Blah-Blah Regarding My Chromebook (Not Quite a Review)

I love my Chromebook. I am irked by my Chromebook.

But overall, I think I'll keep 'im.

First a paragraph of random trivia: I ended up with an Acer R11 Chromebook rather than an Asus Flip. Costco had a really good sale going on the Acer just before Christmas. Like the Asus Flip, the R11 is a convertible: the screen folds back for use as a sort of tablet, which appealed to me for sheet music and PDFs and movies.

It's a little tall and skinny for displaying chord sheets and sheet music, but works pretty well!

It isn't as sleek as the Asus Flip. It doesn't scream "classy." It looks like...a clunky white plastic slab. However, it's a little larger than the Asus (11.6" screen) and has a normal sized, very comfortable keyboard. And I liked the peace of mind of having a Costco guarantee, since the whole Chromebook concept is a new one to me. It also has a little more local storage (32GB) and an Intel processor, should I decide I want to play with Linux at a later date.

There are definite pluses to Chrome OS. For one thing, I already have an Android phone and use the Chrome browser on other computers, and as soon as I logged in, I instantly had all my bookmarks and browser extensions and access to all my Google Drive documents. I did a power wash (basically a factory reset) at one point in the last week, and pretty much lost nothing. Usually switching from one computer to another takes me weeks of tweaking, but there are very few local settings on a Chromebook, so the experience remains just about the same no matter what once you log in. You can upgrade to a new Chromebook, wipe a current one, or just use Chrome elsewhere, and changes sync (mostly) seamlessly.

However, I'm running into a few frustrating issues. Not all can be blamed on the Chromebook itself, but they're there nonetheless.

First of all, one of the primary reasons I bought it was so I'd have an inexpensive, durable, long-batteried laptop to lug to the coffee shop I frequently go to in the mornings. However, as I discovered the very first time I brought it along, Chromebooks can be a little picky about wi-fi. When I tried to connect, I got an error that said "network out of range." This despite the fact that other devices (my phone or my other laptop) connected without issue.

I did a bunch of online research. It appears this is not an entirely uncommon problem. Unfortunately, the advice mostly amounted to making changes to the router--not an option for me.

I've connected once over the last few weeks (presumably the router was reset and worked for awhile), but the rest of the time, the error comes up every time I'm there.

Second issue: Google Docs should work more or less the same off-line as off, though of course won't sync changes until next time you connect. And I have been able to edit existing documents without much trouble.

Creating documents off-line, however, gets a little weird.

For example, the other day at the coffee shop, I couldn't get the connection to work again. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just write offline and sync when I get to work."

So I did. I wrote and edited a short blog article (about 500 words). The top of the screen in Docs said "All changes saved offline." Feeling accomplished, I closed it out, closed up the Chromebook, and headed to work.

At work, I opened up the Chromebook and found...nothing. According to it, I hadn't touched any documents since yesterday. RAGE...RISING.

I thought maybe this was a fluke, that maybe I'd imagined the message saying everything was saved, or that I'd done something wrong. So I tried creating additional documents offline. Same deal. Docs would say it saved my changes. The document would (apparently) vanish into the ether as soon as the document was closed. Sadness would descend.

What I ultimately discovered was that my documents were there (PHEW!), but (aggravatingly) invisible until I'd been connected to a wireless source for an undetermined interval, whereupon they'd magically appear. Perplexing.

For the time being, I created some blank documents named Offline 1-3 to use when I'm just creating blocks of text to be applied elsewhere, since existing documents sync instantly. This also allows me to reopen documents offline. But I don't like this. Hopefully it's something that will be improved upon in the future.

I haven't really, deeply put the little guy through its paces in other realms, but I have used it for displaying recipes while standing tent-fashion on the kitchen counter (soooo much better than trying to read stuff off my phone), and for watching TV while on the exercise bike.

Musician fancy gym bike...

For those purposes, it works like a champ.

I'm not necessarily getting the 10 hrs of battery life billed in the specs, but I didn't really expect that. I can use it at the coffee shop, watch a few YouTube videos during lunch, spend some time surfing when I get home and watch a show while on the exercise bike and still have plenty of battery to spare, and that's good enough for me. My unscientific estimate would be something near 8 hrs.

PROS:

• Relatively lightweight
• Rugged
• Cheap, at least compared to a "real" laptop, or a tablet and keyboard combo (about $250)
• Works adequately as a tablet for recipes, PDFs, movies while exercising, sheet music. It doesn't have a fancy retina screen, but the screen is a decently bright IPS panel. It will do.
• Easy access to Google documents, which is about all I need for creating first drafts
• Great keyboard, springy and nicely spaced

CONS:

• Not as lightweight as the models I'd originally looked at, making it awkward to use as a handheld tablet on the couch or in bed
• Pretty ugly compared to the competition (though it's almost so ugly it's endearing)
• Screen is just OK
• ANNOYING wi-fi issues
• ANNOYING off-line document creation weirdness

Despite the cons, I think it's a keeper. I shall plaster stickers on it soon. Bwahahah.

Typecast: Honk Not

I might add, laying on the horn does not excuse the drivers themselves from slowing down and using a bit of caution at the crossing, let alone entitle them to speed up and blast through, as many of them do.

Other Stuff I Like: Klean Kanteen 16 oz. Insulated

I realize this is out of my usual scope, but caffeine addiction seems to go side-by-side with writing material obsession, no? So here we are.

Not long after the new year, I acquired an insulated 16 oz. Klean Kanteen. This is a heavy-duty stainless steel double-walled vacuum insulated tumbler. Now that I've spent over six months putting it through the wringer, I feel qualified to share my experience.

NOTE: Keep in mind that this has been in (rough) daily use for pretty much that whole period, so this is not your usual pristine review model.

You can get these with a variety of different caps and lids. When I ordered mine, I opted for a "coffee set" that came with both a solid, leakproof loop cap and a sippy "cafe" cap.

Left: loop cap Right: cafe cap

The loop cap is lined with steel, so no plasticky flavors in your beverage. Any dust and gunk is my own, not Klean Kanteen provided.

I use both caps on a daily basis. Typically, I'll make my coffee in the morning and put on the loop cap for the journey to work, so I can toss the bottle around without worrying about spillage. I carry the cafe cap in my lunch bag and switch to that once I get to work, enabling me to sip without having to fiddle with the lid each time. Now...I realize there are fancy caps that have press and seal gadgets so you can sip and then close them. However, a) I am the queen of forgetting a dirty coffee cup somewhere on Friday and not getting around to cleaning it until later, and some of those cups require a mechanical engineering degree to disassemble for cleaning and reassemble, and b) the more parts there are, the more likely it is something will break or go missing. I love the simplicity of the Klean Kanteens.

Another note: if for any reason a cap wears out or gets lost, Klean Kanteen sells replacements.

As a bonus of sorts, the cafe cap resembles a certain Star Trek character. Thanks to Michael Clemens for the meme image made after my initial comment.

Speaking of cleaning, there's a reason for the Klean in Klean Kanteen. Everything about these is easy to get to and scrub. There are no hard corners--even on the cap threads--or places where crud can build up. A bottle brush and possibly an occasional vinegar and baking soda treatment is all you need to keep them sparkly.

Close-up of rounded threads

The cafe cap also comes apart in two pieces to make it easier to clean.

Bonus feature: Although I didn't buy it for this purpose, I quickly discovered these fit in a standard bicycle bottle cage!

Considering I've spent years trying to figure out convenient ways to bring coffee to work when on the bike, this makes me extremely happy.

So...summation of the pros:

1. Easy to clean.

2. Choice of lids (flexibility), which are easy to replace if lost or broken.

3. Fits in bike bottle cage.

4. Customer Service! The Klean Kanteen people obviously feel passionate about their products and stand behind them all the way. When I ordered my first Kanteen, I was a little concerned to discover it made a light rattling noise if shaken (which I typically do to check coffee level, for those wondering why I'd be shaking my cup). I wasn't sure what this meant, so I wrote to their customer service. I got a rapid and friendly response explaining the possible causes, and offering a replacement if I felt it warranted. I ended up accepting the replacement, if only for my own peace of mind. A few photos later, they let me know the new Kanteen was in the mail, and that I could keep the original for use or recycling. (It ended up functioning OK. This is it, in fact, so now I have two.) The experience left me pretty stunned, to be honest. That level of service is hard to come by these days.

Cons (there had to be a few):

1. I would recommend that those who use their Klean Kanteens in the bottle cage either opt for one of the brushed stainless steel models (no paint) or a less scratchy bottle cage. My poor Kanteen has developed rather more "character" than perhaps it deserves.

Scratches, paint chips, my fault...but something to be aware of.

2. The small top diameter can be an issue. It is one of the things which makes it fit so beautifully in a bottle cage, but it does mean your average tea basket won't fit, so if you (like me) like to brew from loose-leaf tea leaves now and again, you may find yourself frustrated. You also can't use an Aeropress directly into it. The Melitta cone, #2 sized version (my usual brewing method) works fine, however.

3. They're pretty pricey compared to the competition, though you *can* find sales here and there.

4. One other minor possible quibble: although coffee remains tastily temperatured until close to lunchtime, I would say overall this doesn't keep things hot and cold *quite* as long as Thermos containers. When I cooled both my old Thermos tumbler and the Kanteen with tap water and then added the same number of ice cubes to each, put the lid on them, and left overnight, the ice cubes in the Kanteen were a little smaller come morning. I don't have detailed measurements of the difference, which likely wouldn't affect normal usage, but I suppose if you spend time out in the cold or heat in the field, it's worth consideration.

Completely unsolicited, no financial interest and all that. I just think these are great products deserving of praise! I hope to add a plain, single-walled water bottle Kanteen to my arsenal at some point.

Specs (per manufacturer's site):
Capacity: 16 fluid ounces (473 ml)
Weight: 8.75 ounces (w/o cap)
Size: 7.25" H (w/o cap) x 2.9375" W
Opening diameter: 2.125” (54 mm)
18/8 food-grade stainless steel

Product page on manufacturer's website: http://www.kleankanteen.com/products/insulated/klean-kanteen-insulated-16oz.php

Faster Than the Speed of Write

I was rushing out the door to ride to work this morning when I remembered I'd meant to grab another Musgrave Test Scoring 100 pencil. The one at work was down to not much more than a nubbin. I'd already buckled my pannier closed, so I tucked the pencil in with my [messily bundled] jacket under the elastic net on the top of the rack and let it ride in the open air.

Looks kinda like a little silver rocket back there, doesn't it? Maybe if I added a few more, they'd make me faster.

(I can dream.)

And the old guy it replaces, just stubbin' in the sun...

First Morning Bike Commute Complete

Here's hoping the ride home goes as smoothly!

Update Just to Update: Self-Derision and Hot Coffee Edition

Doing the Deek thing

Just because I feel like it...a Deek-style sort of journal entry.

Day-to-day Peril

I had two nemeses on the bike commute from my last house: on the way out, there was a long and seriously steep hill that I just--barely--made--it--up every time. Brutal. And on the way back, at the *bottom* of that hill (which was rather a blast coming down, I gotta say) there was a narrow bridge and the bike lane suddenly disappeared until you got to the other side. Cars were supposed to yield to bikes, but rarely did. I'd try to wait a sec for a gap (and keep in mind that I was usually going over twenty miles an hour at that point, and it wasn't a long bridge, so it wasn't like they had to slow down for long), but inevitably someone would come up behind me going twice the speed limit and decide halfway across the thirty-foot span of the bridge that they really, really, really had to get by me before the other side, even if there *was* on-coming traffic. Had some pretty dicey narrow-misses on that thing. *shudder*

As traffic got heavier and new developments and the road construction to go with them sprang up along the route, that commute became impractical, if not dangerous, to do on the bike, and I reluctantly gave it up.

But now--now I live right on the bike path. Not only that, but essentially my house and my work are at the top and bottom of a big square, with the roads skirting the perimeter while the bike path goes straight up the middle. So the bike route is a shorter distance, and not toooo much of a time difference. It was one of the perks that drew me to my little rental house to begin with.

My new nemeses are much milder. First, there's a six hundred foot section of trail that remains unpaved. It's a pretty little track that winds through a bank of trees and up a slight slope to rejoin the paved trail. It looks idyllic, but it's as though someone set out to give us paved-path wimps a full taste of off-roadin' in those six hundred feet. Deep sand? Check. Sticky mud? Check. Loose gravel, sticks and pinecones, washboarding? Check, check, check. My road bike is more of a touring model than a race bike, or I'd probably have to dismount, maybe even carry it. As it is, it just makes for an interesting time.

And then there's a joyful part where there's a gap in the trail and you have to get across a busy four-lane road. Either you walk the bike a lonnnnng way out of the way (no crosswalks anywhere nearby), or you do as most do: wait for a hole in the traffic, dash for the median, wait for another hole, dash to the other side. It's like a real-life version of Frogger, though at least the median stays put instead of floating downstream.

I have a healthy fear of curbs, having both lost control of a bike as I was wheeling it off one and *seriously* crashed hard trying to get onto one, so I pick up my bike (me in my bike shorts and ginormous white budget helmet) and run with it instead, one side to the middle, the middle to the other side. I'm sure I look like a total goober. Maybe it brings some happiness into some peoples' days, though. "At least I'm not *that* much of a dork..."

On the whole, I prefer the rough trail. Fall-down-go-boom isn't as bad as getting squished.

And I was never very good at Frogger.

Cave in

1. Cave in #1
Well, after resisting various posts on the subject for a bit over a year, I've finally given into temptation and ordered a clicky keyboard from Unicomp.



It should be here Tuesday. I'm trying to resist the urge to check UPS for status updates every five minutes. I'll report fully after a few days of using the thing.

2. Cave-in #2
I still have about a chapter left to go on my '09 NaNo, but I'm stalling on actually writing by working on the digitization instead. Actually, it's not really stalling--I need this time to get back into the story, since I abandoned the poor thing for so long. I started out typing things up on the Neo, but in the last week, I started doing OCR instead. The mini version of OmniPage that comes with the inexpensive Canon scanners is actually really good--at least for fairly dark type and certain typefaces. It really likes the SG-1. As I'm getting into the later pages, when I was debating whether or not to change the ribbon, it's a little more challenging. Still a lot faster than retyping, and with all the going over the text I have to do, still a good review and opportunity to do a first-pass edit. I'll be printing it up to really hack away at after this part is done.

3. Other update-just-to-update type jabbering: After years of hearing their ads and thinking, "hey, betcha that'd be a cool place to visit," I finally went to Shipwreck Beads with my sister yesterday. I *love* beaded earrings, but have never gotten into making them. She does a bit. I'm gonna have to learn.



That place is overwhelming. Good golly. Imagine a grocery store sized place of nothing but beads and associated crafty things, in all sorts of colors and shapes and sizes and textures and materials. There are strings of beads, drawers and drawers full of charms, loose beads of all sorts, from tiny shell beads to big blown glass beads and everything in between. Also these funky little rubber beads, which I wanted to buy in great quantities just to handle.

You carry a little tray through the store to pick out what you want, writing down codes for any loose stuff, like at a hardware store. For the more intrepid shoppers, they even had carts with space where you could lay out bunches of trays, and pegs for hanging stringed beads and such like.

We didn't spend much, partly just because there was too much to take in on a first trip. Wayyy too much. Margaret got a few beads and earring supplies and we walked out, a little dazed. We'll have to go back.

Also, after we got back from the bead store, I finally did a dry-run for my new bike commute on the trail from the new house. It's not a bad ride, *except* for a *different* fun busy-four-lane-road crossing, where you either have to go a lonnng way out of the way to get to a very slow traffic light and wait to cross at the crosswalk, OR do what 95% of folks do and wait for a gap in traffic, dash for the median, wait for another gap, and run like mad for the other side. It's like real life Frogger. Lots of fun. At least the rest of the ride is simple and entirely off roads. Lots of people around still, but that's OK.


My bike is purty.

The Shape of Things

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Keystone Kommuter

I rode to work again today. And fell again. I are a moron. I have one spot where I have to cross a fairly big road. The trail kinda just ends at the road and starts up again on the other side and down a way, and until recently, there wasn’t a crosswalk or anything there, either - you just had to wait for a gap in the (busy) traffic and run for it.

Now there’s a new crosswalk with some flashy thingies that are activated when someone wants to cross...but said flashy thingies aren’t visible to pedestrians / bicyclists, so you kinda just have to watch for when the cars stop. And the whole thing just flustered me and made me want to get going. I guess it's better than playing chicken each and every time I cross that road, but...it'll take some getting used to.

When I got across to the other side, there was a guy mowing by the sidewalk, who stopped the mower to let me by, which further flustered me, ‘cause he didn’t have to do that. When I turned to thank him, my tire went into the space between the edge of the other side of the sidewalk and the grass, and I went down right in front of him, leaving him wondering what he did. I just told him, “You didn’t see that, OK?” and went on.

And then I locked myself out on the roof at work...but that’s another story.

Whur's the coffee?

Successful first bike commute of the year! Sort of...

I know, I know, I'm late to the ball game. It's been spring for a few weeks at *least*. Kind of. It can't seem to make up its mind here in the great Pacific Northwest.

Last year, frustrated with how little riding I was able to get in during the evenings, plus the gas prices (and we thought they were bad then...), I made up my mind to try riding to work. It's 12.5 miles each way, which isn't really at the extreme end of bike commuting, but still nothing to sneeze at. I scoped it out in the car for weeks, then rode it on the weekend, and finally figured out a route that is almost entirely wide shoulders, bike lanes, and bike paths. There's one small bridge where I have to merge into traffic, and two left-hand turns that also pretty much require joining the big scary cars. Other than that, it's pretty stress-free.

I'd not ridden yet this year, partly because of our changeable weather and partly because I'd had a nice long winter in which to build up my phobias again. I'm scared of riding on the road. But then, I'm scared of merging on the interstate, too, especially at night. If I do it often enough, I at least get to the stage where I figure I'm more likely to make it than to die. That's about the best I can do. ;-) Same goes for the bike commute.

Yesterday at work, one of the other gals in the office, who knew that I rode in last year, came to talk about her determination to ride in today and the sorts of obstacles she anticipated. I got all wistful and decided I *had* to ride in today - this despite the fact that I'd not even been on the bike this calendar year. Yes, I am a slug.

But I'm a very stubborn slug. That's in my favor, at least!

It was a grey, cool morning - actually very nice weather for biking, IMO. No glaring sun or confusing shadows. After a mile, I thought about giving up and going back. My legs were already burning. Then, the first of the mishaps occurred. I got my shoelace looped on a pedal - something that *never* happened last year. In about two pedal strokes, my foot was completely stuck, twisted sideways, and I was unable to control the bike or free my foot. So I did what I had to do - dumped myself into the grass at the side of the road. There I was, sitting in a dip with one foot sticking up, one foot glued to the bike, and cars slowing down to watch. Yeah. Lovely. As a co-worker said, they probably figured I'm one of those folks who are starting to bike because of the gas prices, but who haven't been on a bike since about second grade. Heh... I had to take off my shoe to get my lace loose, but nothing was broken, on the shoe, the bike, or me. And it made me mad enough to go on instead of going back.

The rest of the commute was equally imperfect. I took a left turn too soon and had someone slam on their brakes and honk at me (they made it into a much bigger deal than it was, but I was at fault, for sure - again, something I didn't do alll last season. Ungh...) I ran over broken glass, which fortunately didn't cause any flats, but sure made me nervous.

But I made it. And I also had the chance to remember how much of the riding experience I'd missed - in the car, you miss the sounds of the world going on around you; the smell of flowers or cut grass or wood (or sewers) as you go past; smiling and waving at pedestrians and other cyclists; the joy of cresting a steep hill under your own power, even if you slowed to a near-walk for the final third; the rush of the wind - sometimes friend, sometimes foe....

It's good to be back again.