A Kindle for ???

Happy Chanukah. Merry Christmas.

After a vacation with the family in Mexico, where I debated bringing a big, heavy hardback book (Clash of Kings) and instead brought a medium sized hardback library book (Someone to Run With), and everyone else brought Kindles, I decided I must have a Kindle. Sure, I have my iPad, which it becomes harder and harder to separate myself from, but an iPad screen is pretty bad for reading books.

Feeling under the weather, which made me want retail therapy as well as to climb into bed with a good Kindle, I braved Best Buy this afternoon. I was focused, asked for what I wanted, got what I needed, and got in line. While in line, I examined the impulse buys: a pink Hello Kitty iPhone case (I was tempted); a Star Wars license plate in a pack of gum (like baseball cards); various cases for things. Then I saw it: a gift bag. The perfect size for my Kindle, not Christmasy, white with purple and blue designs. I bought my impulse bag.

In line, I also second-guessed myself. Buy the Kindle on Amazon and pay no sales tax? Buy it at Target and save 5% with my Red Card? I forced myself to stay in line, calculating the value of my time and my need for instant gratification.

I went home, wrapped the Kindle in white tissue paper and put it in the bag, and thought it was the prettiest present ever.

Now what?

When you give yourself a gift and you know what it is, when do you open it?

When you are on Day 5 of a holiday that lasts eight days, on which day do you open it?

When it's Christmas eve, and it's fun to open presents on Christmas day, what do you do?

Most of all, when you're a grown-up and can eat Pop-Tarts for dinner if you so desire, what rules do you even need to follow?

Since it was so pretty, I decided to wait until after lighting the Chanukah candles tonight. I was going out to dinner at 6:00; the sun set at 4:something. Do I light the candles and open the Kindle before dinner? My nap until 5:00 answered that question.

I went out to a traditional dinner at a Chinese restaurant with friends; more friends walked in at the end, and I hung out with them; they invited me to their house, and I thought, "Cool, I'm really waiting to open that Kindle sitting at home." (Also that I loved all the friendly spontaneity of the evening.) I didn't end up going to their house, and I came home, lit Chanukah candles ... and opened my pretty gift bag to find my pretty little Kindle!

It's a little weird to have in my hands a portable device that has buttons and not a touch screen (I keep touching the screen), one that is not made by Apple, one where it's actually functional when it's disconnected from the internet. This will take some practice. Luckily, Clash of Kings, The Magicians, and Pirkei Avot are already loaded on it from my iPad adventures, so I can begin practicing right away.

Birds and dreams

It is said that dreaming about birds has deep meaning.  Asking the internets, I find answers that sound more like a horoscope than something deep. 

Yesterday was an evening of birds.  I left work early to go to the Berkeley Marina to fly kites with a colleague.  We were the only kite flyers there on a chilly Friday afternoon.  As I arrived, I saw a large, soaring bird.  Or was it a kite?  It was so stationary, just hovering in one place.

Then it flapped.  A big, slow flap that only a big bird can do. 


"Cool, a turkey vulture at the Marina." was my thought.  I love turkey vultures.  Their scientific name, Cathartes aura, means "purifier" or "pacifier," and Cherokee Nation calls them Peace Eagles.  They cannot kill, and by eating rotting flesh they provide cleanliness and dignity to the dead.  Their courtship involves many hours of spectacular follow-the-leader aerial patterns.  For myself, I categorize them as "V birds" because (1) vulture begins with a V; (2) when they soar, they keep their wings in a dihedral, or V, that is quite distinctive (and in that postion they have a distinctive wobble), and (3) because  seen from below (as they usually are), they show a dark "V" of body and leading wing feathers against their white wings.  They are quite intelligent and gentle.  When they are on the ground, they are awkward, so their method of defense is to vomit.  In place, not even projectile.  The smell of their vomit is so foul that it defends them well.

I also love how absolutely enormous they are.  I think my next kite will be a huge delta kite.  My most recent kite is a yellow Wala, about four feet wide, with a 45-foot tail (22 feet when looped).  Big, but let's go bigger!

So there I was, for a fraction of a second (much shorter than it takes to read this), thinking, "I've never seen a turkey vulture flap! Or fly so low!" when I realized that it was not one.  Wrong wing shape, wrong head size, no dihedral, no wobble, no V pattern on wing.  And smaller.  It was shaped like a red-tailed hawk, another bird I can spot fairly easily, and another bird I adore.  Also exciting!  It looked like a red-tail except its tail was not fanned and not red.  I started taking pictures on my iPhone.

Then it soared closer.  And closer.  Finally settling about 15 feet above the ridge, entirely still.  With my Wala in my hand, I strolled toward it, trying to get a look at plumage to see if it was some other kind of raptor, hoping not to scare it.  I finally got within about 25 feet of it.  It paid no attention to me, as it was staring down at the ground, watching for rodents (this was an excellent place to look for them).  It still looked like a red-tail, a little ragged, and certainly it looked a bit unsteady.  It periodically let itself catch a breeze and soar off to the side or below, but it would come back to the same spot.  Once it fell (attacked a rodent?) to the ground, and I got a look and a picture of it, legs apart (they have a wide stance), pantaloons (no spindly legs showing), fierce raptor gaze in my direction, pissed off that I'd seen it be awkward.  Then back to the air.  It did fan its tail, and it was definitely the right shape, although not the usual bright rust red.

I decided it was a juvenile practicing its hovering and hunting.

When I got home, I looked red-tails up in my bird book.  Because red-tails have an infinite variety of colorings (at most basic, Western and Eastern, light and rufous), it may have even been an adult, but I'm still thinking it was a juvie.  The book and the internets verified that this location is red-tail perfect and that red-tails have been spotted there.

How special to have had such a close encounter with a big raptor.

[Note from the next day: I went back and asked one of the regulars if he'd seen a bird like that.  "Oh yeah," he said, "That's the marsh hawk."  Now, I'd never heard of a marsh hawk so I figured he was wrong until I got home and discovered that that's another term for northern harrier, a bird that perfectly fits the description of what I saw.  Yet another local raptor to watch for!]

I also read the news

and saw that an endangered bird, the clapper rail, has been spotted in San Francisco. 

And, to get to the dream part, I dreamt about red-tails and that I saw a flying clapper rail.  I was amazed that I had just read about the clapper rails and appreciative that if I hadn't I wouldn't have recognized this rare bird.

The slow life?

I came home, ran the water in the sink for a few minutes (literally: minutes) to get it to be hot.  Went to the living room, hit the TV power, and while it was powering up I turned on my lamp, which has a CFL bulb and so takes a while to light fully.

Waiting for the water, the TV, the lamp.  No instant gratification here.

The iPad arrives

Once it hit Oakland, it moved quickly.

Interestingly, the return address on the box is Elk Grove, CA.  Looking at the labels on it, there is very little evidence of its travels.  However, on the FedEx mailing label, it has text that says "bill third party" (I assume the Shenzhen shipper was a FedEx affiliate), and, above the Elk Grove address, it  says, "ORIG ID: SZOA" and a series of numbers.  I googled this, and it stands for Shenzhen Optometric Association, a major glass manufacturer. 

I haven't even opened the box yet.  I'm way too interested in the packing labels!

The journey of an iPad

My iPad is due to arrive tomorrow.  Through the miracle of Fedex tracking, I've been watching its every move on this journey.

Like so many products, it seems to have been manufactured in Shenzhen, right near Hong Kong.  And then it moved to Lantau Island -- home of the Big Buddha!  It's a big island and is also the home of the Hong Kong airport, so that wasn't a surprise.  The bigger surprise is that Shenzhen ships from Hong Kong.  It makes sense, but there is an informal country barrier there.  What did Shenzhen do before Hong Kong airport opened up for shipping?

It was a bit of a surprise to see that it sat on Lantau Island for so long.  On June 3, 4, and 5, it checked in as "at the facility."  As I tracked the iPad, as each of those days passed and it just sat there, I wanted to pick up the phone and call someone: Don't you know that my iPad is at your facility?  Can you do something to change that status?

Chek Lap Kok was a new one for me.  It's apparently the actual name of the Hong Kong International Airport.

I like the "local scan time."  It arrived in Anchorage six and a half hours before it left Hong Kong.  

Now it's in Anchorage.  I've been watching for two days: why has it just been sitting there?  For 26 hours?  Fedex keeps telling me it's going to arrive on time tomorrow.  It seems to be on a plane to somewhere now....  Will it go right to Oakland or to Fedex in Nebraska before being shipped to Oakland to Berkeley, to me?

I will be watching this and haunting the mailroom at work tomorrow.

iPad genius

The iPad is far more revolutionary than it gets credit for.

Because it is wireless and has no disk drive, you can only get things like software, music, movies into it via the air.  As a result, as an anti-piracy tool it is spectacular.  No more handing someone else a CD and allowing them to make a copy.  Piracy moves from the privacy of one's home, which is hard to police, to the ether, which, while still hard to police, is a far more public place.

Microsoft gets screwed.  Or perhaps it is screwing itself.  There are no Microsoft products available on the iPad.  Suddenly, Pages and Keynote become not just the fabulous-but-I-use-Office-anyway apps, but become something we have to learn.  And we will learn to love them.  Until Microsoft builds its apps for an iPad, Apple has a head start in persuading its customers that there are alternatives.

Before putting this thought toward iPads, in a recent presentation (done with PowerPoint, although I'd also done a small presentation in Prezi), I talked about things I think will go away in five years.  Mice, I said, because they were created to help us point at screens, and now we can touch our screens.  Cables connecting things, definitely.  Keyboards, potentially, although I just purchased an iPad keyboard (and I don't even have my iPad yet).

And, as reinforced by the iPad, local storage.  Cloud computing and things like Dropbox (which I just signed up for, to serve my future iPad) means that we won't need a lot of disk space any more.

I like the idea of not using local storage.  I am OK with learning the iWork suite.  I sadly wave goodbye to friendly piracy.

Object of study

As I was walking home up beautiful Doyle Street in Emeryville, I realized that I've gone to two teaching clinics today, both incredibly convenient.

1. This morning I picked up new glasses at the UC Berkeley Optometry Clinic, which is right next to my own building on campus.  A nice young woman with long chestnut hair gave me my new glasses and adjusted them for me.  Her demeanor was a little shy or unconfident, but she did a nice job.
2. This evening I had a massage at the National Holistic Institute, which is five blocks away from my home.  A nice young woman with short spikey pink and platinum hair gave me a pretty good massage.  Her demeanor was a little shy or unconfident, but she did a nice job.

So I have participated in the education of students today in two ways beyond my usual work.

Movie summary: "De-Lovely"

Cole Porter marries Ashley Judd.  Everyone speaks in clever sentences.  She dotes on him with all her dimples.  He is gay.  She becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the marriage.  He is gay.  The music is good, and you play "Spot the famous musician."  Everyone dies very slowly, pondering the sadness of it all as they go.  Repeat and fade.