Day 152

In a day filled with walking dogs, washing dogs and taking dogs to the dog park, I eventually found a little time to open up the iPad box I got yesterday and see what was inside. The first thing I discovered was that Apple doesn't believe in instruction manuals anymore. The only instructions inside the box were printed on a small postcard sized piece of paper that basically just said "charge up the battery, plug the USB cable into your other computer, and see what happens." The whole setup routine takes place online.

Once I understood what was going on, I thought it would be a piece of cake to transfer all the information I needed from my other computer to the iPad. The tablet works just like an iPod, and syncs your information using the iTunes application. There was only one problem. Instead of just upgrading my system like a normal Apple user, I keep the old system drive and add new hard drives each time a new system is introdced. The main computer I use for work has four different hard drives that can boot five different Mac operating systems. The oldest of these drives contains most of my contact information, but it wouldn't sync up with the iPad at all because older version of iTunes on the drive wasn't compatible. The newest hard drive, containing the latest version of iTunes, worked just fine, but there was no contact information on the disk to sync. A bit ironic. Apple now offers this fancy "MobileMe" service that allows you to easily sync all your computers, iPods, iPhones and iPads remotely from anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, they never bothered to come up with a convenient way to sync different hard drives inside the same computer. I finally got all the contact and calendar information I wanted loaded in the iPad, but it sure wasn't as easy as just touching the sync button.

Two loose dogs came running after Dot and Dash while I was taking them on their evening walk today. There are signs all over the park saying "All dogs must be on a leash at all times" but people continue to ignore them. Luckily, these two dogs ware small and appeared to be friendly. This isn't always the case unfortunately. About a year and a half ago, Dash and I were attacked and badly bitten by a loose Pit Bull mix in our neighborhood. After that incident, I always worry when I see a loose dog in the park. Walking dogs in a city is kind of like driving a car in the city. No matter how careful you are, you still have to deal with all the other idiots who aren't careful at all.

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