I was finally able to get a new PC for the family.  Michelle needed something a little faster to help with her digital scrapbooking.  I settled on a  dell quad core machine.  So far it seems pretty good, thought I think Michelle is experiencing some growing pains, having previously been on a mac for a while, and now having to adjust to some of Vista’s quirks.  But I didn’t have the extra cash for a Mac, as this pc was only $500 after the discounts I found online.  I sold some old stuff on eBay and was able to make the 500 and then some, so essentially it’s like I got a free upgrade.

I’ve actually liked selling old junk on eBay… probably because somewhere inside I hate to throw things away, telling myself "but it’s worth something."  Well at least this way I get to realize some of that worth monetarily, and at the same time I am uncluttering myself.  Michelle would probably say I’m still far too cluttered, and I am still a pack rat at times, but I am trying to get better about that. 

The title of this post is a reference to Portal. I recently completed it, and while i was disappointed that it was over, I definitely loved the game. I look forward to going back and finishing the bonus levels that were unlocked after completion, but I probably won’t have much time for that in the near future. I just read an interview with one of the game’s writers, Erik Wolpaw. While I like the idea of writing, I never really refer to myself as a writer since my ramblings are sporadic at best. I’ve always had an appreciation for good writing, be it in a book, film, or even a game. A quote from the interview stood out to me:

If you think reading a book is hard, you should try writing one. Because it’s even harder. It’s still not as hard as writing a game, though. If you discount the purely visual pop-up parts, a book is made almost entirely of words. As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points. In a game, the 98% garbage section is filled with the actual game. Even worse for game writers, the 98% garbage part of a game isn’t even usually garbage because instead of reading something boring about the history of Belgium, the “reader” probably gets to jump a Camaro over a dinosaur. That means the pressure’s on to make the two percent wordy part that you’re responsible for really, really spectacular. It’s a tough job.

Source: RPS Interview: Valve’s Erik Wolpaw

Anyway, I found the interview insightful, and it was neat to read something concerning not one but two of my favorite hobbies, gaming and writing. For anyone who completes Portal, you’ll be treated to a great song by Jonathon Coulton, whom I’ve mentioned before. For the lazy, check it out on YouTube.

Michelle continues to wait, patiently, or perhaps not so patiently from time to time. The doctors say she is getting close, I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say her body is getting ready. We continue to wait. Eliana, we’re ready for you. Or at least as ready as we’ll ever be.

I’ll be tweaking some things on the site soon… look for an updated about us page, and if I have time (and effort) I may switch to a new wordpress theme.

    Today marks the end of week 1 of using Windows Vista as my operating system on my laptop.  I’ve encountered no major issues yet, though I still haven’t done much with it.  No games are currently installed other than solitaire and the other typical suspects that come with windows.  Vista adds a few to the mix but I haven’t spent any real time with them yet.  I’m still finding little “small touches” that I didn’t notice right away.  I don’t know what to call some of them but I will say they add some nice polish to the OS.  One example of such is shown below: 

In an explorer window, there is now a small black arrow next to each folder in hiearchy.  If you click the arrow you get a drop down of all the folders at that level.  To many, this is probably a small simple feature, hardly worth mentioning.  But I think this is one of many “small things” that makes the polished interface in Vista not only more enjoyable to use, but also more productive.

Office 2007

    The short summary is that I love the new ribbon interface.  A lot of people I’ve talked to sounded reluctant to make such a change, but really it has taken me no time for me to pick it up.  It really is intuitive to me.  The realtime previews work great.  I’m not using the new xml-based file formats because I tend to exchange files with other people at work who are all on previous versions of office, on both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

That being said, I’m not a secretary.  I spend very little time producing documents in word or excel, and more time viewing or tweaking documents produced by others.  So I’m sure there are plenty of nuances I may never discover about the new office suite.  As far as Office goes, I use Outlook more than any of the other apps.  I’m sure I’m not alone in this category.  So I will focus on Outlook, as that is the app I’ve used the most thus far.

The biggest change in Outlook I noticed is the calendar.  And it looks great.  Gone are the ugly old square yellow boxes from previous versions.  You can view multiple calendars and even overlay them ontop of one another, with each having its own pretty alpha-blended color.  You can subscribe to and publish Internet calendars in the popular .ics format.  Appointments can be categorized by color, making it very appealing to the eye, as well allowing a quick “at-a-glance” summary of your schedule.  Sure, many of these features are hardly original (*cough* – iCal – *cough*, but imitation really is the sincerest form of flatery.  And Outlook 2007′s calendar does a great job implementing these ideas.

Outlook also has full integration with Vista’s desktop search.  Finding messages is near-instant.  I use this feature constantly.  I like how I can instantly preview office documents attached to a message, though I wonder if this dangerous for security.  The folks at microsoft surely thought of that, as by default it displays a short warning and you have to click “preview” to force it to show the file.  This same preview functionailty is available in Vista’s explorer windows.

There are surely dozens upon dozens of new features in both the new Vista operating system and office 2007 suite that I’ve not mentioned.  These are just a few that stand out to me as things I find immediately useful in my everyday work environment.