Until Friday, when the release date for the iPad (April 3) was finally announced, all of my iPad-related projects were hovering in Fantasyland. It was great. There would be a lunch, great ambitious plans would be made, and the meeting would end with a mutual chuckle and an acknowledgement that really, the project wouldn’t make any great leaps forward until we knew the ship date and had some idea of when we might get our hands on an actual iPad.

Now? Yeah. Things…have changed.

To answer an increasingly popular question: no, I don’t have an iPad. I’m up against a real deadline, too. On the morning of April 4, I leave for a whole week at the Conference On World Affairs. If I have an iPad in my hands, then it’ll be one hell of a great opportunity to test the iPad in a very tricky and critical environment.

I’ve yet to find a computer that works exceptionally well during a trade show or a conference. It’s a bit like selecting a piece of gear for a lunar expedition. Size, weight, power requirements, the parameters of what I need to get done during my time on the surface, and usability in a hostile environment all come into play.

A full notebook can serve any function I could possibly need. But I often leave my room at 8 AM and don’t return until after dinner; that’s a lot of stuff to be toting around all day. The battery only lasts a couple of hours, so I’ll need to bring the power brick and hope that I can find seats near outlets. And in many scenarios — like sitting on a panel — a big laptop isn’t exactly a discreet way to take or access notes.

A netbook? It’s tiny and light and has a four or five-hour battery, so we’re off to a good start. They keyboard is tiny and no fun to work with, though, and even a Hackintoshed one probably won’t run the sort of software I need. As for the iPhone, it lives at the intersection of casual nonchalance and emphatic power, but I certainly can’t write anything with it. And I’ve tried and failed to use it to host the various notes and cheat sheets I often rely on when I speak. It’s just too small.

So as a consumer, you can imagine how keen I am to test out an iPad in this kind of environment. A big screen on a slim device that runs a modern OS and exciting apps, which weighs a pound and a half and is an inch thick, with ten hours of battery life and a wireless keyboard that I can touch-type on? Gimmegimmegimme.

If it works. Which is still an unknown. Again I remind myself and the world that I have more experience with the iPad than almost anybody outside of Apple…which only means “I played with the work-in-progress for a half an hour at the media event in January.”

If I don’t board that plane with an iPad…I would surely be the saddest little boy in all of Puppetland. On one of my first panels of the Conference, I will be distracted by a familiar glow in the crowd. I will lean into my mic, interrupt whoever’s talking, and say “You, in the eleventh row…is that an iPad? Um, can I see it?”

Pathetic, I know. But that’s what’ll happen.

Let’s not even contemplate such a thing. The iPad will go on pre-order on Friday. If thousands of people with no particular mandate from an eager readership will have them on April 3, then so shall I. The worst-case scenario: I simply go to the Apple Store early that morning and look for a bleary-eyed person who looks as though they’re too exhausted to keep a firm grip on their iPad. See, kids? There’s a solution to every problem if you look hard enough, and tell your driver to keep the engine running.

In the meantime, I’m preparing for the iPad. I’ve already bought my first two hardware accessories: the Apple Wireless Keyboard and a Pogo Sketch stylus.

I liked this keyboard the moment it was released. I thought it was v.v.cool. My fellow Americans, I did feel lust in my heart and I wished to own it. But here’s the thing: the main selling point of the Apple Wireless Keyboard is that it’s small enough to travel with. Any computer I’d be traveling with would also, you know, have a keyboard built in.

So I didn’t dare live the dream. Ah, but in January it became something I needed. Nay, I was now practically obligated to buy it because it works with the iPad.

(But for good measure, I bought it with Amazon Associates credits instead of real money.)

I’ve had it set up with my iMac. It really is a lovely keyboard. Photocopy your notebook’s keyboard, scissor out just the bit with the keys, and there you have the Apple Wireless Keyboard. The keyboard deck itself is stupid-thin, but it’s all made out of aluminum so I think I can throw this into my laptop bag (or my Stylish iPad Envelope) with a certain fearless elán. I’m also pleased to find that it’s a handy alternative to my big Logitech diNovo keyboard when I’m podcasting. It frees up space on my desk for the microphone and a recreational beverage.

Sometimes my first instinct about a product misses the point. I think that’s what happened with the Pogo stylus, though I hope the official scorer will credit the company with an assist.

When it first came out, it was absurd. The whole point of the iPhone was that you didn’t need a stylus. Using a Pogo was like buying a 60″ HDTV and then projecting 8 mm movies onto the screen, or something. Its only possible selling point, as I saw it, was that it let you use your iPhone or iPod Touch in cold weather without taking off your gloves. Even there, you’d probably look at the original price tag ($25) and decide that cold fingertips would help to build character.

Things have changed since then. The price is $15 and there’s a new Stylus model that has a pocket clip, but that’s not the big deal. Now, there are a whole bunch of great drawing apps for the iPhone.

I bought the Stylus at an Apple store on Sunday, with no sense of urgency. I had time to kill, so I moved on to a restaurant in the mall and started fiddling with a drawing app while I waited for my burger. It arrived ten or fifteen minutes later. I’m not sure how long it was. I had become engrossed in sketching, and my food got a little cold before I finally dug in.

Apps like Autodesk SketchBook (my favorite drawing app) are fun even when you’re just using your fingers. But it’s a different experience when you have a stylus in your hand. The business end is thinner than a fingertip, so it’s much easier to see what you’re drawing. Plus, I stopped painting with my fingers a long time ago. I think it ended right around the day I came home from school with yellow paint inside my nostrils and my Mom yelled at me. Drawing with a pen in my fingers feels more intuitive and natural.

I do have a simple complaint about the Pogo Stylus: you don’t get a little cap or something to protect the drawing end. C’mon, guys. Even an 89-cent Paper Mate ballpoint comes with a cap.

But I can’t even remember the last time I got so engrossed in a drawing that I lost track of the clock. It was another huge win for the iPhone in general. If there’s a single feature that elevates the iPhone from the rest of the pack, it’s the way that it urges and enables me to maximize the amount of time I spend thinking and doing and creating, each and every day. I’ve got ten minutes while I wait for a burger to arrive, three minutes at the post office while as a clerk explains the concept of a “forever stamp” to the unenlightened, six minutes waiting in the subway…it all adds up. I leave the house with my iPhone in my pocket, and I come home with new photos, new drawings, a few tiny things written, many pages of books read, and a better sense of the news of the day.

I accomplished (okay, “accomplished”) all of that in crumbs of time that otherwise would have gone to waste. I don’t get that sort of effect from other phones…least of all from Android devices. If there’s a signature advantage to iPhone’s apps, it’s that you’ll want to use them.

Android apps tend to stop short of being both productive and engrossing. Most Android apps come with a cost: an overall clunky user interface. How motivated am I to draw a picture of the parking lot outside my table? Not very. How much trouble am I willing to go through to do it? Not very much. With an Android drawing app, I’d sigh and end the activity the second or third time I drew a little bit too low on the screen and accidentally activated its Search menu. If it had been a Nexus One in my pocket on that Sunday, it might have occurred to me to draw something with a sketch app but I probably would have just used it for simple distraction: as a way to avoid thinking.

The iPhone can be just as effective as an Android phone as a catalyst for thought-avoidance, of course. That’s not how it usually works, though.

My iPad prep work continues apace. Right now, I’m trying to get my hands on a case or a cover. I’m also trying to line up as much iPad software as I possibly can. The iPad will be released on a Saturday and that’s significant because the CBS Saturday Early Show goes out on Saturday, y’see. Which means that there’s an excellent chance that on the morning of April 3, I’ll be on TV trying to contain my opinions to a smooth four or five minutes of live television. I’m hoping to have a bunch of apps on “my” iPad that won’t be on any of the others being shown off on TV that same morning.

I should mention that The Early Show’s studio is on the same plaza as the Fifth Avenue Apple Store (its big, signature glass cube is only twenty yards away) and my segments usually go out live at about 7:30 AM. It’ll be a total zoo out there. Every specimen of Our Kind Of People will be on full display, excited about getting their hands on the iPad. Needless to say, I can’t wait. I’ve never been at an Apple Store for a release. Usually I need to be up all night writing so I’ll have plenty of stuff online on That Special Day.

I’m 10% sure that I should wear my tuxedo, as though it’s the Oscars and we’re on the red carpet.

I’m also 10% sure that if my segment is at 7:30 and the store won’t allow people in to get their iPads until 9 and I have a working iPad in my hands, I’d probably better wear shoes that are comfortable for running…

Macworld Expo is now over. I have put myself into Recovery Mode, in which I get to lie perfectly still in my hotel bed without having to stand, run anywhere, speak to anybody, or listen to anybody speaking to me. The past few days have all been wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but after 96 hours of it I’m ready to recant anything negative I might have ever said about staying put and doing nothing.

(I’m trying hard to remember what it might have been. I believe my only complaint about entering a state of total inertia was “I can’t convince anybody to pay me to do it.”)

All week long, two phrases have motivated me to bust out of my hotel room despite my feeling absolutely birched and asking myself “Why am I leaving this bed, again?” If it was the morning, the argument-ending answer was “Because you’re a grownup and it’s your job.” In the evenings, it was “Because after you leave San Francisco and get home, you’ll have limitless opportunities to lie in bed and avoid contact with the Humans. Whereas you only get one or two chances a year to hang out with these friends.”

And so, I spent Saturday evening hanging out with my good pal Dave, whom I’ve known since junior high. And not with my mattress and pillows, which I’d barely been acquainted with since I checked in on Tuesday, but which I desperately wanted to get to know better. They seemed like decent folks with a lot to offer an exhausted journalist.

It was a fine trade: dinner in Chinatown followed by dessert in North Beach, two areas bustling with activity and things to see on a beautiful Saturday night. During the walk back to Dave’s car, we passed by the popular landmark shown above. On this site there once stood a famous bookstore known as “City Lights.” I don’t know when it finally went out of business. Sometime during the Ford Administration, I think. But it’s a fixture on the tourist circuit so the City took control of the property and chose to maintain City Lights’ traditional facade and front windows, and staff it with historical reenactors playing the part of bookstore staff, so that tourists could get a sense of what City Lights must have been like, back in the day.

Yeah, I know. They’re not fooling anybody. But it’s a good show for the out-of-towners.

I kind of enjoy mixing it up with historical reenactors. If you’re ever walking through City Hall Plaza during Boston’s three-day Fourth of July celebration and someone asks “Who is that idiot who keeps shouting ‘Lobsterbacks! Assassins!’ at those folks dressed as a regiment of British soldiers?” the answer is probably “Andy Ihnatko.”

So I stepped up to the “counter” and asked the “clerk” where I’d find books by P.G. Wodehouse.

It wasn’t an off-the-wall question. Sometimes Wodehouse is shelved in Comedy, sometimes in Fiction, and sometimes — most appropriately — his books are found in the Classics department.

The clerk searched the database. Yes, the computer was a historical anachronism for a 1960’s bookstore but I let it pass. Finding nothing in inventory, she called out to a fellow employee.

“Where’s do we keep the Wodehouse?” she asked him.

“We don’t have any.”

“We’re out of stock?”

“No, we just don’t carry him. Paul doesn’t like Wodehouse.”

He’d blown it, of course. That doesn’t happen in real bookstores, does it? The 20th century (19th century, actually) produced no greater or more important novelist than Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. You can argue that point. But do understand that if you’re arguing with anybody whose IQ higher than the square root of itself, then they’re just leading you on. They’re really trying to determine just how deep your intellectual ignorance actually goes, having just realized that this is in fact the only sort of intellectual depth of which you are even capable.

So the idea of any employee of a supposedly literary bookstore not liking Wodehouse is ridiculous. The idea of a bookstore banning Wodehouse instead of celebrating his genius and exploiting his enduring popularity is even less-believable. It’s like when the Confederate colonel at the battle reenactment spurs his rebels onward by shouting “Git ‘er dooooonnne!“

I wasn’t there to make a scene or ruin the illusion for the other out-of-towners. So I merely bade my goodbyes in the fashion customary to the time period during which the actual City Lights Bookstore had been in operation (a foggy “Keep on truckin’!” followed by a quick query as to where one might purchase some cocaine tablets) and took my leave. I bet it was this fellow’s first day.

He was a terrific actor, anyway. For a moment — a moment – I actually believed that this “City Lights” was a real bookstore and that this “Paul” person (presumably Paul Yamazaki, a fictional character described on the “bookstore” site as “Chief Book-Buyer”) actually had chosen to run a bookstore in which the works of P.G. Wodehouse would never be sold.

I know: how silly of me. It’d never happen. It makes much more sense that City Lights isn’t a real bookstore.

I mean, I’m right either way. Either this is indeed a historical reenactment of what the “real” bookstore once looked like…or else City Lights Bookstore cannot in any way whatsoever be seriously thought of as a seller of literature. Tourist destination, sure. But bookstore? No way.

Behold, the Conference Faculty badge for Macworld Expo 2010, featuring a whole mess of speaker portraits, faithfully and articulately executed by Nitrozac of “Joy Of Tech” fame.

My first reaction: “Hey, cool!’

My second reaction: “I wonder if I’m on there…”

My third reaction: “Yes I am. Specifically, ‘Yes, you are a loser for immediately looking to see if you’re on there’.”

My fourth reaction: “It sort of looks like someone decided to record a version of ‘We Are The World’ with Mac personalities.”

My fifth reaction: “I’m not in the first row, but I’m in the second row. I wonder how that might correlate, vis a vis the musicians who did the original ‘We Are The World’?”

I’m perfectly aware that I’m not Bruce Springsteen or Ray Charles. Still, it’s a fair question. Even more so when you realize that there are 21 people on the badge and (according to Wikipedia) 22 soloists on that record:

• Lionel Richie
• Stevie Wonder
• Paul Simon
• Kenny Rogers
• James Ingram
• Tina Turner
• Billy Joel
• Michael Jackson
• Diana Ross
• Dionne Warwick
• Willie Nelson
• Al Jarreau
• Bruce Springsteen
• Kenny Loggins
• Steve Perry
• Daryl Hall
• Huey Lewis
• Cyndi Lauper
• Kim Carnes
• Bob Dylan
• Ray Charles

I think so long as I’m not Kim Carnes or Kenny Loggins, I could walk with my head held high.

The difficulties emerge if you open the field to everybody who sang in the chorus on that track:

• Dan Aykroyd
• Harry Belafonte
• Lindsey Buckingham
• Mario Cipollina
• Johnny Colla
• Sheila E.
• Bob Geldof
• Bill Gibson
• Chris Hayes
• Sean Hopper
• Jackie Jackson
• La Toya Jackson
• Marlon Jackson
• Randy Jackson
• Tito Jackson
• Waylon Jennings
• Bette Midler
• John Oates
• Jeffrey Osborne
• Anita Pointer
• Ruth Pointer
• Smokey Robinson

I’m sure you spotted the problem: yes, holy jumping Moses that’s a whole ****load of Jacksons in there, huh? It’s like a Wheel Of Fortune in which every fourth or fifth slot is “BANKRUPT.” The only smart move is not to even play. Being compared with Michael Jackson is kind of okay. Do let us acknowledge that the man was profoundly talented. But if were said to be “the Mac community’s equivalent of” any of the others, then that’d be the end of my career.

(Not because of any kind of shame. Because I’d become known as “that columnist who killed that guy who compared him to Tito Jackson.” It’s hard to bounce back from that kind of PR.)

I’ll be onstage at several points this week:

By all means, do stop by and give a listen if so inclined.

I’m the sort of well-centered, confident man who has no problems admitting it when he’s wrong. Which is particularly easy for me today, because I’m admitting that I was wrong before when I told myself that I was wrong.

“Why am I leaving so bloody early?” I moaned on Monday, as I stuffed socks and underthings into my bag. “Macworld doesn’t start until Thursday. I have nothing scheduled until Wednesday night. At this very moment, I could be doing anything else.“

And when I’m spending the evening closing my office for the week and packing for a trip, “anything else” is a savory alternative. Waterboarding wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. I know from repeated experience how bad a packing day is. I can only guess at how bad it might be to get strapped to a table and have water poured on my face to simulate drowning.

(My eye is also being drawn to the words “might” and “simulate.”)

But of course, now I’m in a hotel room in San Francisco, watching live coverage of Snow Force Fury 2010 XXX, Featuring SnakeFire 4000 Ultra Doppler Imaging. It looks like New England will wind up with little more than A Nice Picturesque Snowfall (by New England standards). But of course today, all kinds of airports are shut down (mostly, the kinds that send planes into the air) and this would probably have had a negative impact on my goal of traveling 3000 miles in a single afternoon.

Well, I’m here. It’s another visit to the Reality Distortion Field…not Steve Jobs’, of course, because Apple is having nothing to do with Macworld Expo this year. But it’s still going to be a week in which normal rules do not apply. It’s a week to tell little stories that give the world an entirely incorrect impression of my level of fame, to name but one example. As I settled into my window seat and enjoyed my final few minutes of Internet access before a six-hour blackout…

(I was on a JetBlue plane with in-flight WiFi. But I had already drunk four Old Fashioneds in the bar near the gate and had purchased enough whiskey at the duty-free shop to ensure that whatever I did on top of the beverage-service cart during the middle of the flight, I wouldn’t be able to testify as to my recollections later on.)

(Comedy.)

…I made a routine dip into Twitter. I tapped the “@Mentions” button and saw this:

I turned to my right, spotted someone who looked like that, and said hi.

(Nice chappie. I was impressed when he pulled out a graphic novel adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451″ as his in-flight reading. I was reading comics on my iPhone but though I won more Nerd Points, Mitch burned far fewer calories scrolling and zooming than I did.)

No, I’m not famous by any rational definition of the term. But Macworld Expo is a bad week for me to leave an inadequate tip…and I also know that if I were to break into a bank with a loaded gun under the mistaken impression that it was my home, it would definitely be noted.

It’s also a week in which I get to pretend to have a lush and fulfilling social life. I had a fantastic meal with a good friend last night, and that’ll be the score for the next several days. And then there’s the sitcom-like nature of street interactions. Walking through a busy downtown and happening to bump into folks you know only happens in “Seinfeld,” “Frasier,” and “The Streets Of San Francisco (During Macworld Expo).” I bumped into Jeff Carlson and Those Lovely Engsts on my way to dinner and had what I’m sure will be the first of roughly a million chats this week.

Plans for today: a lunch meeting, followed by Idle Strolling with a view towards purchasing comics, and then dinner with another good pal.

Okay, I can’t get the first Twitter plugin working. So I’ve moved on to a different one: Twitter Tools. Let’s see how well this one works.

Oh, and based on a quick reaction to that previous post: as much as I’d love to spread the rumor that I already have an iPad…no, the thing I Probably Can’t Talk About wot I used with which to make that last post wasn’t an iPad.

To make it up to you, here are a couple more distracting photos:

Don’t mind me, folks: I’m just testing two things. First, this Wordpress plugin I’ve just installed, which automatically Tweets links to new posts (I thought I’d set it up properly, but apparently I needed to configure it with a special API for the linky-linky), and secondly…

…

…Mmm, no, I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about what I’m writing and posting this with.

Hey, look! A distracting photo!

I was at my usual comix retail establishment, engaged in one of our usual high-level cultural debates, when the talk inevitably turned to the subject of Burt Reynolds’ late oeuvre. We were exploring the fascinating dichotomy between his Hairpiece movies (which are usually very bad) and his No Hairpiece movies or  (which are usually good or even very good).

We had already dispensed with “Boogie Nights,” agreeing that for the purposes of our discussion, a hairpiece which was age-appropriate in both color and hairline would be regarded as a “No Hairpiece” production.

“He was pretty good in that movie he was in about ten years ago,” someone said. “He’s a retired burglar, and he starts teaching this young crook…damn, I can’t think of the title…”

Instinctively I reached for my iPhone and prepared to launch IMDB. But before I’d thumbed the button to wake the screen, Steve (the store’s proprietor) had fished a copy of the Leonard Maltin Film Guide from behind the counter and began flipping through it:

This book is not unfamiliar to me. I used to keep current with all of the master movie reference books: your Roger Ebert guide and your Halliwell guide and your Psychotronic guide, et al. I bought a fresh copy every time any of these were updated and kept them on the reference shelf near my desk, to handle just this sort of question, or to serve me with anywhere from ten minutes to three hours of nonproductive distraction from whatever it is I was meant to be doing.

(Yes, kids, times were hard before the Internet.)

But bloody hell! It’s been years since I’ve even touched a book like that. I grew up with them, and even I regarded this old Maltin guide with a certain mixture of fascination and disbelief.

I realized that one day, I will need to explain the following things to my (as-yet hypothetical) children about what books were like, back when the things were made from mashed-up tree pulp instead of mashed-up electrons:

1) If a reference book attempted to be comprehensive in any way, and it was essential that the information be presented in any kind of a logical, linear order, then you couldn’t update the book without republishing its entire contents. If it was an annual book — like an almanac — all existing unsold copies had to be scrapped when the new edition was released. They almost immediately became unsalable.

2) Why not simply release a slim addendum? Because the information needed to be presented in a logical, linear order: searching had to be done by hand. Many people would cling to the same dictionary editions they’d had since college, simply because they were so familiar with it that if they needed to look up a word like “preternatural” they could instinctively open it to almost the right page. Even so, lots of page-flipping and scrutinizing was necessary.

3) The cost of producing the book was directly related to how many pages needed to be printed. So if a book with lots and lots of content was being prepared for mass-market sale, steps needed to be taken to control the page count. Simetimes, drastic measures were necessary, like tiny, tiny printing and tissue-thin paper.

4) If a book needed to contain more content, the publisher couldn’t simply make the book’s “footprint” bigger. They had to pack neatly into shipping boxes of a certain size, and when they arrived at the bookstores, they needed to be stocked on shelves of a certain size. So usually, the only solution was to simply add more pages.

All of these factors sometimes led to the sort of item you see in that photo: a practically a solid cube of paper. If that book were any thicker, it’d roll away from you when you dropped it.

I remember a multi-page magazine ad that Microsoft took out some ten years ago when they launched their Microsoft Reader format. A timeline ran across the bottom of the ad, dictating how the future of publishing was definitely going to go, now that they’d crashed this Connecticut-sized meteor into the middle of the dinosaur habitat. Oh, Microsoft wasn’t too terribly confident. According to the timeline, it wasn’t going to be until 2005 (if I recall correctly) that “Most books are purchased and read electronically; physical books are only printed in special ‘gift’ editions for special occasions.”

We all had a good laugh about that. Even today, electronic distribution of books is mostly like an awkward office party that everybody shows up for but which nobody really participates in. “Your $12 book is a bundle of electrons that you can’t read until you spend $200 more for a whole new gadget” goes down about as well with the general population as “You know that group of toner-huffing morons you work with? Well, once or twice a year you’re expected to socialize with them on your own time. Oh, and your boss and all of your boss’ bosses will be there too, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities to commit career-limiting blunders, both real ones and ones that only exist in other people’s imaginations.”

But although the transition to digital publishing is happening slowly, it’s definitely happening. It’s a fascinating thing to watch. And the technology is the dull part. What’s interesting is the shift in perception.

You know how sometimes you turn off a certain cognitive section of your brain and force yourself to see a word not as a piece of language with meaning, but as a sequence of black shapes and white spaces? It’s like you’re seeing that image for the very first time and suddenly “bird” seems like a very odd collection of squiggles.

I’ve been buying all of my in-print books electronically for a couple of years now. Physical books aren’t weird to me yet. But damn, that old copy of the Maltin guide was a freaky and bizarre object. It’s the first time I looked at a book and didn’t see a container for information. I saw dead wood.

(Oh, incidentally: the movie was 1989’s “Breaking In,” co-starring…hmm. No, the writer and director are the only other names you’d recognize.)

Pardon me a moment, folks. Just doing a little bit of tech rehearsal for tomorrow.

I bet you can tell from all of this that I did indeed finally get into San Francisco safely. Late, but safely. My hotel is in the financial district and I’m sorry to say that the only viable option for dinner was this:

Yes, I know. But I didn’t have dinner and I was pretty famished. Chiefly, I just wanted to two-liter Coke for tonight and tomorrow morning:

You know. Just Daddy’s Morning Medicine.

Ah.

Great! The system seems to be working fine. The system in question is the combination of hardware, software, and meatware that I’ll be relying on to liveblog from the Apple Event.

I’ll have my Dell Mini 9 hackintosh in my lap, running MarsEdit:

…And my MiFi in my pocket:

…And my Nikon Coolpix with an EyeFi card in its SD slot:

…Which means that I can be adding stuff to a blog post and every time I think I have another good chunk of information and thoughts, I can click the “Update” button and it’ll be added to what I’ve already got.

And every time I take a photo that seems useful for the narrative, I can just press two buttons on the Nikon and it’ll be sent to my Flickr account. MarsEdit has seamless Flickr integration so it’ll be a snap to have live-ish photos in this bloggy thingy as well.

Yes, this whole post has been a “live fire” test, to see how quickly I can write, take a photo, embed it from Flickr, and keep going. Also, to start training my fingers to press the Play, then Menu buttons on the camera…then Up, then OK to set the “protect” flag on the shot I want. This is what cues the Eye-Fi to upload that specific image to Flickr.

Looks good, so far.

One last test upload, and then I’ll click “Send to Weblog” and see if this all worked:

Push the button, Frank…

Yup, the photo pretty much says it all. At 5:10 this morning, I was stopped on the shoulder somewhere on I-95 between my house and the airport shuttle parking, on the phone with a nice lady at AAA and explaining to her that no, I haven’t left my car but yes, I’m quite certain that I blew a tire and I’m also 90% certain that it was the rear tire on the driver’s side.

(“Gosh, that one’s just a little flatter than the rest,” I recall thinking a few weeks ago. “And it’s not the first time, either. I wonder why that’s happening?”)

The car now has two new tires (the passenger-side one was just as old) and I’ve been rebooked on my third flight to San Francisco. I will get there in plennnnnty of time for the Apple event.

I assure you that my elan — unlike my original rear-left tire — is intact and undamaged. This is because the human spirit — unlike the spare that got me back here to my usual garage — is supposed to be able to run for far more than 50 miles at 50 miles per hour.

The only real change is that the focus of my trip seems to be not on Jobs…but on Job.

THIS, me hearties, is Heritage Dr. Pepper:

Remember Pepsi’s brilliant idea last year? To do a special limited-time run of beverages made with real sugar? Well, they’ve expanded this wonderful program this year and added Dr. Pepper to the “Throwback” lineup.

Real sugar Dr. Pepper.

Yes, there’s a bottler in Texas who still does cane sugar Dr. Pepper. But this stuff here can be purchased by the case, by frenzied, joyful case, when you enter your local supermarket with the idea of just buying some lunchmeat and vegetables and wind up running back outside to get a cart.

I find that the Heritage Dr. Pepper is more of a sippin’ liquor than something you might just slug down. I can easily make one can last a full half an hour; each mouthful should be allowed to linger on the tongue and savored. It’s a dynamite flavor.

Good God. Why doesn’t the Coca-Cola Company ever come up with ideas as good as this one? We get Passover Coke, sure, but I think it’s best to maintain a separation of church and carbonation.

Bastards. There I was, thinking I was getting away with something by avoiding carryon baggage fees. But the airline got me back by making my plane go broken before anybody boarded and then canceling my flight. Whoof. That mulched the money I spent on shuttle fare to the airport, one day’s parking, and one night’s hotel in San Francisco.

There was a very quick “Damn and blast,” then I launched a litany of punchier comments at the airline’s automated reservations line which, in my estimation, was severely underperforming, and then a Very Nice Lady re-booked me on an early flight tomorrow.

Well.

I truly think that anger and frustration are voluntary choices as often as not. How do we choose not to react that way?

First, we acknowledge that there are things that can’t be changed. Then we move on from there and make a frank assessment of the potential for credible self-pity:

1) If the original rumors had been true, then I would have missed the Apple Event. I’ll still get there the day before.

2) I’ve been rebooked on an early flight. I can still meet my friends for dinner on Tuesday, as planned.

3) I’m even in a window seat. I could have wound up crammed into a middle.

4) If this had happened on my return flight, I’d be scrambling for a hotel room, imposing myself on friends, or sleeping in the airport. As-is, I get to sleep in my own bed. And the last thing I did before I left the house for the airport was load up the fridge with Heritage Dr. Pepper.

5) It was the very first time that I’d packed for San Francisco using nothing but carry-on luggage. So when they canceled the flight, I was able to just grab my things and catch the next shuttle back to my car.

6) I get a “do over” on my packing. I realized on the bus that I’d left my camera at home. Plus, I’ve checked the weather in San Francisco and feel very good about leaving my leather winter coat behind and traveling in my sportcoat. It’ll be a bit nippy when I return home, but sitting through the 45 minute flight delay reminded me that a reproduction vintage leather bomber jacket was not designed for breathability in heated spaces.

7) I suppose it’ll be easy for me to file a column tonight before I go to bed.

Etc.

Final tally: oh, stop whining and grow a pair, for God’s sake. You lost a hundred bucks but things could have turned out far, far worse. Look here: you’re watching tonight’s “House” and “Big Bang Theory,” too! We’re admittedly far from a blessing in disguise but there’s no need to deploy the left-paren emoticon.

Plus, I’m sure that my luggage enjoyed the little day trip to the airport.

So far, incidentally, I’m a complete convert to the carry-on style of travel. At least 20% of the hassles of airports were eliminated by virtue of the fact that I had a very light laptop bag on my shoulder and a single wheely case. No paperwork or procedures for checking my bags, no delays…and the Pelican 1510 LOC case makes one hell of a comfortable footstool when you’re stuck in Terminal B for an unknown, but profoundly nonzero, length of time.

Okay. That’s a wrap, folks. Let’s pick it up from here tomorrow. See Gene or Stu for your callsheet.

Oh, good heavens. It looks as though Garry Trudeau is doing a whole week’s worth of strips about the Apple Tablet event this week in San Francisco.

To clarify: one of the most popular strips in the world is doing an entire week’s worth of comic strips about an event in which a rumored (rumored) consumer product might (might) be shown off for the first time.

I think we now need to create a new word for “hype” that only refers to the sort of buzz that an Apple product can generate. At this stage, the only way for the Apple tablet to get more press would be if it got into a car crash after its wife beat it with a golf club.

Incidentally, that thump…thump…thump you’re hearing is the sound of Microsoft’s CEO pounding his head against his desk over and over again. You did a heckofajob with that CES keynote, Ballmie…

My pal Scott Bourne has an interesting post on his Photofocus blog: “Seven Things To Ask Before You Take Your Next Photograph.” It’s all good stuff. The man knows photography.

I’ve been blessed with a kind and generous spirit so I thought I’d help him out a bit by adding ten more to the list. No need to thank me, Scott: it’s just what I do.

8) “You’re not a cop, are you?”

9) “What did the model mean when she said ‘Sure I’m a woman…I mean, technically’?”

10) “Would a micro four-thirds camera have been a more appropriate choice for this assignment? How much will it hurt when Kate Gosselin’s goons shove this Nikon D3 SLR up my ass?”

11) “What’s the highest non-lethal dose of Nyquil I can give this kid to make him settle the hell down?”

12) “Should I attempt to minimize its visibility with makeup, or just erase the model’s vestigial tail in Photoshop later on?”

13) “Quick, is this the kind of bear I’m supposed to run away from, or is it the kind I’m supposed to play dead for?”

14) “What’s the legal difference between animal abuse and mere animal endangerment?”

15) “Is there even a market for photos of Susan Boyle sunbathing topless?”

16) “Um…this isn’t the camera with the Eye-Fi card in it, right? Because if this shot gets downloaded by my Mom and Dad’s digital picture frame in twenty minutes, they’ll never be able to look at their daughter-in-law the same way again. Or anyone in a sports mascot costume.”

17) “Usted no es un policía, ¿Verdad?”