Zathras' Great Machine

I've got to stop blogging like this. Or stop not blogging like this. Whatever.

Wow, it's been a week again, hasn't it? I am so bad about this. OK, what's been going on lately...

Well, I upgraded to OS X 10.3 on Saturday afternoon. The upgrade went quite smoothly, with the usual expected repercussions -- just some apps needing updates, nothing more. (With one exception that I'll get to in a minute.) Panther has a lot of nice new features that I really like, so I'm glad I made the switch. Finder windows, in particular, are greatly improved over Jaguar, and the Finder's behavior has been enhanced in quite a few ways as well. The latest version of Safari is a bit of a mixed bag, I'm afraid. Many of its features are quite a bit more powerful in a lot of ways... unfortunately, Apple decided to monkey around with the fonts a bit, and while the effect is not usually noticeable for the most part, it does have the effect of really screwing up the list of displayed results in Google. Like many people, I use Google very heavily, so for that reason alone, I may have to switch browsers.

There's been only one other real mishap with Panther. After I upgraded the OS, Eudora started seriously misbehaving for the next several days (long timeouts), so I began to take a good look at migrating to another email client... something I've considered in the past but have avoided doing because of the hassle. After reading reviews and looking at various apps, I've narrowed it down to two choices, either Microsoft Entourage (which is essentially the Mac version of Outlook) or Apple Mail. Right now, I'm giving Entourage a test drive for a few days. Once I've gotten a good "feel" for it, I'm going to do the same thing with Mail. The last version of Mail that I used sucked Arcturan megarocks, but I'm told that the latest version of Mail is greatly improved. We'll see.

Eudora did stop misbehaving after a few days for some reason, but that was still long enough to convince me to migrate. Eudora is a pretty powerful app, or was in its day, but it's just getting too "long in the tooth". Especially the way it handles HTML-enabled email, which is an absolute disgrace... and please don't tell me that email should not be sent in HTML format; whether you believe that or not, HTML-enabled email is only going to become more commonplace, so having a client that can handle it is important. In any event, once I get a screenshot of a complex HTML-enabled email, such as the ones I get from Godiva and Victoria's Secret, I'll take screenshots of both the Eudora version and the Entourage or Mail version (whichever one I happen to be reviewing at the time) and the difference will be painfully clear.

Inney-hoo. My inclination right now is to go with Entourage. From what I've seen thus far, Entourage has more powerful features than Mail (such as Online Status and Priority Flags, neither of which are supported in Mail), and it also includes a PIM. Even so, I do want to give Mail a chance, mainly because I'd really prefer not to use any more Microsoft products than I have to. On the other hand, I'd like to think that I'm not so blindly dogmatic in my anti-Microsoft stance that I'll refuse to use a Microsoft product if I conclude that the MS product is, in fact, the best choice...

Mailsmith is another one that I looked at but decided against for various reasons. Mailsmith is powerful and versatile, and of all the apps I looked at, it's the only one with a spam button -- one click, and an email is automatically reported thru SpamCop. Nice feature. Unfortunately, Mailsmith's interface is pretty confusing, and Mailsmith costs an arm and a leg. I'm not paying $100 for an email client.

Had a doctor's appointment last Friday, and he reports that I'm in great shape... my cholesterol has dropped 25 points, from 192 about six months ago to 167 now. My blood pressure was about 130 over 90 six months ago, considered "pre-hypertension" by the new guidelines, but is now holding steady at about 110 over 70. Everything else in the various tests that I took also indicates that I'm in great physical shape, except for some minor breathing constriction... it's not big enough to worry about, but it is yet another indication that even the three or four cigarettes a day that I typically smoke is not a safe amount to smoke. *grumble* I hate those damn things...

I'm still having fun with Halo, although I'm currently stuck in a maze and can't find my way out. Very annoying. If I can't find the exit soon, I may have to cheat and do a search for maps.

I'm starting to study Applescript... I've never really gotten into it before, but lately, I've become more interested in scripting a lot of the things that I do, and also experimenting with some other stuff as well. It looks like Applescript is a pretty powerful tool, especially when coupled with a scheduler, so we'll see what I can end up with. I'll probably want to buy a book or two on Amazon.

The final season of Babylon 5 comes out on DVD on Tuesday! I've placed my order with Amazon and specified overnight shipping. *bounce bounce*

OK, am I the only guy who is majorly, majorly annoyed by those ridiculous "Smiling Bob" ads for Enzyte? *grumble*

I saw "Dawn of the Dead" on Monday -- I think I'm going to have to stop seeing horror films for a while. Someone who's been having problems with depression should probably stick to lighter/more positive cinematic fare. I think on my next outing, I'm going to see "Hellboy".

And that's the latest for now...

Posted by Zathras at April 8, 2004 12:16 PM