Day: November 9, 2003

All the channels beyond basic cable went kaput sometime on Thursday. I was running around during the interim, noticed the problem yesterday, but really had time to deal with it today. FYI, the TiVo provided the evidence of when the problem started, because a Premier League football match was recorded at 1am Thursday, but the Rugby World Cup game at 5pm was missed. Argh. Anyway, called Comcast this afternoon. As in prior calls, I was talking to a real person very quickly, and the person was friendly. Spent nearly 20 minutes on the phone, with the man on the phone trying different things on his end, without success. He was able to turn off my digital cable box from his end, but none of the other authorization or configurations he was trying from his end worked. So now we have to wait until Wednesday for someone to come to the house and see if they can untangle the problem. If it’s digital cable related, the visit is free. Otherwise, $20 expense. Could be worse, other than the wait. I know that Gene the stereo guy left everything in working order on Monday, since no problems until Thursday… but how they can turn the machine off remotely but still not fix the problem remotely?

Why did we get -more- involved in TV? I’m a huge fan of Fox Sports World, honestly, but it’s almost not worth the pain. Easy to understand why upgrading is such a slow industry-wide process.

I bought my second copy of Omni Outliner at the end of last week, for the desktop. I’ve gotten hooked on the PowerBook, where it came installed, and decided that the endless To Do list in my head needed to be more tangible. Decided is a cover-up for a longer discussion, but let’s leave it there. I did knock off a few checkboxes this weekend, from the mundane task of writing a friend back to the more measurable step of getting some accounts up to date in Quicken. Anyway, Omni is a slick, smooth program, which does more than I use it for, and it was (is?) on sale for $19.95, so if you’re on Mac OS X, I’d encourage a look.

My favorite thoughtful feature of the program is its strong export capabilities, especially to HTML. I’m a huge fan of CSS, but I don’t -write- compliant code except when carried along by templates… like here and in anything I write in Omni Outliner. It also exports OPML and a few others. Some have even started to take advantage of the application’s scriptability to write their own renderers. If you’re really looking for an in-depth comparison of Mac OS X outliners, try this two-part list. I never knew there were so many choices, so my easy choice of Omni Outliner may be more a testament to the power of bundling than anything (but I don’t think so). Anyone know of a similar comparison list for Windows outliners?

Fun, small wedding yesterday and Friday night. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, and we all rightfully celebrated ‘his Edness.’ If you know him, you know.

A great side-benefit was dinner with another college roommate, Kristan, whom I haven’t seen since visiting Boston to run the Marathon in April 2001. He’s doing well, and I wish we saw him and Stephanie more. One more good friend in Boston… why don’t they move out here to SF?