A little bump in the road of life w/ iPad

Well now, wasn’t this a little surprise? Today, after 4 days of living with the iPad and extensive use, I experience my first crash. Sort of. The event had me slightly freaked out but I knew what I was getting into so I began to calm down and assess the situation.

So it went like this:
I was using the popular app, Brushes, to entertain my daughter for a few minutes. When I was about to leave the house, I asked her for the iPad and after she handed it off to me, I closed the app and pressed the sleep/lock button. Just as I started to walk out the door, I was tempted to reference one of my task lists so I went to wake up the device by pressing the sleep/lock button again, and… nothing. It wouldn’t wake up. At all.

I quickly panicked and immediately started to alter my plans to include a visit to the local Apple store for repair/replacement. Then I started to think rationally. I grabbed the USB cable and the wall charger, plugged it in and expected to see the unit trip itself back to charging. Nope. Now I worried. I continued to deliver digital CPR (pressing the sleep/lock button) but nothing still. I was preparing to deal with the loss of my new beloved tool. In a last ditch effort, I held both buttons down then inserted the USB cable and after a few seconds (about 30), it booted up.

Sigh of relief. I had seen this before with my iPhones. It was seldom, but it had happened at least once to each of them (I have owned each model so it wasn’t device specific). Something is definitely in the OS causing these random shut downs and scary boot-ups. Perhaps a memory leak somewhere? Rogue lines of code acting out a Jason Bourne script? Either way, the iPad is alive and kicking. Apple will inevitably hear about this from the user community or in a more likely scenario, they are already aware and quietly addressing.

UPS and the Never Left the Dock Package

I am completely obsessed with tracking my iPad shipment. Not only am I obsessed, I am also finding out that I am a moron, well, more of a psycho. I know the information hasn’t changed on the tracking website for UPS, but I still feverishly check it every hour. The definition for psychosis is doing things the same and expecting the outcome to be different. I even went as far to download the UPS iPhone app… so now I can get my hopes and dreams smashed quicker and anywhere I get a 3G signal!

What seems to be apparent is that Apple must have paid off UPS so that they wouldn’t post up-to-the-minute whereabouts of my iPad! WTF?! LOL There’s no need for that! Actually there is. I have many a friend at the local distribution centers where truck for various logistics companies. I would be able to acquire my package with some bribery. The few dollars extra would totally be worth it too!

With the announcements of all the iPad apps getting approved is making the last 24 hours all the more difficult. I have even set aside $80 for an iTunes App Store gift card because I know the first thing I will want to do is pickup some of the most important apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Among others, most likely a Twitter client or two (TweetDeck is looking amazing!), a task management app (maybe Things, but it’s too complicated for me), and maybe a game or two. What are you planning to buy/download if you haven’t already?