Postcards From Myself

I am extremely happy. Happier that you can know. Hopefully what has happened here in South Carolina will continue on through the nation. I am also surprised and encouraged by the margin of victory Barack Obama experienced over Hillary Clinton. I was discussing all of this with my wife, who is basically a Hillary supporter, and what I was really trying to express to her is how, above all else, Obama is a candidate of hope and change. He represents the hope that we have that politics can change and be for the people instead of about the power and the money.

I also hope that the rest of the campaign can be a bit less muddy than the road that led up to this evening’s win. Please, no mud-slinging, no back stabbing, and no harmful attacks. Harmful more to the optimism and unity of this entire nation than to the individual being attacked.

As I said before, I was worried about the turnout. Voting this morning took less that 5 minutes. Out of the car at 10:41 and then back in the car by 10:46. Yes, that is right - five minutes to walk from the car, into the school, check in at the registration, vote, and get back in the car. But in the end the turn out was great. By my calculations roughly 525,000 people turned out for the today’s primary. That number compares to about 432,000 for last weeks Republican primary. In a state that is solidly “red,” to have nearly a hundred thousand more people turn out is really saying something. It really goes to show how motivated both Democrats in general and Obama supporters really are.

And finally check out this powerful endorsement letter for Obama from Carolina Kennedy in the New York Times.

So, from Charleston, South Carolina, thank you. And here is to a great future!

I have heard the language of the apocolypse,

and now I shall embrace the silence.

- Neil Gaiman

This is totally random, but I just came across a site that is so odd and interesting that I have to share the madness. This is the kind of site that the Internet was created for and that I can literally lose myself in for hours. Take a look at Strange Maps. Seriously, look a it and then scroll down and look some more. When you are feeling that the world is a dull place and everything looks the same, consider these maps that can take the extremely ordinary and present it some amazingly different point of view. From New York under German occupation to Europe as a conglomeration of cartoon characters, the maps on this site convey more than places and directions; they offer up an alternative way of looking at all that surrounds us.

Enjoy!

Yesterday afternoon I received and installed the newest version of Microsoft Office for the Mac. Since the last version was Office 2004 and this one is Office 2008, you can obviously see that a lot of time has passed between updates. Once installed everything has gone along fine. The interface is a little different as would be expected, but nowhere near as confusing as the new ribbon interface in Office 2007 for Windows. I have used the new Windows version and simply hate it. I can’t find anything. Maybe I would like it if I used it more often, but luckily I don’t have to.

Back to the Mac side… The two biggest changes that I have encountered so far are the file formats and Exchange integration. Office 2008 uses the new Microsoft Office file formats to store documents. You can recognize these easily because they end in an “x”, for example “.docx” and .”xlsx”. I work in an environment where most people have not migrated to a newer version of Office, so I went into preferences and set my default file save format to the older format.

More important for me is the closer ties Entourage has with Microsoft Exchange. I can finally use Entourage to easily check the free time and availability of other user. This has been something that Outlook users have long been able to do, but Entourage users could not. Whenever I needed to schedule a large meeting and wanted to find the most acceptable time to all, I would have to find a Windows machine and use Outlook. But no more! I can finally do this directly in Entourage.

But, what Microsoft giveth they also taketh away. Yes, the new version of Office has lost the ability to run the VB macros that many companies have created in their documents. So now when I go to fill out my expense report I am going to have to do the final printing on a Windows machine. Or I am going to have to create new version of the form for the new Mac version of Office. What a pain. Luckily I only have a few forms with macros. Other companies that have a lot of those automated forms are going to have a real problem.

As I said, I only installed this upgrade yesterday so I haven’t gotten a chance to run all the applications through their paces. My initial impression though is that if you don’t need the VB macros and your organization does use Exchange, then this is an excellent upgrade. If you use VB macros though, or if you don’t need the Exchange features, then there truthfully may be no reason to switch and in fact there may be compelling reasons not to. You may also want to check out this video review of Office 2008 from the people at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

On a side note, as I performed the Office install, I notices that my hard drive had a lot less space available than I thought it should. Since the cause wasn’t immeadiatly obvious, I resorted to a great tool that has been a good friend - OmniDiskSweeper from The Omni Group. These are the same people who make such programs as OmniGrapher (for flow charts and such) and OmniOutliner. OmniDiskSweeper basically searches your entire hard drive and then gives you a tree view of it all sorted by size. Looking at this I was able to quickly find some old files, backups, and such that I didn’t need anymore and that were taking up over 30 gig of file space. Freeing up 30 gig of my drive is what I call an immediate return on investment - especially since it is free software. You can pay for a version that lets you delete files directly, but I just use the free version and use Finder to delete the files.

Update: There does seem to be a problem with the installation of Office 2008. It would seem that the Office installer incorrectly sets some permissions on files, allowing a second local user on your Mac, i.e. a user other than the admin user installing the software, to modify the Office apps and some supporting libraries. This, of course, is not a good thing but the Mac Business Unit has posted instructions on their blog to fix this via some Terminal commands. They also promise that an update to Office soon for those who don’t want to muck around in the terminal.

OK, so I may have a thief in my bird feeder, but I have a friend who has a bandit in her house. Actually, that should read “Bandit in her house” with a capital “B”. Bandit is actually the name of her raccoon. My friend Jan’s thing in life is rescuing wild animals that need help. She works with an organization named Keeper of the Wild. Keeper of the Wild is a Federally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation, preservation and rehabilitation of South Carolina’s Wildlife. (Sounds like an ad, or like I copied that description from their website.) They really are a cool organization and have even been on TV on Jeff Corwin’s Animal Planet show.

Anyway, back to Bandit. My friend Jan rescues a lot of different animals form raccoons and possums to bobcats and otters, but sometimes for different reasons they are not re-releasable. In the case of Bandit, at least now, she is not releasable because she is spoiled and prefers Pringles potato chips to wild berries. And so now, Bandit is a house-raccoon. Actually, much of her times is spent up in the chimney. I am not sure whether she really likes it up there of if she just likes being able to drop down and scare unsuspecting visitors. Trust me, it works.

So, I thought I would give you a couple of pictures and a warning. For the pictures, you have Bandit at the table and another one of Bandit descending from the fireplace. You know there is something going on when you see a chair in the fireplace. And as for the warning? Never have a pet or other animal for a house mate that has hands or opposable thumbs to open jars, cabinets, refrigerators, purses . . . well, you get the picture. She is a really sweet animal, just make sure to hold on to your valuables.