Friday, May 7, 2004

Black is Black

Just watched an advance copy of Lewis Black's HBO Special which airs May 15. It's called "Black on Broadway" and subtitled "Everyone's a comedian," which I guess explains the above graphic. I am hesitant to rave too much about this show because Mr. Black starts out by complaining about people who tell their friends how funny he is, thereby putting undue pressure on him to live up to the advance word. His set is similar to what I saw him do a few months ago at the Comedy and Magic Club — or at least edited down from a similar performance — but not exactly so. (One of the nice things about Black is that he seems to actually talk to his audience rather than deliver a routine by rote.) He talks about the weather, about flying to New Zealand, about what we've done to water in this country, about the greedheads at Enron, homeland security, Weapons of Mass Destruction and other goodies. Anyway, make sure you catch it.

• Posted at 7:55 PM · LINK

Getting Organized

A reader of this website who asks to remain nameless writes...

You must have a lot of communications material, for lack of a better word or phrase. You might not use all of the means I can think of — e-mail, bulletin boards, chat groups, IRC, IM, Usenet newsgroups, phone calls — but you certainly use many of them, and extensively at that, in addition to your own personal notes. So my question is, how do you keep all of your correspondence organized? All in software, or partially on paper? Of the software you use, have you found anything especially useful (searching, linking, etc.)?

Well, I'm not all that organized. I have loads of backlogged, unanswered e-mail and occasionally manage to lose a chunk of it. But the best thing I've found in that area is a program called Agent, which is what I use for e-mail and newsgroups. I do not use the current version of Agent, which is 2.0 plus some fraction. I tried it, didn't like it and went back to the pay version of 1.93, which can still be found on the Agent website. I think but am not sure that you can still pay for a license to upgrade the free, limited version of 1.93 to the commercial, full-featured version. Anyway, that's what I use.

But the key thing that helps me is multiple e-mail addresses. I own the domain "evanier.com" and that means I can set up endless addresses. If you have (for example) johndoe.com, then you can do this. You have your main e-mail go to john@johndoe.com. You have your mailing list stuff (mailings you sign up for) go to list@johndoe.com. You have your phone bill go to phonebill@johndoe.com, your banking correspondence to bank@johndoe.com and so on. This gives you enormous flexibility about how to file incoming e-mail. There's an easy way to set Agent up for multiple installations so you can have one icon on your desktop that will check one address, one icon that will check all your bill-related addresses, one that will check all your mailing list mail, etc. Then within Agent, you can set up filters to put all your phone bill-related mail in one folder, all the mail to your banking address in another and so forth. This puts you in charge of your e-mail and how it's filed. It's been enormously helpful for me.

As for other means of communication: I keep addresses and such in Microsoft Outlook. I handle phone calls the normal way except that when I'm out, I often put my home phone number on call forwarding to my cell phone. This is enormously liberating in that anyone can reach me, assuming I want them to reach me. Otherwise, I keep notes and my list of calls to return either on my little Pocket PC (an HP Jornada) or on little scraps of paper stuffed in my pocket. I'm still experimenting with different programs that manage miscellaneous data. Anyone here like or dislike Microsoft OneNote?

I wish I were better organized than I am. I'm waiting for the day when I have a combination palmtop and cell phone. There are some out now but my friends who know more about these things than I do keep telling me to wait; that there are vastly more superior models on the horizon. Someday soon, I expect to be running my entire life on one such machine, including the posting of messages here. Can't wait.

• Posted at 4:49 PM · LINK

Moore Questions

Michael Moore is now saying things that lead one to believe that the "scandal" about Disney blocking release of his film was something of a publicity stunt. If this is true, I've lost yet another layer of respect for the guy.

• Posted at 4:08 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rants

I only saw a little of Rumsfeld's testimony this morning but it struck me that he thinks (and apparently, others think) that being in the dark about something is an acceptable excuse for those in positions of ostensible leadership. If you didn't know about something, even if it's because you never got around to reading those reports you should have, that's okay. I wish people were more demanding in this country when it comes to people in power actually knowing what's going on in their departments and divisions. Rumsfeld and his supporters seem to think "I didn't know what was going on" is a reason he shouldn't be fired. I think it's a dandy reason to fire anyone in such a sensitive, important position.

I'm also tired of what I call the non-acceptance acceptance of responsibility, a move popularized by Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra flap. That's when you try to make it crystal clear that it wasn't your fault; that others did it and not you...and then you try to demonstrate leadership and manliness by saying, "I accept the responsibility." This is an irresponsible way of defining "responsibility."

End of today's rants. I have to go meet some folks for lunch.