Dear Friends,

Our sympathies and best wishes go out to all of those impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Vermont was pretty much spared the brunt of the storm, even though we had a lot of jitters from our experience last year with Irene. But the devastation on the East coast — in NYC and New Jersey — is simply amazing and horrifying.

More frequent and more severe storms seem to be the trend, and mother nature has a way of re-working the earth. We are still recovering from Irene in Vermont over one year later, so I know that there is a long row to hoe for our friends on the coast.

We received our first iPad mini demos and we have some models for sale in our stores, starting today! I spent a few hours today working on the location of the magnet for the sleep function so that we can incorporate it into our new iPad mini cases.

Of course, it is in a different location than previous iPad models, and once I found it, I had to figure out how to determine the polarity of the magnet. Kerry came up with a thread to suspend the magnet, and since magnets always align North/South, I just needed to know which way the magnet was facing. We should have our leather and poly leather cases for the iPad mini in time for the holidays!

My very first impressions of the iPad mini (only hours old) are that this is going to be one spectacular product. I have begun to use my full size iPad for reading and I think reading on the iPad mini is going to be a better experience because of the size — it can be held in one hand and just seems like a paperback book. We will post more first impressions later today on our blog.

I had my friend (and former employee) Troy Kingsbury come to WDEV as our special guest for Small Dog Speaks this week. Troy owns the local convenience store in the Valley, the Village Grocery (or as it’s called around here, the “VG” or “Troy’s”). Troy was the one who suggested a charitable giving program that allows us to accept donations on our website that we then match. He hasn’t stopped giving, either — in fact, his gasoline pumps are named Giving Gas because he donates 1 cent per gallon to charity. He also actively collects tires in partnership with our Lt. Governor, Phil Scott, to be sold in fundraising efforts. The money raised goes toward providing heating assistance to the needy in our state.

Troy is also a stock car driver at nearby Thunder Road and launched a program called Race to Read. In this program, he takes his race car to local schools with the challenge that if the kids read 15 books, they can sign the hood of his car. He has over 400 signatures so far! He’s one of the good ones, and it was a pleasure to have him on the radio yesterday.