Outlook woes

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Aaarrgh! Microsoft Outlook is driving me nuts!

I've been a long time user of a Palm PDA and their Palm Desktop software (although I did sync with Outlook when I was in an office setting). I have a system set up. Everything works the way I like. We've been cruising a long like a well oiled machine.

DH made a remark the other day about Palm's projected earnings. $190 to $195 million, instead of the expected $331 million (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10110622-94.html). He then suggested that I should start looking into using Microsoft Outlook for keeping track of my calendar, contacts and notes.

I must admit that I haven't actually carried my Palm PDA around in my purse in quite some time. Too much other crap in my purse. I mainly use the Palm Desktop software on my computer to help me stay organized. So the switch to MS Outlook shouldn't be too painful. Or so I thought.

I've only played with it for a few minutes and have already found some annoyances. Hmmm... I think I used to own a very old O'Reilly book called Outlook Annoyances. I bet there is a newer version that covers the latest Outlook flavor.

Annoyances with Notes in Outlook:
1. There doesn't seem to be any way to mark specific notes as "private" (or to password protect them).
2. The yellow sticky note window can be resized, but there is no scroll bar! You can't see anything that is below the visible area of the window. You have to use the keyboard to manouevre around. I would like a scroll bar so I can use the wheel on my mouse to scroll up/down.

Annoyances with Calendar in Outlook:

1. When launching Outlook and going to the Calendar (week view), the application should default to "Today's" date so that when I click on New Appointment, the appt defaults to Today's date instead of whatever day is first on the far left in my week view. Geez, seems logical to me...

My next challenge was trying to find a way to import all my data from Palm Desktop to Microsoft Outlook. I swear, I get more stupid as I get older. It was just a simple task of setting out Outlook conduits and syncing the PDA with Outlook. Definitely a Duh! moment.

I lost the color coding of my Palm categories, but thankfully the categories themselves transferred over. I just have to manually go set the Outlook label color. Going forward. There is no way I'm gonna go update all the past entries!

And while we're on the topic of organizers, I was thinking about the leather binder for the paper(!) organizer I used to use over a decade ago. It was one of those Franklin Covey or Daytimer things. Are they still in business? No, I'm not about to go back to the Dark Ages. However I was wondering whether I could use that with some zipper insert pages to keep my new KP Options needles organized (See yesterday's post, 4 Dec 2008). If I were still living at the Old House, I'd have a general idea of where to look for the binder. Unfortunately I can't recall whether I kept the binder when we moved to our New House. I might have thrown it out. If I still have it, I have absolutely no idea which box it would have ended up in. If I decide to go this route for storing my needles, it would be much easier to purchase a new binder.

Thank you very much for all the comments in my previous post, I appreciate your helpful suggestions. I haven't yet decided what I will try. The only thing I have done since yesterday is placing the needle tips into the pockets of the pouch. I haven't used them yet. I'd like to contrive some new project to cast on -- which would be very easy to come up with! -- but have shown restraint because I really need to finish what I already have on my needles. I do not need to get sidetracked.

Here's what I have on the needles:

Fingerless Mitts, using three 4.5 mm (US7) circular needles.
Fingerless Mitts, using four 2.75 mm (US2) circular needles.
Scarf, using one 4.0 mm (?) (US6) circular needle.

What I need to finish before Christmas:

The two fingerless mitts mentioned above.
Cast on for 3 more pairs of fingerless mitts.

And looking at the calendar this morning I find there is really only 2 weeks left to accomplish all this. Those 3 more mitts must be completed before Monday 22 Dec 2008.

Anybody know how to pause time?

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