The Time Sink

Well, Winter is finally gone (Spring kinda' sorta' didn't happen), and Summer is here. Last Wednesay I believe we didn't even hit 70F and today we were lucky to miss 90F. Yeah, the pool was at 72F Sunday when I recleaned the filter for the season (I'd done it in early March when it looked like we were done with Winter) and the solar had it up to 79F this evening. ...and it's almost too warm to eat outside. Almost...

To much to do and not quite enough time. ...and much easier some evenings to archive the photoblog to make room for a few evening roses than write up the piece I was going to do.

Just a brief report on what the crowd over at OpenOffice has been doing lately. ...and how it's been working for me in a mixed environment. On the Linux box, it 'just works', but we'd expect that. ...and interopability has been way past 'good enough'. ...but how about on Win2k? ...and in an MS Office shop?

Ummm... No problem? Yeah, exactly. When I switched machines in the office earlier this year, I tossed OO on the replacement box (Win2k from Win95) just to see what would happen. ...and I also set it's suite as the defaults for the various file types. ...and then I proceeded to simply work in those programs and learn a few new keystrokes. ...and not bother to mention it to anyone.

So far so good: I've used Calc to work on a weekly spreadsheet (high density, medium complexity) I exchange with an end user at another location; so far it's been transparent to her. I've also used it on a routine monthly spreadsheet I co-author with my assistant (medium complexity, low density), and also have had no problems other than a text formatting issue that may be a carryover from the Win95/Office 97 box.

...and recently I've had occasion to work as an editor for an author who is handling 'author interviews' at another site; that gave me the chance to test the collaborative features of OO-2 as OO-1 had some issues there. Once again, no problem: she sends me her work from MS Word; I do my markup on either the main Win2k box or this Linux box and send it back; she 'accepts' my corrections (or not <g>) in Word and sends me the completed work; I save it as an HTML file from Writer (much cleaner than Word's HTML!) and clean it up in EditPlus for web publishing.

Oh, yes, the PDF export function. It works nicely too. I had occasion at the office to need to work from an Excel Spreadsheet from another department to produce a form on short notice. The "Export as PDF" from Calc worked. ...just worked. ...and a test in Writer produced the same results in a form I use weekly (with some formatting to be handled in the conversion from Word).

OpenOffice is now pushing their product in a new fashion, as a "Legal" substitute for MS Office in environments where 'ghosting' of HDDs may leave places open to license violations. That's cool, but that's also very adaptable to the home user who no longer needs to 'borrow' a copy of Office for a second machine. ...or heck, even the first one. Oh, and the portable version works very well also; it's on my USB key...

If you couldn't hit LiveJournal or Typepad the other day, here's an explanation. For the non-geeks, the servers got slammed and you couldn't get through to post to your site, and your readers couldn't see your place through the traffic jam. ...and for the geeks, there's a tidbit or two of controversy to dig though. Form your own conclusions...

Friday! Yes, dear sister mine, it's indeed Friday! Thank goodness I have you as an editor...

No post: sleep is called for...

Well, the weather was too nice to stay inside and work on things computerish; I spent most of the weekend outside doing yardwork and patio work. ...and making up lists of things that need to be worked on (both inside and out). So I'm behind on emails and posts and a couple of duties, but the Summer heat is hitting and the outside has to be ready for it...

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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