Disaster

Maybe I should have purchased insurance for my Visor.  This site offers insurance policies for PDA's.  $4 a month to protect my $250 Visor? Yesterday I'd have said "no way", today, I'm thinking about it...

Iowa State is apparently going to offer a course all about the 2000 election.  It'll be an 8 week course next spring.  Too bad I'm not at ISU, I'd like to take it.  Maybe I can convince the PoliSci department head here to do the same thing.  I took Mansbach's International Security Policy course when I was at ISU, he's a great instructor, one of the best to be found in the University, in my opinion.  He'd be great for this course.  I've heard Schmidt's radio show a few times, and he seems like he'd be a good instructor too.

I've found one thing that my Handspring "Visor" can't do, it can't withstand a drop from five feet onto a hard floor.  The LCD screen is shattered, so I've called Handspring.  They're shipping me a new one, and I'll ship this one back to them, it'll cost me $85, so it's a costly lesson in Visor care.  How'd I do it?  I had just finished synchronizing the information on it with my computer, and was popping it back into my coat pocket.  Unfortunately the inside pocket of my coat was velcroed shut, and the Visor shot right out of my coat and onto the floor.  Hard.

I tried getting the Handspring rep to send me an "Ice" colored one as a replacement, as I'd rather have that than another blue one, she said that they normally didn't replace a product with something other than that exact model.  I pointed out that this was costing me $85, and that I wouldn't really do this on purpose just so I could have a different color.  She said she'd put a note on my order, but that she couldn't promise me anything.  I said that was good enough for me.

On a related note, the GPS module is now shipping for the "Visor".  Very cool, may have to save up to get myself one, it'd be nice to pull out my visor and see where I'm at on the map.

I posted my response to Doc Searls' bit about revolutions in software design.  Good question, Doc, I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think my answer is at least part of the picture...