The Alaska Airlines iPhone App is the Shiz-nit!

I have been out of touch and away from my blog for a month or so: lots of travel including a 48hr trip to Ireland, a climbing vacation with the boys, a couple short trips to SoCal, and 5 days in the English countryside on a tour of round-a-bouts and concrete cows…

In the process of racking up a large hump of air-miles I have flown on 11 different airlines and I can say without a doubt that Alaska Airlines has been the carrier that has provided the fasted check-in, slickest and most useful App, and all my flights were somewhat on-time. The Alaska App was the clincher. I checked in on the way to the airport, chose my seat, fast-tracked through security, and the QR bar code on my iPhone was scanned at the gate for my boarding pass. From Taxi to assigned seat in the aircraft it took me a total of 23 minutes! Really, I timed it. Now, I still had to remove my shoes (fvck you very much asshat shoe-bombing terrorists!!) and take my laptop out of my bag, but that is just par for the course. If every flight check-in and trip to the gate was this great, then I wouldn’t complain at all about air travel.

An iPad worthy of Gene Rodenberry

Someday I will have a phaser and a tricorder, but for now my iPad is a real close second. This baby let’s me get stuff done! The third morning that she (my white lovely has to be a girl as she is smooth, helpful, and sexy) came to live with me I hopped on first thing that morning while in my bath robe and with a cup of coffee in my hand.   I got my daily news fix, sent seven e-mails to customers, corrected a drawing on my work machine via remote access, looked to see if my bus was on time, checked that week’s weather forecast, looked at the traffic on the bridge, made a quick Skype call, and for good measure updated a spreadsheet – all before that first cup of coffee was gone.

Below are the apps that I have loaded and that I have found most useful. Before loading anything, I had tried all out on others’ iPads or used the iPhone version. This is not an end all, be all review/recommendation, just a list of what I use and find really helpful. note: I am not a big gamer, but I have a couple that I will resort to on long flights.

Pages: Word processing that I import and export Word files from.
Numbers: I can edit any spread sheet I have in it – home or work.
Currency: Great when I am haggling over prices at the Souks in Morocco, buying a hoodie in Belfast, or for filling out my J-O-B’s crazy over-complicated expense report forms…
Kindle: Knowledge is power. If my Kindle dies, I have a back up and if Stamps-With-Foot is reading the same book that I want to read on my Kindle, then I can access it on the Kindle App and we can both read the same book at the same time.
Word Press: For updating my ego blog during lunch or while flying from here to yonder
Convert Units: How many rods are in a league?
NPR: My day starts with coffee, NPR, and cereal
Photo Studio HD: Nice compact foto editor
Notes Plus: Hand writing recognition that lets me organize all my meeting notes and doodles – I doodle a lot, it helps me organize my ideas into something workable.
Skype: Awesome. I can talk to my wife and see her face from ½ around the globe.
Jump: Remote desktop access. Probably the most powerful App in my arsenal. It helps me get a huge amount of shit done!
One Edit: Batch photo conversion, resizing, and renaming
Ukulele Tabs: For my Bad-ass Koa axe!
Zombie Gunship: Because shooting Zombies and saving civilians from behind a 105 in a C130 is just good clean fun.
Angry Birds: I have no excuse – it is addictive
Hulu+ : I hate to miss an episode of Archer
Netflix: Loved Netflix more two months ago before they screwed with billing, but I will still watch a movie lying in bed
Drop Box: Absolutely the best thing I have found to move and back up files on my iPad.
One Bus Away: Up to date/minute bus information for Seattle
eWallet:  A really handy and secure password safe that I first used in 2002 on my Handspring Palm Pilot.