Open Office: Something Good That's Free

I have added a button to download the latest free Open Office Suite to the right column of this page. I have not and will not receive any money for doing this. So why bother? It only seems fitting since these writings were done with Open Office Writer.

Open Office is a free, user friendly alternative to Microsoft Office. Think of it as a non profit alternative to Microsoft. Any donations received go into making it better and promoting it not paying share holders. Open Office is also open source. It has been created and improved thanks to mostly volunteer efforts of some very talented people. Being open source anyone who has an idea on how to make it better can give it a try. You are even free to make your own version or submit your suggestions for consideration in the next release. In this way the software becomes the product of a worldwide community of developers and users instead of a small team of programmers. Some people get really involved. Others like me just enjoy using a program that works.

Open Office also supports the open document format. This means your documents are not tied to the program they were created on. As more and more programs support this format the freedom to switch word processors without having to worry about your existing documents not working will be a thing of the past. How many millions does Microsoft make because users feel locked into Office to ensure their old documents still work? Office is one of it's biggest cash cows. Most users are paying more for office than the processor in their new PC! Then there is the latest updates to be able to read the newest document formats. Worst yet what happens when the word processor you were using is discontinued or becomes out of date? Open Office works with Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets and Power Point presentations for all Office versions. Something not even the previous version of Office can do.

The best part is being freely available Open Office is allowing people around the world the ability to use a powerful office suite that is affordable regardless of economic circumstances. Due to it's 0 cost Open Office is being used today in various projects trying to put computers in the hands of school children in the third world. It is a nice thought that a student in Malaysia might be using the same powerful world processing program I used to write my blogs to write their assignments.

All that from one little button.

5000 miscalculations=time for a new part time job

Where last we left off in the Olympic-Sized miscalculation department prior to our previous election our counsellors planned to keep their city owned laptops even if they were defeated. Naturally this severance bonus for sore losers didn't go over that well. The people of Brantford rattled the walls of city hall in anger and the idea was quickly scrapped.

Not to be outdone this latest council has decided to up the ante and throw a 24% pay raise, plus pension, plus free High Speed Internet, plus, plus, plus at their own pockets while telling rate payers to saddle up for tax increases. But don't worry a five thousand dollar increase in pay for a part time job isn't that much money we are told by one of our gluttonous council members. Not much at least to a city counsellor who is out of touch with the rest of us and reaching for the gold. Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner and that rumbling you hear is not applause.

Update: Brantford City council backed down due to citizen pressure and has now gone ahead with a more reasonable pay increase. Democracy works when people speak up for what we believe in.

Welcome To Catbucks and evil mornings.

I am not a morning person. Some people shouldn't drive or perform important tasks late at night because they are too tired. I would be better to try doing things drunk than trying to do things before 10am. I have in the past...

Put a coffee in the freezer. Put the cat food in the dishwasher.
Put fridge food like milk in the cupboard.
Put the phone in the cupboard (you should have seen the look on my face when the cupboard started ringing).
Among other things. Generally if I can't find something small like my keys I will check the freezer and the cupboard since those are places that I will put things in the morning for some reason. Zombies tend to be more alert than me before my second coffee.

This morning though took the cake.

I got up this morning at 8:30am and one of the cats (Mickey) was pouting upstairs. About an hour later I was getting myself a second coffee when I noticed Mickey had finally come downstairs. I was so happy I decided to give him some dry food right away since he missed breakfast. Just then Dusty started squawking so I put down two bowls with a bit of dry food. I then went back to making my coffee. Sir Squawks-a-lot(Dusty) though was not happy with the dry. So I grabbed another small bowl and put it on the counter and grabbed the can of food from the fridge and a fork. I then turned put a small amount of food on the fork and proceeded to put the food in my coffee. If the food hadn't stuck to the fork it would have gone in. It was as I was going to bang the fork on the side that I caught myself. MMM that would have been tasty. A lovely Catbucks coffee to start the day. No wonder I am crazy:)

Judy