I recently acquired a restored 1969 Ford Mustang convertible in an eBay auction, and now I'm trying to decide which method I should use to get it across the country, from Pennsylvania (where the person I am buying it from lives) to Oregon (where I live).

I have some flexible time right now before and after the Tech-Ed conference, so one option is to fly there and drive it back. It turns out I have family very close to where the car is (within about 30 miles), so I could visit with them while there, as well. The other option is to have it put on/in an auto-moving trailer and shipped to me, no travel to Pennsylvania required. A third option is to fly there, drive it around a bit and visit with family, and then leave the car with the transport trucking company and fly home.

There's a certain appeal to driving this car cross-country and seeing the countryside this time of year (as well as a certain amount of anticipated fear, since although it's a solid and mechanically sound car, it is a 1969 vehicle). I've considered asking a couple people if they'd like to join me on a road trip, since that would make it even more fun. But, that's about a week of flying and driving to make it realistic.

The car's a nice one. It's a muscle car and built to perform like one. Not a show car, but more like a parade-quality one (meaning it gets driven on an actual, real roadway now and then). Leaving a classic convertible exposed to the elements (and seasonal storms) on a trailer for probably three weeks as it gets hauled all over the country doesn't exactly appeal to me, so I'd want to ship it in an enclosed rig, which means bigger bucks. Flying there and driving the car back means lower cost, but it also means putting almost 3,000 miles on the vehicle and possibly dealing with older car issues.

So - Hmmm... Thoughts? :)

The Import Genius blog has a new article describing their examination of shipping manifests for Apple Computer, and they have found an unusual and very large set of shipments over the past couple of months that they suggest is imports of the heavily-rumored next version of the iPhone. I geek out over this stuff, simply because I really like my iPhone and I'm looking forward to the next version and the capabilities we all assume it will have.

According to the Import Genius people,

Since mid-March, Apple Inc. and its logistics partners have imported 188 ocean containers of a product type never before declared on its shipping manifests.

With iPhones currently out of stock at many Apple stores, including its flagship outlets in New York City, rumors abound that the company is winnowing stocks in preparation for a new 3G version of the phone.

Well, we shall see. And hope. Lots more details and evidence are available in the ImportGenius.com blog entry.

Other interesting iPhone tid-bits:

• Fortune Apple 2.0 - What to expect from Steve Jobs on June 9th
• Reuters - AT&T CFO: No pricing yet for next iPhone (but he expects it in the next few months, he says) 
• AppleInsider - Latest iPhone 2.0 beta adds geo-tagging to Camera photos
• ChannelNews Australia - OZ 3G iPhone to be fastest in the world (like as in 42mbs - wow!)
• Also, at&t's high-speed 3G network roll-out should be complete in June - Good timing
  

Susan Bradley is often referred to by her compadres as the "SBS Diva," and for good reason. Richard and I had the opportunity to talk about Small Business Server with her recently for an episode of RunAs Radio (our weekly IT podcast talk show). We talked about what SBS is, where it cames from, and also about SBS 2008. It always surprises me how afordable and complete SBS is.

If you run or operate (or do IT for) a small to medium sized business, I think checking out SBS via this interview will be 30 minutes well-spent.

Show #57: Susan Bradley Fills Us In On Small Business Server

Get ready to get in line. Gizmodo tells us June 9th is the date for the 3G iPhone.

Looks like someone might be in luck for my old iPhone eh? :)

I've spent the past couple days, off and on, editing a manuscript on my Mac using the Pages application that is part of iWork '08. I've been editing a Word .doc file, which pages can open and deal with. Sort of. In the end, the way Pages handles Word docs... FAIL.

Formatting issues have resulted in a badly-hacked mess of a document that probably barely passes for acceptable when I return it with edits. I feel pretty terrible for the recipient.

So, frustratingly it's time to buy a copy of Mac Office '08. I was afraid it would come to this, and I guess I'm not really surprised at all. It was wroth a try, and I get Keynote so that's cool (as long as I don't have to use it for PowerPoint files that is).

Meanwhile, time to go up in the office and grab that Windows laptop with Office 2007 and get back to work...

I'm going to have to try this one next week when I fly...

Apparently Gerald Buckley was able to successfully scan his boarding pass bar code, which was displayed on his iPhone screen as a PDF image. I have to assume the scanner was most likely an image-scanning type since a laser scanner like you see in many places probably wouldn't "see" the barcode. Although, I have noticed in bright sunlight that the iPhone screen almost looks like the text is printed on the surface right under the glass, almost like it could have a shadow. But regardless, it's pretty cool.

Buckley describes his experience on his blog.