Wah Wah

So here I sit listening to the symphony of sump pumps, dripping, and flowing water in our slowly filling basement. As predicted,  the spring showers are reeking havoc on our cellar's delicately balanced ecosystem. The torrential downpours that came with today's thunderstorms caused our street to become a river, our yard a marsh, and our lower concrete enclosed floor a swimming pool or lake. The pattern of water inlets has changed slightly but the results are the same.

I will be up most of the night playing the sentinel and guardian of our domain. I have been manually assisting the sink based pump in its tiring and, seemingly endless, battle against the raging waters forced back from the storm sewers for hours now.

The other sump is doing a fine job of moving the water that is quietly seeping through the myriad of cracks and holes in the floor back to the street every few seconds. Sadly, it gets just enough to turn it on and fill its vertical pipe before it turns off again - barely expelling a gallon at a time.

Reviewing this weather pattern leads me to believe that it will be hours before the storm drains can move enough water away from our area to pause it from intruding into our sanctum. The next couple of days call for similar weather patterns which means this will be a long week.

If the forecast is correct we could see a welcome break this weekend with cooler weather and some drying sunshine. I am certain it will not last though as we have weeks of rain ahead due to this late Spring weather pattern. With any luck though the river will be able to handle the influx of precipitation and the sun will do its best to give us a reprieve from this bad climactic turn of events.

My Time With A Samsung Galaxy Tab

I have a Motorola Droid phone and have been loving it for over a year so I am very familiar with the Android OS. When I received the Samsung Galaxy Tab for testing I was hoping for something amazing but I see why it is not selling well. Here is my summary of my observations and opinions:

• SIZE: The tablet is a good size as the seven inch screen gives you enough real estate for browsing and reading without being too large and cumbersome. It is a bit on the heavy side though for carrying around for long periods of time and it is too big for using one handed unless it is resting on a table or in your lap. For reading books, email and news or playing games the screen size was very nice.
• SPEED: The tablet is faster than by Droid so this was a nice speed boost when surfing or running applications. The extra processor power and memory helped give applications and games (Angry Birds) a much smoother feel. Sadly the timing is bad on this model as there are dual core processor Android phones and tablets that blow it away. Overall though it was fast enough to do everything I wanted and it multitasks very well.
• SYNCING: Really? I tried to connect the Tab to my Windows 7 computer expecting the standard plug and play experience but was instead forced to download and install a communication program for Samsung devices. Really? Even after installing it I could not get files copied off. I could see them just fine and navigate but it would hang when trying to copy them down. Admittedly these were large WAV files but it shouldn't have mattered. I had to disconnect it and remount multiple times because it would not take the Cancel I kept giving it. There is no reason for this. Plug and Play for SD cards is standard.
• BATTERY: The Tab held a charge fairly well. I could sit through two hour meetings doing a recording, check emails, surf the web and play games for over 8 hours without the need to recharge. For low activity periods I could go 3 to 4 days without the need to charge. Charging is quick when connected to A/C but is negligent when connected via USB to a PC.
• APPS: Running apps from the Android Market on the Tab was a decent experience. The increased speed and screen size helped to make the applications much more responsive and easier to see. Some apps were not written or updated to handle the large screen size and resolution though and would just center on the screen. Since I am used to my Droid screen this was not a horrible experience but hopefully developers will get around to improving their apps for all sizes of devices.

Final Thoughts: 

I think the Samsung Galaxy Tab makes a great toy as it is only a larger phone but without the phone calling capabilities. It does have a phone number that is used during activation of the device and can be used for setting up SMS but not for making phone calls. I am sure there are hacks out there for it or will be soon but natively it is a limited communication device. For that reason I could never see owning one as I need a phone, even though that is the thing I use the least on my Droid, I still need the capability. Since the Tab and other tablets are being pawned by cell companies they should include them as phones. I can't see holding it up to my ear regularly but I could definitely see using it as a conference call/speaker phone which is what I generally do anyway. 

I will be trying out the Motorola XOOM next. Hopefully the Honeycomb version of the Android OS will win me over but I do not see the need for having a second device with 95% capability overlap.