Well after a few years running nothing but open source stuff, Open Office, Thunderbird, FileZilla, and Firefox to name a few applications, I finally decided that I had enough of the little glitches.
The final straw that broke the camel’s back was the frequency with which I was needing to rebuild the Thunderbird Mail client’s data files. It was about once a day on a bad batch but more typically a few times a week. Open Office became troublesome as the software was not very consistent with the key strokes and functionality of Microsoft Office. Since I spend hours using Microsoft Office everyday, it became important to me to only have to know one piece of software.
I am still using FireFox for my browser and FileZilla for my FTP client, but tonight I installed Office 2003 Pro. Is it the correct thing to do? I am not sure, but being that I am more familiar with the software and I just want it to work when I press the go button hopefully it will make my life easier.
The part that I was amazed by was that there was no Microsoft or Open Source tool to go back from Thunderbird to Outlook. I found lots of manual ways to do it, but with thousand of e-mails to migrate I could just not see myself doing that. So I broke down and purchased Aid4Mail. It worked as indicated as can be seen below…
Click for larger imageIt only took about an hour and was definitely faster then me working through the process manually. What amazed me was how many unpurged e-mails there were still hanging out as I had already compacted my mailboxes before doing this import.
Oh yeah 71 Days until the Sunburst.
I think I am just going to go bed and save my rant about the Blackberry for later.
So this one set me off on the BMW MOA Forum. Some one has decided to take a year off to volunteer to help rebuild New Orleans. I applaud the effort. However what irks me is that people on the MOA Forum are “shaming” those who are not giving to help this person buy a motorcycle.
So I finally went off…
This is my personal opinion on this topic… let’s make that absolutely clear.
I have other causes that I give to rather then contribute to get someone I do not know a motorcycle. Yes, they are doing something nice for the world, it is a good thing and I applaud the effort. But there are other things I can contribute to.
A friend of mine just lost his wife to cancer after five years. Another friend of mine had his parents’ house damaged by a tornado. Another friend of mine currently is fighting cancer, another one is trying to put her kids through college on a single income…
The point of the list is that there are lots of causes out there, we each have to decide who and what we want to support.
So make a contribution if the spirit moves you, but please do not question those who do not give. Each person should contribute to what they feel is best for them, and it is not a contest to see who can contribute to the most charities or the most money.
So I was wondering what the heck the field trip was when I was at this business event. All the directions we got was bring cold weather gear including gloves, especially gloves. So I packed that stuff. So then when we arrived at the biz event we were asked if we wanted to take part in Bobsledding at the Utah Olympic Park.
So we arrived there and I knew it was going to be something to remember when the release looks like this…
Click image for larger version
Yes that is the word Death in there. Even the vending machine had its own disclaimer…
Click image for larger version
So then it was time to line up and load up…
Click image for larger view
Then getting into and seated in the bobsled was quite a tightfit. The picture does not do it justice, we were crammed in there…
Click image for larger view
Then it was down the hill…. wheeeeee!!!!!!
Click image for larger version
It was so intense, 8/10 of a mile in 53.77 seconds. 15 Turns, the maximum of about 80MPH and 5G’s in turn 6. It was more of a rush then a roller coaster as the whole experience was much more basic. Just the basic conveyance, you could hear the runners sliding and scraping. You could feel the wind and pretty much you were holding on, there was no seat per se.