Right now, I’m sitting on a Boeing 737 in Newark, waiting to take off. I will be doing this for approximately two more hours, at which time, we will fly to SFO. There was a minor issue with the aircraft, which caused a slight delay. The delay was enough for us to lose our take off slot, but the gate was needed for another aircraft, so we moved to a “holding area” where we will sit and wait. People aren’t exactly pleased at the prospect.

This visit back to see my family has all but come to an end. We fly back to the US in the morning on Continental from Shannon. After that, it’s a few hours in Newark before continuing on to San Francisco. I’m back at work in Sacramento on Friday until Sunday. The good thing is that I’m back on evenings. All in all, it’s been a good trip and I hope to get back over here sometime soon.

I was reading the Galway Advertiser yesterday in Supermac’s and happened across a story on Apple’s financial results. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Lindsey Lohan holdng an iPhone, which isn’t all that interesting. What is interesting is the last few ords of the caption – “It launches here in March”. Has the Advertiser some super secret source? Have they managed to scoop all of the blogs and rumour sites? Is it simply wishful thinking?

I’m in my hotel room in Frankfurt and my allergies are playing up. My nose is streaming, my eyes are irritated and I have a tickly cough. I picked up some strange German allergy medicine and I’ve taken some, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m still a little baffled about the cause. Maybe it’s all the German efficiency.

On Tuesday morning, we set off on a journey back to Ireland for a couple of weeks. We will be doing something that I swore I would never do again – flying out of SFO. Honestly, it’s better than the alternative (at least for non revenue travel) of going through Houston Intercontinental or trying to figure out multi airline connections through JFK. This time, we are at least partially armed with some good contacts.

I have no idea what awaits me in SFO or Newark, at least as far as wi-fi goes. I’ll be rocking the new iPhone and my trusty PSP, so I should be entertained at any rate.

While there, we are going to take a small side trip to Frankfurt, flying into one of the airports owned by the parent company of my employer – Frankfurt Hahn. We will be staying beside their other airport in the area and headquarters – Frankfurt am Main. I might end up wandering into the airport to check it all out. One thing’s for sure, there will be at least a couple of bars of the Frankfurt Airport City anthem sung, if only for ironic cheesy purposes.

For the last while, there have been three devices around the $400 mark that have caught my attention. These are the EeePC, the PS3 and the iPhone. Honestly, I could justify none of them at that price. The important thing to note is “at that price”, which is why I jumped at the chance to pick up an iPhone, albeit the discontinued 4GB model, at $200. The phone in question is ex Apple, used only for training purposes. I have to say, I love this phone. It truly is the device I was imagining on those days spent in traffic – something to use to check traffic reports, something to play music, a decent phone.

This last part is important. I have had and used so called Smart Phones in the past, of the BlackBerry and Treo (Palm powered please, none of this Windows nonsense) variety. I have also seen the degree of wrestling one has to do with a Windows Mobile device to get it to do even the simplest of things. The Treo is a great organizer, but the phone was absolute crap. I have heard from others with more recent versions that it hasn’t improved much. RIM make some very capable BlackBerry devices and I would recommend them to anyone needing something to be integrated into an enterprise setting, especially if it’s tied to that awful beast known as Exchange. I was tempted at one stage to pick up a BlackBerry Pearl, but that was before this little beauty was released. BlackBerry devices almost get it right – the iPhone gets it spot on.

The other thing that works surprisingly well is the browser. I typed almost all of the above using the iPhone browser. The only reason I’m not still using it is that I had typed too much to fit in the window, navigated away from the page and couldn’t figure out how to scroll down. I may learn that there is a way in time or I may not. It is still a much more capable browser than anything I’ve seen before on a mobile device.

I can’t remember if I had another point to make. If I did, I have forgotten it. Basically, I love my iPhone and am very glad I got it.

A new year has dawned and all that fun stuff. I have decided that this year is going to be a sort of clear-out for me. I have been a hoarder of all sorts for years, but I’m going to try and change that in 2008. One of the ways I’ll try to do that is to clear my brain out here.