Apple iPod Touch

At work, in our IT department we have been using the 3rd generation of Apple's iPod Touch. We all absolutely love having our email and calendaring right in our pockets while helping people around the campus. It makes it incredibly easy to set up a meeting or change a meeting, which update immediately on the "Outlook" server so those sharing your calendar can see the new information.

It allows you to gather all your email from any account and show it in one list as well or just show a particular email's Inbox. I can have an automated report run which gives me statistics concerning the number of pages we have scanned into our document imaging system in CSV format. I can also open Word and Excel files sent via email. I also love reading the PDF files I can download or the one's I create myself.

While traveling I appreciate listening to audio books, podcasts, and music. It is an excellent tool. Now, we will be getting the new 4th generation iPod Touch and I am excited because it has a HD photo/video camera. I should be able to grab more impromptu photos and videos.

The $12.50 Computer

So I am writing to you on my new $12.50 computer. It is a new to me computer, athough I used one of these kinds at work about 4 years ago now. So the university had an auction and these older computers, 40-80 GB Hard Drives, keyboard, mouse, Mostly 17" some 19" monitors, 1GB Ram, VGA out, etc. type of computers sold first for $25 a set. Then when everyone stopped saying they would like a computer at that price, it went down to $20 and then $15, and finally $12.50. Of course, by this time the nicest ones were taken. I was not even at the auction at the time this computer was purchased and did not even try to bid on the computers.
So how in the world did one "fall in my lap"? Well, someone I knew thought, I will buy two of these computers for a total of $25, worst case senario one of the components won't work and I will just have to buy RAM or a new Hard Drive to get it up and running. And I will give one of them to my friend (me) in exchange for help in getting the computer setup.
So these didn't have any software on them and so I installed Ubuntu (a version of linux) on them and here we are with a $12.50 computer. It is fancy enough for a computer and does extremely well with this incredible and yet free (other than time spent understanding and learning a new Operating System and downloading gobs of different software people have developed for linux/Ubuntu.) Of course, it is another computer in our house. . . =) I hope the queen doesn't mind too much.

Anyhow, I added some images into the photo application on the computer called F-Spot Photo Manager. It looks to be very excellent. I am still learning and have already had to use a command line to get my password reset, because I didn't remember it after setting up my generous friend's computer (the one who bought the 2 $12.50 computers).


Here is our Ammon and the Lamanites FHE by the boys. The elder told the story and the younger acted out the part sword and all. I am sure there will be more fish stories/pictures posted on someone's blog because of the great success they have been having near our house. Well good night.

Getting used to New Technology

I am getting used to my new PDA an iPod Touch, so much so that I tried to touch my computer monitor when I heard the "new message" sound (from the iPod Touch sitting on my desk) to open up a new mail message! I had to laugh at myself. It reminded me of when I have a laptop on the desk by my computer and I use the desktop mouse to try and move the laptop cursor.

One thing I really like about the iPod Touch is being able to read/go through my Outlook e-mail/calendar while my desktop computer is still trying to load the OS and start up etc. It feels more productive and is a lot of fun.