Rich Mintz  

You may recall that I had an unfortunate bicycle incident a few months back necessitating the replacement of my computer. Most everything magically reappeared from the cloud, but there were a few things I had to drag over to the new computer from backup, and I’ve been putting it off and putting it off.

In a wireless world, data moves magically through the aether, which is all well and good except when the data in question is 30 gigabytes. “Estimated time left: 11 hours” is not a cheerful message to receive. So I was dreading the task of restoring my iTunes music collection from backup.

But with taxes due soon, and my Quicken file one of the things still to restore, I took on the task today.

The music collection copied in about half an hour, once I hooked up the backup and the destination volume to the same Ethernet network. But the Quicken restore was trickier.

I had a backup file, but Quicken 2007 doesn’t run on Lion; there’s something else called Quicken Essentials, but that won’t read the backup file. So, faced with a complicated process involving moving my backup file to an old computer just so I could convert it to another format, I bought Quicken Essentials a few months ago and then put all this off.

Well, what do you know — 2 weeks after that, Intuit announced that it was upgrading 2007 to run under Lion after all. So today I downloaded a $15 patch…only to find that I couldn’t figure out how to get the patched 2007 to read my data file. I thought all was lost… But then I found a different version of the data on my backup drive, 2007 opened it on the old computer, I moved it to the new computer, and it opened. Success!

I also sorted out some inconsistencies in photo syncing among all my various MacThis and iThat devices.

All this nonsense took the better part of five hours (I have no idea where the time went).

With Gogo inflight wireless, Delta Air Lines has done something remarkable: made a miraculous technology (Internet service at 29,000 feet) easy and fun to use without charging an arm and a leg.

The service works well, provides more than adequate speed, and it feels very fairly priced. Different plans seem to be available on different flights, but $1.95 for 15 minutes, $4.95 for an entire short flight, or $12.95 for 24 hours all seem reasonable. Once you have an account, signing in is simple and your payment info has already been saved for you (no taking off your seat belt and fumbling for a credit card). You can even hop from one device to another during your flight.

I’ve done a bit of riding on my Strida now, and my conclusion is that I’m a bit too tall for it — but it’s still a good travel bike, even for someone my size. (That size, for the record, is 6 foot 2 inches, with a 34-inch trouser inseam.) The next time I take a trip somewhere of more than one or two days, I’m going to pack it in a golf bag and check it as luggage — it would have been nice to have in LA when I was there at the end of February.

The size problem, basically, results from the fact that the frame is too vertical — there’s not quite enough front-to-back tube length to accommodate my long legs. I’ve slid the seat back on its rails as far as it goes, and also lowered the seat a couple inches, and now my knees just clear the handlebars on the upstroke. However, this is only sustainable if my backside is hanging off the back of the seat platform and I’m pulling back on the handlebars to steady myself. I showed it to the experts at Metro Bicycles, and they told me that if I put on a seat with longer rails, given my weight, I’d probably torque the bike apart.

So it’s not comfortable for long distances, but it is rideable. I can do the 2 1/2 miles to and from work on it, and it’ll be nice for trips.

I wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to do it, but after I found out that Alex Stanton was preordering one, and then saw the reviews, I decided last night to see if I could get my hands on a new iPad 3 on the release date.

It wasn’t that hard. I had to go to 3 Apple Stores to find AT&T stock, but Grand Central had plenty, so I was up and running last night.

First impressions, keeping in mind that I skipped the iPad 2, and this was an upgrade from the original iPad:

The process of transferring content from the old iPad’s backup to the new iPad is pretty close to seamless. I had to re-select the apps I wanted to transfer in iTunes, and reorder my home screens, and I had to reenter application passwords and reestablish Google 2-step authentication and redownload some Kindle books, but aside from that, everything pretty much moved itself over automagically.

The improved display quality is spectacular. I couldn’t really tell the difference in the store, but in real use, e.g., while typing this review, the difference is obvious and very significant. Text is sharp and the edges of letters are brightly defined, and as a result eyestrain is reduced and the whole usage experience is vastly improved. As someone in his mid-40s who has trouble with tiny text, I can really feel the improvement.

The iPad 3 is actually a tiny bit heavier than the iPad 2, while much lighter than the iPad 1. I always felt the iPad 3 was a tad too flimsy, so I’m happy with this size.

The 4G LTE service provided by AT&T, here where I’m currently sitting (in lower Manhattan, in a cafe) is faster than the wireless signal I normally glom onto at this location.

Finally — the magical magnetic cover, that Apple sells, which folds over into a support stand — well, I get it, but I won’t say I love it. It’s too flimsy to be genuinely protective, awkward to leave on while you’re using the iPad in your hand (fortunately it pops right off), and the support it provides in typing or display configurations isn’t really that great. But it’s always there when you want it, which is something.

So as I noted a moment ago, I’m sitting in a cafe on the border between TriBeCa and Battery Park City, two neighborhoods that in contemporary NYC tend to attract young people with (comparatively speaking) more money than they know what to do with, and some sense of direction in life (hence the money). And I’m at the big farm table looking at everyone else at the big farm table, all of whom are a decade or so younger than I am, and it occurs to me that everyone else at this table looks incredibly awkward.

There’s a young married couple, him in a dress shirt and glasses reading his New Yorker and her in her velvety sweatsuit reading the WSJ — and they look so pinched and uncertain, like they’re here because they had to get out of their house but they aren’t sure why. To their left is a slightly younger guy reading his own copy of the WSJ while he shops for long underwear on his iPad, and he too looks like he’s here because it’s Saturday morning and where else is he going to go? And the young dad (ridiculously young, 20 years younger than me), looking totally awkward as he tries to hold a squirming three-year-old.

I recognize the way these people look like they feel. I felt that way all through my twenties and partway through my thirties, constantly wondering Is this where I’m supposed to be today? and Am I doing this right? and Is this what I want? and Can people tell I feel this way? (yes) and, in my more meta moments, This feels like happiness, but is it really, and how will I know?

At some point, though, the frenzy tamped itself down, or more accurately I would say I stopped paying attention to it except in my most anxious moments. And then, at a moment in my mid-forties I can just about exactly pinpoint, it just disappeared. And now, aside from quick little flashes that I can almost ignore, I never feel it at all.

It’s not only about age, although partly it is. Some of it is about reaching a point where you make peace with the choices you made (and failed to make), accept that you can’t do everything (but can do a lot of things, and have already done some), and start to like the person you’ve evolved into being. I recognize that I’ve had lots of advantages, and used some of them. I also know I’ve squandered others, and that’s fine. I’ve blown opportunities because I was too nervous to take them on, wasted great things that happened to me with no purpose and no warning, hurt people and been hurt back, lost money due to my own stupid choices, but on the whole things turned out okay.

Half of me wishes I could say to these people across from me, hey, relax, this thing you’re terrified you’re doing wrong is your life, so you might as well just live it. But the other half goes, hey, that’s how people figure it out, they suffer through, so let them suffer.

Meanwhile, three more people have walked into this cafe with their own subscription copies of the WSJ. What’s up with that?

I rode the Strida this morning to Kaffe 1668 on Greenwich Street, and I have to confess that I looked ridiculous, with my body leaned as far back as possible and my feet turned out like a pigeon’s in a vain attempt to keep my knees from knocking the handlebars. I need to move the seat back another centimeter (if it’ll go), and slide it either down or up another centimeter (the geometry is not intuitive, since the desire to straighten my legs by a centimeter does battle with the desire to lower the highest knee cycle point by a centimeter). Or, as I suggested on Twitter, maybe I should just chop off my feet.

In any case, 1668 (my neighborhood’s faux-Swedish-country coffeehouse) is full of tedious wealthy people in their 20s and I’m now full of espresso, so the trip wasn’t a total loss.

It’s Friday evening (well, late afternoon, really, but it’s already getting dark), so even though I’m still in the office I don’t feel too guilty dashing off a few overdue lines here.

I bought another bike, as I noted on Twitter — a Strida LT as you see above. I’d been coveting one of these, and I got a deal. I mostly wanted it because it’s the smallest bike that it’s practical for a 6-foot-2, 240-pound person to ride, and because it folds up into a size that (theoretically) fits in a golf bag and can be airline-checked. At least in theory, that will make it possible for me to take a bike with me when I go on a multi-day trip to a place where I’d like to have one but may not be able to put my hands on one locally.

It’s belt-driven (so no grease or mess), and it rides very nicely for a one-speed, although I’m almost too big for it — in order to ride it without knocking my knees against the handlebars, I have to lower the seat a bit more than I would prefer and slide the seat itself all the way back on its track to the very last millimeter. But it’s doable, certainly for short distances or occasional use, so it amounts to another option.

For various reasons, I brought the Gary Fisher hybrid (my “original” bike) out of storage this week, pumped up the tires, and rode it for two days. And after several months in which the heaviest bike I rode was the large-but-light Public, and I spent more than half my riding time on BMX wheels, getting back on the Gary Fisher (which, remember, was my main bike until less than a year ago) felt like getting behind the wheel of a Ford Explorer after a year of driving a Civic.

It’s heavy (which is good and bad — heavy means sturdy), the frame is really stiff in potholes (which means, hold on tight or you’ll bounce yourself off the handlebars), and so forth. This means that when you load up the rack, it really drags — you’ll ride steadily, but maybe not so fast. I can imagine situations where I’d want to have that kind of ride — if I’m pulling a trailer full of furniture, for instance, or crossing Donner Pass. And I like it in wet weather. But not for everyday riding.

In other bike news, I still hate the Presta valves on my Public, which require special handling (yeah, I carry the adapter on my keychain but it’s still a pain in the ass).