I think today is a good day to talk about technology, or rant about it. People think I enjoy this stuff but I am beginning to wonder how faithful I really am to “technology”. Maybe that is because I have what I think is a good idea, but I have no means of presenting it in a voice that will be heard. I realize in reality, I am not all that important but I worked in quality assurance for a long time at my last job so I have learned to look how to improve things. While I was there, I learned something important in regards to how a company perceives good ideas. I learned that everyone has ideas but good ideas are the ones that won’t require much cost and time, it can be presented as something much bigger than it really is, and the “big people” will benefit from it even if the “little people” won’t. To not be very concerned with Outlook/Exchange integration and security flaws because you feel an internal messaging system inside your software is more important is a great example of this. Why reinvent what so many others have already done you ask, and done much better? So we can monitor our employees’ conversations while at work. The need to fix flaws in something they didn’t use was not that important because how many companies use Exchange… (no comment). I could give countless examples from past experiences, but I have moved on to a company that realizes the importance of keeping up with technology so while focus on the past.

I have little use for Microsoft Word even though it is a great application. I would guess 95% of what I type is either email, code, or blog posts. So I use a fancy text editor for about everything. You know how handy it would be to have a text editor that doubles as a word processor? A program with all the features for typing code and with the click of a button all the pretty colors are gone you get spell-check on-the-fly. I program that doesn’t bury the option four steps in to the menu (although in this case, spell-check on-the-fly isn’t even an option so…). I want to install the least number of applications as possible so Notepad ++ is an awesome alternative for me, if they would just add that one feature it would seem so much better. Maybe it is already possible and I can’t find a way to get it to work, but I have searched the help and forums and had no luck. I already had to install a separate spell checker for the program to even support spell check, and I certainly do not want to install one of those “spell check in every window” programs. Sure, I can post a request to their forum but honestly, I have never had this approach ever really work in the past. So I sit here, hoping and dreaming that someday there will be a little button to click that makes me happy. Disclaimer: Notepad ++ is free software and I have not found a better editor so in reality, I shouldn’t complain. Plus, the only people that really suffer from me not having spell-check on-the-fly is you, the reader.

Maybe I am just hard to please, which many people would probably agree with. I have an awesome Motorola Smartphone, and overall I think I really dislike it. It does the job but it sluggish and needs to be reset (reformatted) frequently. I also don’t understand how so many people can complain on forums about dust getting under the screen because I have the same problem. That seems to be something Motorola’s quality assurance department should have easily caught. Then there is everyone’s favorite company to hate, Microsoft. Thank you for providing me with two wonderful products in my life; the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista (I happen to be one of those people that have had zero issues with Vista on 4 different machines for over 2 years now and would never chose XP over Vista). Microsoft was also so nice to have these two products interact so nicely with each other, except I have spent countless hours to try getting it to work and only fail. Vista finds the 360 every time it is turned on, but when you put in the 8 digit code and proceed with the setup, Vista claims it can not find the device. What!?! I have read countless guides and still no resolution. I am half tempted to use my laptop with Windows 7 and see if that will even work. Finally, there is Apple and their new iPods. My 30 gig iPod served me well and my iTunes library is patiently waiting for a nice new iPod to sync with. The classic has sort of become the red-headed step child of the iPods, which is understandable since they really did nothing but give it a bigger hard drive (again). I thought they would actually do away with it entirely. Personally, I rather switch to solid state over a microdrive, so that leaves the option for a Touch or Nano. The 32 gig Touch has a pretty steep price tag but a 16 gig Nano just isn’t going to cut it for someone with decent music collection. The novelty of the Touch doesn’t really do anything for me even a touch screen would be nice. If I want to play games though, I will use something designed to play games, not music. The new features on the Nano are actually pretty cool, so why not make it more practical? I wouldn’t even be able to record video because I already slimmed down my music to 20 gigs just for the iPod I had, which was really, really difficult. My full collection wouldn’t even fit on the 160 gig Classic. I understand marketing the Nano to the younger generation but does that mean you can’t put the same features on the Classic or Touch? I had decided that for the money the storage space on the Nano wasn’t going to work and I was fine with the Classic. Thank you for introducing the new models, with cool bells and whistles, because now I just feel like I am getting the shaft no matter which model I pick!

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of things I love about technology but lately I just seem to be frustrated with technology. Who knows, maybe the lovely people at Apple will see this and send me a 32 gig Nano to delete my post, or maybe not.