We went out to Olive Branch Airport (KOLV) today to see Michael Combs on one of his stops in his epic cross-country journey. You can read more about his mission at http://www.flighths.com/ . It’s really great to see someone going out to try and inspire people.

So, I was one of the crazy people that was in line for the iPad 3G’s release at 17:00 yesterday. I had been debating it most of the week and made a last minute decision to go for it. I did a quick check of the Macrumors iPad forum to see how the lines might be and they seemed to be pretty minimal. So, I made a break for it just after 16:00. It took me about 25 minutes to get there, so I didn’t get in line until about 16:30.

At that pint I was probably about 50 back people in line. That caught me by surprise. As we approached 17:00 the line quickly doubled. Demographic make-up was across the board. This product seemed to have a broad appeal. One guy I was standing near already has an iPad and was looking for the extra mobility of the 3G. With so many people in line we were all a bit concerned about availability. Shortly before 17:00 an Apple employee started working down the line surveying us with an iPod Touch. He’d ask us which model we’re looking for and enter it in his little application. After a second or two it would report back if there was availability for that model and he’d move down the line. The 64GB model was available. Yes. We could start to hear cheers of jubilation coming from within the store. What was going on up there?

The line moved pretty quickly and when I got up to the front there were a lot of people coming up to the line-minder asking about availability. He couldn’t reveal inventory levels, but there were a lot of folks concerned they’d wait in line for an hour and go home empty handed. One lady wasn’t even interested in a 3G model, she wanted a plain iPad, but was driving to Hattiesburg next and wanted to know whether or not it would be worth waiting in line or if she should already hit the road. Pretty much everybody in line was after the 3G, so she shouldn’t have much to worry about.

Then my turn came. I was assisted by Helen (one of two Helens, apparently). She took me inside the store and it was obviously all-hands-on-deck. That was a bustling storm of activity. There were people everywhere. Money was flying at Apple. I got one the 64GB models and the dock and was outta there almost exactly at 17:30. As I walked out the staff erupted in cheers — nice touch.

We went to the Apple store today to see/play with the new iPad. Much to my surprise, we had to wait in line to get in the store. Apparently, it was fire code compliance, but I think I’ve seen the store more crowded before. Despite the line, we were inside in under 5 minutes. Then we spent about 15 minutes with a demo unit. In some ways it was like big iPod touch, but the extra screen real estate can be put to great use. I’m primarily looking at it for web surfing and for that purpose it seems to excel. The vocal critics citing a lack of Flash is not something that dissuades me. Having had numerous BSD/Solaris/Linux systems without Flash over the years, it just doesn’t bother me. Maybe I just don’t spend enough time watching embedded videos. I’m hoping this device gives critical mass to HTML5, and the decline of Flash (but I’m not holding my breath). Being that the base OS is shared with the iPhone I thought the Thai support would be the same, but it’s not. Thai does appear to be supported in Safari. I pulled up Thairath and did a bit of browsing. Wow, that’ll be perfect for grandpa. Going into the settings applet there was no Thai option for setting up an additional keyboard like I can on my iPhone. That’s not a dealbreaker, but I hope it returns. So, I’m looking forward to probably picking up the 3G version when they come out later this month.

My big ZFS pool on my SageTV server recently hit 2/3 capacity.  It’s amazing just how big HD shows are, and I record a lot of them (probably too many).  I needed to do something before I ran out of space, so I ordered 4 more 2TB Hitachi drives.  This box doesn’t have hot-swap capability, but if it had I think I could have done this with 1 reboot.  So, I pulled out 2 of the 1TB drives from separate mirrored pairs and replaced them with 2 2TB drives.  Then I ran ‘zfs replace’ for each missing drive and in about 3 hours it was done resilvering.  I did this again for the other 2 1TB drives from those 2 mirrored pairs.  A reboot later and my array now shows 5.44TB capacity.  It appears throughput has increased as well.  So, this is my 3rd capacity expansion on this pool and I think ZFS is indispensable for it.  There’s no doubt that 6 hours of resilvering better than having to find some place to back up everything (if I even have that much space anywhere), backing it up, rebuilding the array, and then restoring.

A couple weeks back I found this article on AOPA‘s site.  Apparently, it’s been announced for over 2 years, but I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard about it.  I’m no longer an active pilot, but I read every aviation magazine I can get ahold of.  I’m surprised I don’t remember seeing this mentioned anywhere.  So, I popped over to the FAA’s website, registered, updated my records, and ordered a new certificate.  The new plastic card arrived yesterday.  It’s a pretty nice card.

Angels & Demons was something of a letdown.  I wasn’t expecting it, but I should have.  Never read a book and then watch a movie with big expectations.  I really enjoyed The Da Vinci Code (the movie, I didn’t read the book) and I thought this would be no different.  Ron Howard really knows what he’s doing and that leads to very high expectations.  So, having read (well, listened, it was an audio book over a lot of road miles) Dan Brown’s book, the movie felt like it was cut short.  In addition, the changes made to the story for the movie adaptation just seemed wrong.  So, it’s hard to judge the film on its own merits.  I keep comparing it to the book.  Maybe if I give it some more time.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was a worthy sequel.  I wouldn’t say it was better than the original, but certainly not worse.  Parts of the story felt forced, but necessary to pull everything critical together.  Despite the forced nature of some of the story, the writing was good.  The voice actors and animation were as well.  In fact, viewing this in HD was a treat; there were many cuts where the scene was almost 3D.  That was cool.  I seem to have a lot of CG films and I think I might pick up the Madagascar pair in Blu-ray when I get to actually buying HD media.  Rentals will have to do for now, though.

Up was an interesting little film.  I guess I had some expectations, because this one surprised me.   I really didn’t think I had any, because I didn’t know anything about it other than that it was computer animated.  Well, the first 5 or 10 minutes was a complete surprise.  I almost couldn’t believe what was happening.  I don’t want to spoil it for anyone that hasn’t seen the film, but I was just confused.  I guess it was required to give enough back story for the rest of the film, but it makes me feel like there could have been some other way to do it without stretching the film out too long.  So you get past that and into the main story itself — it’s alright.  Nothing too special.  It’s certainly a unique subject matter for a kids film, but it works alright.  I’d recently seen a factoid that there were only 2 animated Disney features that included both parents together and neither dies.  This maintains the status quo.  I don’t get the happy Hollywood ending out of it, though.  It’s just not there.  Anyway, I put the story at about a 5.  The computer graphics and voice acting were superb.  The quality and thematic styling of the animation was really outstanding.  I really feel watching it in HD gave some benefit to the content.  Overall, I’m glad I passed on seeing it in the theater, but renting it was alright.

I didn’t know what to expect with the Watchmen movie.  All I’d heard was complaints about the in-your-face nature of a certain blue character’s anatomy.  I didn’t think it was that bad, but I could see how it might bug some people.  Then again, it shouldn’t bug anyone in the target audience.  In fact anyone that complains about that should also be piping up about some other scenes as well (of which I heard no piping before).  Personally, I don’t think I liked the movie, but I could see this becoming a cult favorite.  There is nothing in particular I can say was bad about the movie.  The casting, writing, cinematography, acting, make-up (except for the scenes of old Miss Jupiter, that was obvious costuming), and story were all well done.  It just wasn’t for me.  I think it has something to do with the styling cues and thematic continuity of the film that I didn’t like.  Don’t let that dissuade you.  While I don’t recommend the movie, it’s not for being a bad movie.  Watch it yourself and decide.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was a name and series milking movie.  Really, that’s the way to look at it.  I certainly enjoyed (and own) the first two movies in the series, but I doubt I’ll by this third.  In fact, I think the second movie was better than the first.  This third, however, didn’t stand up to my muster.  It’s not a bad movie, but more in line with something I’d expect as a made for TV movie or Saturday morning cartoon series.  There’s a lot of predictable dialog, and guessable plot lines.  There are certainly some redeeming jokes and gags, a couple new well developed characters, and a nice twist to the saber-tooth squirrel acorn chase.  It’s probably good as purely a kids movie (which is obviously its target market), but the previous films appeal to a more broad audience.  The voice actors did their job, the animators did their job.  The picture in HD was quite good.  It was the story and to some extent the dialog that were the let-down.