Palm Acquires Handspring

1 Reply

At first I thought it was a joke, but it looks like it is for real:

Palm announces acquisition of Handspring

Yes, it’s true… as of today, Palm, Inc. has announced plans to acquire Handspring. The deal is supposed to close this fall.

I’d like to observe a moment of silence for the company that made the break away from Palm in the beginning to offer innovative, value-packed PDA’s. The Visor’s trademark feature was its “Springboard” expansion slot, which allowed developers to create pluggable hardware modules that could be added at any time. Some modules which I myself have had include:

Wireless Web Digital Link: This turned my Visor into a SprintPCS mobile phone
Magellan GPS Companion: This turned my Visor into a Global Positioning System tracking device
MemPlug Compact Flash: This allowed my Visor to read and write to Compact Flash memory storage cards
Backup Module: This allowed my visor to back up its entire contents in a jiffy, and restore them just as quickly.

My first Handspring, purchased in the summer of 2000, was the Visor Deluxe. I later purchased the thin, metallic Visor Edge and gave the Deluxe to Becky. I continue to use the Visor Edge to this day. I keep all of my phone numbers and addresses on it, use it to keep track of appointments, balance our checkbook, get information on restaurants and other attractions while traveling, and read news and entertainment updates.

It has been a great piece of equipment, and I fully plan to continue using it until it dies or has outlived its usefulness.

I present a photo of the Visor Edge, taken today with my cameraphone, as a salute to the wonderful products that Handspring has created. Hopefully their innovations will continue with their acquisition by Palm, and perhaps I will be a Palm customer in the future.

Weekends

1 Reply

Becky and I have realized that in recent months, our weekends have been very, very busy. And we rarely spend a weekend *not* traveling somewhere. So I decided to take an inventory of where we’ve been on the weekends for the past three months. I’ll include links to photo galleries where appropriate, and I’ll bold the weekends where we didn’t really leave the Beverly area:

March 1-2: Beverly + Boston
March 8-9: Beverly + Boston
March 15-16: Beverly
March 22-23: Beverly
March 29-30: Freeport, Maine

April 5-6: Boston + Beverly
April 12-13: Townsend + Boston
April 19-20: Mount Vernon, Ohio
April 26-27: Beverly

May 3-4: Beverly + Shrewsbury
May 10-11: Harrodsburg, Kentucky
May 17-18: Troy, New York
May 24-25: Martha’s Vineyard
May 31 – June 1: Beverly + Shrewsbury

Phew! So chances are… if you’re looking for us in Beverly, don’t look for us on the weekends!

Mind Your Q’s and Q’s

Leave a reply

On Sunday, Becky and I attended the Quitadamo family reunion in Shrewsbury, Mass. There was more than enough rain outside, but there was also more than enough food and warmth inside.

I was there with my camera, as usual, and took lots of pictures. I even put up my own captions for all of the photos, so take a look!

Clean up

1 Reply

I’ve got a few things to mention today:

1. We had a lovely Memorial Day weekend on the Island. It was cold and windy and rainy, but we filled it up with road races, mini golf, Mario 3, and Scattergories. Check out the pics, okay?

b. Congratulations to those of you who discovered the secret new blog feature. For those of you who need a little more help… step 1:Drag your mouse over my head. step2: click.

3. Last night was the begining of another of my favorite shows : The Amazing Race! I think this is one of the most fun “Reality” shows to watch. Last night’s episode was pretty good. It was also kind of predictable. The unfit older couple was eliminated in the first round, but I’m holding out hope for the team of circus clowns!

The producers have made sure to fill out the cast will all the predictable couples, “we’re friends, but maybe this trip will make us more” and “shhhh! we’re gay!” and “dad and son out to bond” and “when will he ask me to marry him!?!” and possibly the most annoying, “we never get along at home so why should we get along here?”

Does anyone else out there watch this? Let me know what you think.

Site Outage

Leave a reply

prwdot.org and all of its services were completely down today from 10:25 a.m. to 11:35 a.m. EDT. The cause was a fire in the data center that our shared server is located in. The fire was effectively supressed, but the power was taken down as a precaution during the firefight.

Any email sent to a user @prwdot.org during that time period may not have been delivered, so I’d recommend re-sending any correspondence from during that period.

For those who don’t know, the prwdot.org website is located on a machine that is shared with several other websites. This machine is administered by Site5 Internet Solutions, and all of Site5’s servers are located at the Network Access Corporation data center in Parsippany, NJ. So when NAC has a problem, Site5 has a problem, and when Site5 has a problem, prwdot.org has a problem. 🙂

In any case, everything is back up and running just fine now.

Let me know if you notice any other problems.

Head’s up!

4 Replies

Well folks, I’ve gone and made a little change to the site. (with a wee little help from Peter)

I had fun creating this little addition and I think everyone may get a little smile from it.

Here’s the catch. You, the reader, must find this exciting feature. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it. Good luck and Godspeed.

Going Globe-al

2 Replies

Read the Boston Globe lately? You never know whose name might turn up… 🙂

In other news, yesterday I saw a report that Massachusetts ranks 2nd to last among the states in percentage of people who fasten their seat belts while driving – 51%. Only Rhode Island is lower (don’t know what their percentage is). The national average is 72%. I don’t know about all you folks, but I never go anywhere in the car without buckling my seatbelt. I simply don’t feel safe if it is there fastened securely. How can you possibly think that you’ll be safe if you don’t buckle your belt? Becky and I were rear-ended a couple of years ago, and I don’t want to think about what could have happened if we were not both securely buckled in. Please, Massachusetts folk, help bump up the average and make sure you and everyone else you know is buckled up when they get in the car. Starting May 19, there will be a nationwide “Click It or Ticket” campaign, for stricter enforcement of seatbelt-wearing laws. If you are pulled over for a violation and you were not wearing a seatbelt, you *will* be ticketed. Do it for your safety, or do it to avoid getting a ticket – I don’t care. Just do it. 🙂

RPI

Leave a reply

Yet another weekend away from Beverly. Not a bad thing! This weekend we were in Troy, New York to see Corey graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ( pictures here ). The weather was beautiful for commencement on Saturday. The program was about three and a half hours long. The highlights:

  • Commencement speaker Benjamin S. Carson. Excellent, excellent speaker. One of the best I’ve ever heard.
  • Flyover by a B-2 Stealth Bomber – amazing! It actually made two passes of the field. The first time, it dipped its wing and flew right around the field. The second time, it flew directly over the field! It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen, hands down.
  • Corey walking across the stage (that’s what we were there for!)

Saturday after graduation, we ate lots of food at the post-graduation picnic. Saturday afternoon was relaxing, playing around in the pool and hot tub at the hotel. That night we had dinner at Cracker Barrel. One of my key observations from the trip: Cracker Barrel’s menu is ridiculously hokey and contains far too many occurrences of “n”. For example “Fixin’s ‘n’ Such” or “Chicken ‘n’ Gravy”. Their food is decent, but wow… the menu be needin’ some fixin’ up! I guess it’s b’caus’a da country style ‘n’ all, but anyway…

Today we helped Corey move the rest of his stuff out of his dorm, then Becky and I took the long drive back on the Mass Pike. It was actually a very pleasant day for the drive. The weather was again very clear, but unfortunately the closer we got to metro Boston, the less green we saw. 🙁 Now we’re back in Beverly for another week, and then it’s yet another weekend away – this time on the Vineyard!

I leave you all with perhaps the best picture of the graduate from this weekend:

Corey at his best

Housekeeping

1 Reply

Did a little housekeeping this afternoon. I updated the photo guide, so it now has our most recent adventures. Check it out if you want an easier-to-digest guide to what exactly is in our photo galleries.

I also changed around the names in the right side nav bar – they are alpha by last name now, and I’ve changed Will’s link from his older webpage to his more recent (and recently discovered by Becky) blog. I also added links to a few of the discussion board websites I frequent, as well as a link to the BeatBlog, a group blog run by Will and some of his Hillsdale cronies.

At the moment we don’t have any major site changes planned. Everything seems to be working well. Perhaps a few minor formatting tweaks, but nothing dramatic.

Keep visiting!