Mike Williams Club – The Blog – Page 92 – Weirder words were never written!

The Problem with Using One Note for Work

The caveat – I love using One Note. I think it is one of the best apps that Microsoft ever made.

The problem – Microsoft does not understand sharing, what it truly means, and why clamping the file down to the computer that created it is a bad idea.

I’ll elaborate. There are certain times when I do not want data I create for work purposes to be solely on the work machine I created it on. Why not, you may ask? Excellent question. Sometimes it can be a security issue where I may not entirely trust our IT department to back up the data or more often than not, I just want to have access to that information from various devices. I could be out at the mall and get a call from work that requires that I look at some of my data. It has happened more often than one might expect.

One Note is not friendly to this type of use. I cannot create the notebook in Dropbox and then use their app to see that notebook across platforms. That is not sharing. For instance, I’ve created a great notebook on my work computer which is a Surface Pro but I can’t access that notebook on my MacBook Pro. I know that I should be able to. That isn’t the reality.

I’m sure tons of techie folks will challenge what I’ve said. Whatever you suggest will never make One Note work the way I think it should.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

November 19, 2017 by Mike Williams Microsoft One Note

Why Aliens Won’t Visit Us

I recently heard a great idea about why we as a species would never be visited by an alien race. The idea is simple. Sentient beings are not capable of truly getting along with each other and always end up killing themselves off before the Star Trek utopia actually happens. Sentient species that are capable of murdering each other are not capable of creating an environment where interstellar travel is a real possiblity. Politics, hatred, and a plethora of other emotions cause them to commit hanous acts of violence against each other and while they are doing that they never reach the level necessary to travel between the stars.

Hell, we can’t even agree of what global warming really is. It is extremely difficult for any scientist to apply static science to a dynamic situation. The Earth doesn’t stay in any one pattern so how do you know that it is or isn’t following one? Easy. It never is. Does the over population cause a problem? Sure. How much of our weather is a result of that versus nature? Not really sure that anyone on this planet is qualified to truly answer that question.

The reason I felt like even writing anything about this has to do with an article on the space.com website titled “Slaughterbots video depicts a dystopian future of autonomous killer robots.” The idea is frightening enough but after watching the video you feel like you want to join their cause to ban these weapons. That isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the fact that simply “banning” something doesn’t stop it from being produced by anyone with enough drive, money, and determination to do so. We were so busy asking ourselves “if we could” that we didn’t stop and ask ourselves “if we should.”

This post could simply been about why aliens won’t visit but there is so much more to explore than that. Let us speculate that an alien society does exist that has mastered the subtle art of co-existing in peace with one another. They reach the level of technology necessary for interstellar travel and they stumble upon Earth. Would they want to contact us? Why? How would they choose which nation to approach? Would the fact that we are not all united under a single earth government matter to them? So many questions but you can certainly get the idea.

I’m including the link to the video. It is worth a look.

Here is a link to autonomousweapons.org. A website devoted to stopping the production of these types of weapons.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

November 19, 2017 by Mike Williams Drones Sh*t Mike Says

Microsoft Word to OneNote

I have been using Microsoft Word to keep a master document of everything new I learn about my job. It was an idea that I got from someone I used to work with and it was a great idea at the time.

As of this writing, my little document has grown into something a lot less managable.

I’m going to start converting my documentation over to OneNote. I saw a co-worker using it the other day for the exact same thing I do and it looked like it worked much better. I also believe the search function is a bit more advanced.

I don’t know why I’m posting this on my blog.

Talking to myself, I suppose.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

November 3, 2017 by Mike Williams Life Lessons One Note

November/October Update

Well, this has been a pretty busy couple of months for me leading up to the retail holiday peak season.

I believe the peak season starts earlier with each passing year.

I’ve started to deep dive into Swift 4. I’m taking courses here and there and watching YouTube videos. The difference between Swift and Objective-C is enough that I find myself scratching my head every once in a while. Swift is extremely easy and more forgiving than previous languages.

I stay away from politics on my website because I don’t follow politics anymore. I found it to be too much of a distraction. In my opinion, I’ve never seen so much ado about nothing when it comes to “Russian Hacking.” That easily translates into buying advertising and that does not equal hacking. Since the Democrats lost the election solely because they abandoned the worker classes, whether or not anyone “hacked” an election seems to be a distraction from their real issue. I’m pretty sure the democrats still haven’t learned their lesson and I don’t see them winning another big election any time soon. Ok, enough of that crap.

I believe when it comes to personal relationships, I’ve determined that love is not in the cards for me. Since my breakup last year, I’ve had a lot of time to think and I honestly don’t think I’m a good catch. I like being alone. Don’t get me wrong, if my ex showed up and told me she wants to give “us” another try, I’d jump at the chance. She was and always will be the perfect one for me. When you meet that person you just “know” that you’ve found your soulmate. I’m not planning on pursuing love interests or any other “interest” for that matter.

I believe that is all for now. I’m still waiting for the Minecraft 4k update.

What else is there?

November 2, 2017 by Mike Williams General Musings

September Vacation

I have a much of stuff I’d like to do this time around. My last vacation was a trip to Georgia. This time I plan to stick around the house.

I plan on using a lot of time to code but I also want to work on some of my Minecraft creations. Over the weekend, I found a lot of designs that I had done previously but when I revisit them now, they look completely wonky. I’m pretty sure that is a real word.

I plan to keep track of what I am doing. I believe iOS 11 and MacOS official releases come out this week.

Hopefully, I won’t screw off too much.

Update: The original plan was to post about what I did each day while on vacation but as it turns out, I played way too much Minecraft. I built a resort town and am actually still working on it. I think that is very ironic.

September 18, 2017 by Mike Williams Big Fat Vacation MacOS High Sierra

Stephen King’s IT

Went to see the movie last night with a couple of co-workers.

I am obviously not going to write a detailed review. I am not very good at that. I will say that I think it was a little better than the first version. If I recall, that was a mini-series that lasted about six hours.

One of the guys made a comment before we went in the theatre “Geez, if the first IT was 6 hours how long is this going to be?”

Running time was a bit over 2 hours.

Nice job and I would recommend IT. Pun intended. 🙂

The Lititz Balloon Incident of 2017 was a nice touch.

September 8, 2017 by Mike Williams Movie Review

New MacBook Pro

I am expecting a new laptop to arrive soon. The last time I bought a new Apple laptop was all the back in 2009.

I think the touch bar is what did it for me. The laptop I am using right now was given to me in exchange for a Mac mini. It is a good and solid laptop but I felt it was time for a new one.

I’ll post more about it when I actually have it.

Update: MacBook Pro arrived yesterday. I ran into a hiccup as a result of me using High Sierra to make my Time Machine backups. The new computer was using Sierra and thus, would not recognize the Time Machine backup for Migration Assistant. I upgraded the laptop to High Sierra and proceeded from there. The restore ran overnight and the only issue I have now is that I have two accounts under my name on this computer. Not bad overall. My old laptop is going to a good home. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The Apple Developer website was down for a couple of hours so I had to wait for a while before I could install High Sierra.

September 6, 2017 by Mike Williams Apple News

Microsoft Outlook Kudos

I noticed a small issue with Outlook 2010. I use it at my day job. If I compose a message but decide not to send it, I’ll choose to delete the draft. Outlook marks the message as “unread” and then puts it in the trash.

Because I may suffer from a touch of OCD, seeing that there was an unread message in my trash bothered me.

I tweeted about it.

The Outlook team responded.

That is strange! Please send us a DM so we can figure this out. https://t.co/IUcFK9Ejgw

— Outlook (@Outlook) July 28, 2017

That is cool.

August 16, 2017 by Mike Williams Microsoft

Minecraft Greek-i-ness Edition

I have been working on a flat world. The idea is that this is the perfect foundation for a city. I started with a small area and realized that a “monorail” would be cool and then kinda of started taking it from there. Here are some screen shots from my Greece-like area.

August 7, 2017 by Mike Williams Minecraft

Minecraft Weirdness

The follow picture is a building I have constructed in Minecraft. I sealed up the building when I created it. The only way inside is by going through doors you have to open (they are not automatic). My question is how do horses end up on top of my structure? There is no logical way for them to be up there and yet, there they are.