Category: My Computer

I’m sure I read something about this somewhere, sometime, but damned if I can figure out where.

My Excel installation has suddenly decided that it’s going to pause every minute or two, go through a monstrous flurry of network activity (locked during that time frame), then return to normal.  Similarly, certain formatting functions immediately cause a flurry of network activity (and locking up of the machine).

These are locally saved files, and I don’t see anywhere in Excel anything pointing to an external data source.

I haven’t lit on a Google search that doesn’t return over a million hits based on the terms given.  Anyone have any ideas?

Back in my old Treo days, I was able to communicate with directly with Yahoo Messenger by way of SMS — there were special short codes for all my correspondents, etc.

Problem is, those don’t seem to work from SMS with my Blackberry.  Nor does the spiffy RIM Blackberry Yahoo client work (it explicitly is not currently supported on AT&T/Cingular networks).  There is a web-based client — but I really don’t want to be hanging out in the browser on my phone.

Of the SMS/Text Messaging-based stuff, I can find not a word on the US Yahoo sites.  It’s as if the technology was removed coincident to my getting the BB.  I do find stuff on Yahoo sites elsewhere in the world, but the codes, don’t seem to work.

Now, on the other hand, the Google Talk client works like a champ — autoconnects just fine, receives messages integrated into the Blackberry’s messaging system, etc.  It’s super-spiffy.

I’m pretty happy right now with my Blackberry Curve.  It was very convenient (perhaps too convenient) in the meetings I was in last week, and it’s working out quite nicely for me.

One tool on it I’m sorely missing, though, is better timed control over the “profiles.”  A profile is a configuration for how the BB lets me know a message, phone call, voice mail, e-mail, IM, or other notification has come in.  I can configure noise, vibrations, and LED indicators for each of those, and can actually distinguish between in- and out-of-case conditions.

Though it’s easy to manually change profiles from, say, “Normal” to “Quiet,” I’m really bad at doing so.  The BB does have an “Auto On/Off” function that will turn the phone off and back on at a fixed schedule on Weekdays and on Weekends — but I could wish for a better control and options.

I had a nice application, Central, on my Treo which did this.  It let me set up multiple schedules to mute the phone — so, for example, I told it to mute my phone on weeknights between 11:30p and 5:00a — but on Saturdays until 10 and on Sundays until 11 (so it stays mute in church).  I could also tell it to mute during my karate class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  It also let me just mute it ad hoc (which is always dangerous when you forget to unmute it — which is why I prefer automation).

I’ve yet to find it, but it would be swell if there were a BB utility that would let me schedule profiles for given times/days of the week.  It would be even more swell if I could tell it to start a profile for a period of time (“I’m sitting down for a movie, so let me turn my phone to quiet for the next 3 hours”), but that would just be icing on the cake.

If anyone knows of something that can do this, please let me know.

Central on Treo

1. It is amusing that e-mail shows up on my Blackberry faster than it does in my online Outlook.
2. It is disconcerting that when I press the “off” button (hang up) the screen does not go dark (like it did in the Treo).  Indeed, the “off” button actually just pulls the screen to the home page; the BB shuts off the screen after a defined period of time.
3. It’s still freaking annoying that the phone came with no case, that I could not yet easily find cases, and that shipping takes so freaking long. 😛

In no particular order …

1. Annoying that it doesn’t come with even a cheap little carrying case.  I know, carrying cases for cell phones are so passe — but I always feel very uncomfortable with the phone in my shirt pocket (since it can easily bounce out).  I have one on order …
2. On the other hand, very cool that the “standard” BB cases for the Curve have a little magnetic plate in them that the phone can detect — so you can set different ring/vibe combos for having it in or out of the case.
3. And I like that it charges (optionally) off the USB port of my computer.  One less thing to plug in.
4. Setting up the filtering of Exchange messages — and telling it which folders to send, which messages to not send, which to flag as High Priority — was a bit of a pain.  Not for having to do it, but because various messages and configurations are tucked away.  That said, now that I have it set, it seems to be working great.
5. In general, way too many configuration applets and options and places to change things around.
6. Smaller and lighter than my Treo (thinner, at least, and shorter, though a scosh wider).  Certainly smaller than this.
7. Have to figure out how to rearrange the icons/applications/folders.  Way too many of them (see above).
8. I’ve gotten SplashID and the GMail extension installed.  Fairly painless.
9. A dedicated mute button on the exterior. Who’d a thunk?
10. I’ve stopped convulsively grabbing for the stylus.  The little track ball is fine, but it still seems
11. I miss having a dedicated period (.) key. Alt-shifting or hitting the space bar twice is fine, but it will take me a while to get used to it.
12. Voice dialing!  Woot!  And it works with my Bluetooth headset!  And it has a faboo speaker for speakerphone capacity!
13. Good forum for information.

So far, so good.

My Blackberry is in, the voice account has been transferred over to it (after the Nice Telcomm Lady spent an hour with some ditz at Cingular who insisted my account has been canceled since December), and it’s now in the hands of the techies who are activating the e-mail on it.

So don’t call me, since I don’t have my cell phone on me … yet.

Woot!

Getting ready for my shift from the PalmOS-based Treo to the Blackberry, due to arrive (I hope) Monday.  I’m going to miss the Palm platform; for all its flaws and increasing single-threaded obsolescence, a lot of my life has been spent (and stored) in it.

Most of the apps I actively use on the Treo have Blackberry versions.  Another old chapter being closed, though, is my Contact software.  I’ve been using a program called PSA Cards for about as long as I’ve been using a Palm device.  It’s a simple, fast, powerful contact manager that does just what I want — stores addresses, phone numbers, and notes about folks, and can sync up with the Palm. 

I found it much more convenient than using a Windows contact manager.  At the time, Windows had multiple of them (not to mention various approaches even within Outlook), and every new release of Windows or Office would create something new.  PSA Cards was a lot faster and, unlike Outlook, didn’t require opening an overly-bloated e-mail/PIM every time I wanted to look up an address.

Alas, PSA Cards is no longer supported (the market for small, fast, easy, compatible contact managers being, apparently, a trivial one), and my old installation doesn’t do anything with the Blackberry.

The Contacts setup in Outlook has largely stabilized, mercifully, but I still had problems with using Outlook for all my contact info, since it’s a humongous app, and I didn’t want to spend a couple of minutes for it to load up just to check a number (similarly, I didn’t want to leave it loaded all the time just for that).

So I’ve downloaded and am trying out Contacts Plus, a separate application that just accesses the Contacts in Outlook (and, if you’re offline, will use the offline file as a source).  It still load a scosh slowly (it’s a huge file), but it’s a cleaner interface than Outlook and has a much smaller memory footprint, making it much more acceptable for not-in-the-office use.

Now that I have all my data exported from PSA Cards to Outlook’s Contacts, I’ll let you know how it works.

I’d better arrive at the office Monday to find an e-mail saying “We have approved your new cell phone” — or, better yet, a box with said cell phone sitting on my desk — or there will be hell to pay. 

The current device works between 1 second at several hours at a time, without shutting the phone off (or rebooting itself), the time being directly infuenced (negatively) by my actually doing anything with it.  This has led to multiple instances of hilarity as people have called me, I’ve hit the button to pick up the call, and gotten the cheerful “Good-bye” picture and tone.

Grrr.

So the Phone Gods have heard about the Crackberry plan and are obviously pleased by it.   And so are pushing me to get rid of my Treo 650 sooner rather than later.

Or else my Treo heard about the plans and is sulking.

1. The camera has started taking blurrier-than-usual shots.
2. The phone has taken to dropping its connection to Cingular.  Persistently.  Can’t keep it up (so to speak) for more than a minute or two.  Which makes my cell phone more like a PDA.

The situation is probably not helped by my having dropped my Treo onto the ground a few times recently. 

So I’ll probably go and pick up the Blackberry tomorrow, I think.  Still massaging my Contacts, and it will me probably being without the Exchange push over the weekend, but I can have that turned on Monday.

I’ll miss my Treo.  It’s been, ironically, almost exactly two years I’ve had it, yet it feels like a lot longer than that (part of which is that I’ve had a Palm device for a number of years before that).

So I started sketching out what I needed to do, data-wise, before they pry my Treo out of my cold, cracked fingers …

The biggest thing I’m facing is changing my contact software.  Back in the days when Micro$oft was adding different address books every time they updated Office, Outlook, and/or Windows, I ended up using a program called PSA Cards — a very simple but highly flexible contact manager, with the necessary bonus of it having a Palm conduit.  Nice.  So that’s where my address/phone book have been for the last, oh, 5-7 years.

Alas, the company that was producing the software is no longer in business.  The only people selling contact software these days are high-powered sales/business development software companies.  Something simple and straightforward and flexible?  Where’s the fun (and profit) in that?

Still, it’s continued to work just fine through various PC upgrades.  But with the Blackberry, my contacts list will be my Exchange/Outlook Contacts.  Now, that’s been pretty stable the past few releases, but I’ve refrained from swinging that way because, well, if I’m at home and need to look up Randy’s phone number, I’ll be damned if I’m going to fire up Outlook (“The World’s Most Bloated E-Mail and PIM Software!”) to do so.  Outlook takes a minutes (and 300K RAM) to start up.  PSA Cards takes seconds and about 20K.

But if I’m going to be using Outlook for my contacts manager … is that the route I’m stuck with?

Maybe not.  I’m looking at Contacts Plus, a program that works as an external Contacts manager using the Outlook/Exchange database.  In theory (and I have to download the trial and test it), I should be able to use that as a front end to my Contacts without having to open up Outlook.  I doubt it will be quite and snappy and robust as PSA Cards was … but it will let me use Outlook Contacts a lot more easily.  Assuming it doesn’t corrupt the Outlook message store or something exciting like that.

Now all I have to do is finish mapping out the PSA Cards export format to something that Outlook can import, and I should be … if not set, then at least on my way.