I have been trying for probably a year now to find the, for me, perfect PIM. It has to include email, calendar, to do list, and some type of memo option. A big concern has been reminders, be they by email or application pop up, for both calendar events and to do list items. The Linux KDE package, Kontact, appears to do the trick.
Many people use the calendar for all appointments/tasks that require reminders. I am however of a mind in which I deal with deadline based reminders and goal (not time sensitive) reminders. The difference may be subtle but to me it is significant. Hence I require a PIM with which I can configure events and tasks using an automated reminder system.
It was very easy to import all my mail from my Linux Evolution client. Two or three steps pulled in all my folders. Contacts, exported as Vcards from Evolution, were easily imported into KAddressbook and integrated into Kontact.
I had some issues getting KMail to recognize my address book after importing it to KAddressbook. After multiple deletions and recreations of the address book, I got it to work. Unfortunately, I am not sure what the problem was or why the fix worked.
Nonetheless, it seems to be working as I would like it to so I’ll keep testing it out and hopefully adopt it as my “new” standard.
Twas a gorgeous day for the cleanup…hardly a cloud in the sky with temperatures in the mid-60’s. I would call our effort at Bull Run and Route 28 in Manassas, sponsored by REI of Fairfax, both a success and a disappointment. It was my fourth or fifth cleanup including a couple on the Potomac River in Point of Rocks and one off Walney Road in Chantilly. We picked up less trash, with a turnout of about 40 people, than I had on previous cleanups with 25 to 50 percent of the participants.
Apparently a local Boy Scout troop recently adopted that stretch of Bull Run so it seems like our efforts would have been better utilized elsewhere. I see plenty of trash in creeks that I pass by on walks around my neighborhood! Additionally, we suspected that much of the trash had been washed further downstream by the wicked runoff we had from more than 70 inches of snow this winter.
You can see the results at the Alice Ferguson Foundation web site which says we collected nearly 113 tons of trash from 214 reporting sites in the Potomac River Water. One of my pictures below tells the tale of how much we collected…pretty weak but the trash just wasn’t there.
The 22d Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup takes place from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM on April 10, 2010. My brother-in-law, Ed, and I are going to meet up with a group, at Bull Run on Rt. 28 about 2 miles south of Rt. 29, sponsored by REI in Fairfax, VA, (21 people have signed up) to pull trash and garbage out of the river and surrounding areas.
Get more information here. Please sign up and come help us out! Green Day, Green Earth, Green Thumb, and all that. They are short of gloves because of an inordinately large turnout this year so bring some gardening gloves, or even better, oyster shucking gloves. They protect your hands against sharp objects and drain the water from your gloved hand much better than other types of gloves do.
What madness! I took the Metro into town on Thursday, April 1, to see the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. Last year I rode the scooter down to check them out but the area was so packed with people I just cruised through for a quick look and headed home. This year, I wanted to walk around and get some pictures so the Metro was the way to go. I got on at the Vienna, VA, station and off at the Smithsonian station. From there it was a reasonably short walk to the Tidal Basin where all the action is. I ended up walking all the way around the Basin at a leisurely pace snapping pictures of the trees and the Jefferson and Washington Memorials.
There were people all over the place. The advent of digital photography has not boded well for tourist destinations since now everyone thinks they are a photographer. Walkways were blocked by phototogs trying to get snaps of their friends, family, and the monuments. I believe that I can assuredly say that if all those people had to pay for film and developing, most of them wouldn’t be taking pictures. I certainly take many more pictures using my digital camera than I would using my analog cameras. At least I have a history going back 26 years of taking analog photos and have four analog cameras to my two digital cameras.
That being said, I think I got a few decent photos. I went into town late with the intention of staying through sundown. I did do that but ended up shooting sunset photos on the mall of the Capitol and the Washington Monument rather than of the cherry blossoms. This was mainly due to the fact that I had to pee and was thirsty as hell. I walked down the south side of the mall near the Capitol looking for an Irish bar that I had been to years before but haven’t been able to find for the past few years. I am not even sure it is there any more.
What is really odd is that it is so hard to find someplace to just stop and get a brew or quick bite to eat around the mall. There are huge government office buildings everywhere and people have to drink and eat. D.C. is very much a commuter city so perhaps the government workers are just in and out for work and there isn’t a good restaurant business environment. I ended up going to Capitol City Brewing Company on Massachusetts Avenue just of Capitol Hill. It is adjacent to Union Station which is a good venue for getting chow and such, not sure about brews, and also catching the Metro.
After making my bladder gladder, I managed to find a seat at the bar in the very packed restaurant. I was so thirsty from walking around for four hours in the sun that I pounded down a pint of Kolsch and a pint of water in no time. Since the sun was setting, I had to get back out on the mall, about 5 blocks away, snap some pictures and get back to the Smithsonian Metro station. Even though it was about 8:15 PM, I just barely managed to get a seat and was hemmed in by people as the car reached standing room only a few stops later. That lasted until about four stops before the end of the line where I disembarked and headed home.
When I got home, I realized that I hadn’t eaten the sandwich I brought with me so I showered the city off of me, scarfed a quick brew, ate my sandwich, and chased it all down with more water. Meanwhile, I was downloading 203 pictures from my camera to my computer.
Here are a few of those pictures. More will be posted in my photo album in the not too distant future. Once that is done, I’ll make a note and put a link to them here in my blog.
Spring is in the air which is great but… I get to open up my apartment, air out the cat dander, and freshen things up a bit. Sadly, my downstairs neighbors, who are friends, regularly go out on their porch and smoke. My balcony is right over their porch and if my sliding glass doors are open, which they are likely to be in this fine weather, the cigarette smoke wafts into my apartment all the way to my back bedroom where I sleep.
Now, it is not a huge issue, the smell doesn’t seem to linger, and I cannot really do anything about it but the other night it was annoying. I was tossing and turning at 1:30 AM, had the doors open to cool down my apartment and had to deal with the secondhand smoke. I was not a happy camper!
Below is most of what I sent to my apartment manager regarding illegal dumping of waste on our apartment complex. Names and such are redacted to protect those presumed innocent until proven guilty.
“I am sorry to bother you since I understand you are out of town but I need to cover my bases on this one as I am know I have pissed off one of your maintenance staff. I viewed him earlier today emptying the contents of a carpet cleaning unit on the lawn below/in front of my apartment. I surmised that this was not legal and subsequent research has shown that my suspicions are most likely true.
I wanted to talk to you about it but when I went in the office I found not only that you were not there but that the maintenance staff in question was so I deferred reporting the incident at that time. Later in the day as I passed by the office, I just couldn’t let go of it and in hopes that the maintenance staff member was not there, I decided to tell your office staff about the incident.
Unfortunately, the maintenance staff member was in the office and I put myself in a spot where it would have looked weird if I walked out again without saying anything. Accordingly I brought the subject up to your assistant manager, the office assistant and the maintenance man. Needless to say it was an uncomfortable situation. Your maintenance man was on the spot and obviously disgruntled with my revelation.
According to the maintenance man, disposing of carpet cleaning waste on the lawn is commonplace if not the norm. It however should be disposed of through a home/business sewer system and where not applicable at an authorized disposal facility. It should not be dumped on lawns, pavement, or storm sewers. I do not have pictures of the action but do have pictures of the residue from the dumping of the waste.
I want ….. Apartments to take action to come up with a legal and ethical means of disposing said waste and I do not want to be a victim of retribution by the management or staff of the organization for reporting this incident. Please assure me that you will follow up with me on this.”
Had a wicked ride on the scooter today…about 190 miles. I hit many of the roads I frequented when I lived up in Frederick, MD. The temps were in the sixties…perfect.
All the creeks and rivers I came across were running very high! The roads, for the most part, were in pretty good shape. Most of the gravel, dirt, and detritus left over from the long winter was gone. There were still some wet spots from the high level of ground water though. You definitely had to be careful. Also, some of the roads were in pretty bad shape. Unfortunately considering the state of the state finances (Virginia), many of those roads might not see repairs for months if not years.
I tried to plot out the route in Google Maps but am not sure how well it worked. View Larger Map
That ‘s all I have. Needs more work but has potential to plot out routes that other bikers might enjoy. However you look at it, there are lots of great roads for scooter riding in Maryland, western MD that is.
