Archive for January 2007

I don’t like a cluttered desktop or Program List. Most of the time, I won’t let an application add icons to Quickstart (the >> between the taskbar and the icons on the left) or desktop, unless it’s a program I’ll access frequently. The most frequently applications get to live in Quickstart.

According to this Seattle Times article, Computer makers cut down on desktop clutter. Who needs to have an icon or program shortcut in multiple places?

Since I like things organized, this is how I set up my desktop, Quickstart and Program shortcuts in Start:

* **Keyboard button shortcuts**: Programs accessed daily (email, main browser, IM, Palm).

* **Quickstart and Start**: Frequently accessed programs not in keyboard shortcut (text editors, other browsers, business apps, Web design-related apps).

* **Desktop**:
– Infrequently accessed applications that I use from time to time (spyware checkers, video editor, Belarc Advisor).

– Applications I’m currently reviewing (I uninstall the application when I’m done).

– Applications I want or need to check out (otherwise I’ll never remember to search for them in the longer All Programs list).

* **All Programs**: Everything else.

Developers like to create their own folders and sometimes, a folder within a folder (this annoys me). So I get rid of sub-folders (usually it’s just one — makes no sense), and move the apps up into the main folder. I take the following:

\> Program Folder > Subfolder – Application – Uninstall

And change it to the following:

\> Program Folder – Application – Uninstall

I also have generic folders like Games, Communications (instant messenger apps), Media (media players and editors), Palm, and PocketPC. I move related apps into their folders and delete as many subfolders as I can. Thanks for indulging me — my apps look much better as I reorganized them while writing this entry.

I try to limit All Programs to three columns. Any more than that starts to spill over too far. At one point, the All Programs list crossed over to my second monitor. That was a sign to clean up.

In Flower Shop: Big City Break, I step into the role of Meg, who left the city for a quieter locale to open a flower shop. Though I’ve played the owner of a similar game that took place in a bakery, it didn’t prepare me for this one. Hence, it was good to have a tutorial guide me through the game to get started. As I warmed up and found my way around, the game added more features and explained what to do.

The game contains over sixty levels and each level represents a day in the life of the florist. The game provides a goal to reach in order to advance to the next level — actually, two goals. One for advancing to the next level, and the other, “Guru” goal, for the extra challenge. Whenever I reached the Guru goal, I earned a star on the map that appears between levels to show Meg’s progress. The number of stars I earned is puny, but it was exciting to win them.

I prefer running a bakery to a flower shop, but this game played better than the bakery version. Halfway through the bakery game, I got stuck on a level and couldn’t get past it. With Flower Shop, I failed to meet the goal a few times, but made it on a second or third try. This one also contains bonus rounds for a change of pace and bonus points.

A level typically involves taking orders, fulfilling them and grabbing the dough. Starting was easy as I planted flowers, bundled them and gave them to the customers. With each advancing level, I had more work to do before I could complete an order. Some flowers require watering before blooming and others require watering and fertilizer to bloom. I’ve never been a fan of daisies until this game because they don’t require anything to grow — thank you, daisies.

The bakery game involved buying and upgrading equipment. This one takes care of the upgrades for you, which was fine with me as my mind was spinning from trying to do loads of tasks. I could give Meg many steps to do before she actually does them. Occasionally, I would hear a rude buzz when I tried to do something that I couldn’t do – even when it was a legitimate move. During the wildest moments, my brain felt like it was doing multiple processing at once, but that made the game stimulating and fun.

As if growing flowers and serving customers wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I had to watch out for flying clocks and flying creatures as an opportunity to get more time on the clock or more cash. One annoyance: The bugs. I could do without them, but they’re a real problem for gardeners and florists, so I understand their inclusion in the game. On the bright side, I’m thankful the game didn’t include eight-legged web-making creatures — then an arachnophobic like me would never play Flower Shop.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Big Fish Games
• Amazon

Other related games

• Cake Mania
• Diner Dash Flo on the Go
• Diner Dash

Thanks to poor Pluto’s recent declassification as a planet, the American Dialect Society — an organization founded in 1889 that “is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by” — picked “plutoed” as its 2006 Word of the Year. The word means “to demote or devalue someone or something.”

Expectedly the word originated when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union announced Pluto was no longer considered a planet. Other considered words for the Word of the Year include climate canary (“an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon”), murse (“man’s purse”), flog (“a fake blog that promotes products”) and macaca (“an American citizen treated as an alien”).

The winning word was the right choice compared to the others. It sounds natural and it’s instantly obvious what it means, if you know that Pluto lost its planet designation.

Murse sounds made up or fake (funny, words are generally made up). I haven’t come across climate canary nor macaca. The latter isn’t attractive considering the last part of the word has an ugly word. Flog has another meaning and the general public is still getting used to the idea of blogs.

Do industries secretly agree not to provide the best customer service so no one gets a competitive advantage? A little overboard, but it looks that way lately. Our arch in front of our house cracked — not unusual based on the way it was built without rebars. But it scares me whenever people come to the porch because I don’t want anyone hurt. Our family goes out the back door anytime we want to go outside.

We called four masons for estimates. Three came out and three gave quotes. We’re ready to proceed, but no one is returning our calls. To boot, it’s been below freezing in the Dallas area, so we doubt that they’re outside working on projects (I hope not). The crack needs fixing before something happens.

One of the carpet stores came to measure our floor because we need to replace the carpet (thank you, Itzy) before we have a big shindig next month. The store called back later the same day and left a message to call them for quotes. Paul called several times and gets no answer or answering machine.

Not all is bad. Verizon and the remodel company did their jobs. We switched from Time Warner to Verizon FiOS. Verizon showed up nice and early on the scheduled date. After inspecting our set up, the employee needed to go to his parts yard for parts. He returned on time and finished the job. He even gave us his cell number so Paul could call him with information.

We’re also switching to Verizon FiOS TV. They’re supposed to come today, but the Dallas area got hit with unexpected sleet. Original prediction was for snow flurries, after 4am — it changed to sleet and the roads are bad. No one is overreacting this time. Funny thing is that all independent school districts closed except for Dallas.

When we made the appointment, Verizon said someone would be here at 8:30am. The person forgot to say was that it was a window from 8:30am to noon. When Paul called about it at 10am, they said it was a window of time. At 11:00am, someone else called and said they would not be able to make it because of weather and rescheduled for Saturday (only a couple of days away). PLUS, they gave us one month of service free.

Nice work, Verizon.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, doesn’t have a simple answer to the question of how to cancel an account. I joined the family plan, so I need to get rid of my original account.

It happens to everyone, writers and non-writers. We need to write something, but can’t produce content — at least, nothing of good quality. A couple of people I know (one is a writer and the other isn’t) ran into this problem as a result of personal challenges. One weathering a dangerous storm and the other a family crisis.

It happens to me when I don’t get enough sleep, don’t feel well or get frustrated with something. When my kids had the day off from school, I struggled to write one sentence in what felt like an hour. Of course, I’m available to them — in this case, my son interrupted me every few minutes and then his shadow (little brother) would do the same. After all that and yesterday’s loud noises from the carpet install and the alarm going off eight times before I disconnected it, I slipped into a writing rut.

I didn’t give up and go off to do mindless stuff. Instead, I switched to tasks that require less creativity. Editing (the content is already there), research, reviewing web sites, updating status reports and so on. I never run out mindless work to do before I find my groove again. This works well as I finish other work needing completing without wasting my day. How do you deal with writing when your mind isn’t focused on the task?

I recently read an article that says executives have higher vocabulary than the average person. Managers, too, but not as high as executives. This book is a great way to expand your knowledge.

A devotional is a short religious service. Religious and spiritual devotional books break down religious readings into short chapters to help readers grow closer to G-d. Readers typically read a little bit each day. The Intellectual Devotional has nothing to do with religious practice, although religion is one of the fields of knowledge covered in the book.

In fact, the only thing The Intellectual Devotional has in common with a religious devotional is the concept of reading one short passage on a daily basis. Instead of growing spiritually, you exercise your intellect with knowledge divided into the following seven “fields of knowledge” as the book calls them:

Sunday: Religion
Monday: History
Tuesday: Literature
Wednesday: Visual Arts
Thursday: Science
Friday: Music
Saturday: Philosophy

Every entry takes up no more than one page. This style lends itself to easy reading unlike encyclopedias where entries appear alphabetically like terms in a dictionary. It’s difficult to decide where to start and stop reading. The Intellectual Devotional covers one topic related to the day’s knowledge field within one page. The entry contains details that normally would be too much for an encyclopedia, and this makes the reading more captivating.

The book contains 365 entries for reading one per day for a year. I admit it. I cheated and read at least two entries a day — not as if I would wait a year before writing this review. I took care to absorb every entry, as that’s what “devotionals” are meant for — digging deeply into the reading.

I’m grateful my liberal arts education, which provided me with knowledge from a wide array of topics much like what this book covers. In spite of the education, I’ve plenty more to learn and believe in lifelong learning. The book fulfills this need nicely as I finally grasped some topics with which I was somewhat familiar, but lacked concrete knowledge. The book also refreshed my memory of long forgotten knowledge.

The nice thing about the book’s set up is that I pick up something new, but it won’t get in the way of another book I’m reading. I read one or two entries, put the book away for the night and spend the rest of my time reading my current book.

If the book spawns more like it, it won’t surprise me. I’d love to see more. Maybe with a different set of seven fields of knowledge, or perhaps the seven fields of knowledge get their own books for those who wish to delve more into the field.

One minor criticism — a couple of the more complex topics are difficult to understand since the writing didn’t clarify them well. Think of an engineer explaining a formula in engineering terms instead of layman’s terms.

The Intellectual Devotional sends minds thirsting for knowledge on a pleasurable journey with every page. Whether or not a person becomes a better conversationalist isn’t as important as the feeling that comes with picking up a morsel of knowledge. It also makes a wonderful gift to almost anyone thanks to its diversity of information.

Here is the audio CD that the article about vocabulary referenced. I emailed the author asking if there is a script or book that comes with the audio since I can’t follow audio without help.

Title: The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class
Author: David Kidder and Noah Oppenheim
Publisher: Rodale Books
ISBN: 1594865132
Date: October 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 375
Cover Price: USD: $22.50 Amazon: $13.50

Writing White Papers has put together an impressive list of the top ten books for writers. A list of finalists (for anything in general) often contain a couple of weak choices, but not this list. Stelzner asked readers to submit ONE favorite book, which created a strong list of finalists. I have some of these books and others are on my list of books to buy.

A writer who has some or all of these books will do fine with them and nothing else. One other book writers would benefit from having in their writing toolbox: The Street Smart Writer: Self Defense Against Sharks and Scams in the Writing World. Unfortunately, it’s common for writers — even the smart ones with good common sense — to run into bad agents, publishers and contests. The book makes a good starting place for getting help.

My vote went to On Writing Well simply because I picked up a few tips and applied them. Still do. A successful nonfiction book is one that encourages you to take action and continue doing it long after you’ve read it.

In the US, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In spirit of celebrating our world’s uniqueness, we look at how people read or hear a word and understand it differently than originally intended.

Many words contain multiple definitions, and sentences provide the context. A simple example: My daughter was watching a fashion reality show on TV when I caught one line in the captions, “It’s not safe.” Perplexed, I asked her if the designer made something that would not be safe to wear (thinking of needles sticking out and poking the model).

The speaker’s saying that meant the designer was taking a risk with the design. How many misunderstandings have we had because of such mix ups? When people ask me how much I hear with my hearing aids, I explain that it helps me distinguish words that look the same on the lips like “mom,” “pop,” and “mop.” But if I were to close my eyes, I’d hear a word, but not know which word.

But sometimes even with a complete sentence — we misunderstand what the speaker means. It happens to me a lot, but usually I misread one word or two for another. Had a few embarrassing situations when I did that.

All we can do is be aware of our conversations and communications. An off-track response gives a hint there may have been a misunderstanding.

P.S. I am using categories again. So those who prefer to find past entries by categories have the option (well, I need to categorize my thousands of posts first). For fans of tags, those are still here.

Taking a page from M&Ms Dark’s movie puzzle, Viking’s Stationery Movies contains 10 movies for you to guess. Only instead of a painting, it uses office supplies to depict the movies. I got 10 of 20. The ones I missed — I don’t think I could’ve gotten because I was either not familiar with the movie’s scenes or never saw the movie. Even if you heard of the movie, it most likely won’t help you in this one.

Since I like to figure out things with hints before getting the answer, I’ve provided hints here. To see them, you’ll have to scroll your mouse over the text below or do a Select All (CTRL+A). Here’s another fun link where Fido reads your mind. Can’t imagine the math calculations that go into this to make it work.

Hints

1. Weaver
2. Grant
3. Burton
4. Think famous saying.
5. Third of three movies.
6. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
7. Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be in the movie, but an allergic reaction kept him out. Make sure you include the short word that comes first or it won’t accept it.
8. I never saw this movie, but I managed to figure it out. “Lost River Lake.”
9. Committing the perfect crime. No animals in this movie.
10. Star of this one was also the star of the movie that has its own new reality show.
11. Tippie.
12. Three months ago.
13. Haunted hotel.
14. Ahh-nold.
15. Guy in this doesn’t have a limp.
16. Rock ‘n roll. Turn up the volume. Louder!
17. I thought this #6 represented this one better.
18. I thought this was the easiest because the image depicts the ads/movie poster.
19. Character.
20. Does this really need a hint?

Answers: I included notes in case you weren’t familiar with the movie.

1. Alien. Scene where alien jumps out of stomach is famous.
2. Bridget Jones’s Diary (I think this would’ve been good for Memento.
3. Edward Scissorhands
4. ET. You know, “E.T., phone home?”
5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Movie scene.
6. Jaws: Movie scene.
7. The Wizard of Oz: The yellow brick road… follow it.
8. Piranha: Just a bunch of fish in the water.
9. Reservoir Dogs: I believe it refers to Mr. Yellow and other characters.
10. Saturday Night Fever: Dance floor and pointy finger.
11. The Birds: Just a bunch of birds everywhere.
12. The Hunt for Red October: Tape dispenser represents submarine.
13. The Shining: Movie scene.
14. The Terminator: Person made out of metal.
15. The Usual Suspects: Movie ads/posters with suspects against wall.
16. This is Spinal Tap: The band went on and on about making the speakers louder as most volume controls only go up to 10. They also say, “Up to 11.”
17. Titanic: Gigantic thing.
18. American Beauty: Appeared in movie posters/ads.
19. Moonraker: Jaws was in two James Bond movies, so it was a matter of guessing which.
20. Star Wars: Darth Vader with lightsaber.

I’m not into this tagging business. It works well for sites like Technorati, but I think for sites that aren’t social networks or bookmarking sites, tags don’t do the job. When I launched the new design of this place, it came with tags instead of categories. Research indicated that tags were the way to go.

Some days we remember tag words and other days we forget them. Therefore, when you want to retrieve a post using tags instead of search … it’s a matter of selecting the right tag that you used in the post. I’d like to go back to categories, but that would make a mess. Besides, what you think is more important.

Tags, I believe, are best used when interacting with other sites. For example, a blog uses tags so readers can search the web or a social site for more posts on a specific keyword. But to find something within a person’s site — categories work better.

What is your preference? Why?