of course, there are the memory cards. The cards are your 'hard drives', because everything on the iPAQ resides in memory. I expect that I'll eventually get a few memory cards, one for work-related stuff, one for personal stuff (including eBooks and rocketry files, and maybe one dedicated to music files so I can use the iPAQ like an iPod.

I didn't mention games at all, because I'm not a big computer game player. The iPAQ comes with Jawbreaker and Solitaire, and versions of Minesweeper, Tetris, and almost everything else under the sun are available for download. The screen is small but sharp and clear, so I expect game play to be acceptable.

I'm pretty level-headed when it comes to new technology, I really have to be able to justify it to myself before getting a new toy. If you have the need for one of these, I highly recommend it. If you don't have the need, you'd probably find something for it to do, because it's that versitile.

Posted by: Ted at 05:51 AM | category: SciTech
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