Friday, April 22, 2011

Day 493

Well, I'm ready now for my new role as a roving Internet journalist. I found the 4G hotspot I wanted. It wasn't at the AT&T store. It was at the T-Mobile store across the street. Those guys shouldn't have put the hard sell on me yesterday. I probably wouldn't have even discovered the T-Mobile store if the AT&T guys hadn't been so pushy. All's well that ends well though. I ended up getting a 4G hotspot that five devices can hook up to, along with unlimited file transfer and no contract for less than AT&T was charging for a 5 GB file transfer limit with a two year contract.

The little hotspot fits in my pocket and works like a charm. Best of all, I can even use it with my iPad and iPhone. Now that I know I'll be able to upload something at the conference, it's time to figure out exactly what I'm going to be uploading. There are a lot of nifty little HD cameras that record to memory cards and save files in the native YouTube format. Sound is going to be the big hurdle. Since I will be doing mostly on the spot interviews, I will need to have good quality sound. I'm looking for a little inexpensive camera that has an external line or mic input, so I can use a better quality microphone. I still don't know if they'll let me in the building yet, but I definitely think I'm making progress on everything else.

Dot got her bandage off this afternoon, but she still can't do anything strenuous for the next three or four days or the wound might reopen. She seems completely back to normal and doesn't appear to be in any pain. It's going to be hard to keep her quiet for another three days. It's hard to get used to the appearance of her paw too. One toenail is completely gone, so the whole paw looks out of balance. Hopefully the nail will grow back in a couple of months.

It's hard to believe that Easter is this Sunday. The entire year has gone by in a blur. It's time for Dash to have his annual exam again next week. It's time for me to renew my drivers license. I hope I can do that online, since I hate to stand in those long lines at the DMV. I guess it's time to buy another lawnmower too. The grass in the front yard is starting to look pretty shabby and I still haven't been able to get the old mower to start. It's always something, isn't it. Maybe I'll make a little test video of the Dalmatians this weekend to see how long it take to upload things to YouTube. My grand plan of uploading straight from the conference exhibit hall isn't going to work very well if the video files take an hour to upload. I'm still not really sure how fast 4G is. The sales guys say it is five times faster than 3G. It would be nice if this were actually true.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day