Thursday, June 30, 2005
Security updates. Set up Office:mac 2004. Updated access to Debrah's files. Maintenance on Debrah's computer and telephone. Supp app edits. Lunch: roast cow sandwich from the cafeteria. Covered the front office for an hour. Prepared for listserv rotations. At my request, BK sent me an invite for a gmail account since I need it to test my XHTML e-mail templates. Chatted with Sneeper who just had his wisdom teeth removed this morning. Rotated the listservs. Maintenance on Charles's computer. Home. Chopped and pulled up giant weedy grass from the entryway and driveway. This wild grass is the tallest I've ever seen, some almost as tall as me! Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza. Shopped online for a cellphone provider. I found a Consumer Reports article from March 2005 called "Cell-phone complaints: A sorry picture for Cingular/AT&T" which was helpful except that the URL to it was 315 characters. You can find it with tinyurl.com/8yc5q and if you steal my WebLogic session ID from me, I want it back. They also have a wireless plan comparison tool at tinyurl.com/bjf34 which works well for the most part except the comparison grid fails to include the name of the company in the results. All my recent research has made me decide I am still not ready to jump back in to having a cellphone. Or, alternatively, the cellphone industry isn't ready for my business yet. The Blackberry 7250 is interesting and very promising, but the interface demo makes it seem really clunky usabilitywise, and I found myself wondering, "But when will Blackberry devices feature ClearType?" Ah, Microsoft, evil empire that you are, you have truly spoiled me with ClearType. I also just noticed that every web page in blackberry.com I have visited seems to be titled "Blackberry"—this is very poor usability, particularly in search engine results. For example, the page describing the Blackberry 7250 should be titled "Blackberry 7250" instead of "Blackberry."