Monday, April 30, 2007

My Beef Over Blogger

Before I launch into a series of posts that essentially do nothing but blast Micr$oft and their Vista money making machine, I need to fuss about Google and what happened on Blogger.

It has been about 6 months since I posted to my blog because my life has been filled with many new things due to a circumstance not of my own doing. But just like everything else that happens when a door closes, a window will open for you to jump through. Well, suffice it to say, I have settled from the jump and once again have time to focus on my blog. The main difference is that I can speak freely about systems and system interactions with any software package without any recourse.

So last night, I decided to login to blogger and start blogging about my thoughts, views and opinions of the state of software and today. (My own chance to act like John C. Dvorak and be an industry crank.) As with all things in my life, it is always a challenge and finding my page on Blogger was nothing new. It seems that the folks at Google decided to change the login mechanism for Blogger from the old system to now being attached to my Google account. So when I logged into Blogger, my page did not exist although I could see it as a webpage. (sigh) SO I went through the challenge of actually linking this blog to my Google account login. And of course every time I clicked a link to perform the process, instead of getting to the page to link my Google login to my Blogger page, I would get a link that would allow me to send myself an email to reset my Google password. (grrrr....) I am not really sure if I finally hit the right link of if the computer gods just got tired of messing with me but after a frustrating hour of getting nowhere, I finally landed in the proper link and was able get my old blog associated with my Google login and not my Blogger login. Now, I hope everything is nearly as easy when I try to blog through Picasa. I can only hope.

And as you can tell, last noght was a blazing success. I am back to blogging and ready to let loose on the computer world. Hang on all you tech folks, because here comes the word from a thirty - something, tech geezer who has been in the trade for over half my life. And I know I have been around this stuff way too long when I can reminisce on the days when I could say that Excel 4.0 was a many times better than Excel 3.0 and exponentially better than that piece of crap Excel 2.0. But more about Excel in the blog. In the last ten years, I have not become Mr. Excel, but I know my way around making this tool work for me and not work me to death. Just like a mattock (nicknamed the "mankiller") around my house growing up. It was a great tool for Dad who knew how to use it, but for me, for the first few thousand swings, it worked me harder than I could work the tool, but eventually, I learned how to make it work for me. Those same lessons have been learned with using many programs and now I am about to share some of those experiences here as well.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Over 6 Months Later And

it is time to get this blog rolling for real. No more fussing about my car because I still like it and have to say that it is officially the most expensive "beater" I have ever owned. (Note to self: Philly is not the place to park a nice car because the urban thuggary is just too great.) The lucky part is that I do not have graffiti down the side of it.

The good part is that I am hoping to change the focus of this blog back into what my original intentions and that is to spur on discussicussions about software. Currently, I am typing this post using a computer running Ubuntu 7.04 aka Feisty Fawn. Quite a departure from the Windows loving fool I once was. Only one note of is that I will not be including Mac discussions for now only because I do not have an Apple Mac and do not intend to get one in the near future. Although, I have been hating Vista now for over two months and every time I try to give it a fair shake it shows me at least three reasons why it does not deserve one. So I am still a lover of all things XP although I am getting quite tired of the start menu. Ubuntu and Suse flavors of Linux offer a nice refreshing look at how things could be if Microsoft could move away from that design from the mid-90's that is getting quite frightful.

So, were off to the races with a new board and a new set of posts. And most of all, I also plan to include photos that I take as well from trips and events. So here is to a new leaf and a new blog.

Cheers!