Jon Greaves: Service Science, Gadgets and BBQ (not necessarily in that order...)

I’ve spent the last month on the road between sun offices in Santa Clara, Menlo Park and Broomfield. I have managed to spend four days in the ashburn office between flights and customer visits. I have my gadget selection down to what I now think is optimal. I travel with my Treo650 (finally stable now I have downgraded my sim card to 32k from the 64k it’s shipped with). Bluetooth GPS and headset and the best laptop I have ever owned which is the Sony Viao Tr2. The sony is a tiny laptop but packed with everything I need. I imported mine from Japan via dynamism. I’m running a number of OS’s on the box via vmware. Solaris10 works like a charm, so does linux (I’ve been a gentoo user from day one jumping over from slack), or even both at the same time. Best of all the laptop will run for 6-8hrs of real use on a single charge. One thing I have noticed that’s disturbing is I’m beginning to plan my trips not by where I can grab an internet signal, which was me just a year ago (I just use the treo as a wireless modem for a quick net fix) but where I can grab power to charge each of the gadgets up. I know the tricks to find the power tucked away behind the departure board at gate b32 in Denver, the outlet sitting behind the gate boarding pass checker at most of the san fran gates. I’ve got to get my power fix to charge the laptop before the flight so I can watch a movie, catch up on email or complete that document I’ve been working on. I am not alone, I often bump into people who now travel with a four way extension cord so they can get more devices into the wall to suck airport juice, or to share the free energy with other needy travelers. I can’t imagine this will go on for much longer before airports getting wise and cracking down on pulling juice from the wall. Got to hope that one of the emerging battery technologies will save the day and let me stay unplugged while on the road.