Blogger for Windows and other stuff

Today while surfing the Internet I found Blogger interface for MS Word.  Wow, I am totally impressed.  Now I can do all of my blogging right from MS Word where I am at home.  I have enjoyed using the bloggar interface to do most of my writing over the last couple of years and while it is a nice interface that is more powerful than the web interface MS Word is still a much more useful word processor.  It goes to say that if you want to do something you are always better off using the right tool for the job the first time.  This way I can format the text any way I want to and it is supposed to insert the document into a blog entry by my pushing a publish button. You can not insert pictures or tables at this time however.  I guess you will be able to tell how well it works by the blog you are reading.  Let me know what you think if you have a moment.  

Well, Katy is headed to Columbia SC for the last weekend for the month of January and I know the poor dear is just worn out.  I am so proud of her dedication to both her career and family.  Once Katy passes her PACE course the state will receive her certificate around February 15th and then hopefully she will get all of her back pay and sign on bonus in March of this year.  Our budget and our creditors will be pleased.  As usual I am down at the County office building in downtown Charleston making life safe for the employees who comes in on the weekend.  

I spoke with Katy this morning and she advised me that she had a “discovery zone” moment in her Ford Escort Station wagon that she has been driving for a year and a half now.  She told me that she wondered IF she had water in her water reservoir for her windshield wipers.  Apparently she has been wondering about this for quite some time and had just not gotten around to asking me about it.  This morning when she needed to clean off her windshield she spied a button on the dash and decided to be adventuresome and push it to see what happened.  Katy said she was amazed and surprised to see water shooting onto the windshield.  LOL…  Yes honey, your car is equipped with Air Conditioning and windshield wipers with water.  Next week you might discover something else.  Katy told me that she was worried about the prospect of getting a newer vehicle because it would probably take her years to figure out all the gizmos and gadgets.

Today marks week number two at Santee Cooper and thus far they seem to be happy with my performance.  That is a good thing which means that the power lords at the power company are not going to vote me off the island just yet.  As a matter of fact I have a list of 15 projects that seems to be growing every day and I have been set free to divide and conquer these projects.  I am working with a 24 year old co worker named Johnathan who has been very helpful with regards to acclimating me to the network environment at Santee Cooper.  Johnathan used to work in the desktop support side of IT and when a Network Services position came available he transferred over there.  From what they told me he used to be a contractor as well.  I am hoping that I can make these folks very happy and that at the end of my 6 months that they will have enough work to keep me gainfully employed either as a contractor or a full time employee.  I have been spending the last couple of weeks getting intimate with Tivoli Storage Manager and Dell Openmanage software.  Tivoli Storage Manager is their data backup and recovery software of choice and Dell Openmanage and server assistant software is the software that resides on the Dell blade servers that are installed in the data center.  I am like a child in a toy store.  I can not tell you how wonderful it is to be paid to play with technology all day.  That does not mean that I am not challenged technically because I certainly am.  One of the things that I learned a long time ago in I.T. is that no matter how good you think you are or how knowledgeable you seem to be there is always a peer sitting right around the corner from you that is better.  What is nice about that is that you can put yourself in a position to learn from them and them from you.  I always get tickled with folks who fancy themselves as the one who feels they are a gift from God when it comes to technology.  You have met the types I am sure.  You ask them a question and they always have the answer and are overwhelmed with the urge to impress you with lots and lots of techno drivel and acronyms from hell.  LOL…  I know so much about this problem because familiarity breeds contempt.  It is one thing to be confident in your skills but when your pride and ego start to get out of control that confidence can very quickly turn into arrogance.  One of the things that I appreciate about most IT folks that I rub shoulders with every day in corporate America is that most of them hold this arrogance in check and realize that they are just like me in that they are swimming in a pond with other fish bigger than themselves and are willing to be helpful to the rest of us that are on a learning curve.