I dropped out of school for the semester, which means that my life should be totally together. This is not always the case, but I would like to blog more. I will start on this resolution tomorrow. If you were to check my Sunbird, you would see that all of my good intentions are scheduled for tomorrow at 11am.

So, my harddrive died f'reals sometime in July. I am reloading my life onto it, and in the process trying to use technology to improve my life. This list is pretty basic, but it includes some tools I would recommend.

1. Start with the web brower Mozilla Firefox.

Load it up with some sweet features:

• Auxilliary search engines (including the crucial Wikipedia&Google search and the M-W search which hasn't been as cool since they added popups)
  
• IE View, for compatability geek webdesigners.
  
• StumbleUpon - you rank sites as you surf, and delineate preferences, and then the Interweb takes it upon itself to tell you other sites that you will like.
  
• I am running the iFox skin, even though it makes me feel like a poser. I think Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) is really cute, but I cannot deal with hitting the drop down list when I want to go Back.
  

2. I don't use Thunderbird because I like checking my email in a million different places, but I have been eagerly awaiting the Mozilla calendar program. I belatedly noticed its release, and downloaded. Sunbird is very simple, which is both good and bad. I hate Outlook because it's such a fat program, but the lack of customization in Sunbird is a tiny bit limiting. However, it will remind me to pay my electric bill, and that's all I really need.

3. I am really trying to get used to the Google Desktop. My problem is that I like it as a sidebar so that its functionality is right at my fingertips, but that means less screen space. And as it is Always On Top, it has to be docked to the left, because my buddy list on the left creeps me out.

• Todo - is a plugin for the Desktop that lets you make a checkable todo list. Can you tell I'm seeking organization?
  
• gdTunes - another plugin. It lets you control iTunes from the Desktop. I just changed my iTunes to hide in the system tray when minimized, so this gives me quick access without taking up space in the toolbar.
  
• These come pre-installed, but I use the News, Web Clips, Scratch Pad and Photos tabs. News is for boredom, Scratchpad for organization, Web Clips is to remind me to read things that I like, and the Photos are actually really nice to look at. You choose your folders and they scroll randomly. I have a lot of pictures I like.
  

I'm feeling a little defeated by the chat client situation. I downloaded Google Talk because I would love to throw over the empire. But as you must be updated to Tiger for it to work with iChat, very few of my close friends can switch over yet. Making it useless to me, though I keep it running. I downloaded Trillian again, but I'm really dissapointed with the skins available, and too lazy to make my own. Also, it's a chubby program and takes forever to load. In other messaging fields, I tried Chikka but found it difficult to sign up for and pretty annoying alround. I also signed up for Skype and had a really positive experience with it. It's almost enough to make me use Trillian, because then I could voicechat with my iChat friends, but if I cared enough, I would just make them migrate to Skype.

Curious what else rounds out the typical Caitlin computing experience? iTunes and AIM vie for first program opened. Adobe Photoshop stays open because it's chunky, but also because it gets used about 5 times a day. I download music with Soulseek, and the last two things loaded onto my computer were the Microsoft Office Suite (yay! for Excel, boo! for PowerPoint) and WS_FTP le (old school, no longer available. I'm sure there are better things, but I'm a weird kind of loyal). I would put Sid Meier's Civilization III back on if I could find my disk. And then I'd waste away the rest of my life.




Next time will be pictures.