Good News!

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Why am I not suprised?  Mac OS X isn't going to support several "goodies" when it ships, according to this article at ZDNet.  When it comes out later this month, you'll be unable to play DVD movies, or use Apple's iTunes and iMovie software.  It's pretty sad when Apple can't even get their own software ready in time for the launch of the OS.  This means you can expect to see third party applications available sometime around 2010...

Good news from my mom today regarding my sister's MRI!  Here's the e-mail:

The MRI showed no malignancy and seemed to indicate that it may be a lymph node. she has an apt with her ENT next Friday so I will keep you posted as to what he says. His office staff yesterday said she could wait until her next regular apt but they called again today. I have no idea when he thought her apt was!

 

Too Early

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John has posted some great pictures from our little adventure yesterday.

Office XP was interesting, it has a lot of the usual feature bloat, but Microsoft finally caught on to a few things about Office 2000 that annoyed people.  The paperclip guy isn't turned on by default now, you can use the group scheduling functions of Outlook, even if you don' t have an Exchange server, and it's much easier to format and perform a lot of the common tasks in Word.

In my opinion, UserLand should be scared of Microsoft's SharePoint server product.  It's everything Manila & My Userland On The Desktop could be, all ready for the masses.  Microsoft has something called "web parts" which allows you to create your own little applets for web pages, that retrieve news, stock quotes, etc. from other sites via JavaScript, VBScript, or even using XML.  They demoed it by retrieving headlines and stock quotes from other services, and said there will be several hundred pre-built web parts available at launch.

Sorry Dave, no RSS in there... 

The web integration looks pretty cool, but I'll have to use it in person before I can judge its true utility.

The "smart tags" in Office XP are a feature that I'll have to get used to.  The amateurish comedian demo guy showed us how you could start typing someone's first and last names in Word, at the beginning of a letter.  Word would scan your Contact List, and if it found the name, you could simply right click on it, and choose to insert the person's mailing address, saving you the hassle of typing it. It's a neat feature, but only for those who use Outlook.

If nothing else, I learned a lot more about transferring a NT domain into Windows 2000 ActiveDirectory, and had a good lunch at the Machine Shed...

Still Waiting...

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I added MacOSRumors to the list over at www.weblogs.com tonight.  I get tired of checking the site daily to see if there is an update.  It's one of those sites that sits idle for two weeks, then updates daily for three days in a row, then sits idle for another week.  Add in the fact that they only keep the most recent day's post on the front page, and you get a weblog that's not so user friendly.  Hopefully, having it part of my weblogs.com list will keep me up to date.  For those of you looking to find the listing to add to your list, it's "MacOSRumors".

Excitement here at the apartment tonight, my girlfriend just dropped her watch in the toilet, as she was flushing it.  Yes, she is talented...

I recovered it, and it's still ticking away, it's a quality Armitron timepiece... It wasn't even affected by the blue stuff in the toilet.  I washed my hands thorougly afterwards...

My sister's MRI is today, the e-mail from my mom says they may be doing a biopsy also.  The waiting is the hardest part...

I just saw over on John's weblog that an old co-worker of ours has brain cancer and is now living on borrowed time.  Hopefully Jessi's tests will return better results...

John and I will be hitting the road tomorrow, to a Microsoft presentation in Des Moines.  He wants to learn about upgrading his NT domain to Windows 2000, I want to see the preview of Office XP. 

We decided to skip the free lunch that Microsoft provides, as it would require us to sit through a lecture about software licensing and the importance of complying.  I've already been enough of a pain to the people in my college here, I get the impression that they were used to just getting whatever software they wanted, and no one ever said "Who's going to pay for it?".  When someone calls me, and says they want the newest version of Office installed on their computer, I hit them up for $60.  It not only pays for the license, but it keeps my workload down, as they're only going to request the software upgrades they actually need.

 I'm not trying to be a Nazi about the licensing, but I just came from an IT shop that was in GROSS violation of the licensing on much of their software, despite my urging to comply.  I'm not going to let that happen to this place under my watch.