She’s dead Jim

    I’ve had my Palm Tungsten T3 for 2+ years, and I learned in the first month or so that some apps could cause it to hang in an ‘On’ state, completely unresponsive to any reset except a power reset. Unfortunately, the T3 has a built in battery, meaning you have to take it apart in order to disconnect the power. I have done this, so it is possible, but not something I care to do often. Besides, it means loosing everything in RAM (eek)
    One thing I haven’t encountered is it hanging in an ‘Off’ state. Guess what? I’m on a 2 day business trip, and it is silently reminding me of stuff while I network with new associates. I snooze a last alarm as I’m wrapping up, and return to my room. As I set up my power tree to re-charge my various gadgets, I try turning on my T3 to check something. Nothing. OK, I’ve drained it before, and a quick reset brings it back. Not this time. Fine, it just needs a recharge. Plug it in, and the LED is green. Still no response to reset. Maybe an overnight charge is in order. Meanwhile, OK I’m a geek, I start planning to bring my spare T3 online (Yup, it’s traveling with me).
    Aaaaggh. Next morning finds it in the same state. I’ve preached the importance of backups for decades (OK, I’m an old geek), and I’ve been burned more than once by my various Palms when I got lax with syncing and backing up. But I do have a good sytem in place now, with Resco Backup for regularly scheduled backups, and OnGuard Backup for backing up app dbs upon exiting the app. And my most recent full backup was the day before, so I relax as I restore to my spare T3.
    All restored and I’m ready for another day of meetings. My first T3 is dead, but I’m holding out hope that as soon as I have some quiet time, I can take it apart and do a power reset. Hmmm, my list of DAs seems off. Yup, it’s short and some are missing. Hey, where’s TealPhone? Ah yes, I use JackFlash to put some apps in flash, and I don’t have them in flash in this T3. Now I’m worried, because I don’t remember everything I had in flash on the dead T3, and if I can’t get it back to life……
    To make a long story short (too late), I limp along until I get some time at home, dig up the steps for taking the slider off my T3, remove and re-attach the battery, and bingo, I’m back in business. And to avoid some of these problems in the future, I start to backup the apps in flash, only to discover that I wasn’t so lax way back when when I first installed JackFlash. I did actually create a directory on my SD with the stuff in flash, I had just forgotten all about it. All is well with my original T3, and I’m blogging from it right now. What will I ever do when both T3s die? I hate having to learn a new gadget just to do the stuff my old gadget did fine. I was one of the last hold outs to move off of Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. I do enjoy a new gadget when it’s for fun, but I’m such a creature of habit, I prefer consistency in the use of technology for my daily tasks. There’s that oldness again. 🙂

Round-about revival of an old family tradition

    My family has a monthly trip to Barnes and Noble, where the adults play Scrabble, while the kids hang out with their grandpa reading books or playing with the trains. It started several years ago during the Dot Com boom, when B&N sponsored games nights to lure folks away from their web browser, and my mother-in-law went regularly to the Scrabble night. Eventually, my wife joined her, and despite B&N dropping promotion of game nights, we have developed friendships with several of the players and continue to gather there to play.
    Not surprising, some of these friends share other interests with us. Of interest to this story is Michele, whom got a Sony Palm PDA from her significant other, to replace her ancient Palm V. Being the Palm supporter that I am, I was quick to supply here with a wide variety of apps to fill her larger memory. The last time we played, Michele mentioned that she had been enjoying a game I had beamed her, called Rally 1000. It is a Palm 2-player version of Parker Bros. Mille Borne. I had forgotten about it, as I have a tendency to gather computer games, but rarely use them. I’m still puzzling out that mystery. Anyway, I found it on my T3, and checked it out. It reminded me that Mille Borne was one of my families favorite games, and we always would play games, like Mille Borne, after holiday meals, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.
    That got me thinking about the fact that I have really lost touch with those old family traditions, probably since my mother died. My own boys are getting old enough to play with sufficient patience, so I dug out my copy from our game stash. Sure enough, the kids love it, and we played it after Thanksgiving dinner with my family. It was a somewhat indirect way to get there, but I’m glad to have revived this family tradition. Take a moment and see if you can’t remember a family tradition of your own that could use a revival. Or start a new one, just for the fun of it, even if it has a Calvin Ball forced random element to it. What else are you gonna do with your time? Read some boring blog? 🙂