Grandpa "Tip" Going Home

Very early Friday morning the phone rang. I answered it to find my mother sobbing on the other end. I knew that this couldn't be good.
My Grandfather had just passed away.
My Grandpa "Tip" has been in the nursing home for the past year or two. With Alzheimer's, diabetes, a pacemaker with a battery in need of a charge and a perhaps sprinkling of  undiagnosed Parkinson's this wasn't totally unexpected. You never want to ever let your loved ones go so it is always tough when they do leave.
I think my Grandfather lead a good life. He may of not been a rich,wealthy man, but what he lacked in riches he made up with in heart. Always the friendly guy who made his rounds around the small town of Baudette, MN, going to the gas station just to have conversation and check in on how people were doing. An avid hunter and fisherman. Always willing to lend a hand. The guy everyone knew and loved.
I doubt that life was always easy for him. He was a World War II Navy veteran. Was a recovering alcoholic for many many years, probably long before I was ever born. He'd grown up poor and had an alcoholic for a father.
The good and the bad shape how we are. And in Grandpa's case, I think every thing worked to make him a great Grandfather.
This coming Saturday is his funeral. I'm leaving Austin early on Friday to fly to Bemidji, MN, the closest big airport to Baudette. It's then a 2 hour drive to Baudette. Funerals aren't my favorite thing to attend. I think mostly because so much of the emphasis is on mourning the loss and not enough about celebrating the life that it was.
Hopefully this will be different, as Grandpa Tip had a great life.

My mother sent me a link to this video. Thought it might have been something her Daddy would have said as he went home:

iPad Hype

Good thing that Steve Jobs is not in the business of selling Snake Oil and Moon real estate, or we'd all be buying some. He must have an incredible propaganda machine. Looking at the front page of CNN.com you'd think for sure that the entire CNN staff got their payroll from Cupertino.
Don't get me wrong. While I'm not a Mac fan boy by any means, I do admire Apple's design, ergonomics and simplicity (though the dirty secret about Macs is that they actually have their share of problems too). Though I think the thing I admire the most out of  Apple is their ability to create hoards of raving fans that will buy anything they produce...no matter what it is...sight unseen.
The iPod and iPhone were certainly revolutionary, even though portable music players and smart phones had essentially existed long before either iDevice was a glimmer in Steve Job's eye. So what made it different when Apple produced them? A heck of a lot of spin for one thing... But they did spend a lot of time looking at what other products weren't and baking that into their products. Couple that with the more less proprietary service of iTunes to get your music and apps transferred. It's pure genius and an act that apparently only Steve can get away with.
So that brings me to the iPad. It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Kindle. While I don't think that the iPad is really a Kindle killer (though the iPad does come with an eReader), since it lacks a lot of the real benefits of the Kindle, such as free 3G connectivity, worldwide with the new models, and really, really long battery life. The CNN article on the 12 Things to Know about the iPad had some misinformation and glossed over a lot of the limitations of the iPad. Somethings I noted:

• No mention of battery life.
• You can choose not to sign up with AT&T for service...which puts you at the mercy of wireless hot spots...which while becoming more common in public spaces, still aren't everywhere.
• The neglected to mention that the Kindle reading app is available for the iPad. Still a win/win for Amazon.
• The article made it seem as though the only place you could get content for the kindle was Amazon. The kindle supports unprotected content from Mobipocket books and text files. You can also send documents like Word files and PDFs to your kindle either by copying the files over by standard universal USB port or sending to your Amazon kindle email address where they are then converted and sent to your Kindle wirelessly.
• The Kindle DX supports landscape mode. I'm not sure I've ever read two pages of the same book at the same time. Seems like touting this as an amazing feature of the iPad is a bit of a non-item. Printed books have two pages, otherwise they would be twice as thick and twice as expensive to produce...

Oh yeah...that whole USB thing. Apple seems to have taken a step back in time and decided to do away with a standard universally compatible USB port in favor of their proprietary dock thing... need to snag some power while you are on the go? Now where did I leave that dock thing? Any one have a dock thing I can borrow? Anyone?
But could be that Apple is trying to change the world one standard at a time. Perhaps they have something else cooked up.
I'm more interested in seeing what the PC companies have lined up for slates with some real computing power. One of the biggest negatives so far with the iPad is its inability to multi-task. While I'm sure that some propeller head in Cupertino is already working on that for the 2nd gen iPad, which will be released shortly after all the early adopters have camped out for days in front of the Apple Store to buy the first generation. Nothing like a little double-dipping to squeeze more cash from your droves of ravenous fans. Keep your eye on Ebay in about 6-8 months.
We'll see...I don't think it's going to be a crazy success at least not in its first incarnation, but if it spurns development in creating the paper thin portable computers of the future I'm all for it.