Ten Reasons Why

You’re a presumably semi-intelligent businessperson at another company. You’re writing me to suggest a partnership with my company, further a relationship, provide a referral, ask for help, etc. One very simple rule:
Put your friggin’ company’s name in the Subject line!
Maybe you work for a company that has eleven clients and one partner, but I don’t. I speak with a couple hundred companies a year, not to mention dozens of our several clients. . When you send me some random email with “Hi” or “Need some information” as the subject line, I’m filtering that right into the trash unless I recognize your name (and with the number of people I talk to the odds of that are slim).

Personal

One of my ongoing pain points is managing the crapload of information I have to track. To do lists just don’t cut it for me and I’ve managed to narrow my Inbox down to about 1500 items (and about 1800 in Sent Items). Manually organizing them into the several hundred folders I now have in Outlook has ceased to be productive. So here’s my request: does anybody know of an alternative to Lotus Agenda that is affordable (preferably free or at least has a free trial) built on relatively modern (e.g. post-DOS era) technology for Windows?
Remember Lotus Agenda from way back in the DOS days? That would be the perfect tool. And, yes, I know you can still dig it up online, but I’m not so desperate (yet) that finding it and dealing with the awkward install and lack of documentation just to be stuck in DOS hell outweighs the Outlook hell I’m in now. If you don’t know what Lotus Agenda was/is, here’s a description [source]:

A typical Agenda screen is divided into three columns: one in which you enter the specific piece of information (”Call Mom,” “Sell Yahoo stock,” “Memorize Hamlet,” etc.), one for date, and one for priority. Those left-side specific pieces of information can be further divided into categories (”Calls,” “Memos,” “Ideas,” etc.). Without doing any manipulation of your data structure, then, Agenda lets you view your data in four ways: organized by category, specific piece of information, date, and priority. Then you can assign your specific pieces of information to more than one category. And without noticing it, any words in a specific piece of information that are also names of categories automatically are filed into that category as well as any others you want to stick it into. For example, if you have categories called “Mary,” “Sally,” and “Sales” and you have a specific piece of information that reads “Tell Mary that Sally needs sales reports today,” the item will automatically show up into those three categories–plus, because you used the word “today,” Agenda will file the item by date, too.
This may seem like a lot of redundancy, but it turns out to be an efficient way of storing and deploying information. By placing specific items into multiple categories, any view you choose will reveal all relevant items. In other words, Agenda manages its database of information in the opposite way of traditional databases. In relational database-management programs like Access and Paradox, you build a structure for your data first. Only after the structure is set can you enter data. With Agenda, you input your ideas while they’re hot, and then work with the program to figure out where they belong in your structure-in-progress.

And, yes, I know Chandler is supposed to be able to provide some of that functionality, but since it’s a really thin 0.2 release at this point, that doesn’t help me much.
Ideas?

Other

No, you are not imagining things. There is a big pair of stone lips in the header. It doesn’t have any significant meaning; it just looks cool.
You might have noticed some other changes — like just about everything. I started the re-design during the week between Christmas and New Year’s with the idea that it would launch on New Year’s Day. Oh well. A little bout of insomnia gave me the time over the last few days to get it to a point where I can roll it out.
I had to learn some new CSS stuff and a touch of XSL for the new RSS feed. I don’t pretend to be an expert in this stuff, so I’m sure someone much more skilled will recoil in horror at my stylesheets, but it was a fun exercise to learn some new stuff.
One of the cooler parts of the redesign is the new RSS feed. When you take a look at it in a web browser, you might not think it’s an RSS feed, because it doesn’t look like one — i.e., it’s not a page of unrendered XML, but an XSL-styled page with an explanation of RSS and how to use it. However, it is a valid RSS 2.0 feed.
Since I’ve written about the bad interface for RSS before, I’m glad to be able to demonstrate a different approach.
Kudos go to Dave Shea of Mezzoblue who described this approach in Plugging the RSS Usability Hole. I’ve totally cribbed from Dave’s code, since I know squat about XSL. A shout out also goes to Brad Choate for a non-funky RSS 2.0 template for Movable Type
There’s still some sprucing up of the style to take place and I might apply the same approach to the RSS 1.0 and the new Atom 0.3 feeds if I get a bit more comfortable with XSL. But it’s better than raw XML.
Anyway, for the most part, I think I’m about 85% complete on the redesign.
I know that the comment pages (e.g. the pop-ups and the previews) are still styled wrong. I’ll get to that in the next day or two.
The content column (this white column) looks a little hinky when the content is shorter than the sidebar on the left, which only happens in a few of those categories where there aren’t many posts. Not sure what to do about that. CSS gurus? Any ideas?
Also, my primary browser is Mozilla Firebird. I’ve checked the site briefly in IE and noticed at least one error in the comment form on the individual entry archive pages. I’d love to hear more feedback from IE users on Windows and Mac and as well as Safari and Mozilla users on the Mac. (And I suppose Konquerer et al on Linux, but don’t expect to be a priority!)
I’m sure I’ve forgotten or missed some other stuff, so pardon the incorrectly styled comment pages and tell me what you think. Suggestions, feedback, constructive criticism — all welcome.
I’m going to bed now. Nothing like coding CSS to cure insomnia. Sheesh.

Personal, Syndication & Aggregation

More so I don’t forget these links than for you, dear readers:
Yesterday, Robert Scoble, who works for Microsoft, wrote a long entry (choosing a media player. Scoble’s basic point is if you plan to buy DRM-protected music online, you should buy a media player powered by Windows Media software instead of an Apple iPod because it’s likely there will be more Windows Media powered devices (e.g. moving the DRM-protected song from your media player to a car stereo) than there will be Apple devices.
Scoble’s logic — or lack thereof — was so brain-spinningly ass-backwards that when I began to write about it yesterday, I got so frustrated I gave up. Glad I did, because today Cory Doctorow managed to explain the flaws in Scoble’s argument better than I could have:

In this world where we have consumer choices to make, Scoble argues that our best buy is to pick the lock-in company that will have the largest number of licensees.
That’s just about the worst choice you can make.
If I’m going to protect my investment in digital music, my best choice is clearly to invest in buying music in a format that anyone can make a player for.

Bravo.

Intellectual Property

I don’t really have a good explanation for the recent hiatus. It began with the flu and then got exacerbated by the holidays and then I started a site redesign that I’ve never finished then things got crazy at work with special projects I can’t talk about and in the middle of all this I remembered that I really enjoy laying in bed reading novels (which is suddenly possible again because the radiator in the bedroom got fixed a couple weeks ago) more than I enjoy futzing with Movable Type templates.
Anyway, the are two reasons why I’m posting today.

1. Apparently the lack of activity here on Ten Reasons Why is quite distressing to my officemate. That, in and of itself, is kinda strange for two reasons:
   1. It’s clearly not a concern for my safety. She sees me five days a week and knows that I am healthy — or relatively so if you don’t count a sort of lingering low-grade sniffle and the limp from last week’s curbside backflip precipitated by . . . well . . . the precipitation. Of course, for all that the rest of you dear readers know I could still be lying in that gutter on Massachusetts Ave. slowly starving to death. Thanks for staying in touch, you uncaring toads. :P
   2. It’s clearly not for lack of witty banter. A full thirty percent of my job responsibility is entertaining my officemate with witty banter. And sixty percent is annoying her with an assortment of muttered curses, grunts, sighs, and other exhortations induced by crappy software or our totally opaque and impenetrable phone system. The remaining ten percent has something to do with educational technology, I believe. ;-)

   Anyway, I think she just wants a shout-out. Attention hound. Witty banter for thirty percent of an eight-hour day isn’t enough for you?!?

2. Bob Mould has started a weblog, which I can’t let pass without acknowledgement, not so much for the quality of the blog but for the quality of the Bob.
   For those of you not in the know, Mould was the frontman for the seminal 80’s punk trio, Hüsker Dü, then went on to release several solo albums, and found another band called Sugar. He dropped out of sight for few years to become a scriptwriter for the World Wrestling Federation (no joke) before re-emerging here in the District, of all places, with an album of electronica and a regular DJ gig at, first, the Velvet Lounge, and now the 9:30 Club.
   Mould’s 1990 album, , has been in high rotation on my CD player for over a decade now. It’s about as tight of a punk-pop recording as you’ll find, but its high profile in my playlist probably has something to do with seeing Mould solo — literally solo; just Mould and a twelve-string guitar — at Gabe’s Oasis in Iowa City, Iowa, on the ‘90-’91 tour to support Black Sheets. That still ranks as the the best club show I’ve ever seen; that one guy sitting in a chair with a guitar blew me away thoroughly with the heart he put into playing for us.
   Fast forward six years past that show, and I’ve just moved to DC and am trying desperately to find a place to live. I respond to an ad in CityPaper for two guys looking for a third housemate. As I’m looking at the house, I notice they have a Hüsker Dü poster on the wall. We get talking about Mould and the conversation reveals one of them was at that same Gabe’s Oasis show in Iowa City six years earlier. Kismet is declared, I’m accepted as a housemate, and 7+ years later those two guys are still two of my best friends. So thanks, Bob — for the music and the friendships that arose from it. :-)

Anyway, I’ll be back blogging when I feel like I have something I want to say again. I doubt I’m gone for good; I’m way too opinionated for that. ;-)

Personal