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title: Palm on the Go
date: 2024-10-19
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Zire in the Wild
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I haven't has as many posts this week because I was traveling up to
San Francisco for my companies bi-annual onsite. I've been
traveling up there since I started fully-remote in 2015, and have
probably done the trip over two dozen times by now. Usual route is
car to airport, wait 2hrs, 1hr flight, land then taxi into the
downtown SF.

This time was different as I now had a fully powered up Zire with
actual software and could use it out in the wild.

So what did I do with it? Well not a whole lot to be honest. I had
hotsyncd it before I left for the airport, so my calendar was
up-to-date and I had some games to play. After going through
security (which I feel like the TSA did a slight pause scanning my
bag maybe due to the Zire), I sat down at the gate and pulled it
out.

I reviewed my schedule for the day, which included onsite things
and todos, checking off a few that I had completed and adding 
one to write this post later.

After that I played some Dopewars, which was fun for a few minutes,
then moved to Space Trader for some entertainment.

Dope Wars

Space Trader

Space Trader was also good, but after about 15 minutes and seeing m
flight was delayed an hour, I put the Zire away, and played Balatro
for the rest of the time on my iPhone. I'm not proud of going back
to modern technology, but Balatro is rather addicting, and it did
make the additional hour melt away.

I did accomplish what I wanted with the Zire, and the fact it
didn't hold my attention as raptly as a modern phone did - just
use and put away - is a bonus.

Up in the Air
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After boarding and getting past 10k feet, I decided to get some
debugging information for the palm-calendar-sync2 tool from an
issue I was having. The planes wifi was down, but thankfully I
had the github issue page still open and was able to debug 
locally with GDB.

This was another benefit of the Zire over modern technology.
While everyone else was overly reliant on what their
phones/tablets/laptops could do without a wifi connection, I could
just do things locally and didn't feel any loss of functionality.

My recently setup Linux Laptop also performed well, and it's
smaller size fit well on my lap and the tray table. I much
preferred using it to my 15' work Macbook Pro on the plane.

My Palm Desktop

In the Office
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After landing and getting to the office, I took out the Zire and
reviewed my schedule again. This did expose a downside of having a
fully offline calendar, as the onsite schedule had changed slightly
and my Zire was therefore out-of-date, requiring another hotsync.

Our office is on a higher floor in downtown SF and has some really
great views, which contrasted well with my 23 year old device.

Because I allowed calendar notes to sync I had room information as
well and was able to use the Zire to know what rooms to go
throughout the rest of the day without having to fully rely on my
iPhones calendar.

While using the Zire at first was novel, it did start to become
more of a chore as I couldn't really use it during meetings to take
notes due to the slowness of inputting text with Graffiti compared
to a keyboard. It was also yet another device to carry with me and
keep track of.

While I love the idea of having single-use devices for specific
purposes, in a work setting it doesn't execute as well since
coworkers are relying on you to get things done and not mess around
with a hobby device. So for the rest of the onsite I mainly used
the Zire to do schedule reviews and add low-key todos as to not let
it affect my professional responsibilities.

I had expected some interest in it, and it made for good non-work
conversations with my teammates I see only twice a year. The
reactions were mostly of amusement, but some people had stories
about their old Palm devices and it was fun to discuss them with
other people in person.

Can a Zire Work?
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At the end of the onsite I had accomplished my original goal of
seeing how well the Zire could function "in the office". While
unfortunately in a modern sense it isn't viable due to all the
expectations in a modern technology workplace, it was a lot of fun
and did show that it still can handle the most basic of work
functions like scheduling and short lists.

The social aspect was probably the biggest benefit, as it provided
a quick outlet to connect with people in a setting that can get
awkward with small talk due to our remote nature.

I probably won't use the Zire for much else work related except as
an offline version of my calendar going forward, but do plan to
continue to use it in a personal capacity more.

Links
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