The Blog With No Name

I am a prisoner of my favorite toys, like a fly stuck in amber in a bad SF movie. I lovelovelove my Palm Centro, but Palm doesn’t make it any more, no one writes software for it any more, and none of the new groovy calendar- and contact-syncing web sites work with PalmOS any more. I love MS Money on my computer and Ultrasoft Money on my Palm (they talk to each other! perfectly!) but Microsoft has discontinued Money and won’t be supporting it after the end of the year. Eventually my Centro will die (noooooo……….) or my computer will totally crash, and then how will I track my finances as perfectly and easily as I do now? I am whining. I still don’t trust Mint or Wesabe or those totally-online “solutions.” Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m going to take really good care of my phone!

Finally finally finally – I have a computer running linux (Ubuntu 8.04 Server) hooked up to our network. It is headless (no monitor, no keyboard), I access it from a terminal prompt on my Windows computer (go, puTTY!). I plan to learn a little bit about Apache (web server), mySQL (database), and other assorted webby things. YAY! Hours of fun, and all FREE!

Firefox 3, Release Candidate 1 – LIKE LIGHTNING, BABY!

I am in a monumentally bad mood, and have been all day. Perhaps not co-incidentally, my car is full (to the point where my nice neighbor is loaning me her car tomorrow morning to take the kiddies to school) of obsolete computer equipment that I have collected from work and church and various individuals. I am going to recycle it at the electronic demanufacturing facility in Davenport, Iowa. I wonder whether, once my car is empty, I will feel better. I always feel like the clutter is weighing me down, waiting to pounce on me, and in my car right at this moment that is literally true – heaven help me if I have to stop suddenly, I’ll get a monitor straight to the back of my skull.

(Of course, I could also be in a bad mood because my children are complete dorks, but it’s more fun to be all metaphysical about it. Plus, I have just started reading It’s All Too Much.)

I have finally gotten an alumni e-mail address from college. I did this so I could purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate at a 91% discount ($60 instead of $690). I am thinking about buying MS Office so that, should I ever get a tablet/laptop, I can use MS OneNote. I am not likely to get a laptop/tablet any time soon. I have heard enough icky things about Office 2007 (I have encounted first-hand the non-backward-compatibility, grrr) that I probably shouldn’t want it. There is just something about that “91% DISCOUNT!!!” that calls out to me.

http://twitter.com/mbrodd

My clone daughter is, as I type, giving tech support to one of her friends over the phone (how to set up iTunes with her new Nano). I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

My aunt gave me her old computer (next – my mom’s!) and I have installed Linux on it (Slackware 12, to be precise)!! It’s in the basement, so I won’t go near it unless I’m doing laundry, or I won’t get any laundry done unless I’m playing with mySQL, take your pick. In any case, I think it’s time for the daughter to start doing her own laundry.

Unlike the last time I tried this, I have a decent computer to work with, and the installation went very well (except for forgetting to install Lilo the first time around, so no boot – oops). And it’s not networked at all, but at least there are USB ports on it, so I can use a flash drive if I do need to put anything else on it.

Woot! I’m ROOT, baby!

I’ve spent the past two days playing with AutoHotKey and Samurize, with the result that I’ve got a little text file that displays right on my desktop, no window or anything cluttered like that. The text file is an on-the-fly todo list, to which I can add items by double-clicking on one icon on my desktop. I now have such a long list of AutoHotKey shortcuts and hotkeys that I need to make myself a cheat sheet. On an index card, of course…

(Read more about Samurize here.)

I am having a lot of fun with a program I found on lifehacker.com called AutoHotKey. You can find it here. This post is an experiment in using AutoHotKey hotkeys for blogging and HTML. I also now use it at work for quick emails – one keystroke brings up a blank email already addressed to the boss and the parish nurse about a hospitalization, or a blank email check request to the treasurer. Brilliant! Highly recommended.