iPhones for the family

My wife and younger daughter have been anging to get iPhones for quite a while. When the 3G was annouced at the much reduced price, we had to bite the bullet. Being on the return trip from our RV trip (see earlier post) we were unable to join the throngs lining up on July 11th. After that it turned out to be quite difficult to find one, let alone two. We tried the two Apple stores in Orlando, I even made plans to drive to New York from South Jersey, to their flagship 5th Avenue store. But last weekend we managed to get our two in Orlando.

I am quite impressed with the user interface on the phone, and the large screen. Unfortunately, the iPhone is missing some key features that I find very useful on my Treo. They include Voice Command, Bluetooth A2DP (stereo), tethering, cut and paste, memory chip expansion, turn by turn GPS, MS-Office compatibility, to name a few. Some of these are no doubt available now, or soon, in the Apps Store, but I will wait to see what the Windows Mobile phones such as the HTC Touch or Samsung Omnia are like.

It has been interesting to see how my wife has taken to texting, even in this short time, now that she has an easy to use keyboard instead of a phone pad. The fact that the messages get delivered immediately is also a plus since her experience with T-Mobile was frequent delays in the delivery of the text message which I was sending. I will blog in a few weeks about her experiences with this new toy.

Philly good omen?

Well I finally switched back to travelling in and out of Philly. On my first "return" trip to PHL I am very happy to report that my flight arrived exactly on time. In fact pretty much the only hitch was my name missing on the car rental car assignment display. It was great to be at my hotel not too long after midnight, instead of somewhere between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m.

Thanks Philly, hopefully a good omen for my upcoming flights

Weather discrepancy

Last week I was getting ready to leave for my 90 minute drive to EWR and decided to check fly.faa.gov. The FAA was showing 75 minutes delays at EWR, due to low ceiling (low clouds). I have complained earlier about how quickly these two runway airports back up, so was not surprised. However, on the drive up to the airport I was surprised that the sky was beautifully clear, so reckoned that the delays would be over. I checked the flight status on pda.continental.com and my flight was confirmed as 'On time'.

As I rushed to the gate (I had left the office a little later than planned) I noticed that there were a lot of people standing around at the gate. Yes, the flight was not boarding on time. In fact, about twenty minutes after the official boarding time, the display board at the gate suddenly had a new departure time, ninety minutes later than scheduled. So even in good weather EWR continues to be plagued with delays.

In flying in and out of EWR over the last 12 odd weeks I have had only one flight, in or out, that left on time. So time for a change, I an going to give my nemesis, PHL, another chance.

Useful gadget

A while back I mentioned how much I love my TomTom GPS solution running on my phone. One of the problems has been finding a place to balance the phone on the (rental) car dashboard. After having the phone fall off, normally at an inconvenient time. My GPS came with a windshield holder, but it is quite a large piece of equipment, and by briefcase is already pretty full. So I decided to get an airvent holder, and found I should have bought one of these much sooner. This gizmo holds the phone so that the screen is easily visible while driving. When using the car charger cable the phone battery, which normally runs hot while charging, is kept cool by the air coming out of the vent.

[Sorry no pictures of the phone in the holder, as I used the phone to take the pictures]

Back to Blogging

It has been a while since I posted anything here, partially because I took a break from flying up and down to South Jersey. Getting away from the hassles of boarding passes, malfunctioning monorails, security lines and delayed flights, I drove from Central Florida to Jersey. There is a little method to my madness, we have an RV and I took my wife, our dogs and our cat along for the ride.

We arranged to spend the July4th weekend in South Jersey, and used it as a base for visiting Philly and New York. Of course, July 4th was reserved for Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There was something special about visiting Independence Hall on Independence Day, 232 years after the deed was done. We also watched the Philly fireworks, in the rain, but have to admit that once you have enjoyed the Disney extravaganzas, you are spoiled for life.

But I am back to travelling, so posts will start coming again.

Stefan