If "All's well that ends well"...

...then what trite saying do you give when things don't end well??

Not very long ago we gave up our kitty Dido. A number of reasons prompted this change, primarily the discovery of Amelia's allergy to cats. But continued "hostility" and schizophrenic behavior was also common (the first vet's office named her "Hyde" - as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr.).

We endured for years with her in a cooped up state. But finally, with the girls getting older, with Addysen not as careful as Amelia, and in general frustration with her behavior, we gave her up. Or, more accurately, we found long-term care for her at a rescue facility in a less densely populated area.

It was a sad day at the time, but we had grand dreams of her playing, running, climbing trees, bothering cows, and chasing birds. I'm sure she did.

On a hunch yesterday, I emailed the caretaker just for an update. They had agreed to never contact us about her, but had also agreed to provide updates, as appropriate, when we asked. So it saddened us greatly to hear back today that Dido's cat got on the roof (okay, old joke).

In all seriousness, she regrettably got in a tangle with a much larger animal, and she lost. It may have been a wild dog (we didn't suggest this to Amelia - we posited it was a wolf or coyote - she's stuck on the idea that it was a coyote, I think only because it's such a fun word to say). And the caretaker stated her surprise, thinking Dido would be less likely to meet such an end, as there were numerous, smaller cats at this place.

But knowing Dido, if she didn't instigate the fight, she definitely didn't back down. She was one to hiss, scratch, and chase after unknown creatures. In fact, one day she attacked our window at an attempt to get a stray cat wandering in our backyard. So although we know she was out in the country where she could be free, and she probably went down swinging (acting in her true nature), we've lost a little part of our family in a very sad sort of way.

All's well that ends well. In this case, we'll just say that we have fond memories, and we can be thankful that it wasn't a protracted kitty disease or a vehicle that led to her death. We told Amelia that when we drive by this area, we can blow a kiss and remember how much we loved Dido, and how much we still miss her.

What Outlook CAN'T Do

The dark side of converting from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook. I love Microsoft’s deep concern for the wishes of its customers…(these answers come from MSFT, not from our IT Dept.).

 

From: HELPDESK-DIT-COMPUTERS
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:57 PM
To: All County Users
Subject: Outlook Tips and Info for Tuesday, Sept 15 - PLEASE READ

 

What Outlook can't do

Organizing meetings

Outlook's central purpose is structure and organization. It therefore expects certain things from meeting participants, and has still higher expectations of meeting organizers.

§  The organizer role is not transferable.

Once someone has organized a meeting, they are the organizer until the meeting is over. Someone else cannot take the meeting organizer role if the original organizer can't attend. The only workaround is to delete the original meeting and reissue invitations. This is a big and complex issue, in both design and programming required to make it work..

§  The meeting stays on the organizer's calendar.

The meeting can't be deleted from the organizer's calendar, even if the organizer can't attend, because the organizer is the only one who can change the meeting. This barrier was designed specifically for and implemented into Outlook 2007.

§  Meetings you decline don't exist.

If you decline a meeting, it disappears from your calendar. If you want to track all of your group's meetings, you'll have to look for another way to include those that you decline.

§  A meeting invitation is a separate e-mail.

Currently, you can't reply to an e-mail message with a meeting request. This is a frustration for many users.

Views and Folders

Outlook offers many opportunities for customization, but there are a few areas where it currently enforces restraint.

  Folders lists are sorted alphabetically.

In the navigation pane at the far left of Outlook, you can freely rearrange your "Favorite Folders" in Mail, and the shortcut buttons at the bottom that take you between Outlook functions. But the list that you see in "Mail Folders" and "Folder List" — including Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items and Deleted Items, together with organizational folders that you create — is sorted alphabetically, and that's how it stays. If you want to go to the trouble, you can rename your folders, but be careful about Outlook functionality (e.g., avoid renaming "Inbox") and any rules that you may have set up.

  Each folder has its own view.

You can change the view of each of your folders - your Inbox can look different from your Sent Items or personal folders. But you can change the view only for each folder individually - you can't apply changes to multiple folders at the same time.

  The navigation pane font is what it is.

The style, size and color of the type in your folders list can't be changed. Sorry.

Distribution Lists and e-mail

The world revolves around e-mail nowadays, and that's an area where Outlook shines. Even so, there are some features users still dream of.

  Distribution lists come from Contacts.

It would be useful to be able to stick an e-mail sender directly onto a distribution list — for example, someone responding to an offer for an e-mail newsletter. But Outlook prefers that you build distribution lists from your Contacts, so you first must add the sender to an address book in Contacts. If you'd rather not mix contacts, you can establish an address book especially for the purpose by creating a new folder within your Contacts folder.

  Contacts are individuals.

As you learned earlier in this article, you have to add e-mail senders to Contacts before they can go in a distribution list. So, wouldn't it be clever to be able to search for such senders and add them en masse into Contacts? Of course it would. But Outlook says that you have to add e-mail senders to Contacts individually.

  Each message is sent only once.

Some people say they'd like to set up a recurring message, e.g., to send reminders. Outlook doesn't do that, but there are third-party add-ins that enable that function.

 

ObamaCare's Contradictions - The Wall Street Journal.

I thought you would be interested in the following story on WSJ.com.

ObamaCare's Contradictions

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574360541357223298.html

Karl Rove: Obama's Great Health Scare - The Wall Street Journal.

Good read!!

Karl Rove: Obama's Great Health Scare

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574318334081271414.html

Lunch with Mimi

> At the end of our Savannah Beach Trip we visited Atlanta to see my
> grandma (Mimi). This is us having lunch with her this afternoon. I'm
> back in town and the girls will have a mini-vacation with my folks
> over the next week.
>

Ang's Revenge

Haha! My turn at the camera, Danny's turn under anesthesia. He had an
endoscopy this morning, and here he is after waking up. I think we're
just about even now. :-D

Score One (+1) for the iPhone

While at a wedding reception for some wonderful friends, another guest asked if a certain song was available to play. The DJ would have had no reason to be in possession of such genre (Celtic/Riverdance-ish music). And I surely didn't have anything of the sort in my playlist.

But score one for the iPhone - the guest told me the name of the song, I opened up iTunes on my iPhone, found it, previewed it (to make sure it was right - the first one I tried was NOT right), bought it for $0.99, downloaded, and sauntered on up to the DJ.

You see, it turns out that the groom is an incredibly accomplished Irish Dancer (hope that's the right term). And without him knowing what was coming, he was called - alone - to the dance floor, and he gave us a 20-30 second incredible solo dance. On his wedding day. Impromptu.

So shout out to Steve Jobs and Apple for such a great piece of technology (both hardware and software), and a bigger shout out to Michael for being a good sport and giving us all a great show.

And the +1 (from the title of the post) - Link here. (HT: TheGreatBlackAngus)