This week we thought we'd just follow up and provide some updates on a few of the posts we've made in the past few months.
"Make Yourself Happier - Give"
Couple of updates here. For ourselves we have been back to the Habitat house a couple of times--including the day the roof that we had worked on was lifted into place. Check out Jon's photostream on Flickr if you want to see what a flying roof looks like! In addition to continuing to work on this house we're now looking at some of the other opportunities to work on Habitat projects in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Meanwhile our friend Aaron Bartell has reached his first milestone. If you visit his donations page at http://www.firstgiving.com/aaronbartell you'll find a link to the hilarious video of him attempting (with the "assistance" of the smallest member of the Bartell family) to shave his legs. Even funnier than the video are the off-screen comments from his wife and (we suspect) sister, offering helpful advice on how to shave one's legs.
"Asking the Right Questions"
This entry resulted in an interesting response from David that those of you who only read the intial post may have missed. He pointed out that Eric Raymond has an excellent discussion on how to ask questions. Although targeted at people asking questions in online forums, it is nonetheless an interesting and thought-provoking read. It certainly pointed out to us why we don't always get the right answers to our own problems!
"Japanese Imports and a New Role for COMMON?"
We were happy to see that Martin Fincham is leading the charge in Europe and look forward to seeing what his group comes up with. It was interesting to note that in one of the comments to his original post, a contributor noted that in Italy alone more than 19,000 of our favorite systems are in use in small businesses of all kinds. A pretty big opportunity and one that is obviously open to an attack by Microsoft-based "solutions".
We are saddened though that COMMON has remained completely mute on the subject. No public statement of support (something that we might also have expected to see from COMMON Europe)--not even a comment. Nothing--and nothing from the North American ISV/BP community either. That's sad.
"These are a Few of Our Favorite (Free) Things!"
Hans Boldt added his own personal choices to our list, and with one exception we agree with him. In fact Jon has added Open Office (OO) to his own personal list of favorites having been using it more and more over the last few months. He has encountered so many compatibility (not to mention reliability) issues with the Mac 2007 version of Office, that he had to either upgrade or find an alternative. So far he's very happy with OO, in part because some of the things that he hates most in Word and Excel are much easier to handle in their OO equivalents. With luck he thinks he can avoid enriching Bill Gates further by avoiding an upgrade.
"Make Yourself Happier - Give"
Couple of updates here. For ourselves we have been back to the Habitat house a couple of times--including the day the roof that we had worked on was lifted into place. Check out Jon's photostream on Flickr if you want to see what a flying roof looks like! In addition to continuing to work on this house we're now looking at some of the other opportunities to work on Habitat projects in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Meanwhile our friend Aaron Bartell has reached his first milestone. If you visit his donations page at http://www.firstgiving.com/aaronbartell you'll find a link to the hilarious video of him attempting (with the "assistance" of the smallest member of the Bartell family) to shave his legs. Even funnier than the video are the off-screen comments from his wife and (we suspect) sister, offering helpful advice on how to shave one's legs.
"Asking the Right Questions"
This entry resulted in an interesting response from David that those of you who only read the intial post may have missed. He pointed out that Eric Raymond has an excellent discussion on how to ask questions. Although targeted at people asking questions in online forums, it is nonetheless an interesting and thought-provoking read. It certainly pointed out to us why we don't always get the right answers to our own problems!
"Japanese Imports and a New Role for COMMON?"
We were happy to see that Martin Fincham is leading the charge in Europe and look forward to seeing what his group comes up with. It was interesting to note that in one of the comments to his original post, a contributor noted that in Italy alone more than 19,000 of our favorite systems are in use in small businesses of all kinds. A pretty big opportunity and one that is obviously open to an attack by Microsoft-based "solutions".
We are saddened though that COMMON has remained completely mute on the subject. No public statement of support (something that we might also have expected to see from COMMON Europe)--not even a comment. Nothing--and nothing from the North American ISV/BP community either. That's sad.
"These are a Few of Our Favorite (Free) Things!"
Hans Boldt added his own personal choices to our list, and with one exception we agree with him. In fact Jon has added Open Office (OO) to his own personal list of favorites having been using it more and more over the last few months. He has encountered so many compatibility (not to mention reliability) issues with the Mac 2007 version of Office, that he had to either upgrade or find an alternative. So far he's very happy with OO, in part because some of the things that he hates most in Word and Excel are much easier to handle in their OO equivalents. With luck he thinks he can avoid enriching Bill Gates further by avoiding an upgrade.
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