Sometimes Software Updates Suck

 It was working fine.

a month ago Windows Outlook updated and broke its ability to sync with OutlookDOTcom mail (well played Microsoft)

Two weeks ago I found an update that fixed the outlook web mail issue, but in doing so it cocked up my work email. Didn't break it, just made it a mess - jacked up all my folders (yes, I use folders, sue me, it was working swell).

Today, in an effort to clear up the work email we upgraded to Office 365 Outlook. That:

1. didn't clean up the folders (although I think I can now do it manually without fear of wasting time).

2. BROKE the outlook webmail again (you apparently can't use outlook and Google Workspace concurrently in a single Outlook instance. Microsoft apparently knows this and their workaround is to use two separate profiles - which precludes sharing a folder structure which is the whole point of using Outlook for me.

3. BROKE the connection to my ages old AOL account. This is apparently AOL's fault and not Microsoft, as AOL has apparently (and according to many online likely purposefully) kneecapped the ability to check email from a third party app.

So if you are keeping score, this morning I had four working accounts with one behaving badly and this evening, after an entire day of work, I have two working accounts with one still behaving badly.

Our IT folks badly want me to drop Outlook anyway. This might be enough to do so (really missing Thunderbird this evening).

I've had my AOL for like 25 years. This might be enough to make me drop it.

It's BAAAAAAACK!

Sometimes things work out well.  Sometimes.

As one of my four readers you may be aware that I run another blog: News From the Real World.  That blog aggregates articles I think are relevant for my students.  This is the source material for the "Worth a Look" and "Vote for Comment of the Week" posts on this page.

There are two main streams for the content on that page.  One of the is the "ToDo/Alerts" folder in my email.  Through a bunch of Outlook rules that folder gathers a bunch of industry content and I winnow that for Greenpage (my shorthand for News From the Real World) content.  The other stream are articles I tag "Greenpage" in my RSS feed.  I have lost track of how many feeds I am subscribed to and which of them are pretty much exclusively for Greenpage content generation.  Anyway, articles pile up under that tag and then I winnow those into Greenpage articles.

In my present operation of 12 posts per day, 6 days per week I generally post 6 articles sourced from my RSS tag.  A quick scan of the tag shows 26 articles tagged today.  That means 20 articles that I initially thought were relevant don't make the final cut.  Often it's editorial balance that makes the difference - I just don't like the way the 12 daily posts are forming up.  Sometimes it is just volume.  If I posted everything it would be overwhelming for the students.  Sometimes I think even the 60 posts per week is overwhelming.

Back in the golden days of Google Reader (may it rest in peace) the software gave me an interesting sideline.  Tagged articles in Reader could themselves get RSS feeds.  That allowed me to have a link on the Greenpage to what I called the "Greenpage Feeder Page."  If people were so interested and wanted to see the remaining tagged articles that didn't make the 6 that got to the Greenpage each day they could check out the Feeder Page and see all of the articles.

Unfortunately that functionality was lost with the loss of that specific RSS reader.  I switched over to Feedly Reader and my process didn't change at all.  I still tag articles "Greenpage" and then select a couple of articles each day to promote to the Greenpage proper.  I could see the full list but the opportunity for readers to get access to the full tag volume wasn't available.

Until I got around to fixing that today.  Introducing the "Greenpage Source Page."

While I have been griping about this loss of functionality I have been peripherally aware of a service called If This Then That: IFTTT.  In broad terms this is a service that lets you link other internet services.  Looking through the available "recipes" I found one already written to generate a blogger post each time a Feedly article was tagged with a specific tag.  So I started a new blog, set up the IFTTT recipe and presto: new outside "Greenpage" tag access.

I need to work on some formatting issues.  Part of me thinks it will never look polished, but that is sort of in the "backstage" spirit of the thing anyway.  If you have the time and inclination you should check it out.

Free WiFi

No that title won't bring people here by mistake.

Question: Is changing my consumer habits because of free wifi the responsibility of the shop keepers or a demonstration of a poor hardware choice on my part?

Today I didn't go where I wanted to go for lunch. I drove right by that place on on to another place I wanted to go to less. I did this because the second place has free wifi. In retrospect it seems odd to me that I would base the decision of what food to eat on the stop's data availability. But here we are.

This never used to happen. I rarely if ever used my laptop in public places like that. The combination of abysmal battery life and a poor antenna always made taking it a eventually disappointing ordeal. My phone gets internet over 3G. The decision there always seemed to be about if what I was eating could be managed with one hand, leaving an ungreasy hand to manipulate the touch screen (and yes, I have managed to eat wings with one hand to be able to surf at the same time).

Then came the tablet. While battery life isn't something to sing about it is much, much better than my laptop. On the other hand, I have a wifi only tablet. For the first time today I kinda regretted not getting the 3G version (which would last right up until I was billed for it even once).

So here I am, out for lunch, just looking for a place with unhealthy food and free wifi. McDonalds has free wifi, but I am trying to cut down. Rock Bottom has free wifi, but I am looking for fast food or fast casual. Uncle Sam's? No. Qdoba? No. Chipotle? No. Ok, ok already, back to Panera.

Talk about your 21st Century Problems.

Now I am sure that people will tell me I am framing the problem incorrectly. I have internet at home (and at work for that matter). Why not eat at home, or pack a lunch. Yes, you're right. Or they could say I should jailbreak my phone to enable tethering so as to be able to access the 3G internet connection on my phone through the tablet. Of the two, the latter is probably more likely to happen.

But really I should have just bought a paper.