Author: Carl Setzer

Wired has a brief bit about what happens when humans get too cocky; unsinkable ships sink, people die, pandemonium.

Can anyone tell me why Outlook’s printing “number of pages” choices is only odd or even? Why can’t I just choose to print page 1, or 7, or whatever? Why the heck would I only want to print odd or eve? I’m baffled.

I’ve been ruminating lately on my dependence upon my Blackberry. Slowly, with a near sinister creep, this dependence has grown. In 1998 I sprang for my first electronic calendar, a Palm III. Essentially, it was an electronic address book. The other item I’d considered was a device by Franklin, which was only an address book. Soon, I saw the ability to calendar more effectively. Then I figured out Tasks, and the ability to set reminders, and I was hooked. Syncing with Outlook sealed the deal.

I went through several iterations of the Palm, culminating in a Treo 650, which was great at its inception, but proceeded to whither in my esteem. Particularly, the device was buggy to start, and seemed to get buggier the more I did with it. It also didn’t seem to like Cingular’s network. And, finally, the sound quality was terrible. When I’d had enough, I explored other options. I was unwilling to risk another several hundred bucks on a new Palm device, and the lower end ones seemed like cheap crap. Thus, I started exploring Blackberrys.

My friends with the devices always raved about them. It also helped to ease my mind that they tended to have them for years. Now, if I were a chap of unlimited funds, I would’ve sprung for an iPhone, but I am not such. It’s been nice that the Curve has excellent phone quality and I’ve not any network issues (actually getting stronger coverage than my wife’s cell phone). However, there are a few cripes I must air. First, I miss SharkMsg. Also, I miss the sheer volume of aps. I did enjoy running myriad goofy aps, which I’m sure affected those bugs mentioned above – mea culpa. Anyway, I also miss the ability to set short cut keys for pretty much everything. On my Treo, I’d set one of the keys to open up a text to my wife. Handy for those folks that I text often. I had those short cuts set up for all my key aps.

Anyway, regardless of the “wants” listed above, I’m not about the move back. Stability and voice quality trump these. Perhaps this is an area that I can be a solution rather than griping about the problem.

One thing NASA ought to consider is which branch of the service they pull from. Instead of pilots, they should look at submariners. They are able to work in confined spaces and deal with the long term tedious routines needed for long-term space travel. Just a thought.>>

I generally use iGoogle as my RSS reader, as opposed to Google Reader (amongst the myriad choices). I prefer the reading experience in iGoogle, but have come up with one nuisance: adding feeds. I need to click on “add stuff”, then on “add feed or gadget” (not so easy to see, ½ way down the page on the left column), then I drop in the URL. Why not have this accessible from the Main screen, as it is on the Reader page? Just a thought.

I saw two blog posts about Yahoo! this weekend, Jeff Jarvis and at Liveside, so I wonder. Considering Jeff’s comments about the new Shine portal, which seems a rather weak offering (I am in complete agreement with Jarvis’ commentary), it doesn’t seem that Yang and co are in a place to truly fight back Microsoft’s bid. I find it similar to, let’s say, Landrover or Jaguar, fighting their takeover by Ford, decided to release an updated Yugo. You’d almost guess that they were trying the poison-pill approach; which always seems to be a daft move (unless you’re so narrowly focused on your short-term power-trip). Now, I don’t think that Shine is meant to make Yahoo! look less attractive as a brand, it just looks like a daft move by someone who doesn’t get the new internet business landscape. But, hey, what do I know?