Jim Panttaja

We used to raise dairy goats. This insight is from those goats.

If you are flying a plane, and you see a goat eye to eye – there is probably a mountain he is standing on.

Sometimes you see a  glitch once in your system. It only happened once. You can’t figure out how to duplicate it. So you decide to release anyway. Not a good idea. You need to figure out how to look harder – or look at it a different way. You are seeing the goat. Watch out for the mountain!

Every day at 5:30 performance goes to a crawl. But you can’t figure it out. Watch out for the mountain! There might be a process that is running way at 5:30…

At Sapias, we sometimes saw trucks that appeared to be in the ocean (I am not mixing metaphors here). The truck shouldn’t be in the ocean. We eventually determined a combination of problems in antennas, and indications from the device about the location accuracy.

We once saw network traffic go out of site. We had a hard time figuring out where the traffic was coming from. But there was a mountain, and we finally tracked it down.

If you see a goat – find the mountain before it finds you.

I was in business as promised by iTunes (doing my activation) – actually earlier than promised. There were some complications of moving my phone number from Sprint (it was the primary number on an account that included phones for Mary, and our kids). But by about 3:00pm yesterday, all was working.We have a wireless network in our house (I haven’t tried it in the car yet) – and the iPhone picked up on it immediately. As I played with the iPhone around the house, I had fast access. On our bike ride this morning, we tried browsing the internet from Cloverdale – it was a bit slow, but email flowed, and it was usable. But I probably won’t be doing a lot of browsing unless it is urgent if I am not near 802.11 access.I am already checking my email more from my iPhone than my computer. My personal and Gmail accounts are working fine. I am having some problems with my Sapias account – but the incoming is me (Mahesh has it working) and outbound is likely fixable. The biggest issue on my personal account is the volume of junk mail I get. On my Mac with Entourage, the junk is filtered – but on the iPhone there is no filtering. And so far, I haven’t figured out multi-select to trash multiple emails at once (it may not exist yet).I have downloaded music and podcasts – and will at least spend some time trying these out. The features are as advertised – just have to see if I have the inclination to listen while I am walking or doing other things.I had to get Mary to get me pictures of my kids and grand kids – something I have never kept current before – I will likely keep this info current.I have found lot’s of useful web sites that I will likely look at more regularly. Some of the tools I regularly use work, others don’t yet.

• Mary has been able to post using WordPress
• I can view my iGoogle page
• I can view my Google Calendar, and add calendar entries. I am trying to figure out the best calendar solution on the iPhone – the problem with Google Calendar is that it requires connectivity. But Mary and I need some way to share calendars
• I can view Google Notebooks – but I can’t edit them. I put research notes on several different Notebooks, and like this technique – but I won’t be able to manage from the iPhone
• The Google Reader allows me to read my favorite RSS feeds and blogs – but it doesn’t support the unconnected mode that works from my Mac.
• See Mary’s notes on maps – this is pretty cool – effectively having an atlas in my hand at all times
• As mentioned above, I can check email – and send email – easily
• I have weather set up for home, and for my next adventure. It is trivial to view them.
• The new Sapias user interface – which uses flex – does not work
• The older Sapias user interface does work (though it isn’t nearly as cool)
• The Sapias.com site navigation bar does not work – though the site comes up. The navigation bar is not even visible.

I will be taking my iPhone – instead of my computer – to more appointments. Perhaps with a small notecard or notebook – until I sort out better ways to leave notes. There is a notes application that may handle brief things