Google Calendar Quick add via email?

For a wile I have been looking for an easy way to add entries to my google calendar. I’m a pretty heavy user of google calendar and love the existing quick add option from the web site or via SMS. but sadly, SMS is just too slow and buggy on my iPhone these days to make it useful for me to quickly add items to my calendar. What I really want is the ability to add items via an email address.Frankly, I can’t believe Google hasn’t already added this feature. I can add doc’s via email why can’t I create an appointment via email?  Come on google calender.

Until google creates an official option, does anyone know of a work around?

Another great iPhone advert

LEAKED: New iPhone Commercial

iPhone rant #1

While I love the iPhone there are a few elements of the functionality that I really don’t like.

Bugging me the most lately is the fact that you can not end a call (unless you are using a headset) without first clearing through (selecting close or view) EVERY text message received while on the call.

This may not seem that annoying, but with how often I get SMS messages from twitter and other people cobmined with confrence calls it becomes really annoying. Even for the short calls.  I REALLY JUST WANT TO END MY CALL, I’LL DEAL WITH THE TEXT MESSAGES LATER.  What I don’t want to happen is for me to forget about the text messages just so I can end a call.

Please Apple fix this.

What little quarks about the iPhone aggravate you?

New hobby – Sailing

I have wanted to learn how to sail for the past few years. This year I finally decided to make it happen and take a week off of work this summer to attend a sailing school.

After a few weeks of internet research of sailing schools in the Annapolis, MD area I decided to attend JWorld Annapolis. I chose JWorld because of the high frequency the school was recommended in online forums,  how highly people spoke of the school, and because the school’s focus is more on performance and racing rather than just cursing around the bay (If I’m going to do something, I might as well be able to do it well, or at least try to).

My week of “school” was the last week in July and in one word it was AMAZING! The staff was friendly and very knowledgeable and the boats (J80’s) were great. It was a pleasure learning on such a high performance boat. With one other student in my class for the week and the nearly 7 hours a day of sailing I received a great deal of personal attention and training which gave the the confidence to want to spend more time sailing.

Now that I am hooked I look forward to finding a boat I can use frequently and trying to make it up to Annapolis as often as I can for the Thursday night races. I recommend JWorld to anyone looking for a sailing school in Annapolis. And if anyone is looking for a sailing partner let me know, I’m always up for a sail.

Shot from JWorld (via Flickr)

The stimulus and road construction

I’ve been driving in the greater DC metro area a lot more than normal in the past few weeks and have been noticing new road construction projects. Assuming these projects are funded by the recent stimulus plan, I don’t know if they are I would guess they are but I don’t know for sure, I wonder what, if any, thought these “stimulus architects” gave to the externalities of these road construction projects. They certainly don’t speed up traffic and in fact seem to cause more congestion resulting in more wasted time and agerviation and second, the construction tears up ones car resulting in the individual’s car requiring additional maintenance than expected. While yes, that spending may “help” the economy but does it help the individual? Do  the benefits the “stimulus spending” on road construction really outweigh the cost of wasted time and additional car repairs on the individual?

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know I am not a fan of the road construction! Granted, one could make the argument if the repairs were not done than the poor quality of roads would result in wasted time and damage expense. However, in my limited experience thus far, I feel the roads that fall into the later category are not under construction but the roads I never had a problem with are all torn up.

Hopefully it’s better elsewhere, or at the very least someone considered the impact on the individual before starting these projects.

UPS and Amazon are awesome

I love Amazon.com Prime, the service makes ordering and shipping so easy, so easy its dangerous as I end up spending way to much money with it. Case in point, last Friday I was thinking I could really use this widget for my sail over the weekend. A quick hop to amazon.com and within a few minutes I had located the widget, read a few reviews, and selected the right model/ color. As I went to place my one click order I saw the Saturday delivery option for a very small fee and of course I selected the option for instant gratification. Just over half a day later the product was delivered just before I left for the weekend!

Below is the UPS.com tracking, Product shipped and delivered in 11 hours 45 min on a Saturday! Thank you Amazon.com and UPS

Click to enlarge

Ez-Pass

I was crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge This past weekend and as expected the traffic was quite heavy Saturday crossing from west to east. However, what surprised me the most was the lack of people in the EZ-Pass lane.

The EZ-Pass lane was actually moving while all the other toll lanes were backed up for about 2 miles. A quick glance at many of the license plates revealed many of the cars were from DC, MD, VA, and PA. So I’m wondering how many people in the these states do not have EZ-Pass and why. One of the first things I did when I got my car was to get an EZ-Pass, I rarely use it, but it is always faster. Why do people not have EZ-Passes? it baffles me.