Well, it’s been 8 years, but I finally logged another 2.6 hours of time flying. On Saturday I got to do a little cross-country flight to Gaston’s White River Resort in Lakeview, AR. A few weeks back, I got an e-mail newsletter from CubCrafters listing that their network of dealers will be hosting “Demo Days” throughout the month of June. These are demo sessions across the country promoting LSA and CubCrafters’ Carbon Cub SS. I’ve not seen many LSA, and the Carbon Cub SS is a development I’ve followed, so I took a list of Demo Days events and looked where the closest one might be — it was in Lakeview, AR. That was just close enough to entice me, but still too far. It’s a 4.5 hour drive and at this point I’d have to do the visit in a day trip. That’s just not happening, so I decided to look into air-taxi as I’d seen one advertised before by Downtown Aviation. It wasn’t going to be cheap, so I actively recruited other aviation buffs to join me and help defray costs. I only had one taker, but every bit helps. Downtown Aviation was willing to structure the flight as a training flight to help save us some money. I really appreciate that. So, come Saturday, we loaded up in a Cessna 182 and made a cross-country training flight out to Lakeview and it was a blast.

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I waited in line to get the iPhone 4 today and came away successful. I don’t yet know if this is a great new phone, but it has an amazing screen. I am blown away by the clarity. It’s like going from an SDTV to an HDTV. Text looks like it’s back-lit print — just amazing.

The purchasing experience was great too. Note that today is the second day of their availability. My working theory was that there would be some reservations that weren’t picked up on day one and those go in the available-to-walk-ins pool. I was sure others would be thinking the same way. I’m not totally nuts, though, so I got in line at 7am (for a scheduled 8am early opening). I was about number 20 in line. I talked to the folks around me and it seems everyone had been there the day before. It sounds like that had been a real zoo. It took about 30 minutes for me to get inside once the doors opened. I spent another 30 minutes getting and activating the 2 I was after. Not too bad. Now what do I do with 2 iPhone 3GS?

I watched my first Red Bull Air Race in HD yesterday, and it was over the air (OTA) for free on Fox! It’s one of the few things I missed from having cable, but even there I didn’t get it in HD. I’d discovered that the World Cup was on ABC and was pulling it up on the big screen for Grandpa and I flipped past the air race. Whoa. I quickly pressed the record button. After the World Cup game was over (it was Brazil vs the Ivory Coast), I went back to the recording. Very cool. I hope there are more. It was truly awesome.

So, after a half-day with iOS 4, I have some opinions. Note that I have an iPhone 3GS.

• Threaded conversations is nicely done.
• Multi-tasking seems well thought out.
• Having a wallpaper throws me.
• The change in animations is nice.
• It ‘feels’ like the text on the home screen is clearer.
• Rotation lock is great.
• iBooks feels pointless on such a small screen.
• Some animations weren’t smooth.
• I don’t like the new calculator icon.
• Folders are a welcome addition, but the auto-naming never picked a name that I thought appropriate.
• Wifi staying on feels odd. We’ll see how it affects battery life.

I’ve seen repeated over and over that the iPad has poor wifi reception, but our iPad 3G seems to defy this. I dare say that our iPad is the best wifi device we have. I haven’t seen it drop signal anywhere in our house (even the driveway). Our iPhones are a close second, but none of our notebooks are even in the same realm of reception. So far 3G reception has been great as well.

It should go without saying — grab the right lens. We went to the Memphis Exotic Italian Car Show today and I just grabbed my camera on the way out. I only have 2 lenses and I figured that the one already installed would be “good enough”. Well, that was a big mistake. It wound up being my 50 – 200 lens, which is fine, but a bit too much zoom on an APS-C sized sensor like I’ve got. I kept finding myself trying to step back in places I couldn’t. It was really frustrating. Neat cars, nice show, a little small, especially for $10/person, but nice place to take Grandpa on Father’s Day. There are truely some cool cars in town.

I’m giving in. I’ve set my camera clock to GMT. The timestamps in the EXIF data on most of the pictures I take are only good for picking out what day it was taken, maybe even localizing to morning or afternoon. The problem is I almost never remember to change it’s setting when we have the DST transitions or travel to different timezones. If I never remembered I guess it wouldn’t be quite as bad. So, today is a flag day — all of my primary camera pictures after 6/11/2010 are stamped in GMT.

My face hurts, but it’s a good thing. I never remember laughing and smiling so much that my face was sore, but it’s happened. This current visit of family has just been wonderful and the last couple of days — a real hoot.

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.