2.33 Gallons = 1 US Peck

Please forgive me.

I must confess, I’ve cheated on you. You’ve worked so hard to supply me with my daily dose of satisfaction, intelligence, and humor. And what have I done? I left you for someone else. Well, I’ve figured out how wrong I was and now I want you back. Will you take me? Will you forgive me for leaving you? I need you. I can’t take life without you. Please take me back.

OK, for all you sick puppies out there, NO, I’m not having marital problems (quite the opposite is true in that department). Last week I decided to try the new Google Reader. I’m always excited to see new things from Google. Everything they’ve done to date is widely used on my PC, both at home and work. I don’t know what I would do without Picasa, Blogger, Google Desktop, Google Maps, etc. But I’m quite disappointed with Google Reader. I’ve been a Blogline fan since Mike turned me on to it a while back and have come to like what I get from it. Ya, sometimes it doesn’t load my feeds for a couple of days and sometimes I get the little plumber guy telling me that I can’t read my feeds right now, but what software or service doesn’t have issues every once in a while.
So, here’s the run-down on why I went back to Bloglines.
1. Oops… There was an error, please try again in a few seconds. Yes, I know, it’s probably because it’s still in beta that I get errors, but almost 1/2 the time I was unable to load my Reader home page. Got very annoying when I did want to read my feeds.
2. One post at a time. Still being a dialup man, only having the ability to view one post at a time instead of the entire feed from that site or category was very annoying. Even at work with the fast connection I hated scrolling through one by one. I subscribe to a couple of photo groups on Flickr and it’s not unusual for me to get 100-200 posts a day. With Bloglines I could click on the feed and have it load all the thumbnails at once. With Reader it was select… load… view… next… load… view… repeat. Took me forever. Not the way I want to view my feeds.
3. Tell me I have something. One of the things that actually stops me from doing things with Bloglines was the notifier. It makes me stop what I’m doing, killing my productivity, but I want to know when I have new stuff. That’s why I subscribe to the feeds. Otherwise I would go look at the sites if I wanted to just browse, but no, tell me I have something new.
4. How do I add something? I love how Bloglines has the extension to Firefox that just allows you to click the subscribe button and it loads it all up for you in Bloglines. Not so with Reader. First find the feed page, copy the url, then load into reader. No thanks. Too many steps. I’m lazy.
5. Well… I’m sure there was more, but I didn’t stick around to find them.

Not everything was bad with Reader, so don’t give up Google. The interface was nice looking. I see potential to integrate it with the personalized home page, integrated with the feed search, starring posts, easily reviewing posts you’ve already read, …I like Google… You just needed to slow down. I’m sure all you folks at Google used Bloglines or something when you thought this one up, so why didn’t you copy all the things we love about it and then add the Google factor? What were you thinking? Oh well, take your licks and go make it better. You know where to find me when you’re ready.

Add comment October 11th, 2005

Autumn Colors

I was hoping this week’s theme would be easy enough for everyone to get back in the swing of things. We’ll see if that comes true.
I actually had a tougher time with this week’s theme than I thought I would. I took my camera to work with me a few days hoping to get out at lunch and get some pictures around town. Every day I planned on going out something came up. And the one day I did manage to make some time I got rained out. So it wasn’t until Saturday that I actually got to take some pictures. I’m so glad that I ended up waiting. I took the kid’s down to Mom and Dad’s lawn and piled some leaves up in the yard. Boy did I take some pictures. I took almost 200 in the matter of an hour or so. I’ve posted over 30 to Flickr. If you’re not part of my friends and family, let me know and I’ll ad you as a contact so you can see some of the ones from the kids. They turned out great.
So, here’s this week’s entry.

Props to Mike for helping his poor, HTML illiterate brother with getting this image here.

Here are the others I took this weekend. I hope you enjoy.

Links to everyone else’s photos for the week. Alvin is it so far. More links to come I hope.
**Update: GrizDave’s is in. Mike’s is a different twist on the theme. Chad’s is in finally.

Who’s going to pick next week’s theme??
Next week - Black & White (Alvin’s choice)

2 comments October 9th, 2005

Entrance

This was actually a difficult week for me. I couldn’t come up with anything besides doors and windows and I didn’t get to go out this weekend to try and find something that wasn’t around the house. So, here’s what I came up with. I titled it “The Window Into My World.”

Here’s my backup. Yes, a door.

Again, it appears that I’m the first to post. Hope we get a better turnout this week. I’ll post the other’s links as the come up.

Next week’s topic: “Autumn Colors”
Yes, I know, not very original, but I wanted to get out and take some fall pictures.

**Update: GrizDave, Mike

Add comment October 2nd, 2005