Even though I've had a smartphone for a year, I don't tend to use the calendar function much. I mean, I use it sometimes when I need to look at a visual representation of a calendar and I'm not at home or at the office (where they are conveniently hung on the wall). But I don't use it to keep track of appointments and important dates. I just prefer to write things down, I think because it gives me a better chance of remembering them.
For the past several years I have been using a Moleskine combination planner book/notebook. These come in several variations; I prefer the kind that shows the week vertically on the left pages, and has ruled lines on the right pages to make notes about whatever I want. For example, this is how I keep track of my online bill payments each month, just as a kind of backup to the confirmation emails.
This year, I didn't remember that I needed a new book until I came back to work on January 3rd. Last year I think I bought one at Porter Square Books, but I haven't been over that way in some time, and it's way out of the way for me to go there after work. I kept meaning to stop by the Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center, which is more or less on my way home, but with the ridiculous weather and the days I haven't even come into the office and the days I've had to head home from work early to take care of the dog, it just kept slipping back on the priority list.
I finally made it there one night last week, and of course I was way too late: anything calendar-related that remained in the store was marked down to at least half-price and piled on a small table, but there was very little left in general. Moleskine doesn't seem to sell its products directly online, but I figured other places must. A little searching got me to the Barnes & Noble online store, where I hadn't visited in several years. Not only did they still have the notebook I wanted in stock, but it was still half-price. A couple of CDs I'd been wanting to get (yeah, I still buy CDs) got me over the free-shipping threshold.
At this point, a month into the year, I would have preferred to find this item in a local store, but then what's a few more days to wait until it arrives?
As a quadruple Macster (work, home and laptop, plus an iPhone) I have subscribed for two years to MobileMe to sync my contacts and iCal; with the new iPhone4 and a new work computer, however, the fragile network went bonkers, and my iCal and Contacts started duplicating entries; two months ago, it stopped recognizing the entries on my iPhone. About 10 Apple Support phone-hours later, including my last two-day support call from a very nice and helpful but, in the end, embarrassed guy who lived in Minnesota, I gave up and went back to analog. I tried gmail cal for a week, but when my SO said that his calendar wasn't backing everything up and he was losing things, i just went to Barnes and Noble last week and got myself a Moleskine knockoff -- same features, only in a nice Green Apple color, for $2.50 on clearance. Now, I update my calendar via kitchen table meetings and via email, very low-tech and annoying, but not as annoying as spending late nights on a phone with Apple. I'll manually sync the contacts every now and then, but iCal, we're done for now.
ReplyDelete