Bloggystyle -- The Latest

Easter, medical stuff, iPad

First off: I had a couple of stories in the paper this weekend. The first was, of course, about the iPad. It was a remix of a blog entry I did last week gearing up for the launch but with a few changes and info boxes thrown in. (Some of which didn't make it online.)

I plan to tell the whole story of how I ended up buying one -- the short version is that in December we almost bought a Macbook Pro to replace my wife's ancient, battery-dead iBook G4 and I told her to hold off and see what Apple announced in January. (We were also having a baby at the time, which made it easy to wait.) When the iPad was announced, she decided that was pretty much all she needed, as long as there was a way to print from it. (There is.) She really didn't need a $1,200-$1,500 laptop for her limited computer needs, so the way we saw it, buying an iPad instead of a Macbook Pro was going to save us about $800.

We then decided to wait until after the hoopla had died down, but when Apple didn't send me an iPad to review in advance of the launch (long story, not worth getting into), I figured it behooved me, like a horse's foot, to get one so I'd at least be up to speed on it for my job and for NPR. I didn't want to be the one tech writer in the country who hadn't laid his grubby paws on one.

So with that flimsy justification, I went to Best Buy and got one Saturday morning. The line and the wait was short and my very short review is that I'm much more impressed with it than I was expecting to be. I'm sure Glark and I will be talking about it at length this week and I plan to write more about it on Digital Savant. I think it's a B/B+ in terms of hardware, but the apps and overall operating system software are what really make it shine. It's just a damned elegant little machine.

The other thing that was in the paper was a story I've been working on for months about four medical technologies that are new or not things you've probably heard of being used in Central Texas. I've done a few round ups like this before and with all the coordinating and photo scheduling it's really like writing four separate stories for one piece. But I think it turned out well. Hey, I took that photo, too!

The other big thing this weekend was that it was really the first time Lilly has understood Easter (Easter the egg-hunting holiday, not the religious part, but still). So she had two Easters, with each side of the family, and we're up to our balls/ovaries in plastic eggs, candy, Easter baskets and chocolate bunnies. I can't even imagine how much it's gonna multiply when Carolina is old enough to join in.

Oh, and in one hour, I turn 35. What's up with THAT?

posted by Omar G. at 10:38 PM

Continually updated...