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So, it’s been a while since I "shared"…

I’ve been busy writing my thesis.  I’m at 242 pages, including all front and back matter.  Yikes.  It’s getting to be a little large.  My prof says anything under 300 is good, so we’ll keep motoring.  In reality, there’s not much I can do to shorten it – think of it as an encyclopedia wrapped in some blah blah blah.

Back in July I had an interview for the dream job that I’ve been aiming for for the past few years.  It’s true what they say about it’s all about who you know, and that only 20% of the jobs are posted.  I got really really lucky several years ago when a big company decided to invest in some research with my prof.  It turned out that I was at the exact right place in my academic career (i.e., in the 2nd year of my PhD – enough time to be finished my courses, but not enough to have nailed down my research topic) that I benefited from this arrangement.  It included two summers as an intern, which was really just me doing my thing, but in a different place.   It was also helpful that I’m actually pretty darned good at what I do, so what they did see of me was good enough for them to want me when I was done.

Of course, that doesn’t negate the fact that I don’t think anything is guaranteed.  I invested heavily in this job hunt, from taking multiple workshops at the university, to getting my resume professionally done, to practicing interview questions.  But all that planning paid off, and I received a verbal offer last week.  I’m still waiting for the paperwork, but it looks like I’ll be starting the job at the beginning of January.  Plus two months of student coop at the end of this year.

All this boils down to the fact that I NEED to finish my thesis and submit it by the third week of October.  Eeek.  I would say that one of my causes of procrastination (fear of success – what happens if I finish my thesis and I don’t have a job) is gone.  However, I managed to do absolutely nothing today, so obviously, there’s some more work to be done ;)

To celebrate, I’ve been updating the blog to the newest version of wordpress, plus changing the theme, adding some widgets, etc. etc.

Once I start work, you can expect more posts, especially as I wrap my brain around Lotus Notes, and how to get it to work for me and my GTD.

instead of the supposedly normal web page:

Notice that the web page has an option to add an exception, while the popup does not. It’s possible to add exceptions through options/advanced/whatever, but it’s easier this way.

I finally figured out how to fix it, based on some arcane tips buried deep in a Mozilla forum that helped. The key is to turn on the browser.xul.error_pages.enabled flag in the FireFox settings. To do this, go to the URL about:config in your FF browser. If necessary, agree to the warranty warning. Then use the filter to find the right flag. Double-click it to change it from false to true.

Now you can get an invalid certificate error, and still continue on.

I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into this application – I’ve been a beta tester for years, I’ve posted innumerable helpful posts in response to questions on their forum, I’ve posted glowing reviews about it here.  What do I get for all this effort?

On the one hand, part of the company is great – they’ve even gone out of their way to provide good service.  On the other hand, almost every complaint I’ve had about the new version has been pooh-poohed.  “No, you don’t need that particular functionality (any more) because the twitterific geo-caching wine-guzzling facebook-loving generation doesn’t need it.  So, we’ve arbitrarily decided to remove the functionality.  Even though you and other power users have clamoured for it.” 

I’m guessing it’s a numbers game.  If we assume Nielson’s statistics are accurate, then the vocal few of us on the forum are the “heavy contributors” and represent 1% of the user base.  I figure, there’s maybe a dozen of us “power users” who (used to) show up on the forum.  If we represent just 1% of the users out there, then I can see why this nameless company feels free to ignore us.  (Kind of reminds me of that advice that businesses should fire their high-maintenance customers and save money on support.)

Normally, when I receive such shoddy treatment, or when a product starts letting me down, I just move my business.  Unfortunately for me, this application is so unique that there are no direct competitors.  Sure, I could get some of the functionality in some other places, but I can’t get all of the functionality, and man, have I ever gotten used to that functionality.

So, I find myself in the position of taking lesser and lesser levels of service, and even sucking up an occasional dose of patronizing bullshit on the forum.  But to be honest, it makes me feel cheap and dirty.  It’s not a pleasant feeling.

How long do you stay loyal to a favourite product?  What’s the tipping point where you just give up and move on?

Although I carefully (I thought) followed the upgrade instructions, I still ended up with grief.  Everything seemed to be going so well until I noticed that all of my categories were blank.  No names, no descriptions, just counts.  WTF?

It turns out that this is a common problem with the 2.6 upgrade.  I don’t know why.  Personally, I don’t care.  I’ve just lost 2 hours of my life fixing my categories.  Two hours I will never get back.  And even though I thought I had backed up my WordPress (i.e., I copied everything from the server onto my computer), I seemed to be missing the critical piece, i.e., the table that contains the category names/descriptions/counts.  Argh.

I managed to rebuild the information from scratch.  Scratch meaning that I looked at a Google cache of my blog, which showed me all the categories that I had, along with counts when I did a mouse-over, e.g.,

Unfortunately, I have many categories with 1, 2, 3, 4 tags, etc.  So, there were only a few I could match up right away.  Then it became one big logic problem.  I finally got it solved, and then followed the excellent instructions here on how to fix the category problem.

Don’t ask me what I did – the instructions were so good I just numbly followed along, like a little monkey typing on my keyboard.  And now, I think things are back to “normal”.

However, now I’m curious to see what the difference between categories and tags is.  Hmmmm…

Anyway, the product is KiGoo, which promises a way of accessing your Google calendar through MS Outlook.  It’s not a sync tool, but rather a way for you to actually bring your Google Calendar into Outlook, and modify it.  I thought it was a neat idea.

From the KiGoo web page:

Manage Google Calendar through the MS Outlook interface.

Key Benefits
Manage Exchange and Google Calendars in only one program !!
Check free/busy availability of all Google Contacts who shared their   information !!
See, Browse, Update, Email and invite your Google Contacts from MS Outlook !!
No synchronization needed!!
Real Time access!!
Easy installation!!
Supports MS Outlook 2007!!
KiGoo is free for non commercial use!

I would love for a few of you to try it out and let us know how it fares in the comments.