Happy Halloween

It sucks that my mouth hurts and that I'm sick. This means that I really can't enjoy Halloween and I love Halloween. This is the second time that Bear and I haven't been ready for Halloween. Last year was due to moving around and school, this year because I've become ill. This truly sucks. I will be manning the front door eagerly waiting for the spooks and goblins to show up for their treat.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Living in the Cloud

Mail.app vs Gmail

It's been a month that I have been using nothing but Gmail on my home computer. On my iPhone I typically use the Mail.app instead of Gmail directly. Problem with Gmail on the iPhone is that the web app chooses more for me than I am allowed to choose. If I want to email someone from the phone using Gmail it will only pull my most contacted addresses. I have to actually search for who I want to email first then start composing. Ok but this is not about Gmail on the iPhone but how usable Gmail over Mail.app provided by Apple is. I like the ability to search my emails from Spotlight and with Mail I can do that. Now Google has come up with Precipitate. It allows you to search from Spotlight your data that is in the cloud. Right now it only supports Google Bookmarks, and Google Docs but I'm sure they'll expand it to include Gmail. With about 7 gigs worth of storage space it will take a long time to fill up. I could still use IMAP and connect Mail with Gmail without problems but I want to use mostly web apps for my experiment about living in the cloud. I have to admit that I love firing up Safari and connecting to Gmail. I like the idea of labels vs folders — rather than breaking up where all my emails are I know that they are all in Gmail. Labels allow me to segregate those emails from each other but at the same time I don't have to go into separate folders to try to find a particular email. I also like that you can create very filters to help categorize information and to act on them if necessary. It's limited in comparison to Mail's rules. With Mail you can create AppleScripts that can allow emails to trigger actions on your computer and that is very powerful. With Google Gears  and knowledge of Javascript you could achieve the same thing. The biggest difference is that with Gmail knowledge of HTML/Javascript can help you make changes to the Style Sheets of Gmail and recreate design the UI to something that suits your purposes without having to learn another language. That is something that I find more useful. Of course I have to learn those languages in order for them to be useful but I would have to do the same for Mail.app. And with Mail.app I wouldn't be able to change the UI even once I did learn AppleScript just be able to add to it.

So far I'm sticking with Gmail.

Office vs Google Docs

I've also been using nothing but Google Docs instead of Office. Now Microsoft is beginning to invade the cloud with Azure. Now I haven't been completely using Google Docs instead of Office. At work they don't give us access to Google Docs so I have to use Office. But I was able to get one of my teachers to accept my assignments under Google Docs. We had some problems with an essay but for the most part it's been successful. I've enjoyed using Google Docs and with Google Gears it is supposed to be able to be offline. I haven't been able to edit any documents offline nor create a document offline again that is something that would be corrected in the future. That's the interesting thing about Google Apps is that most of them are in Beta. They give you a taste but are still missing a lot of the functionality of most Office applications. Pagination with Headers and Footers is the biggest issue that I currently have. For the most part I don't miss Office but I cant wait until the offline functionality is better. 

Hey at least for blogging Google fixed the title posting issue that I had earlier this year so I'm confident that offline support will be better in the future.

So, living in the Cloud is pretty much living in Beta.

It works!!!

Just a quick note. Someone at Google gets my very special thanks. I just posted Sick and Tired... and something wonderful happened. Usually, I edit all my documents in Google Docs. I give each document a title but once I publish it to the blog the title never came over so I would always have to rush over to Blogger and change the title. Well, when I did that this time I found that my original title was already there. Yeah!!! 

Google Docs has just moved up on my list. 

Sick and Tired...

The last couple of weeks have not been fun. First I got sick and on top of that I'm still in school and Calculus is busting my butt. I'm at the point that if I can make a 'C' in the class I'll be happy and move on to the next Calculus class. It's been hard. Being sick has not helped at all but I have to give myself credit the same week I became sick is the same week as I had two tests to complete. Which I did? I didn't whine about not feeling well I just studied hard and, feeling icky, went and took the test that I had to complete. 

I've been studying other things as well. I just found out about the Perl and cloud computing. I know what I've stated about cloud computing but I still do find it very interesting. And why couldn't I attempt to create an application that will work on both your home computer when it is not connected to the Internet and when it is connected. If the app loses some functionality when not connected to the net would be fine. But the biggest issue is that you should be able to edit any document regardless of an Internet connection. Google has the right idea, and so does Mozilla, when it come to Google Gears and Greasemonkey. The problem I have is that I want to right my apps in Perl. So, I joined the mailing list and I'll playing catch up with the project to link the Google AppEngine  with Perl. I need a project and I need to relearn Perl. What better way than to help solve a problem. 

I may not be going to work but I can at least continue to study school work and work on a project.

Testing Mobile Blogging

I'm sitting here at work and once again I'm trying out Mobile Blogging
with Gmail. I have tried with the regular email program on the iPhone
but Blogger viewed the soft line breaks as hard line breaks. I am
hoping that this doesn't happen with Gmail.

UPDATE: It does happen with Gmail. So the issue is more likely with Blogger and not with either mail application.

No to Incumbents

I remember a time, ten years ago, when everyone wanted the Congress and the Senate to have term limits. It was believed that too many of those in power stay in power not for the people of the United States but for themselves. Somehow, the politicians have steered our mindset away from term limits. But after the Iraq war, not being able to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice, and a 700 billion reward to Wall Street for making the middle class poorer than before this idea has to be revised.

But I don't believe that after a single term no one would write, and vote, on legislation that effectively removes themselves from office. According to this article, the original intent of our founding fathers was that 50% of politicians would only serve for a single election cycle and that in the last 100 years this has changed. Well, if they're not going to remove themselves then we need to start voting out the incumbents. Why do we continue to vote for people, year after year, if they don't really do anything for the people of the United States? Our economy has gone from a surplus to the biggest deficit we have ever know. Deregulation of the banking the system has caused many a bad loan to be approved. And now we have to pay for the mistakes of Congress and the Senate. I don't know about you but if I mess up, badly, on my job then I going to be fired. So lets fire them.

And not just during this election should we vote out incumbents, and not just on the national level, but every office that, we the American people, have a say and a vote. Doesn't matter that the politician in local or national if they have served a term then it is time for them to leave. Even if that wasn't the intent of our forefathers then it should be our intent now. These career politicians have us believe that if we don't vote them in election after election then they won't be effective. But the opposite is true. They have been in office and the United States has suffered because of them.

Doesn't matter if a Republican or Democrat is the opposite person for your party. It just matters that you vote out the incumbents.

Just VOTE !

Two Weeks No Office

It has been two more weeks have passed and I have yet to use MS-Office for any of my needs. It feels weird at first because, like everyone else, I've always used Microsoft's Office Suite, and now its time to play with some new products. The reality is that I'm no longer working in an area where I have to take work home all the time. Being strictly customer service these days, which is great if you going to college and need a full time job, I don't make a lot of reports like I used to when I was a Medical Cost Analyst. That seems like a billion years ago. And then my last gig as a teacher where I needed to use Office a lot as well.

The nice thing about Google Docs is that my school, Central Piedmont Community College, also has Gmail and Google Docs so I can complete work and share with fellow students or my instructors. Case in point, I had a portion of a project to complete for my Anthropology class and I emailed the instructor if I could not use Excel but use the Spreadsheet in Google Docs. I let her know that this was a usability experiment and if she didn't object than I would like to submit my work that way. She said it was okay but I'm a bit neurotic so when it came due, and I shared it I sent her a couple of e-mails to make sure she could access. I can report that she accepted the work. The next assignment is an essay so I'm going to submit, again, via Google Docs.

Now the problem with papers is that I don't think that Google Docs doesn't have proper Header/Footer sections I don't think that will be a problem because this is an informal essay. Still for the sake of the experiment I have to try out all aspects of Google Docs. Unfortunately, I probably won't be using the Presentations piece of Google Docs. At this time I have no need for it if the need does come up then I'll play with it.

Last thing to note: my computer instructor uses MS-Office, and why shouldn't he, and he posts his lectures via the web in Word format. At first I had to access the document and then access Word to view or print. But I've come up with a way to have to download, then upload the document back up into Google Docs. It's a bit of a hassle and I'm thinking of writing an app (yeah that'll happen) to scan my school folder on my hard drive and then upload any documents to Google Docs for me. Again, the only real problem that I have with Google Docs is that I have to be online to access my documents. An offline version of Google Docs would still be nice.