Why I Must Have A TabletPC

I can't stand paper. Don't get me wrong, I don't have some kind of burning hatred for it. I don't feel a strong desire to rip every piece I come across into a thousand tiny shreds. I enjoy paper in many cases, usually when printed with interesting strings of sentences and bound together into a handy bundle that I can carry around and look through when it strikes me. Namely, I don't mind books. In fact, I love books.

No, I hate loose pieces of paper. I'm not a very organized person, and I'll be the first to admit that. My desk is cluttered as a general rule, between code reference guides, cups of water and coffee, and especially piles of paper. Most of the time the paper gets put into various stacks, which eventually get stacked together when I try to 'clean up' and ultimately get discarded when I realize they've been sitting around for a year without my ever needing them.

The worst part is that I like to jot things down as they occur to me. In fact, I almost need to or I will completely forget about various ideas/tasks/issues-that-I-absolutely-need-to-address. Whenever possible I utilize some kind of electronic means to capture the information, but I'm discovering that many times I want to have the best of both worlds - I want to store things electronically, but I'd like to be able to draw things out by hand instead of dealing with typing/formatting, which can be ridiculously frustrating at times.

Enter the TabletPC! I've seen demos of the handwriting recognition capability that Vista has, and I've decided that is my answer. I need a TabletPC (a pretty portable one with a great battery) that I can have on my desk to write things down as needed, which I can quickly and easily pull up months later when the need arises. Oh, to have an extra $1,500 or so lying around!

Should have flown on Hooters Air

Apparently there have been several cases recently where Southwest Airlines asked women to adjust their clothing in order to board their airplane for a flight. I don't know how I feel about that one way or the other, but a good quote was

[Southwest] dressed its stewardesses in hot pants and called itself "the love airline" back in the 1970s.

That's classic. I wish I'd lived in the 70s.

Interestingly, there is a quote at the end of the article by Lynda White, the self-declared "First Lady of Manners," which blew me away. She had just finished recommending business-casual attire on a plane, "because you might be seated next to a potential employer or business contact." Okay, I'm with her so far... I think that much makes sense, although I wonder how many people actually end up working for the guy in 14B. This is the one that really got me, though:

If you wear provocative clothing, tattoos, or you smell of alcohol or cigarettes, who's going to believe you?

I'm sorry, what? Who's going to believe you? What the hell does that mean? I suppose if I meet someone who reeks of stale cigarette smoke and they tell me they're a non-smoker, I might be disinclined to believe them. But what does having a tattoo or wearing provocative clothing have to do with believing someone? That's just plain stupid (unless the quote was printed out of context, which I'm sure is possible).

Now, I don't know anything about Ms. White other than what I read in this article, but I've painted a mental picture in my mind, and to me she's the kind of person who will take a rather insignificant detail and use that to base an entire judgment about a person. Kind of like I just did.