So it would seem that my almost seven year-old daughter Jessica is really enjoying Amateur Radio. I just joined a local club, and she’s been attending meetings and events with me. This serves a dual purpose: it eliminates the need for a babysitter, AND it allows me to expose her to my newly rediscovered hobby. This past Monday, she came with me to the West Chester Amateur Radio Association’s August meeting. Knowing that the best defense against a cranky kid is ACTIVITIES, I came loaded for bear. Jessica was carrying a backpack containing a couple of books, a Nintendo DS, gummy worms, the toy from her McDonald’s Happy Meal, and her MP3 player. She was amazingly good, quietly and contentedly sitting there through the entire 90 minute meeting. Afterwards, she wanted to go up to the club hamshack and “play some radio.”

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It seems like any blog out there seeking tech creds is reviewing the iPhone 2.0 software that was released today.  Unlike most geeks, I didn’t jump in on the early “release” yesterday, waiting instead for software that wasn’t going to potentially screw up my phone or make it unstable. But, now that I have the official, Infinite Loop Drive-blessed, Jobs-approved release, I’ll be putting it through its paces, so expect my review this evening or tomorrow.

One snag on install - iTunes is having slight difficulty re-authorizing my phone through ITMS.  Updates as they become available.

UPDATE #1: I finally got everything installed & working - it DID take about 5 - 10 minutes of “Accessing iTunes Store” before the phone was completely installed.  Lots of people doing what I did…when I did it, I’d wager.  Apps are pretty cool…but some definitely need some polish.

UPDATE #2: So I’m standing behind my earlier statement regarding apps needing some polish.  Some apps (WeatherBug, for example) seem to hang for extended periods while they download data.  I’m forgiving about this on my Edge connection, but at least provide a modicum of notification to the user as to what’s going on. Also, I’m getting quite tired of having to authorize location services to every application each time I launch them.  Apple:  How about a preferences pane where I can explicitly authorize an application to use location services?  Monkey Ball is pretty darned addictive, and wickedly hard to boot!  I can’t really see giving this to my 6-year old daughter, for fear of her chucking my iPhone out the window.

I went to the Dayton Hamvention on Saturday. It’s been YEARS since I last went. I’m setting a goal now to have my “Amateur Extra” license by December 31, 2008. That means I will buy an all-band radio at NEXT year’s Hamvention!

As of right now, I’m eyeing a Yaesu FT-897D radio.  This baby does almost all available bands, in all modes, is built for portability…and is under $1,000!

Today’s quote:

Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat. — Albert Einstein

Have really been enjoying the XKCD webcomic. Especially this one:

Wow.