Leopard is here...

Just a brief comment on Mac OS 10.5. I installed it on the iMac using the upgrade option, throwing all caution to the wind. (The MacBook is probably my main machine these days anyway.) The install went uneventfully, the longest thing was probably the verification check of the DVD. I think the whole thing took about an hour or so, I didn't stick around to watch it.

So far, I'm pretty pleased with it. I've poked around in some of the less used apps, like Image Capture. Something that seems new to me anyway is that it recognizes my Canon MP500 printer as a scanner, something I don't think it ever did before.

I like Cover Flow. The icon for TextEdit includes the "Crazy Ones" commercial text. I connected a 500GB Iomega external HD to use as a backup disk for Time Machine, and it's doing its thing.

Can't say I care for the new folder icons. Blech. Safari seems faster.

Haven't really dug into it very much yet. Just wanted to mention I had a successful upgrade with no "blue screen of death."

No Leopard For Me

I've been bitten by Apple's requirement for signature delivery again. Ordinarily, I'd have printed out a form, signed it and left it on the door; but when I last checked the shipping status on Wednesday, it still said only that it would be delivered by 6:00 PM on 26 October. When they have a shipping status, there's a link to the form to pre-sign for the delivery. I guess I should have checked this morning and I would have found the link, because it's there now.

So the Fedex delivery person left one of those obnoxious, "Sorry we missed you!" tags on my door. I'll drive out and pick it up myself from Fedex tomorrow. Oh well.

ScanSnap

The new toy arrived yesterday. I spent part of yesterday evening playing around with it. I haven't done much in the way of trying to figure out the optimum way to use it, the best "workflow," to use the popular vernacular. There's an article up at MacWorld that deals with the ScanSnap and the "paperless office." I've skimmed it, but I haven't tried to apply a folder action script yet.

A couple of observations though: The document feeder can hold quite a bit of paper, but some multi-page documents seem to tend to "stick" together, and you'll get several pages being fed into the scanner at once, which isn't what you want. I scanned a 30 page insurance policy and found I had to feed it in about 8 to 10 pages at a time, and only after separating the pages and kind of rattling them a bit to break up any residual "stickiness." (I don't know, but I suspect it may be something to do with laser printing and residual static electricity.) When you do it this way, you can configure the scanner to ask you if you want to keep scanning after it finishes the batch in the feeder. Otherwise, it may treat each group of pages as a separate document.

At first, I thought I'd just slam a bunch of documents in the hopper and let it scan and OCR all of them at once. But some of them were two-page documents, some were only one page, and a few were three or more. You can configure the software to make every page a separate document, or every n pages a separate document. This works well if you're scanning something like your electric bill, where every document is only one page (well, two, if it's front and back), or your bank statement which may be three pages (six, front and back). But if you're scanning documents of various lengths at the same time, you can't rely on the software to figure out which pages go with which document. So what I ended up doing was scanning a single document at a time, whether it was one page or many. This sounds a little tedious, but it's not really. So in this case, you want to stick with the setting that asks you if you want to continue scanning after it empties the document feeder each time.

This weekend I expect to go through my files and scan single types of documents. For example, all the bank statements for 2006 can be in a single document. This cuts down on the number of individual pdf files in the documents folder. Same thing for the individual utility bills, credit card statements and the like, a year's worth in one file. I'll scan all of my navy fitness reports into a single document (though why I keep those is something of a mystery to me). I haven't quite figured out how I'll organize my medical records, and the pet records, and the like, but that'll be interesting.

Right now, I'm scanning to a 2.5" external HD. Once I get all the historical documents scanned in, I'll burn those to a CD or DVD as a backup, and keep that in a secure, undisclosed offsite location. I'll probably make an additional backup to keep in the hurricane box. I can think about making them encrypted disk images. We'll see. And I'll probably also upload them to my iDisk, depending on how much room they take. Right now, I'm seeing about 1 MB per page because I think I've cranked up the resolution a bit. I may change that. But even at 1MB per page, a couple thousand pages would only take 2GB of storage, and it's possible I might be able to save some of that if I compress a disk image. We'll see. But so far, it looks like this will be a practical solution to getting rid of lots of paper.

Next actions include figuring out how I'm going to incorporate scanning into my daily routine, and how I'll organize those files. I believe I can go back at the end of a year and make twelve separate pdf files into a single pdf for a complete annual record, but we'll see. And I'm going to want to compare the OCR results of the ABBYY FineReader with that of Acrobat and see if I want to make some changes there. So far, OCR seems to be working great with FineReader. And then I'll look at assigning a folder action to save a step on scanning. As it is now, after each scan I tell the ScanSnap Manager application that I want to add an OCR text layer the pdf. That's just a mouse click, but it seems like it's something I'd want to automate.

But for now, this is pretty fun.

GTD Fetishists

It was kind of a toss-up between titling this little rant "GTD Fascists" and "GTD Fetishists." Why? Let's take a look at a few excerpts from the latest post at one of the leading GTD fetishist weblogs, 43 Folders. (11,836 subscribers in Bloglines.) This is from Derrick Bostrom, presumably "the annoying productive guy at work." That's probably a charitable description.

A couple of week (sic) ago, I found an old performance review while cleaning out my desk. On the final page, scribbled in an area marked “goals,” was an odd item which I’d forgotten all about: “develop training program for helping leadership better manage email.” Last year, our director of I.T. told us to work with our Outlook users whose mailboxes had grown too large, announcing that those folks above 60 megabytes would be having their accounts suspended. (Of course, the deadline came and went with no action taken, despite some of my users having in-boxes more than ten times the allowable size.) The project came to mind the other day as I looked over a co-worker’s shoulder.

She looked up at me with heavy lidded eyes and replied, “I’m…just…too…busy….”

I love it when "co-workers" look over my shoulder. I especially love it when they sort of regard it as a virtue, presumably saving me from myself. And this guy has keen powers of observation! Not only can he read the contents of the inbox as he's "looking over" someone's shoulder, he notices her "heavy lidded eyes." Perhaps he just failed to mention she breathes through her mouth? What a jerk. It gets better! Or worse. Well, mostly worse.

This person’s experience was typical. It would have been a blessing if her account was suspended; the system was all but useless to her anyway. Trying to explain best practices to such a hapless user is a lost cause. I decided to try an approach that combined humor, some color, and a little public humiliation. Every week, I would load all of my users into a spreadsheet sorted by mailbox size. I gave each increment of 100 megs a different color and attached a gag color legend, changing the gags every week. One week, the red users (my worst offenders) had “completely given up,” the next they were “blackballed from the Clean Plate Club.” Last week, they were “helping the terrorists.” And so on.

"Trying to explain" things to a "hapless user" is a "lost cause." What a crushing burden this lone IT martyr labors under! So rather than try to explain something, it's better to combine "humor" and "public humiliation." Nice guy. And he's so clever with his color codes! "Helping the terrorists!" How topical! As a 43 Folders reader, I suppose I'm to be basking in the warm glow of our shared sense of superiority over these "hapless users."

Fortunately, there's a happy ending, and all this "public humiliation" was really "a blessing."

It got people’s attention. Yesterday, my heavy-lidded co-worker finally asked for some help. First we separated out all actionable stuff. Then we fished out all relevant reference material. Then we banished the rest. I stitched everything into place with a small but powerful handful of rules, then showed her the result. She looked it over for a minute or two, then suddenly turned to me with a startled look on her face. “My god!” She cried, pointing to the screen. “I didn’t realize this was due on Monday!”

No word on whether or not her "heavy-lids" have been "enlightened," but I suppose we should be grateful for whatever small advances we can achieve. And fortunately, whatever was due on Monday was presumably done, because, you know, it's all about "getting things done."

Well, I'm "done" with 43 Folders. It's been getting pretty absurd lately anyway. Somebody wrote an article about paring down the size of your iTunes library because, you know, those thousands of tracks are such a burden to manage and back up and what have you. It's gone from being an interesting site about different work habits to being a fetishists' site, and not far removed, judging by this post, from a fascists' site. So, I'm done with it.

I'm feeling more productive already.

DVD: Evan Almighty

I'm pretty dense, it didn't occur to me that this was a sequel to Bruce Almighty until after I'd bought it. Be that as it may, it still sucked. Bruce Almighty was pretty good, but this one was predictable and trite.

The one thing I did like about was that it seemed to promote the idea that we don't "change the world." We work on changing ourselves, "one act of random kindness" at a time. If everyone worked on changing themselves, the world would change. But where's the fun in that? Nobody gets to be the "change agent," the hero, the leader! It's way, way too "flat." I don't think the cool kids would like that.

Cheese Sandwich: Life in the Slow Lane

I sit here at my kitchen bar, with Bodhi at my feet, occasionally lifting his head to lick my toes. It tickles.

Anyway, life is good. Crud is mostly gone. I have some residual upper respiratory congestion, and if I speak more than a few sentences, I begin to sound like Tom Waits singing. I went for a run yesterday and only managed 3.75 miles, where I'd been planning for 4.5. But I walked Bodhi on the long loop of 3 miles earlier in the morning, so some of it was crud and inactivity, and some of it was the earlier walk. The good news is I'm able to do stuff again.

Speaking of doing stuff, my friends and I got together on Friday and brewed some beer. One of our number has some experience in these matters, and we thought it would be a worthwhile October activity to brew some beer of our own. We made about five gallons and I'm looking forward to giving it a try in a week or so. Actually, I'm supposed to note that we made an ale, not a lager.

Last weekend we had a little get-together for some friends who have bought a home and are leaving the condo. They're a great couple, and we're going to really miss them. Plus, we'll have one less Golden Retriever in our pack, and one less dog named Buddy! I was still pretty sick, but I managed to drag my sorry butt down to the pool to infect all my neighbors. I'm sure they appreciated it.

I enjoy my little social network in "meat-space." I'm not one of the hip, cool kids with hundreds of "friends" to which I devote "continuous partial attention." I'm officially an old fuddy now, I guess. My status as someone who doesn't "get it" only further cemented because I don't embrace "change" with the enthusiasm of the enlightened and anointed, who never see anything wrong with change. Who never doubt. I don't fear change, so much as regret some of it. Though I don't spend much time on regret either. Change is inevitable. I'd say we'd be better off to treat it skeptically, or even with just a little sobriety, instead of rushing headlong to embrace it. I suspect much of that is more an effort by those who do so to promote themselves as far-seeing "visionaries" who are at "the edge" and therefore somehow more perceptive, or courageous, or intelligent than the rest of us poor, benighted sods. Woo-hoo.

I do find I'm reading less on the web though. I've found I can basically predict most of the things I'm likely to encounter at the blogs I usually read. I rather suspect the same could be said of Groundhog Day, but hey, that's a feature! I actually bought USA Today on four days last week, and found that more interesting to read than Bloglines.

One change I am looking forward to is Mac OS 10.5, also known as Leopard. I'm kind of grappling with bringing the administration of my life into the 21st Century here at Action Dave's Cool-Guy Bachelor Skypad. I got so sick of piles of paper waiting to be filed, that I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. Well, I ordered it, it's not here yet. It's ludicrously expensive, though I suspect much of the price has to do with the copy of Acrobat 8 included with it. I haven't quite worked out where it's going to go yet, because that's probably the most important issue. It has to go somewhere within the immediate proximity of the kitchen. As it is now, I bring in the mail, open it, throw away the crap and leave the rest in a pile "to be filed." Except it never gets filed. The pile just moves to a more remote location to await "being filed." The idea is for me to open the mail, throw away the crap and scan the non-crap, then throw that away. So it has to be in the right spot, or I'll just end up with piles waiting "to be scanned." Right now, I'm leaning toward the TV stand, where I have a Mac mini already connected to my TV. It might interfere with my carefully developed feng sui, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Anyway, it's the pseudo-intelligence of Leopard and the latest version of Spotlight that makes this an opportune moment for automating my domestic administrative processes. I get to embrace the whole "everything is miscellaneous" ethos of the "Taxonomy is for losers" crowd. How those guys find anything that isn't searchable by a computer is beyond me. "Socks don't go in the sock drawer because taxonomy is for losers!" But I digress...

Spotlight searches across the network now, and boolean searches are more readily supported. So I'm hopeful that I can just use the file system in Leopard without going to something more sophisticated like DevonThink Office. Not that I'm opposed to a dedicated application, but it seems like the services provided by the OS itself in the form of Finder, Quick Look, Spotlight and Preview ought to be more than sufficient. So presumably all I need to do is drop the mail in the scanner and then forget about it. I may have to look into where I want to store it, and make sure that that is backed up by Time Machine, but it shouldn't be much more complicated than that.

Mac: Spots

Ordered Mac OS 10.5, aka "Leopard," the other day. It's supposed to arrive on the 26th. Tom Yager sure likes it.

Cheese Omelet: Still Breathing

This crud has just been kicking my ass. I think I'm finally through the worst of it, but I have some lingering congestion in my head and lungs. At least I feel better. One ear is kind of plugged up, which is driving me slowly insane, but I'll take what I can get at this point.

Okay, enough whining. Carry on.

DVD: Reign Over Me

I watched this Adam Sandler movie last night. It'd been a while since it was out in the theaters, so I couldn't recall exactly what it was about and the box gave sketchy details. I thought it had received mixed reviews, with some critics praising it and others panning it. The quotes they put on the box didn't inspire confidence though. I took a chance.

Well, I thought it was a pretty good movie. My favorite part was late in the movie with Donald Sutherland playing a judge in his chambers putting a smart-ass lawyer in his place. Well, that probably wasn't my favorite part, but I liked it. A lot.

"This is not going well for you."

Liv Tyler didn't have enough to do, but what she did have, she did well. Can't get too much Liv Tyler, I think. Don Cheadle was great, and it made me want to go buy Picket Fences on DVD. I used to love watching him and Ray Walston as Judge Bone go at it. Adam Sandler just might become a great actor someday. He was pretty damn good in this one. Very damn good.

It's a really sad movie, with a typically cheesy American happy ending; but when you've got the flu, or something like it, cheesy American happy endings are a little bit like chicken soup. I don't think I've ruined it for anyone, because it's so relentlessly sad I was about to give up on it near the end. I'm glad I didn't.

Cheese Sandwich: Sick as a Human

There was a crud making the rounds before I left for New York, and now it's made it's way around to me. Blech. Mild fever, body aches, cough and general crappiness.

After enjoying a nice long run of no illnesses, this one probably feels worse than it is. But I'm hatin' it anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Arrived back in Florida yesterday in one piece. The trip back was pretty uneventful, and my bag managed to make it back with its contents intact. That's usually the case, (Is there a pun there?) but I always kind of worry about it anyway.

I seem to have acquired some sort of upper respiratory annoyance somewhere along the line. Hopefully, that will resolve itself quickly.

The wedding was beautiful, though the weather gave us a bit of a scare. After a gorgeous rehearsal, a line of thunderstorms moved through the afternoon of the wedding, but the subsequent storm systems stayed north of us through the ceremony itself. The weather for the whole time I was up there was unseasonably warm. More like Florida than upstate New York.

The other scare was when Dad tried to make it up the stairs from the rehearsal. The wedding was held at an old mill, and so there are a number of flights of stairs from the entrance down to the mill stream ("down by the old mill stream?"). He made it down okay, but coming back up he was very short of breath and was briefly kind of out on on his feet. After he sat down for a few minutes, he seemed okay and so we went on with the wedding plans. On the day of the wedding, the owner shuttled Mom and Dad from the parking lot to the ceremony in a golf cart. Dad mentioned that that was the first time in his life that he'd ever ridden in a golf cart.

As luck would have it, he had an appointment with his cardiologist yesterday and the test showed that one of his bypasses is partially blocked. So he's got another consultation and I gather we're looking at a catheterization to address the blockage. So while that wasn't exactly welcome news, at least we know what the problem was on Friday and there's a plan for treating it.

At the rehearsal dinner, I was seated next to the minister for the wedding, who also happened to have taught film at Syracuse University for many years. He'd lived in Greenwich Village in the '50s and that was a very interesting time. It was there he said he'd learned that film was the medium for his age. And he'd also met and done some work with Alan Watts, which I thoguht was very cool. He restores old books now, but I asked him if he'd thought about writing a book. He said that he was, on old movie houses in upstate New York. I encouraged him to write a memoir of his life, because he had some fascinating stories.

Again, the wedding was beautiful and the reception was held in the restaurant at the mill. They had a pretty good DJ, and the dance floor was pretty much full all night. I know I got my workout for the week out there!

On Sunday, most of the family gathered at the local Denny's for breakfast. There were 18 of us at the restaurant. John and Jeannie were getting ready for their honeymoon, one of my brothers-in-law and nephew were on their way home to make my nephew's football game, and Chris and Caitie remained behind in Florida, so there are 24 of us in the extended family. The service and the food were both good, and we had a nice time before everyone said goodbye and went on their separate ways.

I collected some leaves on Monday to give to my neighbor who watched Bodhi for me. She's from the northeast and doesn't get home very often. The leaves were just beginning to turn, but they were still beautiful, and I think I managed to find a few good specimens. Did a little impromptu plumbing repair for Mom on Monday. I'm never terribly good as a plumber, but I don't think I made things any worse, and fixed at least one problem!

Monday night, Dad and I watched portions of the Yankees/Indians game (Dad hates the Yankees), and the Dallas/Buffalo game (I hate Dallas). Though I don't like Dallas, I picked them in our little football pool, so I was conflicted as I watched Buffalo defy expectations and seize the lead. I had to get to bed before it ended because I had an early flight, but I'm sorry I missed the rest of the game because it was far better than anyone anticipated.

And that brings me up to date. I'm back at Action Dave's Cool-Guy Bachelor Pad, and Bodhi is next to me playing with a tennis ball. It was great to get back home and see everyone. I hadn't seen my little brother, Eric, apart from video chats, in many years, and I'd never met his wife, Heather. They're a great couple. His son, Tyler, was a real joy to have around and quite energetic on the dance floor during the reception! I got to see my brother Mark's new MacBook Pro, which was very cool, though his choice in motel accommodations left something to be desired... (Just kidding, Mark!)

Time to go walk the dog...

Hitched

John and Jeannie Rogers

Alison Mason Kingsbury

This mural resides in the Canastota Post Office. It was painted by Alison Mason Kingsbury, who lived from 1898 until 1987. I haven't been able to find out a great deal about her, or if any other examples of her work are available on the web or not, but I thought this was pretty cool.

I went to the post office to mail my dad's old bowling ball to myself. I haven't been in this post office in many, many years and had completely forgotten about the mural. When I saw it, I had to come back with the camera and take a few pictures of it.

Cheese Sandwich: Noisy and wet

The weather has pretty much just sucked the last couple of days. I'm so tired of hearing car alarms go off because of thunder! It's been hard to walk Bodhi too. I really need to get a raincoat of some kind. It was pretty windy yesterday and umbrellas are pretty much useless then. It's supposed to be like this for the rest of today too. Doppler radar shows a line of intense thunderstorms heading this way. Ought to make for an interesting commute this morning.

I'm getting ready to head up north to my brother's wedding. Of course, I'm so not ready to go! I think I've said this before, but I hate flying. I'm not afraid of it, I love airplanes; I just hate the whole air travel experience. Apart from the time it takes, driving is actually more pleasant. It might be less onerous if I was flying with someone, but I'm not. And I get to do it again next month when I have to fly out to California for a meeting. And if there's one thing I hate more than flying north or south, it's flying east or west! Time zones suck! (I know, I'm a grumpy old man.)

Depending on how distracted I am by the inhumanity of the air travel experience, I may have a few moments here and there to record a few observations regarding some developments I've been following.