Monday, November 04, 2002

Finding Forrester   A crude joke, I guess. Here it is, night before Elections and I'm looking for info on our Senate race in NJ. ALSO about our county races. These guys spent millions of dollars trying to get elected and the most they sent in the mail were junk pieces bashing their opponents and listing huge subject issues in shorthand. He's FOR healthcare and AGAINST TAXES. Yeah. In my congressional race, lets see, -there's a very conservative Republican whom the previous Congresswoman didn't endorse, and there's a Republican-turned-Dem woman who used to fundraise for the previous Congresswoman. She, according to his bashing literature, hasn't voted in school board elections in 12 years, so how can she be "for" education? He's basically anti-abortion and pro gun lobby - Maybe he's figuring one is murder, the other is just accessory to murder?   In the local election, one issue seems to be whether we'd want to house terrorists in our understocked jail. Sure an idle jail is the devil's plaything, but do I want high profile potential targets for terrorist raids or hostage situations in my county?   Some of the candidates have web sites, but you would barely know it from the campaign literature. I get 'spam phone calls' daily from folks like President Bush, and my own 'boss', Mayor Giuliani (he called 3 times yesterday!)  I frankly think that Phone-spam, like email spam, should be illegal.   With so much of the country evenly divided between the parties, the only thing I think we can be sure of for the next two years is more of the same. And that seems pretty ineffective. 9:11:41 PM    comment []

Good Contacts I've started using GoodContacts to help manage the thousands of entries in my Outlook list. So far, it seems to work pretty well. I sent a note (hopefully not too impersonal, though a few folks thought it was) to my entire outlook list, sending them what I had for their contact info, and asking them to correct it if it was wrong. I've gotten a lot of good responses, a bunch of notes from people I haven't heard from in a while, and the inevitiable pile of bounced-this-person-doesn't-work-here-anymore letters that are the sign of a bad economy (and a lazy person not keeping up with contacts :-) I hope if you got one of my notes you'll reply and get back in touch. As to how well the software works - a few complaints first. 1. It claims it will automatically delete rejection/bad mail notices from my inbox, but it missed about 50% of them. 2. I've had the program crash with an 'internal communication error' several times. 3. There's a way to mark contacts as 'bad email address' but there doesn't seem to be a way to translate this info back to Outlook and put those folks with bad email into an outlook category. I have to look over the documentation a few more times. On the bright side - this is trial ware - if I like it I pay $49/year. So I'm getting a good test without spending money. So far, I'm leaning towards buying it.  Stay tuned. 12:38:10 PM    comment []

Gen is thinking through what a network of XBoxes (or other game consoles) could become, if given the right push. Add IP telephony to your home console, and it's an international telephone that doesn't cost anything per call. Hmm.   12:20:01 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2002 Howard Greenstein. Last update: 12/3/2002; 1:59:53 PM.