I really like the MacBook Air’s lightweight form factor, powerful processor, beautiful screen and long battery life. If only there was a Windows laptop like that. Well there is, or soon will be – the Ultrabook.

If you’d like a definition of Ultrabook more precise than a Windows clone of a MacBook Air, you can read What’s an Ultrabook? on Ultrabook News, a site started by my friend Steve “Chippy” Paine. 

Chippy tweeted me the other day that the first Ultrabooks will be out in about a month. Will I get one? Do bears sleep in the woods?

My wife Devvie and I lost today our beloved Italian Greyhound Dante (fawn colored on the right). He seemed fine until yesterday. But yesterday he seemed listless, then limp. That evening Devvie took him to animal emergency (I was teaching). They diagnosed a bleeding mass by his spleen and liver.

Today we took him to the surgeon to have the mass removed. Unfortunately, the ultrasound showed a cancer that had spread throughout his liver. Nevertheless, we were willing to proceed with surgery if that would give him even some chance of prolonging his life by several comparatively healthy months. Therefore, we spent a lot of time with the surgeon exploring all possible options. Unfortunately, there really weren’t any. Even assuming Dante survived the surgery, he only had weeks to live, and these would be painful weeks. Nevertheless, it took us a long time to decide to let go. But in the end we decided we had to do the right thing by him than the selfish thing by us in having a little more time with him.

My wife and I were able to take Dante for a brief walk in the sunshine because the vet had given him blood and fluid transfusions. Still, the poor guy didn’t have a lot of energy. Nevertheless, he seemed to enjoy our walk together, and like his old self sniffed plants, “marked his territory” and barked at other dogs. When after about 10 to 15 minutes he started to tire and limp, I picked him up and we went back into the animal hospital. There, we held him for a while, and told him over and over that he was a good dog and we loved him. He got upset when I left the room briefly to get him some doggie treats, but on my quick return was back to normal and ate the treats. Finally, we held Dante again while he was put to sleep, and kissed him goodbye. He was happy, peaceful and comfortable.

We’re both broken-hearted. Yes, Dante was a dog. However, he also was a member of our family. He was beautiful physically, but even more so on the inside. He was a very gentle dog. He also was a gentleman to our three female dogs, outside the house acting protective, inside the house letting them eat first even though he was larger and stronger than any of them. I will miss him in many ways, including his puppy-like nature, his soulful eyes, and his cuddling up to me in bed. I especially will miss him this Sunday, which would have been his 8th birthday. Goodbye Dante, I miss you.

So the song goes. Not true of course. It rained and even hailed yesterday, and snowed at only a few thousand feet.

The picture was taken in the San Fernando Valley looking NE. The “flats” in the picture is just SE of Bob Hope airport in Burbank. The mountains are in the Angeles National Forest.

I’m not very good with the camera. However,  it’s easy to take a decent picture of natural beauty like this. But you have to do so quickly, as today it is bright and sunny, and all that snow is going to melt real soon.

Well, back to figuring out the Eden UI of the Notion Ink Adam, in between grading student assignments and other tasks.

Apparently so. And this end of the year expose isn’t from Rush. Instead, it’s literally from tree huggers; Treehugger.com, in its Polar Bears Full of More Toxins Than Any Other Creature.

Chris Davies of Slashgear, whose tweet brought this to my attention, correctly asks what our governments are doing about this ursine environmental menace. Well?

I have sat through interminable committee meetings at the community college where I teach Computer Science. I’m often subjected to opaque edu-jargon such as: “We must be accountable, transparent and sensitive to the diverse needs of our underrepresented constituencies and stakeholders.” Zzzzzzzz. Sometimes I wonder if the speakers are paid by the buzzword.

Today’s Dilbert cartoon makes me feel better. I am not alone.

Tab over to next Monday and see

The title of Don’t Be Blinded By ‘Gadget Lust’ (picture source) is self-explanatory – and painfully applicable to me. Interesting reading and sensible advice. Though the article seems much like dating advice, with section titles including Bad Romance and Love the One You’re With. Though I wouldn’t take the dating analogy too far, with other section titles including Focus on Price per Feature.

I ordered the Skadoosh stand for my iPad. Basically it enables you to lock the iPad in a number of angles convenient for viewing and typing. When a promised ship date came and went, I inquired and was told the stand would ship by Monday, June 21. When I hadn’t received a ship notice by the next day, I followed up and asked about status. The candid reply:

“I am writing to inform you that we have run into a very unfortunate delay. I have been waiting until we had information on our new timeline before I began notifying our customers about the situation. We made a poor choice in the company we were using to put the finish on our stands. After they failed to meet the agreed upon deadlines we realized (a little too late) that we needed to find someone else to work with. We have found a new company and they are trying to get our parts done in an expedited manner, but they will not be ready for us until Wednesday of this week. We will immediately complete the assembly of the stands and will begin shipping within 24 hours of picking up the parts. You will receive a confirmation email when your order actually ships. We are very sorry for the delay and appreciate your understanding. Please contact me with any questions or if you wish to cancel your order for an immediate refund.”

Such honesty is all the more refreshing in these days of corporate-speak. I’ll continue to wait. Hopefully I will receive the stand next week, after which I will do a quick review.

I am in a meeting out of the office. I wanted to travel light. So I brought my iPad instead of my laptop.

The meeting site has free WiFi. However, the network admins have installed a very restrictive Internet filter. I guess the idea is to keep employees from goofing off on the Internet. However, the filter also prevented me (and colleagues) from accessing business-related websites.

We were told to submit each site we want to visit. The network admins then could review and determine whether to allow an exception to their filter. Obviously not workable.

Fortunately I have a 3G iPad. Also fortunately, I previously paid for the unlimited 3G data option. AT&T since has ended that plan. But fortunately I’m grandfathered in. So I fired up 3G and was able to access the websites.

WiFi is prevalent. But so are Internet filters. So to be truly mobile, relying solely on outside WiFi (as opposed to your own like MiFi) may not always be sufficient.

(BTW, I wrote this post on my iPad’s WordPress app using a Freedom Pro bluetooth keyboard.)

I’m writing a long article on the iPad. The article is taking longer than anticipated to finish. Partly this is because I’m using my iPad a lot and keep coming up with new things to write about. So in the meantime here’s a brief post about how I’ve used the iPad during the first week I’ve had it. Some of my uses, like checking out the Internet or email while sofa surfing or waiting, are expected, so not really worth writing about. But other uses, maybe not so expected, so I’ll share them with you.

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