[Haiku] Keyboard Demon!

Oh, ergonomics!
Disregarded for beauty...
Carpal tunnel now!

Hahahaiku

I've decided to do a couple mini-reviews by way of haiku.

My first one I call...

Mighty Mouse
------------------
Cannot right click you!
Left finger not high enough?
Give me tactile clicks!

The Mighty Mouse... Almost

I decided to get the Apple keyboard and a Mighty Mouse when I was using my MBP17 as a desktop. The keyboard becuase it's pretty small, and the mouse because a buddy of mine used his with work and liked it.

The keyboard is fine. Well, as good as you can hope for for a non-ergonomic keyboard. CTS, here I come... again. The mouse though. Hmm.

I've finally stopped using the Mighty Moose. For two resons.

1. The side "buttons" are just too stiff. I suppose that's intentionally, but I just didn't like squeezing the sides.

2. (This is the killer.) Right click is just waaaay too iffy. Sometimes I'd have to click 4-5 times before my left finger would be elevated enough from the surface of the mouse so as not to register a normal click. Plus, it seemed like my right finger placement was affecting it as well.

Fortunately, my trusty Logitech G5 works a treat. Well, once I installed SteerMouse to get the acceleration under control. And bind the extra buttons. Life is good, now.

Time Tracking FTW!

Previously I'd been using a program called Klok to handle my time tracking needs in Windows. It's based on Adobe Air, and works pretty well for the most part. It's graphical, easy, and can export to Excel with drag and drop ease - which I really liked.

I've been using Klok for my Mac, as well. But, I was growing increasingly fed up with not being able to sync between two different computers (or more) and wanted something that was web based. That, coupled with an EPIC FAIL on my last timesheet (Klok just managed to screw up everything, I don't even know what happened) and I decided to start looking around again.

I ended up deciding to try the Google Calendar method. It's simple, online, and it integrates with iCal. Pretty good. The only thing was that I had to manually count my hours spent across my various projects. Until I found...

TimeTable! TimeTable is awesome. It basically looks at your iCal and calculates the hours for you based on what's in there for a given timeframe. Like this week. Then you can export that data and send it happily on to whomever handles your timesheets. In a nutshell? It's awesome. I tried it for literally 2 minutes before heading to the developer's site and buying it.

For me, this is perfect. I can visually manage my hours in iCal, which syncs to my Google Calendar, which syncs to iCal on my laptop. Then, I can easily compile and send off my timesheets. Life is good.

What's This?

Well, it's like this. I recently decided that I needed a new 17" laptop as I was doing more and more work on my laptop and my 13" and netbooks both weren't really suited for heavy code work. So, I went on a shopping spree. After trying two Dell 17" offers and not being totally happy with either of them, I opted to get a Macbook Pro 17. Why? Well, I knew I could install Windows on it.

But something funny happened on the way to the forum. First, I fell in love with the trackpad gestures. Second, I realized OSX has come a loooong way. Third... (and this is what killed me) I found some coding software that I absolutely fell in love with. (Panic's Coda.)

So, long story short, I found that I was possibly more productive within OSX than I was within Windows. Longer story short? I now spend most of my time on my Mac mini and spend the rest of the time curled up with my MBP17 in front of the TV. Life is pretty sweet. Except now I'm using TWO macs and am still struggling to come to grips with some of the things I miss, some I love, some I hate. The transition from Windows has been interesting at best. I'm gonna post some of those experiences here.

You know, that is until I get tired of this. I give myself 2 weeks. haha