This past Saturday, Cheryl and I spent most of the day downtown on the Maumee River for the annual Dragon Boat races (pictures here). Her company sponsored a team that did fairly well in their division. It reminded me a lot of going to a swim meet; you sit around in the burning sun for a couple hours until your race is up, and repeat this for three races. I used the time to soak up a little too much sun (I have a nice sunglass tan line on my face) and finish the final Harry Potter book The Deathly Hallows. Overall I thought it was a decent finale for the series with enough surprises to keep me entertained for the 750 or so pages. With that completed, I'm back to studying for the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) certification which I hope to obtain by the end of August. I'm using the PMP In Depth: Project Management Professional Study Guide for PMP and CAPM Exams book as it has been highly regarded as one of the better training materials. Speaking of books, I happened upon The Complete Peanuts Collection while browsing at Borders at the mall. When completed, this extensive collection will have every Peanuts comic strip drawn by Charles Schulz over a 50 year period. In the end, the collection will feature 25 books, each covering two years. I've bought the first two, and look forward to collecting them all as the years go by.

Last weekend (July 20), I got to see the Gin Blossoms in concert at a Rally By the River event here in downtown Toledo. We met up with Kelly and Jared at The Blarney for dinner and walked down to the river for the show. All in all, it was a great night for a concert and went pretty well; they ended up playing all of my favorites, as well as a couple tracks from their newer album. This weekend is Cheryl's graduation down in Bowling Green, as well as the Ribs on the River event. For whatever reason, there is also the larger Northwest Ohio Rib-Off next weekend at the fairgrounds in Maumee so I'll be eating lots of ribs over the next two weeks. Finally, I'm planning on making my first weekday beer tomorrow, a west coast pale ale in the stylings of a Sierra Nevada Pale. We'll see how that turns out...

My prayers have been answered... sort of. Apple is opening an Apple Store this weekend, but it's not in Toledo... it's in Ann Arbor. The store will be opening this Saturday at 10:00am in the Briarwood Mall on the south side of the city. It will be located in-between The Limited and D.O.C. Optical. Now here's a conundrum: do I go up there for the grand opening, or do I wait at my apartment for the last Harry Potter book to arrive from Amazon?

Well, Cheryl and I made it back from Bellefontaine and just in the nick of time; it's insanely hot outside and my parents still have not seen the need to get central air in their house. The trip was pretty uneventful besides getting to enjoy a couple margaritas at Los Cabos and seeing the Indian Lake fireworks last night. For the most part, my iPhone worked everywhere in our traveling except for some spotty areas between Findlay and Kenton. Otherwise, I was able to login and check email and visit a couple websites throughout the weekend. I also found myself taking a lot of pictures with the built-in camera; so many in fact that I decided to move the iPhone Pics link to the main menu bar on the left side of the screen. On that page, you can see the 50 most recent pictures, or click through to view the entire gallery.

Speaking of pictures, I managed to snap a couple of some unidentified flying objects that flew overhead while we were waiting for the Indian Lake fireworks to start (here and here). Were they aliens looking for a good spot to watch the fireworks, some secret government aircraft test, or simply some redneck hillbillies playing around with fireworks? You be the judge...

I'm finding myself doing things a little differently since I bought my iPhone, and I thought it might be a good idea to write up a little bit about my experiences in case they might help someone else who buys an iPhone. So, without further delay, here is the first one (of possibly many).

Since buying my Macbook Pro and switching last January, I've been using a neat technology called RSS (really simple syndication) to keep tabs on a number of websites. These RSS feeds allow you to quickly keep up with the latest news and updates by presenting either a summary or a copy of the entire posting that a user can subscribe to. With the help of a RSS reader, users can aggregate a number of these feeds and receive all their information at once instead of manually visiting each website. While Safari has some basic RSS functionality built-in, I quickly purchased NetNewsWire as it was highly regarded as one of the best RSS readers for the Mac platform that offered functionality to sync stories between multiple computers. This was important to me as I have two Macs; my laptop and an iMac desktop. I didn't want to have to either reread old stories or manually mark them as read. NetNewsWire took care of all of this for me, and I was happy for it.

However, with my purchase of the iPhone, I was facing a dilemma; how could I extend this functionality to this device since a) Apple failed to include a RSS reader, and b) third-party applications are very limited as to what they can do on the iPhone? Enter Google Reader. The developers at Google have built a powerful RSS reader using the latest in web technologies, making it very easy to import a copy of all of your feeds and keep multiple systems up-to-date and in-sync with each other. Coupled with a custom interface specifically tailored to the iPhone, this is a pretty slick solution that I'm sure will only get better as Apple and Google continue to work together. This application works remarkably well when connected via Wi-Fi or even AT&T's EDGE network as the amount of data transmitted is much less than actually visiting each website. And, my feeds are instantly available from any laptop or desktop with an available Internet connection in just a few seconds.

Even though I've paid for the NetNewsWire software, I think this is going to be my solution from now on.

Well, I've been an iPhone owner for almost a week now and I must say that my overall experience has been very good. Except for some activation issues (took about 12 hours to activate, and another 2 days to complete the port of my phone number), I've enjoyed using the iPhone so far. My biggest concern going into the purchase was the speed of the EDGE network that the phone uses for its data capabilities (internet/email), but the recent updates done by AT&T seem to have minimized this issue. As long as the phone has a decent signal (which it has pretty much everywhere I've gone), the download speeds have been better than expected. After the connection is made, websites and email are quickly received and available to use. Navigation is amazingly simple and the virtual keyboard is no where near as bad as the media was making it out to be. I was able to type with two fingers within 24 hours of using the device; the key is to ignore your errors (unless they are in some proper names) and let the software recognize the error and make the appropriate corrections. Once you finally accept this, you can type fairly quickly on the screen. The camera is also fairly decent if not overly simplistic; I've created a seperate page for all of the pictures I've taken using it here. While I don't think I'll take it on the slopes with me (thanks to a SIM card, I can buy a cheapo phone to use), the screen and casing is of a high quality and hasn't scratched yet. All in all, this is the perfect device for those times when you want to stay connected to the world, but you don't want to lug around a laptop.

My only major complaint is that the iPhone is not 100% compatible with my Belkin Auto Kit car charger. This adapter features not only charging capabilities, but a line-out that I use to connect my iPod to the stereo in my Honda Civic. While the charging functionality seems to work, I have been unable to get the line-out to work properly. I'm hoping that there can be a software fix for this, but I'll probably end up buying a new cable once the "Made for iPhone" hardware starts to hit the stores. I can't say that I blame Apple (or Belkin) for this product not working; there are a number of interference issues that need to be addressed so that the phone can continue to function. My iHome Audio alarm clock works, but I do get some static through the speakers whenever the unit connects to the GSM network, which it does periodically.

All in all, the experience of camping out and waiting for the phone to be released was pretty cool and I'm glad that I did it. While I ended up sitting outside for almost 10 hours, I did end meet a lot of great people (and Apple fanatics) who made the time go by fairly quickly. I had worried that people would be fanatical about stepping out of line for a couple minutes to use the bathroom or simply stretch, but everyone watched each others spots so we could wonder around. I would have liked to have gone to an Apple Store, but since the closest one is well over an hour away, I'm glad I decided to go to the Maumee AT&T store. Maybe Apple will decide to open a store at the new Fallen Timbers outdoor mall in time for the OSX 10.5 Leopard release. =)

Last night, Cheryl and I went to see Pixar's new movie Ratatouille at the National Amusements theater in Maumee. In typical Pixar fashion, they have created an animated movie that appeals not only to kids, but has enough references and jokes aimed at adults to make it an enjoyable experience. We'll be making the trek back down to Bellefontaine this weekend to see the Indian Lake fireworks and spend some time with the family. Should be an interesting experience as always...