It's been 10 days since I purchased the last iPad2 in Reno. ;-)

It was Friday the 11th.  iPad2 goes on sale at 5pm.  I'm thinking that there isn't going to be lines in Reno.  I wait until 4:30pm and take off to the Apple Store to pick one up.  Little did I know...  I get to the store and there is a line of around 300 people.  About 5 minutes in line and the Apple store employee tells everyone past about half way that the store is sold out.  So, I jump in my car and head to Target.  I get there just after 5pm.  Sold out.  Jump back in the car and head to Best Buy, sold out.  While driving around I had Jason on the phone calling other stores.  Sold out.

But then Jason calls the Best Buy in Sparks.  They have one!  Jason heads over there to save it for me.  He gets there and there is only one left.  A white iPad2 with the smaller GBs.  Pretty much the one I want.  So he puts it on hold for me.  I get there and buy it up.  It was the last one in Reno.  I got lucky.  (Thanks Jason!)

I have to say, all the issues I had with the iPad 1 have been fixed in the iPad 2.  It's faster, has more memory, and feels better.  I can't put it down.  I have it with me everywhere I go.  The apps have really matured since I sold my v1 in December.

I'm addicted to FlipBoard, and I missed the Twitter app.  Some apps are still missing like Google Voice and Skype.  I can use the web version of Voice, and the iPhone version of Skype is just OK.

So, I'm back on my iPad for my personal stuff and keeping the MBA for work.  Feels good.

One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. "Ninety knots," ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. "One-twenty on the ground," was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was "Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground," ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, "Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground." We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.

The new auction system has been coming along pretty good.  It's almost ready for launch.  All the features are in place and the hosting is setup.  We have a few auctions scheduled to start soon.  It's going to be pretty awesome.

I was doing some checking.  I've checked in 60,000 lines of code and removed 40,000 of them while optimizing.  That's a lot of KLOCs.  It's amazing to see how much code is thrown away when you are doing projects.

There are things people don't know about the iPad, yet they say it doesn't support.

SD cards and camera support -  People say that you can't plug a camera or SD card into an iPad to get the photos from it.  There is a camera adapter that you can buy to plug your camera or SD card into the iPad and load your photos into iPhoto.

TV and projectors - They say you can't use your iPad for a presentation, but that's also untrue.  You can get a cable to plug into a projector or even your TV for viewing presentations, movies, or whatever.

Keyboard and Mice - You can use pretty much any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with the iPad.

I've been thinking about how much I would like to do awesome software that I love to work on. Software that is not dumb down to the lowest common denominator (I'm looking at you Internet Explorer).

So, I'm spinning ORS back up to be my own software company. I'm not taking on clients and doing work for others anymore. I'm building software products that people can use and pay for.

I am also looking at taking on some partners. No sales, no marketing, just developers. I'm going to try out the whole 37 Signals approach. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Somehow I've started too many projects again.

* Move old web sites to new Wordpress server
* WISPbox - A easy to use pre-paid billing and authorization system for ISP's.
* TheCardPost - A business card listing site that shows business cards.
* DealerTradeZone - A system for car dealers to use to trade cars with each other.
* MyClock.in - A time card mini-web-app that can be used on phones for employees to punch in.

On top of those projects I have a bunch of little things that I'm working on. Like a few Wordpress plugins to help some of my customers with their web sites.

I'm going to start a new thing here at ORS.  I'm going to work on an ORS project one day a week.   I think Friday would be a great day to do that.  So Fridays are Orange days.

I had a pretty good time wheeling at the ORI Exit 28 Motorsports OHV area. The waterfall was a blast.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uic1xgj0o

I did it again.

I quit my job at DealerTrend.  A new opportunity opened up and I jumped at it.  It's a pretty sweet deal and I could not turn it down.  So I'm now back to work in my Orange Room doing Ruby on Rails application programming.

We are running in stealth mode right now, so I can't say much.  After we launch and I'm fully integrated then I'll let ya all know more.

But it sure is nice being able to work in a quiet office with no distractions.  It's also nice to have normal business hours.

I had an awesome birthday with everyone at the beach on Sunday.  Thanks for everyone that came.

I totally missed all the calls that came in.  I didn't hear my phone ringing.  Had like 5 missed calls the next day when I looked.

I worked on my buggy the day before.  It's all ready for assembly.  Everything is painted, fab'ed, and fixed.  So next weekend I'm going to be putting it all back together.