ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Tablet & Peanut Butter Day

Today is National Peanut Butter Day. We had peanut butter toast for breakfast and we just had a peanut butter & Triscuit snack.  MMMMMmmmm... Gave Willow a taste because she loves the stuff... Buffy not so much... She prefers ranch dip.

So, with all of the peanut buttery goodness, I must be careful with the new ASUS EeePad Transformer Tablet that we received yesterday. Peanut butter and touchpads do not mix (stick, yes).

This is the first time I've ever had my hands on a tablet and I must confess to a stupid error that I figured out eventually.  I was unable to scroll down a page. I went to my Kindle app and have a list of 85 books but it only displayed 15 (3 rows of 5) at a time. If I touched the screen and dragged, it would start downloading whatever book I had touched.  Also, I could not read the Google terms & conditions when signing up because I couldn't scroll down. This was not discussed in the Quick Start manual.

I finally sussed out that the technique is the opposite to the tracker pad on my MacBook. With the MacBook I drag down, but with the ASUS table I push UP! How simple.  I mention this because someone else might be experiencing a similar problem (I won't tell).

I'm happy with the device. It is not flimsy. Seems a bit more substantial than the Apple iPad I picked up once at the dive shop. I was worried that it might not be upgradable to newer versions of Android. No problem.  I selected settings and there was an option to upgrade the firmware. It was surprisingly quick even with our dodgy and slow wifi.

Today I bought a case from Amazon for only $9.00 to protect it and to help keep it clean.

They also have a silicone skin for the Transformer eeePad for $7.99. It appears that some people buy both.

Another cool accessory for this device is a docking station with keyboard, power, USB port, etc., if you want to use your tablet as a mini-notebook.

We love Amazon. Something that we ordered on Thanksgiving with a delivery date of December 2nd at the latest just arrived (9 weeks later). Amazon gave us a refund last week (just took a couple of days with no questions asked) and the item will be returned to sender.

I'm going to post this and then get to messing about with my eeePad... I love that name. As you might know, the letter "i" is pronounced "ee" in French like "eek, there's a mouse". So I also have an iPad, I guess :) Much less expensive than an eyePad and just as neat. Must go play now...

So it goes...

It's the first Caturday of the new year

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!

While it is a big disappointment to be in St Croix and not the French islands for the holidays, we made do just fine. Go with the flow & so it goes...

What's wrong with STX?  Well, take cheese, for example. I wanted some blue cheese and all I could find was an expensive tub of crumbled cheese that would be swept off the cutting board and into the trash in St Martin... Not even a common Camembert or Brie. The only pastis on offer was Pernod and that's $14 for a 750ml bottle (rather than $5/litre for a no-name brand in SXM)... We won't mention bread :)

But the cats are making me smile this morning. They are playing with one of their favorite toys (right up there with the cardboard boxes we get from Amazon)... the TUBE.

They love this so much even after 18 months, that I had Amazon.com send a tube to my brother for Christmas for his clowder (or clutter or pounce, if you prefer) of cats.

It is a hit with all of his cats but the newest kitten and little dog enjoy playing with it together. Waiting for his video.

Bob has a couple of interesting links on his BoatBits post today that I'd also like to share.

• On Board With Mark Corke points out one of the Republican candidate's voting record regarding the National Weather Service which should be a concern of everyone, especially us sailors.
• This is also an interesting post about one of our favorite outdoor manufacturers : Patagonia Becomes a Benefit Corporation... Do you remember Great Pacific Ironworks?

As you may have read in recent All About Boats posts, I'm considering getting a tablet for testing purposes... not my own enjoyment, of course :) So, I found this article interesting about the One Laptop per Child project.

---

---