Google vs. Microsoft

From a regular Joe's perspective with a common awareness of tech & business news, it's not hard to see why Microsoft seems to loathe Google. Here's a company that showed up on the internet scene with a search engine like so many others and have grown and expanded into many other areas. Microsoft too has expanded into many different areas but they did it by developing and SELLING software.

Now while Google may have software or other technology that they sell, we don't see their products on the shelves at stores on the same aisle as Microsoft Office. Google drew in crowds worldwide not by selling software but by giving it away FREE. What a novel concept. You mean people are interested in free software that works really well and have most of it web based applications? Yes, people are moving away from Microsoft Office and turning to Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar as replacements. Heck, my Dad used Google Calendar to invite me to an event and when my Outlook picked up the invite from my Gmail, it showed it on my Outlook Calendar. (Too bad I can't have my Outlook items auto populate into Google Calendar.) These web based applications are helping many to move away from the Microsoft operating systems they've grown tired of and are more frequently unimpressed with what the software giant has to offer and what they expect you to do to get it wether it be by controlling the market price of software and operating systems or simply bundling it with their OS or your next new PC. Many people are discovering a world outside the realm of Microsoft with Macs and a wide variety of Linux options. I posed the question recently on Twitter asking people if they thought there was really any piece of Microsoft software they couldn't do without. For me, I could do without most of it and it's making the decision of swaying me and many others to quit investing money in Microsoft products. It was a good ride while it lasted but it's gone downhill. I mean there really hasn't been a motivating reason to upgrade from Office 2003 or perhaps even earlier. I know I won't be installing it on any PC I own anymore but that's another story about my frustration with Word and it's hooks into Outlook.

Polishing the floor

I was looking through the media I had saved to my cell phone and came across a couple clips I had recorded last year. They show that there are alternative methods to cleaning your hardwood floor and that it can be fun for the whole family.

Along a similar vein is the home version of Shuffleboard for kids:

Great ways to save money on expensive games and cleaning supplies.

Timex Sloagan Made True

Some time ago Timex had ads that stated their watches "takes a licken and keeps on ticken". I have a personal experience with this in a way. My brother gave me one of those digital calculator watches around 1991 or so. It was great especially given my aptitude for math. The amazing part of the story is that I wore this watch up until last month when it finally died. When I say that I mean that the battery and all its functionality lasted me 17 years. I have never had the battery replaced. The watch has never been opened since it's been given to me. During this time I've replaced the watch band several times, perhaps every year or so. I tried genuine leather, imitation leather, velcro, basic plastic / rubber, etc;

This watch was great for me. I had it in -40 degree temperatures in central Canada. It's been in the clear blue waters of the Bahamas and the warm ocean waters of Maui beaches. I've worn the watch swimming, snorkeling, camping, biking, hiking, and many other activities during all kinds of weather. This watch from the early 90's didn't have many of the newer features of todays watches such as Indiglo backlight and didn't have any kind of fancy display where it showed anything more than the time without pressing another button to show the date or anything else. It served me well for those many years and I found myself in a unique situation, I've never had to go shopping for a new watch in my adult life and I probably never will open that watch to replace the battery. It's done it's job extremely well, been through a great many experiences for a watch, and I believe it's way past its time to retire.

Rest in peace Timex calculator watch from the early 90's.

Updated Profile

Well, not much of a posting today. Just wanted to throw a note out there that I put some time in to creating / updating my user profile so I wanted to draw attention to that for people that are interested in finding out a little more about me. Of course the real meat of who I am will come as I make more posts which will really reflect my personality, interests, writing style, opinions, etc. I also read a little bit about Google AdSense and still figuring out what the options are for blogger.com and would love to hear back any comments on my posts or suggestions of things you'd like to hear about. I'm pretty open to a wide variety of topics. Hope to hear from you and get more readers soon. Pass along the word about this up and coming new blog.

Camping & Service

Camping is usually a novelty given the frequency at which I get to do it. I don't know why I choose to put myself through it as it is actually quite a bit of work. This time I went with only my 2 older daughters (Jennifer, 7 & Sara 5 in ten days). So I had to take care of them solo this time, make sure they're fed, safe, decent sleeping arrangements, change of clothes, etc. Basic parenting stuff that seems to come naturally to my wife but for me I fumble through it and somehow manage.

There is a novelty to getting to spend a night in a different environment, making fires, full day picnic for meals, etc. When we can go camping and have something to sleep in other than a tent that will shield us from the elements, it's much nicer. Don't get me wrong, my tent can be set up in less than 5 minutes and sleeps 5 people but not having to worry about making sure it's clean inside & out before putting it away and making sure its rolled up just the right way so it fits back in that tiny storage back all neat and compact is a nice burden to be rid of occasionally when going camping.

This time we had a cinder block cabin to stay in. It's about 20 x40 foot room with 8 bunk beds, a wood burning stove, a long table and some chairs inside with lights, electricity, and even a smoke detector. Outside there was a covered fire pit, small covered porch with another long table, hose with running water, and 2 picnic tables.

The main reason for going was to do some maintenance and improvements on the property. One thing we did was shovel gravel from a tractor bucket into wheelbarrows and spread it around the outside edge of the cabins. Someone brought the tractor to where we were, turned it off, then went elsewhere to do other work. In our group there was 4 or 5 adults and about as many young men. The first cabin we worked on was on a slight slope and after a few seveal minutes of shoveling, the tractor started to roll towards the cabin. I yelled so everyone would be aware and not get hurt. One adult quickly jumped in the tractor and put his foot on the break to hold it in place. The next thing I did was look to see where everyone else was. I saw the rest of the adults 5-10 feet out of the path the tractor and the youth trying to hold or push back the tractor. When the danger was over, the result was a blatant and somewhat humorous demonstration showing the experience and wisdom of those involved. The naive youth thinking they could prevent the tractor from rolling with their own strength and the adults knowing full well that the best thing to do was to just get the heck out of the way and the one adult who had the quick thinking and reflexes to jump in and apply the foot brake. We found out later that the parking brake didn't work and the bucket should have been all the way down on the ground lifting the front wheels up to serve as the brake.

Who thought that giving volunteer service could have such excitement. Too bad there weren't more people that could come to be part of such an event. Now when I return in August with my family, I can show them what we accomplished and where these events took place.

So I decided to start a blog

With all the momentum behind social networking and this blog thing not really turning out to be just a fad, I was persuaded to start a blog of my own. I started using Twitter recently and figured that if I could post comments to that on a regular basis, then the next evolutionary step is blogging. My main concern was that I didn't want to be one of those people that start a blog and then have infrequent and intermittent posts once every few months or so. I've been using e-mail since before any of my friends in high school even had the internet (around 1992) and my Hotmail account was created before they were bought by Microsoft. Back then there weren't alot of web pages compared to what there is now and there was actually a book called Internet Yellow Pages which surprisingly enough they still sell today. I have 7 e-mail accounts and use 5 different IM services.

On the horizon for my upcoming technology considerations and/or learning are Mac (haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet), Network Attached Storage device, SQL (Oracle & MySQL), PHP, and Apache (not necessarily in that order). So this is my first blog posting. I'm going camping with my 2 older daughters for one night without Mom then perhaps I'll have more to blog about tomorrow.