With the spring like weather, I have had scooter fever!  Been looking for something that my wife can handle, and also, easy to push on and off a a versa hauler mounted on the back of the motor home.  I bought this Thursday and picked it up this evening!  Took it to a local parking lot and my wife handled it like a pro!  Seems to be a fun little scooter for the money!  The best part: it gets 90 MPG!

So Friday morning, a few of us headed over to the eastern side of Asheville to do some mountain biking!  Great, great fun!  Almost perfect weather, and just maybe one of my most funnest ever mountain bike trips!  We did a lot of riding!  We didn't go hungry, and when it came a big rain, Jeff and Shawn decided , "whats a little water?" and rode through a very hard rain!  Having the camper on this trip made it really nice as it turned the rain into basically nothing!  Great time!

Here is a little video I put together of pictures mostly taken by Shawn's new camera.  

Click here to grab the Video

 And a picture gallery

Through the years, I have owned a few motorcycles.  Good times, all and all.  On the last camping trip out, a beautiful SCOOTER caught my eye.  Not your ordinary one, but still a scooter.  There was a time in my life when I wouldn't have been caught dead on one!  My, how things have changed!  I am test riding this one this afternoon. . .

So I headed out in the MotorHome today!  There was a Malibu on my tail the whole way.  I mean the guy was never more than 5 feet from my rear bumper the whole trip!  Oh, wait a minute!  That's my Malibu!  So this is the 2nd trip out with the MotorHome, but its the first trip out with a Tow vehicle. Thank God that I figured out how to transfer Power, disable the Drive Shaft and not lose the car enroute to our Destination.  Our Destination?  Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  We are nestled into a campground about 1/2 mile from the main drag.  There is a nice stream flowing about 20 feet from my bedroom window.  The cable TV is not very clear, but as you can plainly see, the Internet connection is pretty strong!  Currently, the rest of the fam is gone to Walmart for some minor things for the weekend.  I am headed to the bed to take a nap and get ready to fire up the grill for Burgers tonight.  Depending on the day, maybe some pictures later on, but here are the ones for the moment.

So last weekend we took our motorhome out for our first adventure.  A local park where I could check everything out!  I left out Friday afternoon and I had to be at Church both Saturday night and Sunday morning so I knew my time was going to be limited. So besides the obvious of Gas quickly approaching $3.50 per gallon, here is the adventure. I pack up a few groceries and throw in the fridge, grab the dog and head out!  I am loving driving the beast!  Lots of fun and I feel like I am getting the hang of handling all 31 feet of her! 

I pull into the campground and its raining pretty good! I set her up in the rain and everything goes great! The wife joins me and for supper we eat Pizza!  I build a campfire as wood is pletiful in this campground!  We get a visit from my wife's brother and we hang out and watch a DVD on the TV and just talk about nothing . . . .  They leave, we climb in bed and I sleep like a rock!  Life is good!

Wake up Saturday morning and I take the dog for a walk.  The wife sleeps until almost 11:00 so the bed either works great for her or she just didn't sleep at all for my snoring and is trying to play catch up!  It rains most of the day, but thats OK, because I have plenty of room in the motorhome and spend most of the day watching TV.   I leave about 5:00 PM to head to church!  Perform at Church and then go to damon's to eat; churches treat!  Get back to the motorhome about 9:00PM and probably in bed by 10:30.

Wake up Sunday, take a shower and head to Church to perform for two services.  Come back around 11:30 and lay around for about an hour.  Then I start tearing down.  So far, I don't feel I have had a chance to really enjoy it because of my obligations . . . .

Pack everything up in about 45 minutes and start the drive home.  The first part is down a narrow road . . . BAM!!!  the Passenger mirror smacks a roadside sign!  Leaves a small scratch on the mirror.  Get the motorhome down the driveway, start to get out and notice a crack in the windshield! How did that happen??????? 

Call a local company about replacing it and they say bring it in.  I learn that it had been cracked there once before and plugged.  The weather lately had been very cold at night but fairly warm in the day, thus the spidering that I saw.  $300 and I have new windshield!  I am hoping this is not typical of my trips out!  I am still learning all the systems as this thing is much fancier than the one we had in the 80's.   I like several things about this system, but if its going to cost me $300 + gas each time I go out, I might be selling this one soon . . . .

A very long time ago, one of my very first posts to my blog was my Palm Treo History.  A malicious hacker deleted that folder along with others and that post is lost forever.  But I did get to thinking that maybe I should lay out my Cell phone history to include before and after the Treo and capture that here. So without further adue, here we go.

Sprint Brick: Yea, this one was my first!  I debated getting a bag-phone.  I ended up running with this one because I felt it more "portable".  I remember the plan was $30.00 per month and it included 30 "anytime" minutes.  Weekends were free and Sprint was the provider!  The best I remember anything past the allowable 30 minutes was something like $0.45 a minute!  We carried it everywhere but used it rarely!  I actually gave this phone away to a girl who wanted to walk around the Mall pretending to talk on it, just for laughs.  We've come a long way baby . . . .  

 During this time, I had a PDA!  it was a Palm IIIx.  I think the x meant that it was double the RAM/ROM of the original III series.  I can't remember if that was 4 or 8 megs of Ram.  But with that said, I used this device. I used it daily and never left home without it!  It would become my organizer and I was constantl tweaking, installing, uninstalling, and playing with this device! 

I dropped the III one day and cracked the screen. But that was not that big of a deal as I had been eyeing a device that offered 16,000 colors vs the grayscale unit I had been using.  In fact, it had come down in price to be just a little more than what I originally gave for the III.  This was called the IIIc.  And the "C" stood for Color! 

Six weeks to be more exact!  I really intended to write this closer to the one month mark, but I have been wide open, with several different projects, with not a lot of free time, and it's only because of inclement weather here in Northeast Tennessee that I am sitting down now to write this. Do I still like the TyTN II?  Yes, I still like it!  But there are things about it, that I don't like for sure!  Lets start with those:

• Email:  Attention developers!  Windows Mobile needs a reliable, easy to use, IMAP capable email client!  I guess Flexmail has won awards because its better than anything else available, but it sure don't come close to Chatteremail for the Palm OS.  I have found this email client awkward for multilple email accounts, and not very easy to navigate in General.  IMAP works, but it could work better!  For example, why can't I get different ringtones for different accounts, with different vibrations?  Currently when mail comes in, I am pecking 4 diferent inboxes to see where I just got mail.  I am telling you, take the Chatteremail user interface and copy it in everyway you can!  I can accept the file size limits and mark for download without a problem.  I just find email in general very limiting compared to what I have had. And I would love for this client to be able to "self Launch". If for any reason, I reset, then I have to manually turn it on.  With Chatter, I could set it to launch when the Treo booted up! I also have a problem with the home screen.  I have an email icon, but its tied to the default email app.  This is now wasted space on my homescreen as it no longer works. 
• Messaging:  Flexmail can handle messaging!  So can Palm's own mail client!  These are both tied in directly to "Mail" I purchased a standalone app to allow me to better manage messaging.  Its nice to look at, and "finger" friendly!  But it doesn't recognize html addeys.  I use Twitter and the links that people are sending are no good.  I can't even copy/paste them into a browser . . .  If someone can recommend a decent messaging app, I am all ears!
• Phone App:  I appreciate that Microsoft's Phone interface is "finger" friendly!  But what I am after is something a little more versatle.  For example, favorites: I can only have nine persons in my quickdial list.  If your not as popular in my book, then you have to go into my "Contacts" list so that probably means I am not going to call you often.  The reason is that from my favorites, I have to go to contacts, and there are a lot of contacts here! Yea, I can use the scrolling feature, or type in part of your name, but that takes two hands, so forget it while I am driving. 
  
• Built in weather app: There is this very cool, very attractive weather app on the today screen.  But its limited in the cities that are available.  The closest city to me is 90 miles away, so that makes it not very accurate for weather.  I have read about hacks, but those hacks have not helped me as this data is being pulled from Accuweather's world site and my city/zip is just not available on this site.  More wasted space on the today screen.

Now that I have the venting out of the way, lets talk about the pluses . . . .

•   GPS:  To have this GPS with me everywhere I go is just handy!  This is a very large plus and I know its becoming more common in phones in general!  I say great!  I have used this as my only GPS and on a recent trip to Nashville, compared it to my Tom Tom One 3rd edition.  I believe the Tom Tom one is a little faster and overall, more friendly, but its an extra device!  I hope one day soon to get them up both side by side to show you the differences.
  
• Sliding Keyboard/Tilting Screen:  What a great design!  I love typing on this phone!  I can whip out a message pretty darn quick with the keyboard and the text recognition feature. This was a big concern with me, leaving the Palm Treo design with the keyboard right on the front of the device.  But I have to say, when I need the keyboard, its almost effortless to access it!  And when I am done, its just as effortless to close it!
  
• Calendar: I thought the Palm Calendar was pretty good . . .  But the TyTN's is much more intuitive and syncs with no effort.  For example, I am at work, with my TyTN hooked up to my computer.  I accept a new meeting request and within seconds, its on my TyTN!  I don't resync or push any buttons.  It automatically adds the calendar to my TyTN!  And it adds location, notes, etc on its own!  Very nice feature that I am enjoying!
• Volume:  This thing is loud!  I don't care if I am listening to a podcast, or talking on it! Nice!  I also like that out of the box I can add MP-3 ringtones and trim them with the included trimming app!  With the Treo, this would have meant adding a 3rd party app, and then using Audacity to trim the song on my computer. 
  

Overall, I am enjoying my new device!  And if I didn't sound like it, be assured that I have no regrets of leaving the Palm OS platform! But I do miss a few of Palm's features!  Email and phone features being the largest ones. But lets not forget that Palm has its own set of shortcomings that I am not covering in this article. I have used WiFi on the TyTN, but not a whole lot. Its one of those features that is not a necessary, but when you use it, you are sure glad you have it!  I also like the scroll wheel on the side.  Depending on the screen you are on, this goes a long way on making this device a one handed device. I also like the camera.  Its a little awkward, but compared to the camera phone I used to have, its a camera that I can actually use a picture or two that I take with it! I like it that I can use a USB cable to hook it to any computer!  No special cables to buy or keep up with!  In fact, I probably have about 5 digital camera USB cables that I can use.  This unit is a very quality unit!  I have said it before, but I like the feel of it in my hands.  Yea, its heavy, but the feel of the buttons and the lines makes this a very well-built device.  So the bottom line: I am enjoying my new TyTN II! 

If you are a long time follower, you know that I use Joomla to manage my content here at Just Duke!  I can't say enough about what a powerful application Joomla is!  Best of all, its open source with a very active, and very helpful community!  Since its open source, I have tried to give just a little bit back to the community by tweaking and building templates for others to use!  I have been testing Joomla 1.5 for a few months now and although I have yet to migrate any of my sites to 1.5, I thought it was time to build a template.  Introducing Stone:

If you would like to see a demo of this, I currently have it up and running here .  And as I do with all my templates, you can download Stone here at Just duke by clicking this link .