Portable Technology

Several years ago I purchased and enjoyed thoroughly a shiny new Palm Pilot.  I loved this little device!  It synchronized with my Microsoft Outlook and kept me on track with my appointments and contacts.  I said good-bye to written address books and embraced technology.  I had several books on it to read when I got bored and it's best feature was that it allowed me to take notes and download them to my computer.

At the time that I had this handy little gadget I was a Project Assistant at a construction firm.  My job oftentimes required me to attend meetings on site and take notes.  I have ALWAYS been faster with a keyboard than with pen and paper and often lamented that it would be so much easier and faster if I could type the notes on site and then clean them up in the office rather than writing them on site and then typing them at the office.  Palm was always good with the accessories and I didn't have my device long before they had a folding keyboard that worked with it.  I can still remember the first meeting that I took this wonder out at and set it up.  Everyone looked at me with amazement.  I started out with two pieces of gadgetry that together weighed about 2 pounds but were compact and within seconds I had a full sized keyboard with the device plugged in and was ready to take minutes, word for word.  It folded away just as easily and packed conveniently in my purse.  I LOVED that device.

Palm moved forward with their technology and then they started falling behind.  Blackberry and Windows phones came first and Palm struggled.  My little device served me faithfully for 3 years or more before it started conflicting with the new computer software and finally age made it unuseable.  I kept those pieces hoping that someday I would find some way to fix it or make it work as brilliantly as it did before.

Obviously I have kept up with technology and made use of laptops, smartphones and now tablets but I've always missed the portability and speed combination offered by my first Palm Pilot.  So why am I taking this trip down memory lane, you ask?  Because tonight for the first time since that Palm Pilot am I enjoying compact, light, portability.

Last year my husband was kind enough to purchase for me an Acer tablet which I have gotten much use out of.  Said tablet came with bluetooth technology and a USB port and I've attempted use of both of those features to work with an actual keyboard.  I have found some keyboards that work well, but they are not portable in that I cannot put them in my purse or bag.  I attempted one of the flexible keyboards which was really cool and did prove portable but there was a significant delay from my typing to appearance of letters on the screen leading  to a high error rate that had me irritated and thinking the on-screen keyboard was a better and faster option. Tonight I ran across ZAGG's Flex keyboard.  This little bluetooth keyboard connected quickly with my tablet, is smaller than the tablet and weighs next to nothing.  Additionally, it keeps up with my 70+WPM typing speed.  I am loving this new portability enough that I may be able to finally part with my beloved Palm Pilot and accessories more than 10 years later.

Technology is a lovely thing and it always seems to be moving forward.  But thinking back to that Palm Pilot I realize that while features have changed, portability may not have kept up. I don't know if you can purchase anything from Palm anymore, and perhaps 10 years from now we will be amazed by something else aside from our Android or Apple tablets or phones.  But for now, we can enjoy technology and wonder in amazement what is around the corner for tomorrow.

What technology features have you enjoyed and feel that current technological advances have forgotten to include?

Catching Up . . . Again!

I can’t believe that it has been so long since I’ve done any blogging. What a shame as I enjoy the opportunity to write and keeping this updated was on my list of New Years Resolutions (smile). Rest assured, that despite my lack of attention to getting things documented, we’ve kept very busy!

David took over as Seneschal for our local SCA group in July and I’ve been doing the Rapier Marshal for the group since February 2010. These keep us busy! Additionally, I served as autocrat for the 12th Night Event in January. It went well, but I would want to make a few small changes next time, but that is probably always the case. The group has a demo coming up for the local College in April and I’m looking forward to it and wondering if I’ll have anyone to help me with the rapier demo .,.. hope so! David is going to try to take the day off work for it which means they will have an armored combat marshal as well.

I’ve been volunteering a lot with the local Spouses’ Club and we’ve just recently held our annual charity auction. It went really well. We purchased a new software program this year to help us track everything and the program seems to work really well. It was a big change for some though because the program documents things at a deeper level than they had been before and sometimes it seemed ridiculously deep for most of us (me included), but it was all for valid reason and we learned some things a long the way so next year it will go even better!

This weekend we should be enjoying one of our favorite American Civil War events in the area, St. Catherine’s Military School, however we will need to temporarily vacate our home for a few days so they can fumigate for termites. The termites are not in the home but instead in the garage, however the two building share conduit and there is a chance for the gas to come into the home so we need to leave the home and bag everything up as if they were fumigating the home. Sigh! Since we can’t come back to the house for a few days (Sunday – Thursday) I’m wracking my brain trying to think of everything I might need across the next week.

As I’ve been busy with the auction (and then catching up on some much needed sleep and other tasks) we’ve not finished the paperwork to get our taxes in. David is getting anxious, and rightly so. As the place we’re staying in while the fumigate likely doesn’t have internet, I’m taking all the tax information with me so that I can get that done during the hours of “nothing better to do”. I know I should keep up with the paperwork throughout the year (deductions) but somehow I don’t get around to it for the last 8 months or so of the year so I always spend the month before we go to the tax accountant digging through receipts and entering them into the appropriate worksheets. Unfortunately, David cannot help me with this, much to his disappointment as he would love to do anything to make it go faster!

The day after the Auction we held the annual BBQ party for our American Civil War group here at the house. That was SO nice!!!! We have so much space here and rarely have the opportunity to entertain so it was wonderful to do that. David and I have been with this group for 1 year and so we were given CW ID tags – NICE! Due to one thing or another we’ve not had an opportunity to reenact with the group since July of last year and I’m glad they haven’t given up hope on us yet. We were so looking forward to this event this weekend since it is done primarily for the school and the kids all come out – it reminds us of the school talks which is where our focus is! I’m bound and determined that we WILL be going to Prado next weekend even if we can only go for a day because I’m missing my CW season! Although that brings with it another complication since Ashton, our cat, has diabetes and needs shots twice per day . .not sure how we can camp and still get her her medications unless we take her with us….hmmmm.

Well, thanks for reading my procrastination. Now I’d better get back to packing up and out. More later!

Just saw the cutest play

Some of the neighborhood kids had worked hard all week after being cast in the Missoula Children Theater’s travelling production.  I couldn’t believe how well they did.  There was 48 kids of all ages and every child had a part.  The production was not only a play but also a musical and they performed it tonight in front of a full audience after having only 4 days of practice.  Absolutely fun and fantastic.  If you should happen to have the opportunity to see one of these plays I would highly encourage it.