There seriously has been nothing going on.
It’s so boring around here that I didn’t have the heart to blog about nothing yesterday. Or, it could be that I just couldn’t think of anything good. Whichever you prefer.
I have been doing geeky things, but nothing anyone would really be interested it. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway.
I downloaded the Microsoft Office Beta a bit ago, and damn, it’s confusing. Kinda. Since I mostly use Word out of the bunch, that’s what I’m going to focus on.
The new Word 2007 menu bar.
The navigation bar for the new office programs is slick, but hard to understand. Even though I’ve been using Office since the dark ages, this new nav bar is messing up my mind. Things aren’t where they used to be, and it takes a little thinking to find them again. It doesn’t help that I haven’t really had a reason to create a document since the semester ended, and I downloaded the beta after that.
Options for where to send the file to. Including blogs.
Not that Microsoft made it obvious, but you can actually blog from the new Word, and my last few posts have been published that way. However, I really am not a big fan of how everything is set up. To start with, there is no way to create a blog post without opening up a regular document first. I suppose Microsoft is assuming that people will create a document, and then decide “hey, I think I’m gonna blog that.” Then, when you do choose to blog, it creates a completely new document with the same exact text. Pointless, I tell you. It should be seamless.
I think that if you open a blank document, one of those lovely little tabs should say “blog post,” and when you click on it, it should give you the options you need: publish, publish as draft, remove formatting, etc., etc. When you decide to blog, it shouldn’t make an entirely new document out of it.
Also, I’m a bit afraid to start in with the formatting on the posts. If I bold something, I have no guarantee that it’s going to convert to <strong> over something else. It would be nice if the writer was offered some way to see the HTML before the post, and insert some of your own. I’m unsure how to do lesser headings since any code you type out in the document doesn’t get converted when it’s uploaded . Also, I wish that formatting would be stripped from the <p> tags that Word sends from a regular document to a blog document.
On the publishing side of things, Word doesn’t have a problem connecting to WordPress at all. However, it doesn’t respond as one would hope. When publishing, it sets the timestamp to WordPress’s default, December 31, 1969. It’s rather annoying, because once you post you have to go and edit the timestamp. Also, categories are not supported, so if you’re using them, again, editing in the admin panel has to happen.
I think that if Microsoft wants to make Word a viable option in blogging, these changes need to happen. I really hate posting, and then going in and editing my post, and I don’t want Word throwing bad code after good. If you like what you’re using now to post, don’t even bother with Word’s beta.
I’d go back to Ecto if I wasn’t so frustrated with it too, at the moment.
—”Electricity,” 311: 311
Things that I have that I don’t use:
- Dayplanner
- Palmpilot
- Sunbird
I try so hard to stay organized. I try so hard to schedule things so that I don’t run out of time. But, I just hate doing it. The palmpilot is so, so old. I bought it right after high school. Just starting college and the like, and I thought it would be nifty to stay organized in the most geeky way possible. So, it only lasted a few months, if that.
While I had (and still do have) the palmpilot, I was still way, way too attracted to a paper dayplanner. I don’t know what it is. I just love to write in them. So, at the beginning of last semester, I forked out $20 for one I liked, intending to use it to write down when quizzes/tests/homework was due. That only lasted until September. The moment the teachers got behind schedule, my schedule was wrong. And I stopped using it.
This semester, I downloaded Sunbird, intending to use it to stay on top of things. It only lasted two weeks. It’s missing a basic functionality that I was too lazy to work around. There is no way to assign to-do items to a specific day (as in, make it show up on the calendar as well as in the to-do list.
I realize there is an easy work-around, by making those to-do items an event, but really, I just didn’t care.
But, with the middle of the semester bearing down fast, and multiple essays coming due, I figure I had better give it another chance. After all, I am classically-trained to believe that I have a week longer than I really do to finish things up.
I was talking to N a few weeks ago, during the course of a work day. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s secretary for two of the busiest lawyers at a large law firm here in town, as well as a full-time student over at Sac State (English major, naturally). We were discussing ways to stay organized, because as English majors we tend to have multiple essays due right after one another.
She was telling me how on her new laptop she was using Outlook to create alarms that would pop up when she had two weeks/a week/ two days/ one day left to finish the paper, so that she couldn’t forget when it was due, and she’d remember to do it.
Since I spend so much time on my computer, I realized that it is a genius idea. Sunbird has alarms, so I’m going to try to start using it to remind myself when things are due.
So we’ll see. Besides, I have two weeks until the next round of essays are due… I think.
—I am sure someone really famous said this first, but my uncle says it all the time (and still, I can’t remember what the 7th “p” is supposed to be, as he refers to it as the “Seven Ps.”)
