Still figuring this Google stuff out

Share

When I first made Yggdrasil Mark I, I bought an IBM mouse that worked like a charm for a while. Eventually, though, the wheel became stuck, so I wound up buying a Microsoft mouse as a replacement that didn’t work so well. Not only does the pointer like to jump around the screen a lot, but about once every one hundred boots or so it just doesn’t respond at all and I have to reboot in order to get the mouse pointer to work. About a week or so ago I actually had the mouse fail to work on two consecutive boots, but a third boot got it to work all right. However, once I started loading my applications up, I found that my Google sidebar had lost all its information; my blogroll and photos were defaulting to things I’d viewed on the Web recently but didn’t add (and my old directories disappeared), and my to-do list just vaporized. I can’t be certain that the mouse problems and the Google problems are related to one another, but I was starting my reboots before Google Desktop had a chance to load. I’ll just blame Microsoft for this, since it’s easier and, let’s face it, likely true.

Speaking of Google stuff, I’m only now beginning to use Google Calendar on a regular basis. Back when I was going to school my schedule was kind of straightforward, and I never really had much need for a scheduler of any kind because, well, I had no social life. I still don’t have a social life (or at least much of one), but as I start teaching more and more, and start branching out into other professional things, I’m starting to see the value in scheduling software. If nothing else, by putting in the days of upcoming events that I probably won’t go to but would give some consideration to, I’m at least giving myself a reminder that there is other stuff out there for me to do in case I change my mind about going to stuff. (Given all the tasks I’ve already piled upon myself, though, I don’t know where I’d find the time for most of these events.)

On a related note, I think it’s only now that I’m starting to see the value of browser tabs. I hadn’t heard about Meebo until Ariel blogged about it recently, and now I’m finally beginning to get a picture of what so many of you out there must be doing. I’m guessing that for a lot of you, you keep one browser tab for surfing, then keep your Webmail account always active in another tab, your messaging client in another, and your scheduler in another. I’m still using Outlook for e-mail and Trillian for messaging, so I have to keep switching between windows, which isn’t as elegant. I’m not sure if I could ever switch entirely to Web applications, but I’m probably going to use browser tabs a lot more in the future here to see if they help me keep things in order.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.