Back To The Bakken From Space -- March 23, 2016

The real story regarding those nighttime photographs of the Bakken some years ago: turns out the photographs were "inaccurately derived flare images that are usually highly process, manipulated, and often amplified 100x."

The report from the UND EERC at this link, a pdf.

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The Apple Page

Regular readers are probably aware that I am "Apple Fanboy #3" -- a handle/moniker/hashtag/whatever that was my first "screen name" years ago. My "love" for Apple has not changed over the years.

I often wish Tim Cook would announce that he was taking the company private and that the company would be owned 100% by its employees. I never liked the "business" part of Apple. I always enjoyed Apple for how Steve Jobs must have envisioned it.

Be that as it may, we had another great experience in the local Apple store yesterday afternoon.

Yes, May got her Apple Watch. It is incredible. May is not particularly geeky or techie but she fell in love with it immediately. The buying experience was incredible. We had gone in Saturday afternoon to make our selection but planned to wait until after the Tim Cook presentation Monday. It also gave me time to call the bank and let them know an "unusual" charge would be coming through.

Rarely, very rarely, we pair up with an Apple employee who fails to meet the standards of what we have come to expect. That happened yesterday; the sales woman was out of her league. I assume she was relatively new to the store and she will eventually find her niche: mostly likely in the back room doing inventory where she does not have to smile, or really interact with other human beings.

Fortunately we had already picked out our watch a couple days earlier. May confirmed that was the one she wanted, and the Apple person brought us over to "Holt," who would guide May through the "pairing process" -- the process in which one paired the Apple Watch with the iPhone.

"Holt" -- short for "holster" no doubt -- a nickname he probably picked up in another life, another time -- was outstanding. This has to be one of the most boring jobs in the world, like watching paint dry when watching two mobile devices sync. It took about 5 minutes but would have taken one (1) minute had May not bothered to read the legal disclaimer. My hunch is she was the first person to have ever read the legal disclaimer when it popped up on the iPhone and by the 19th page, she, too, was skimming through it.

I'll look later to see if the legal disclaimer absolves Apple of any liability when using the Apple Watch to blow up an airport.

She paired it up, and the first thing that popped up was an alert reminding us that it was our oldest daughter's birthday this weekend. I am kidding you not. That was the first alert. We have a photograph of that.

On the way home, May left her iPhone in her purse, and made a "Dick Tracy" phone call from her new Apple Watch.

Later, she had an incoming phone call. Reflexively she went to her purse, but I reminded her to "answer" on her watch. She did and she never once got her iPhone out. I loved it. She actually spent more time with me than with her iPhone and she was always connected.

The penetration rate for the iPhone, the Android, the cell phone, whatever, was phenomenal. There was nothing in the past that compared with that penetration rate, except perhaps the Battle of the Bulge, until slowed by General Patton.

The penetration rate for the Apple Watch, the 'droid Watch, the cell watch, whatever, has been much, much slower. I was never surprised by that.

Yesterday afternoon, at the middle school track meet, in which our oldest granddaughter participated in the 2 x 400 relay, and the 300-meter hurdles, I noted that about 50% of the women all held their iPhones. It was so refreshing to see May arrive without her iPhone but 100% connected. She "wrist" called me to find out where I was.

Later in the evening, when we stopped by the granddaughters' house, May showed the Apple Watch to the 9-year-old. She had not held one before. Within nano-seconds, she was clicking, tapping, pressing, surfing, glancing through the Apple Watch with the greatest of ease, doing things we were not aware the watch could do.

The penetration rate for the "Dick Tracy" watch has been slow, as noted above, but the "S" curve will become steeper over the next couple of years. I wouldn't be surprised if the Apple Watch is on the top ten Christmas list this year. Bands will become anniversary gifts, birthday presents, and throwaways. There must be a gazillion of them; they are all interchangeable (they all work with all the watches); and, they range in price from free (come with the watch), to $49 for least expensive add on, to tens of thousands of dollars.

I wanted to get May the Milanese loop but she preferred something else and that's what she got.