Mental Hygiene the best thing you've done for your brain all day

well, i’m in italy. 6 hours late, but moving fast.

i missed my connection in newark, partly due to my travel agent’s short layover scheduling, but mostly due to the crack-smoking sadists that designed the newark airport.

if i have an hour and a half layover, and i need to check into my flight an hour befor departure or else get booted, an airport designed to take 30 minutes to travel from one point to another (and the worst directional signage in any airport, ever) leaves little room for delays.

at least i wasn’t alone. the other ugly american took the bad karma brunt for me by being an ass, while i slipped into a zen-like state, repeating to myself “i paid them to get me to palermo, and if it takes all day, they’ll get me there.” the capo di ticket agenti working on our connections set my mind at ease.

so, i’m in rome, and waiting on my puddle-jumper to sicily. the map is updated (i’m optimistic at this point)

clicketty click

i love open source software. love it.

and this time, i’m not being sarcastic when i say this. most of the open source software projects i come in contact with – linux, bsd, mozilla, apache – are the best at what they do. especially the server side of things.

(openoffice sucks rocks, especially on OS X, but still, it’s a start.)

anyhoo, the reason for this outpuring of love? i’m helping my office move from crappy microsoft outlook 2001 to slightly less crappy microsoft entourage X.

after much cursing and gnashing of teeth, our inept windows network admin finally managed to get the server working properly – i say she did, but it was the consultant she has do everything for her that finally figured out the permissions problem. so the time has come to migrate from outlook (classic, hella crappy to entourage (OS X native, slightly less crappy)

but there’s no mechanism for such migration. none. microsoft admits in their support materials that no program except outlook can read the outlook mailbox files. not even microsoft entourage, the outlook replacement microsoft is pushing mac users to adopt for connecting to an exchange 2000 or later server.

more cursing and gnashing of teeth.

but wait! what do i find in my research, but a solution! open source software to the rescue!

seems open source godsend mozilla can read the outlook mailbox files, and convert them to standard, universally adored .mbox format files.

and entourage can import mbox files.

but then, so can OS X’s mail.app. and with some inexpensive utilities iCal can read and post calendars to an exchange server.

so wait… why are we using entourage?

that does it. i’m old.

ancient. paleolithic. prehistoric, even.

i’ve receieved an invitation to my ten-year high school reunion. sigh.

actually, three of them.

apparently, when you accept the invitation from the company that’s organizing the event, they ask you for email addresses of other folks you graduated with – i presume, as i have yet to accept the invitation. so, at least three people i know will be there.

three people that know my email address, anyway.

and that’s about the number of people that i graduated with that i still keep in touch with. maybe a few more. most of the other five hundred or so, i couldn’t care less about.

wow. a little out of date, aren’t we?

well, watch this space. another grand adventure is coming soon, for you to Play Along at Home!