Save for your Winter Heating Costs all Year Long without Temptation

When the winter comes along, homeowners in most parts of the country feel their wallets get lighter. For example, I predict that I will use about 500 gallons of kerosene to heat my house this winter. At $2.80, that's $1400! Unlike working with a utility company to get a budget plan where they estimate your average monthly utility expenses and charge you that, I have to save up before hand in order to pay the delivery man when he comes to fill up my tank. And with a 100 gallon minimum, the smallest charge I'll have is around $300. Yikes.

The other issue most people have is the temptation of spending that $1k they have had sitting in their bank account all year.  As the balance grows, so does the desire. The same problem happens when a homeowner doesn't have a tax escrow for property taxes, they must be disciplined enough to save for property taxes. One product banks offer is a tax savings account to save all year and only withdraw when presented with a tax bill. We'll use the same principle with saving for heating costs: a "holiday savings club" account.

Obviously a holiday club or holiday savings account is normally used to save all year long for your year end consumerism. Most credit unions offer them and a few banks do as well. What happens is you make deposits year round and then in October or November, the bank will transfer the entire balance to your regular savings or checking account, earning you a little interest in the process. Most holiday savings accounts have restrictions on how many withdrawals can be made during the year and some will even close your account it you make more than one early withdrawal. While its possible to blow your heat savings on a new car, by making it more difficult to access the funds (some require you visit the branch for an early withdrawal) you reduce your temptation. And if a major emergency does occur, the funds will be available. Setup direct deposit or an automatic transfer and you should be all set for Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Use a summer savings account or a vacation club savings account if you live in a warmer climate and need to cool down in the summer.

Another alternative would be to open an online high-yield savings account and setup direct deposit or automatic transfer. Being separate from your regular bank should keep your eyes off the money while earning 1%. ING Direct and HSBC Advance are the largest. I have HSBC and I am unsatisfied with their customer service but like the fact that by having a regular checking account with them I can carry out transactions at my local branch.  You could really keep your hands off the money by getting an X month CD depending on the time remaining until the winter. However, nowadays most CDs wouldn't earn much more interest than a savings account and most earn less than 1% of such small amounts and short time periods.

Whatever you choose, the most important thing is to have discipline. This is not meant to be investment or tax advice and you should consult with a financial professional before taking any course of action.

Let me know if you have any tips for fueling your house with your bills. I wonder at what point it becomes more economical to burn the money for heat.

Avoiding Being Eaten by a T-Rex: Why your Software Development and Deployment Process Should Matter

Recently my wife and I re-watched Jurassic Park. When I was a little kid, I used to believe that the tropical storm was the main reason for the power outage and problems on the the island befalling the guests. Now I know that the real problem was poor IT management and processes. Use some of these best practices to avoid being a raptor's lunch.

Could you imagine hiring this guy?:

Dennis Nedry is essentially a consultant. He doesn't know much about what goes on in the park, he's only hired to fix bugs, and he's given poor resources and poorly compensated. Giving someone like that access to
your production code is just a recipe for disaster.

Scheduled & Restricted Production Deployment - Your live environment should not be free to be updated by anyone at anytime. In a continuous update-release product you should schedule production deployments for a time which is least likely to interfere with other business operations and schedule other business operation at a different time from the release. For example, early in the morning bi-weekly would be a great time to update your dino park. No tours, feedings or events should be scheduled and the weather would be generally more cooperative. A designated and trustworthy pair of developers should perform the deploy together and perform the required testing afterwards.

Who's watching this guy?

Code Review - I have a feeling that debugging the phones does not interrupt the security and power systems on the island. I also have a feeling that most people question the need to reboot those systems if they had a change log or diff for each release. A good practice is to generate such listing for each deployment and have it reviewed by a second party.  For larger changes or changes that present a problem to security, a more complete review should be performed. Also, tying into the previous practice, you should have a standard script or deploy method and any deviation should also be part of the code review process. A source control system would make finding changes easier.

One thing they did right was have source control.

Test Environment - Your development environment should never, ever be your production environment. I'm pretty sure if you are compiling and it affects the production system, you're doing something wrong. If you have a local development environment, you can run all your unit tests and make all your mistakes safely before you put everyone's life in danger.  You might not kill an entire population, like if you worked on a nuclear reactor, but you might lose important time or data. In a multi-developer environment it might be a good idea to have an individual development copy and a collective development copy. Adding an additional step in the pipeline, creating a test or practice environment, will help find errors in your deployment environment. Treat this as if you were doing an actual production deploy. If you're missing any files or there are conflicts, testing here will highlight them. Having a test plan developed for each change and running that test plan in each environment gives you the most robust management.

If you can make this you can make a simulator for your test environment.

Stakeholder Management - If IT is important to your organization, it is important to keep everyone involved on board.

Not as nice as I remembered.

Chastising your workers for "their own mistakes" of a personal nature is not a good way to keep morale high. Also, not keeping track of the progress of Nedry or properly educating him in the business side of the island was a lack of 2-way communication and fulfillment of business goals. If compensation becomes an issue, then it might be wise to consider other vendors or a different IT budget to prevent sabotage, poor performance or quitting.
"Dennis, our lives are in your hands and you've got butterfingers?". Sounds like he was important enough to be better managed.


Well I hope you learned enough to avoid becoming a snack. If you have any other best practices you use, leave them here.

Use Sandwich Bags to Untangle your Cords

If you are a geek like me, you probably have a huge box or bin full of cables that seem to have woven together into a not-so-fine tapestry or nest. "Do I really need those modular power supply cables which I don't even have the power supply to and that power a floppy drive?" "Probably not." But in my quest for cleaning out my electronics bin and drawer I've found some cables that I know will still be useful or that I have no clue what they go to so I fear throwing them out. Instead, after spending an hour or so detangling I came up with the following solution:

Each cable now is in its own individual sandwich baggy. All of the cables fit into that bin and take up about 1/4th the size they previously did. You could use twist ties or Velcro instead but I had neither of those. This is also a good idea if you are moving and you can label or write on the bag to more easily identify the cable.

 Anyone else have any cable management tips? Those Velcro cable ties work wonders on in-use cables. I can never seem to optimally route my desktop cables both inside and outside.

Setting up SSH on your Wireless Router with DD-WRT

My network setup sometimes requires me to use SSH to tunnel into my home network to work on my machines remotely. Before my project, my desktop was running an SSH server (WinSSHD) which had its ports forwarded on my DLink DIR-615 router. This was far from ideal because if my desktop was down/disconnected I wouldn't be able to access any of the network via SSH. The ideal solution would be to run an SSH server on my router.

The Ideal Solution

After doing some quick research, I learned I could install new firmware on my router from an open source project called "DD-WRT". DD-WRT has at least all the features I took advantage of on my router (port forwarding, upnp, web interface). It also had the feature I wanted, an ssh server daemon. It is an open source project based on Linux. You can check to see if your router hardware is supported here.
Note: Flashing your router with new firmware can result in it no longer working! I won't be held responsible by anything you do to your router and you should be confident before attempting anything recommended here!

The nice thing about the DIR-615 is that it provides a web interface for updating your firmware. This is also a means to easily install DD-WRT. Just download the firmware file and upload it via the web interface. These are the instructions I used. Remember to check your hardware revision (letter) because it might be different and cause problems. The main DD-WRT router hardware page should tell you what is compatible. I was actually surprised at how easy everything was to setup. The only gotcha with the firmware upgrade was using IE instead of Chrome for the upload. Also, I put my router into a reduced state by holding the reset button until the Internet light flashed on the front. This will reset everything(including admin password) and make sure the router isn't too busy to complete the update. Always wire in when doing the upgrade since it will reset the wireless settings! Don't forget to download everything you need including instructions before starting since you might not have Internet access afterwards! Download your router's original firmware and know how to restore before starting as well. If you need Internet, reroute your cable modem to your computer instead of through your router. Don't attempt on borrowed or rented hardware!

After the firmware update, your router will now be accessible from http://192.168.1.1 since its IP is changed. Set your wired settings to use the 192.168.1.* subnet in order to see it. That url should bring up the following:

This is the router's info screen. At some point the router will ask you to make an admin username and password.

To get SSH working, I reviewed the following Wiki pages:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/SSH_access_from_internet
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Easy_SSH_tunnels
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Telnet/SSH_and_the_Command_Line

If you are lazy [Note: you are responsible for your own security]:

1. Navigate to Services -> Services
2. Scroll down to Secure Shell
3. Turn on SSHd
4. Turn on SSH TCP Forwarding
5. Enable password login or provide public keys for login (if you don't know, just go with password)
6. Give it a port
7. Navigate to Administration -> Management
8. Scroll down to Remote Access
9. Turn on SSH Management
10. Give SSH a port to run on 
11. For my ports I use 443 since 443 is usually open in firewalls and represents encrypted https traffic
12. Setup a Dynamic DNS service on the router or a pc (Setup -> DDNS)

Some gotchas:

• You can't enable https for the web GUI since it will use port 443. Give your SSHd a different port to run on and then you can use https
• You can only have one user if using password login and that user is "root" with admin password
• I use Putty Tray as my ssh client because it is powerful and minimizes to the system tray.

Other Things to Do With Your Router

Enable Remote Access -> Web GUI Management

This is useful for performing maintenance remotely or rebooting your router. Especially nice if you won't have anyone to help your troubleshoot your router while you are away or if those people aren't tech savvy.

Setup static IPs for your computers

Leave your computers as DHCP and setup the DHCP server on the router to associate a specific MAC address with a specific IP address.  Use these IPs in your port and firewall rules.

Setup a PPTP VPN

This should let you use Window's to connect your your home VPN without any computers running the VPN server.

Add a second way to connect to your wireless

This tutorial might get you started.
Some other things you can do with this:

• Create a temporary wireless point for guests with a different password. 
• Create an access point using a less secure encryption but set access restrictions. 
• Create a public wireless network but with lower signal so only in-house guests can access the wireless
• Create a public wireless network but make it ad supported using the other DD-WRT services such as Chilispot, WifiDog, or AnchorFree under Services->Hotspot or Services->My Ad Network
• User DD-WRT to provide a wirelss hotspot for customers but a private network for your business

With any of these methods, you should use a separate subnet and other security controls to prevent breeches.

Bridge two different LANs with wireless or Add a wireless repeater

This is good if you have a computer in a different part of the house without wireless and you have a spare router r have a big house.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linking_Routers

Run a VoIP PBX via Asterisk on your router

Watch out, this is tricky!
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asterisk

Add network storage via SMB or FTP

Only if you have a USB port in your router
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/USB_storage

Block websites, time restrict access to certain websites

Stop yourself from playing too  much farmville
Left as an exercise for the reader.

Many, many more ideas

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Tutorials

Remember, some things your router might need more memory or specific hardware that you don't have. I know my router doesn't support jffs so that prevents me from doing some things.

Let me know what project you decide to undertake.

#GoneGoogle - Letting Go

I originally micro-blogged about staring to use Google on my twitter @MatthewMMorrow but here is a some more.

The first part of this series: #GoneGoogle - Taking off into the Cloud

XKCD

Browser

I have been using Internet Explorer as my browser of choice since IE was indistinguishable from Netscape Navigator and Microsoft made it the Window’s default. At times I’ve fervently defended the browser and dreamed of the next version. At work I still use IE but that is mostly for development reasons.

As part of my Google experience,  I decided to test out Google Chrome [Get Chrome]. For some reason IE was giving me some speed problems and so I figured it was as good of a time as any. I had dabbled with Chrome when it first came out; it was nice, fast, and sleek, but it didn’t quite grab me then. This time my experience was different.

The install process for Chrome is smart. It installs itself to your user application data directory. This means you don’t need administrator access to perform the install. The install is little more than going to a specific link. Later on I switched to the Dev channel [how to switch] to get the newest features and again it automatically changed itself just by visiting a webpage. Chrome also keeps itself up-to-date. No more multiple versions to support (curse you IE6, die already).

This isn’t going to be a review of Chrome, try it out for yourself if you want one. But instead I’ll focus on the neat features and extensions that I use.

The first feature I appreciate is syncing. I can sync bookmarks, settings, and extensions between my laptops and desktops. Currently extensions are only able to be synced in the Dev channel [Lifehacker].

Feature #2 is tab pinning. Not terribly useful all the time but it helps me keep where I left off.

Feature #3 are all the extension I use. There is a better collection than those available for IE.

Here are the extension I use:

• Google Mail Checker Plus - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gffjhibehnempbkeheiccaincokdjbfe
• Google Calendar Checker w/Popup - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eaipgbekceebhbboemgghnjhnamflgmp
• Google Reader Notifier - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/apflmjolhbonpkbkooiamcnenbmbjcbf
• Toodledo - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ballhmoamkbbfadiealjmgmhbbnellbc
• Google Voice - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kcnhkahnjcbndmmehfkdnkjomaanaooo
• Chromed Bird – Twitter Client - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/encaiiljifbdbjlphpgpiimidegddhic
• Craigslist Preview – Adds the images of the listings to the search page. Saves time! - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jmcbgcbedienblgnfeecolmmcgocefnf
• Facebook Ads Hider - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/leeebdddeggoocipdjiokmjcpidnmoah
• Facebook for Google Chrome – Easy notification and wall updates - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lkdedmbpkaiahjjibfdmpoefffnbdkli
• Google Quick Scroll – This is awesome, click it and it will jump to the text you searched in Google - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjnmnbdibhgpbllgc
• Good Habits – Keep track of your habits - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eoeffklnhhikjcgnehoglndikmidlgca
• Pirate Bay Ad Remover – Of course - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hkggcdanhcfibkhpfiogkoaodjalekcc
• RSS Subscription Extension – Lets me add RSS feeds to Google Reader - https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd
Anyone have any others they like?

Label your Physical Hard Drives for Easier Troubleshooting

In my desktop computer I have a total of 4 SATA drives. When the drives are in the computer, you can't see the manufacturer's sticker to determine the size nor identify which drive is which. This last time I was working on my machine I decided to take all the drives out and use a white paint marker to write the size on the back end of the drive. Since all my drives have a unique size this takes the guess work out of troubleshooting and removal. It would look nicer with a label but I don't have a label maker.

Any other good tricks?

Google Bookmarks - How Do you Use Lists?

Google recently added lists to their bookmarking service. I was wondering how everyone was using them compared to previously.

How do you use Google Bookmark lists?

Foray into Windows 7: Part 3 - First Impressions - UI

"My new computer came with Windows 7. Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. I don't like that." - Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory [video]

So far my journey into Windows 7 has a few notes. Here is my stream-of-consciousness laundry list of thoughts.

The taskbar grew since the last time we met it. A little bit taller and a little bit wiser in Windows 7. The taskbar now also has nicer icons for Wi-Fi and battery built in (oops, this is just a ThinkPad thing).The "Show Desktop" button taking permanent residence on the taskbar is a welcome change. I would have just added it as a quick launch icon (though I'm not sure how it works anymore). Our beloved programs now merge with their icons which blurs the line between desktop and application. I like how each individual tab can be accessed from the taskbar when working with IE or Chrome. Sometimes I'll hunt through each of my open programs looking for certain content and forget that it was just on another tab. Having actions as the context menu makes a lot more sense than the "Close, Max, Min, Size, Move, Restore" found in previous versions. Perhaps the only time I have ever used "Move" was when a window was off the screen and I've never used "Size".

Pinning programs to the taskbar is nice. Pinning documents you have open in the programs on the taskbar or start menu is even nicer. Pinning recent documents FTW.

My gadgets no longer have a nice "drawer" to fit in. I'm not sure how you can call it the "Sidebar" program if there is no bar anymore. It's alright, I've abandoned my gadgets anyway. I never really used them unless they were set to "always display". Going to the desktop seems like too much work just to check my CPU speed or get the calendar. Maybe it will come back. My first use for the sidebar was mainly to reduce my window real estate so I didn't have to mouse too far on my widescreen.

Windows Snap: LOL! I'll use it occasionally but it isn't spectacular. It's almost as fast as manually resizing.

Now here is an interesting find. You can now backup your credentials and encryption so you won't ruin your files if you reset your password. Or at least the option is more user friendly. I also like the more prominent credentials manager but we should probably hide that from a non-power user.

Paint has a ribbon interface!

Calculator has so many more functions! I'm a programmer but I doubt I'll ever use the "Programmers" mode. You can also now take the Xths root of a number. Nice addition. Has anyone ever noticed that the scientific mode never had a square root button? I guess if you were smart enough to use that mode you were smart enough to use x^(1/2) to get the square root.

Anyone else have any first impressions? I haven't had much time to go into depth but I'll write about it soon.

Foray into Windows 7: Part 2 - Booting Up

So my new laptop finally arrived! No real new features to note over my laptop except this one has an LED screen which is significantly brighter than the normal LCD laptop screens.

My first test was to see how fast the initial Windows boot was and how long it would take to get to an interactive desktop. Seeing as this was the first boot there would be some final Windows setup to complete so that is measured separately.

The finishing setup touches went by pretty quickly for a total of 9 minutes until I was logged in for the first time. One item of note that I thought was very thoughtful on Microsoft's part was including setting up a wireless network as part of the initial setup. The integration of Wi-Fi into Vista was a vast improvement over using 3rd party wireless setup tools or the XP tool and now it's nice to see that setting up a Wi-Fi connection is a major part of the Windows 7 install. It was too easy, in fact, just clicked my network and entered my key. Another curious part of the setup (and might be true for earlier versions) was that the password hint field is required. This seems like a major security weakness by making it easier to guess a user's password. I wonder the percentage of users with their hint being their password backwards. I would feel much safer without a password hint but instead I took this opportunity to throw a would-be hacker off my trail. Use "It's a month" (but don't use a month as a password) and set the account login failure lockout to be around 5. They will start guessing months and then get locked out.

After my first login I shutdown so I could measure a clean boot-up. The shutdown itself was very fast at about 10 seconds. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for your computer to shutdown. Starting back up it took me 90 seconds to log in again. That is an alright time, but then again the Lenovo laptops come with a significant amount of software utilities that always start. I imagine if I use ReadyBoost my time would improve as well. Unfortunately my ReadyBoost card has been recommisioned as a camera card.

So far the Windows 7 experience has been clean and quick. We'll have to see if this trend continues when I load my software. Have you noticed anything working faster or slower in Windows 7? Write me a comment! More to come.

3 Ways to Free yourself from the Multitude of Customer Cards

Tired of carrying around all of those customer rewards cards in your wallet or on your keychain? You can cut back on those by consolidating them into a single item to carry or store in your car or for those more tech-savvy users, go digital. This is just a quick summary of some of the information I found while working on my own.

1. CardStar http://www.mycardstar.com/
This is what originally got me started on this project after reading about the service on Mashable. Great if you have a smart phone.
Lifehacker

2. Digital copies
If the barcodes work on an iPhone app then you might be able to email or upload pictures of your barcodes to your phone. Load them up on the screen and hand to the cashier. You might want to have a backup in your wallet the first time you try, just in case it doesn't work.


3. One card
There are a number of sites which will offer to create a single card that you can keep in your wallet. Or you can make your own using tips found towards the end of this post.
http://www.keyringthing.com/ <- My final solution. http://www.justoneclubcard.com/
Lifehacker

Getting good barcode images

You have a couple options in order to copy or create your barcodes.
1. Use an online generator
Most generators will need to know the whole card number. However, some companies don't put it on the card so here are some tips:
UPC-A numbers are 12 numbers so if you have 10 numbers try starting it with a 4 and the last digit is a check digit which can be calculated online from the other numbers
Long numbers or alphanumeric codes will likely be "Code 39" barcode and have visible space between each character
Read wikipedia on how to read a barcode number. The largest space or bar will be 3 bar-widths.

http://www.barcoding.com/upc/
http://www.justoneclubcard.com/index.py?view=advanced

2. Scan your cards
3. Take a photo
Lifehacker

Foray into Windows 7: Part 1 - Leaving Vista Addendum

Speaking of Vista's perception, I had forgotten all about the Mojave Experiment.

In the experiment users were taken through Microsoft's "next OS" which was revealed to be Vista after everyone had given positive feedback. Now there are a number of sources pointing to the shortcomings of the experiment to measure on an absolute scale the rating of Vista. However, I believe we have forgotten the basis of scientific experimentation which it to attempt to disprove a hypothesis. In this case, Microsoft's hypothesis was that Vista's PR had no impact on user's perception. If a rebranded OS and a fresh explanation of the new features had an effect then Vista's bad press certain had a play in perception.

However, this experiment can't show us that Vista is great yet most blogs will discredit the experiment because of glossing over of drivers, software, and setup. Because these are issues also found in XP and 7, these issues being in Vista should not affect it's reception vs. the Window's baseline. If people love XP and 7 more than Vista is is not because those OSs are any better in those areas. Well, maybe 7 I'll have to see...

See Also:
NY Times - Blog Posts Poke Holes in ‘Taste Test’ by Microsoft

#GoneGoogle - Taking off into the Cloud

I originally micro-blogged about this on my twitter @MatthewMMorrow but here is a full write-up.

I don't know what initially caused it. It was like a disease. Us geeks get strange urges to do something geeky for no real reason. On the positive side, I am very happy where I've come. I have weaned myself off of my dependence on desktop based personal management software. I have left my comfortable Microsoft Outlook software and surrendered to Google.

How it was

I used to use Outlook for everything. I probably had a dozen email accounts so I could best filter my email and reduce spam. My Outlook PST files are now interred at a whopping 1.51GB. Performing a backup of my data would take a long time and couldn't be done with Outlook running so it rarely happened. Outlook was my email, calendar, tasks, contacts, and notes hub. The problem was that my laptop had to be running and I had to have access to it in order to check my email and go about my daily business.

How it changed

GMail
My first to step was to setup GMail and all my email accounts. Grabbed my desired username (which is used for all my Google services) and loaded up GMail. Luckily GMail will check external POP3 email accounts. (Guide from mydigitallife.info) Perfect! Now all future mail will be received by GMail. I turned on "leave mail on server" in each Outlook account so it didn't affect GMail's retrieval.

The next goal is to get all my old email into GMail.
There are notable differences in the features available to email messages:

• GMail uses "labels" instead of folders. Labels are quite different because you can have multiple labels per mail message. To maintain a heirarchical structure you can use the "/" character in your label. For example: Animals/Puppies will tell you that Puppies are grouped under Animals. In GMail labs I recommend the "Nested Labels" gadget will let you expand and collapse your label hierarchy like you would expect to happen to folders.
• Gmail uses "Star" instead of "Flagged". Again a GMail lab called "Superstars" will give you multiple "Star" actions.
• GMail groups your emails into converstaions. An email and all its replies will be displayed as one entry and expanded when opened. Keep that in mind while looking for old emails.
• GMail's Inbox is a type of tag. When you "archive" an email it will remove it from the inbox and it can be found in the "All Mail" screen or in the screen for the labels it was tagged with.
• GMail discourages deleting in favor of "archiving". I say just go ahead and delete something. Messages are held in trash for 10 days.

I used  this guide from labnol.org to help me move my emails. It was fairly straight forward but since I had an Outlook Archive PST I moved those folders to a special "Archived" label.  This is also a very good time to organize your emails. I would recommend organizing and double checking in GMail. You can do a simple item count to see if everything transfered but remember, converstaions count as 1 item while they can contain multple emails. Also, make sure you drag any "Sent Items" to the appropriate GMail IMAP folder.

I'll post later about how to trim down your unruly email cache.

Google Contacts
The next very important feature from Outlook was my contacts. Who would I email if I didn't have any contacts? Microsoft even tells you the easiest (but also less advanced) way to export your contacts. I'd review your contacts and make sure no important data is missing (e.g. birthday, anniversary, addresses). Export and Import wasn’t the approach I took…

Google Calendar (and Contacts again)
Since I can sync my phone to Outlook's calendar and contacts I also wanted to be able to sync Outlook and Google frequently and automatically. What is also important is that for the calendar I use multiple categories to color my items. There is another difference in Google.
    Google Calendar does not have categories. This is a huge oversight! GMail has labels but Calendar has nothing of the sort. The solution is to make multiple calendars. (Here's how: http://www.brighthub.com/internet/google/articles/2841.aspx). Unfortunately that means each event can be on one calendar (unless is just a copy) but its a simple solution for now.

So for my syncing I had to turn to some 3rd-party solutions. This section turns into more of a software review...

• Google Calendar Sync (http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955) - This is made by Google. It doesn't do contacts and it only supports syncing with the main calendar so in my book it is pretty useless. It would be great if they expanded it!
• gContactSync (http://code.google.com/p/gcontactsynch/) - Contacts only. I for some reason it didn't correctly find my contacts so it didn't work.
• GO Contact Sync (http://lifehacker.com/5193636/go-contact-sync-keeps-google-and-outlook-contacts-matched) - This one worked OK. It was a little trick to get running the first time and it seems to get screwed up by adding contacts to both Outlook and Google. No category sync :-(. I was able to get my contacts into Google but then I stopped using this sync. Organized my contacts so now Google is my main repository.
• RemoteCalendars (http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/) - This doesn't actually sync your calendars it just displays them in Outlook. Works with any internet calendar.
• KiGoo (http://www.getkigoo.com/) - Again, no sync but is a very good Google Calendar integration. Shows up and is editable just like any Outlook calendar.
• SyncMyCal (http://www.syncmycal.com/home.htm) - This was ok but still not quite the feature set.
• OggSync (http://oggsync.com/) - Very good software. Didn't end up using it but it did give me the idea to setup filters to sync each different Outlook category to a different Google calendar.

The winner:

gSyncIt (http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/) - The software I ended up purchasing for $15. This will also sync notes (to Google Docs) and tasks (to Google Calendar) and has advanced filter options. Once its setup it works great.

NOTE: PLEASE BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE USING ANY SYNC SOFTWARE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ENABLE "DELETES". I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED ALL MY CONTACTS THROUGH A BAD SYNC BUT GOT THEM FROM THE TRASH"

Google Tasks
Google Tasks is a joke. For a task you can only provide title, description and due date. My Outlook tasks were more complicated than that. I need at least repeatability and preferably repeat after completion. Remember the Milk doesn't provide the latter and does not currently offer any way to sync with Outlook.

My choice cloud-based task software is Toodledo (pronounced to-dull-due). They also recommend software that will sync between their service and Outlook software that will sync between their service and Outlook. Bonus: Toodledo also provides a "notebook" feature and the software will sync your Outlook notes with your Toodledo notebook! My favorite feature is syncing by importance (not priority). Importance = 2 + priority (3,2,1,0 or -1) + starred (1 if you marked it as starred) + due date (6 - overdue, 5 due today, 3 due tomorrow, 2 due this week, 1 due 2 weeks). This means that your lower priority tasks with a closer due date are more evenly matched with your higher priority far away tasks. Getting a pro membership will let you share task, create subtasks, show statistics, and give a recommended schedule of tasks to complete based on time. One downside is that completed tasks are deleted after a while (6 months) but I might not miss them.

Conclusion

Well that covers all the features of Outlook. I am very glad I moved my data to the cloud. About a month after my transition I spilled soda on my laptop and had to get it sent into the factory. All this time I don't have Outlook but it doesn't matter. I can check my email and tasks from any browser anywhere. Speaking of browsers, I'll write about how to make all my information more accessible using Chrome and also about the other Google services I've tried.

Of course there are other minds, like those at zenhabits.net which prefer to go Google-free. The main lesson I learned here is that cloud computing rocks and the more cohesive your services the more synergy you gain.

Foray into Windows 7: Part 1 - Leaving Vista

I'm fond of Windows Vista. In fact I'm reluctant to upgrade all of my computers to use the new operating system. The new features aren't terribly interesting or worth effort of upgrading. To top it off, the Microsoft commercials seem to only focus on the new "snap" feature. Neat but not that neat.

One of the most cited reasons for switching to 7 is that it is less "buggy". I didn't even notice that Vista was buggy. Perhaps the only bug I encountered was the slow network speed due to Remote Differential Compression (which was solved by turning it off). I'm willing to be that most "bugs" were due to user unfamiliarity, UAC, lack of driver support, and lack of early software support. In fact this list at AskVG.com tells us that 7 has a few bug fixes over Vista. Yet, 7 is heralded as much more stable. Hardly a major stability upgrade. Perhaps we have Apple fan's sensational journalism of the beta version of Vista to blame for its poor reception.

If it wasn't for the amazing accidental damage warranty from Lenovo, my replacement laptop will have Windows 7. So, I'll be jotting down some of my observations.

Windows 8...?

Well this was a welcome find today.  The Windows 8 leaked Powerpoint slides look promising.
If you haven't seen them yet, take a look!
http://msftkitchen.com/2010/06/windows-8-plans-leaked-numerous-details-revealed.html
http://www.windowsette.com/2010/06/sfuggite-slide-segretissime-sullo.html

One of the most annoying things in the current version of Windows is the poor sense of identity.  When I was a kid each member in my family had their own Windows account.  Unfortunately, it was too slow and too much of a hassle to switch users so we all used my father's account.  It makes it difficult to personalized a computer when it is public or shared.  Any personalization has to have enough value to over come the pain-in-the-neck of switching users.  This also leads to reduce security, privacy, and restrictions.  Could you imagine sharing your phone like that?

Windows 8, on the other hand, looks marvelous to this effect for a few reasons.

1. Focus on reducing user switching time.  
2. Identify users automatically - if I could just sit down and it would bring up my user in a matter of seconds that would be amazing.  Maybe load additional user settings into memory in the background after the first user is logged in. Predict when I'll be using my computer to preload before then for best memory usage and you'll get a gold star.
3. Cloud Identity - I recently switched from my MS based groundings with Outlook to a better cloud-based identity with Google.  I love the fact that I can log in anywhere with a browser and have my settings.  More importantly, my wife and I each have a laptop but we each frequently use the living room desktop.  Having my bookmarks, history and extensions (via Dev channel) in Chrome automatically sync between computers is like a dream.  Over the weekend I set up a Linux box and again, all my Chrome settings came with me!  If I can have everything but my large games and archived files (which I can 
4. sync everywhere I go and remote to or network share everything else, my computing experience becomes something totaly different.

Another plus in my book is the centralized marketplace.  Again, with my Linux box being able to install packages, applications and games from a central source means I'll spend less time installing and updating.

Windows 8 will be something I will be watching closely.

Vision

My goal here is to make notes of information I find, thoughts I have, and to illicit feedback.

We'll see how it goes.