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Another trip to Durango...
Apr. 22nd, 2003 08:53 pmBut not for long. The doc revised my meds again, and I'm to keep track of my BP for the next couple of weeks, and we'll run it from there.
Unfortunately, I went to Durango without my AmEx card, so my ability to spend money was limited. (OTOH, I did have a couple of checks, which I put to good use.)
I visited the sushi place in Durango, and Feht is right: it's expensive. I'm not sure it's the best sushi place I've ever been to, but it's certainly the best sushi place in the area. The sushi was fairly good, but their dynamite roll was nothing special.
Doing a Google search on "livejoural + twiki" doesn't yield much, but what does show up is interesting. My mind is racing with the possibilities of using a wiki in my translation business, even if I don't involve anyone else in its development (which perhaps makes me a WikiGeek, I don't know).
The thing that attracts me to the wiki concept is its free form. I have a long history of not adapting well to environments where I have to organize information the way someone else sees fit.
Take address books, for example.
Really simple, paper-based address books basically give you a place where you can note name, address, city/zone/state, and phone number.
More advanced approaches give you an extra line for a company name, and another line for a fax number, and in exceptional cases, another line for your contact's title.
(This immediately introduces a problem. If Jane Smith works for Acme Manufacturers, do you put her entry under "S" or "A"? Both? If Acme supplies you with widgets, you might be tempted to put the entry under "W", no? In short, you have to remember either the person's name or company to find the information you need. But I digress, as this issue (how to organize entries) is different from the one I'm talking about (how entries are organized internally).)
In most cases, you have to write "outside the lines" of your paper-based address book if, besides the aforementioned, your contact has a cell phone and a pager number. Moreover, maybe you've also been given a home phone number.
Some software goes a long way toward addressing this swamp, as do some PIMs. For example, my Palm lets me enter last and first name, title, company name, up to four "slots" to be allocated among work, home, fax, pager, main, or cell numbers, e-mail address or 'other' info, one slot each for address, city, state, postal code, and country, and up to 4 "custom" slots that are the same for all entries. (FWIW, there are still holes in the approach: if you want to add a bunch of people to your address book, all of whom work for the same company, you'd have to enter the address, etc. separately for each one.)
Some software will also allow you to enter the home address, names of significant other and offspring, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., but the key here is this: each contact in your address book has all of these slots, whether they're empty or full. This makes finding information somewhat less than easy.
Years ago, I reviewed a product called InfoSelect for Byte. The glory of the software was that it implemented a free-form database where you were in control of what appeared on your screen. If all you had for someone was a phone number, then that information could be "chunked" together without imparing your ability to write the Great American Novel™, if necessary, to describe the skinny you had on someone else.
As with most great concepts in the software industry, the publisher decided to "improve" the application by loading it up with a bunch of (to me) useless features, causing it to take up a larger memory footprint and more hard disk real estate. I've got a copy of the latest-greatest installed on my machine, but the most useful features (for me) have paled, and I don't use it the way I used to (in 1995, I did a presentation at the ATA conference in Nashville highlighting my use of InfoSelect to implement a free-form glossary with more capabilities than your ordinary, linear electronic dictionary).
Anyway, a few minutes ago, I started on the first "draft" of a ContactInfo topic on my locally installed wiki. The main page of the topic contains a table with bare bones information: names, companies, phone and fax numbers. The company names are linked to separate topics devoted to the respective company: address, web sites, etc. I can also include the names of other people at the company with whom I have little or no contact, but who should be kept track of (if only to know who's in charge of what department).
The trip to Durango did not interfere with my sending off the item due this morning, but it did keep me from invoicing it, so I guess I'll do that tomorrow. I also received a call from a client asking about my availability, which means I should probably expect something tomorrow.
As of now, Drew and Galina will be attending the AMPC show in Austin on May 1-4, which means they'll be leaving on the 30th, which means it'll be just me and Jody in the store for about a week. I am not looking forward to this, but it's doable.
Cheers...
Unfortunately, I went to Durango without my AmEx card, so my ability to spend money was limited. (OTOH, I did have a couple of checks, which I put to good use.)
I visited the sushi place in Durango, and Feht is right: it's expensive. I'm not sure it's the best sushi place I've ever been to, but it's certainly the best sushi place in the area. The sushi was fairly good, but their dynamite roll was nothing special.
Doing a Google search on "livejoural + twiki" doesn't yield much, but what does show up is interesting. My mind is racing with the possibilities of using a wiki in my translation business, even if I don't involve anyone else in its development (which perhaps makes me a WikiGeek, I don't know).
The thing that attracts me to the wiki concept is its free form. I have a long history of not adapting well to environments where I have to organize information the way someone else sees fit.
Take address books, for example.
Really simple, paper-based address books basically give you a place where you can note name, address, city/zone/state, and phone number.
More advanced approaches give you an extra line for a company name, and another line for a fax number, and in exceptional cases, another line for your contact's title.
(This immediately introduces a problem. If Jane Smith works for Acme Manufacturers, do you put her entry under "S" or "A"? Both? If Acme supplies you with widgets, you might be tempted to put the entry under "W", no? In short, you have to remember either the person's name or company to find the information you need. But I digress, as this issue (how to organize entries) is different from the one I'm talking about (how entries are organized internally).)
In most cases, you have to write "outside the lines" of your paper-based address book if, besides the aforementioned, your contact has a cell phone and a pager number. Moreover, maybe you've also been given a home phone number.
Some software goes a long way toward addressing this swamp, as do some PIMs. For example, my Palm lets me enter last and first name, title, company name, up to four "slots" to be allocated among work, home, fax, pager, main, or cell numbers, e-mail address or 'other' info, one slot each for address, city, state, postal code, and country, and up to 4 "custom" slots that are the same for all entries. (FWIW, there are still holes in the approach: if you want to add a bunch of people to your address book, all of whom work for the same company, you'd have to enter the address, etc. separately for each one.)
Some software will also allow you to enter the home address, names of significant other and offspring, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., but the key here is this: each contact in your address book has all of these slots, whether they're empty or full. This makes finding information somewhat less than easy.
Years ago, I reviewed a product called InfoSelect for Byte. The glory of the software was that it implemented a free-form database where you were in control of what appeared on your screen. If all you had for someone was a phone number, then that information could be "chunked" together without imparing your ability to write the Great American Novel™, if necessary, to describe the skinny you had on someone else.
As with most great concepts in the software industry, the publisher decided to "improve" the application by loading it up with a bunch of (to me) useless features, causing it to take up a larger memory footprint and more hard disk real estate. I've got a copy of the latest-greatest installed on my machine, but the most useful features (for me) have paled, and I don't use it the way I used to (in 1995, I did a presentation at the ATA conference in Nashville highlighting my use of InfoSelect to implement a free-form glossary with more capabilities than your ordinary, linear electronic dictionary).
Anyway, a few minutes ago, I started on the first "draft" of a ContactInfo topic on my locally installed wiki. The main page of the topic contains a table with bare bones information: names, companies, phone and fax numbers. The company names are linked to separate topics devoted to the respective company: address, web sites, etc. I can also include the names of other people at the company with whom I have little or no contact, but who should be kept track of (if only to know who's in charge of what department).
The trip to Durango did not interfere with my sending off the item due this morning, but it did keep me from invoicing it, so I guess I'll do that tomorrow. I also received a call from a client asking about my availability, which means I should probably expect something tomorrow.
As of now, Drew and Galina will be attending the AMPC show in Austin on May 1-4, which means they'll be leaving on the 30th, which means it'll be just me and Jody in the store for about a week. I am not looking forward to this, but it's doable.
Cheers...
