According to the archives, it’s been 19 months since I wrote anything. In the interim, I have dutifully read all the posts and comments (and added a comment or two of my own here and there). Based on these readings, I have noticed a few disturbingly intelligent discussions around here and have determined that I need to return in order to lower the level of discourse.
Apart from parenting and various job upheavals of my own creation (arguably, perhaps, in response to difficult situations), my life seems to have been mostly static. In fact, all I want to mention about where I am after 19 months of absence are three things I like that I could have more or less mentioned in 2006:
- I like to use Notepad. I know there are millions of thirty-something cool kids who feel the same way, so I am not trying to play any kind of hipster card. However, there is something about Microsoft Word that feels so intimidating and so final. I only write in Word when it is for work or for a manuscript.
- I like at least 4 out 5 episodes of This American Life. This has been going on for me for at least a decade now. I was surprised to hear a colleague say how much he hated that show and would turn off the radio as soon as he heard it begin, but I am often pretty hardcore into pointless crap.
- I like Nine Inch Nails. I like that he made the newest album available for free download so that I don’t need to make myself conflicted about downloading it illegally. His “computer music + negative emotion” thing continues to feel about right to me. And I still want to be a rock star.
For this morning, that’s all I’ve got. No John McCain, no poems, and no cats.
Hooray for Chris!!
In Windows I gravitate toward Wordpad and .rtf files myself, but I must use Word all the time for work. When I do write in Word, I massacre all the toolbars and turn off all the bells & whistles, which makes it tolerable.
But for now, on my new computer I don’t have anything but TextWrangler and a trial version of Pages. Textwrangler makes more sense.
by greg—May 24, 09:59 AM
Welcome back!
I have recently started composing on Textwrangler on my aged home iBook. I use Crimson Editor at work for doing text-editory things. I guess I write reports in Word, but as said reports are a once a month “this is what happened last month in the library in three paragraphs” sort of thing, they don’t entail any real thought and thus I don’t much care about their creation.
by Laura—May 24, 10:32 AM
Word is pretty great for making forms and checklists, though. (This I have discovered recently as my job has become more invested in the development of forms and checklists.)
by greg—May 24, 10:41 AM
With respect to forms and checklists, I do definitely use Word as opposed to anything else when making questionnaires and other materials for my research. Autoformatting is often frustrating, but the other formatting tools are helpful when form is as important as is content.
Have any of you tried the OpenOffice suite? I haven’t, but I prob will the next time we have to buy a PC.
by chris—May 24, 11:55 AM
I have not tried it, but it sounds mostly OK. How much its OKness is borne of OpenSource geeks praising it up and down, though, I dunno.
by greg—May 24, 03:18 PM
I’ve been playing quite a bit with Open Office at work. It’s good, though a little disorienting: enough things are enough like the Microsoft equivalents that you get lulled into thinking you know everything, but then you run into something that’s different enough that you have to spend awhile figuring it out.
I’ve not used Neo Office at all, although I will if/when I get a new computer.
by Laura—May 24, 04:01 PM
well… be still my beating heart, i’ve been away much too long!!!
by Balthasar Gracian—May 26, 07:59 AM