Microsoft Office is one of those products that is hard to do without.  At some point everyone needs to open or create a Word document. Power Point, Excel and others aren't quite as needed but are very nice to have.  There also aren't very many competitors to Office. So you are stuck paying $400 for Office... or are you?
Open Office is an open source version of Office. It works just about same as office, has all the same programs, and like all open source software, it's free!
    So is Open Office that great? I've been using it for a little while now and I've been completely satisfied. I should note that I haven't tested out any of the advanced features. I've mostly just created short documents and sent them to people. So if you want a review of all the programs and the advanced features, you'll have to look elsewhere. From everything that I've heard, it's a great alternative that will do what you want.
    Reasons not to get Open Office... If you already have Microsoft office or can get it for free then stick with it. If you heavily depend on MS office and you  don't  have time to learn something I wouldn't switch.

To find out more and download it click here.

PS Google has online versions of Word and Excel in the works but aren't available to everyone yet. While not Open Source, they are expected to be very nice and good alternatives to their Microsoft counterparts.
   

I think I may have figured out what the deal is with babies and all their crying, they are itchy. Think about it, have you ever had an itch someplace that you couldn't get too. Maybe you were carrying something that you couldn't put down, or performing at a piano recital, maybe you were kidnapped by keebler elves and they tied you to a chair while an itch on your forehead drove you nuts. It can be darn near unbearable!
Now think about babies, they cry when they have a need that they can't meet themselves. Many times you can pinpoint the problem; they are hungry or tired or poopy. Sometimes no matter what you try, they just keep bawling and bawling. I've tested my theory on Dahlia a few times, but it only seems to make things worse. which doesn't really surprise me. Having someone else try to scratch your itch never seems to hit the spot. So until she's older and can scratch her own itches, we'll just have to keep watching her suffer.

Software is expensive. Microsoft Office is $400, Windows XP is $200, Adobe Photoshop is $650. That's a lot of money for a few programs that can be hard to live without? Fortunately there is a better way, it's called open source.
Most software is a product of a company. Someone decided to make a product, they hire a bunch of people to do it and then they package it and sell it.  Open Source works a bit differently. Anybody can work on open source, whether they are writing code or testing it out. If enough people work on something a great product will emerge. The best part is, it's always free.
The most popular example is the firefox browser.  There was a time when firefox was not that great. As time went on more and more people helped out on it and it has become the best web browser around. The more popular it has become, the more people work on it and the better it is.
Over the coming weeks (I'm back on my every other week schedule), I'm going to take a look at a few (at least three) other open source programs and weigh the pro's and con's of each.
Are there any programs that you wish you could get for free? Let me know and I'll see if I can find a open source and/or free alternative.

It's been so long, old friend, only a month but it feels more like 39 days. A combination of travel, world cup, running, dahlia and work have kept me procrastinating. But no more excuses it's time to blog... now I just need something to talk about.

A few random things:


This guy is my new hero.

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I went on a trip to the Oregon coast with my youth group. It was fun, but I swear it was the same temperature as it was the last time I visited the coast... in December.

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What's the deal with people using the word literally like it's literally going out of style. I literally want to jump off a bridge when people say 'literally' when they don't mean it. I read a report about a soccer match and the writer said that one of the teams was literally asleep on the field. I literally wanted to reach through my computer and literally punch him into next thursday!

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My family is back from Thailand permanently. In August they are moving back into the house that I grew up in, which will be nice. Now they just need to figure out what to do with themselves.

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Congrats to Kyle MacDonald who successfully traded one red paperclip for a house.