HAD TAKEN SOME CANDID PHOTOS OF THIS (ASSUMED) FAMILY ON SATURDAY SO WILL INCLUDE THE OTHER PICS AS WELL BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS A NICE SETTING. (Plus I slipped them a Bayfield Bunch card before departing:)) 
It was a muggy overcast morning, but better than the oppressive heat & humidity of last week. I noticed the sun was barely over the horizon this morning when I made my way to Goderich. That tells me the days are getting shorter & my early morning travels will slowly become darker over the next couple weeks.
BIG LOAD OF STRAW BALES
Today's photos are a mish mosh of pics I took this past Saturday in & around St Marys. Kelly & I used to drive school bus in St Marys so I stopped by the Murphy bus yard & took a couple pics. Kelly drove one of the larger buses for a bit & when I came on board there they teamed us on a smaller mobility bus for challenged kids. I drove the bus & Kelly was the aide. We did that for a couple years along with some other jobs we had going on at the same time before moving to Bayfield on Halloween Night of 2002.
THE MURPHY SCHOOL BUS YARD IN ST MARYS, ONTARIO
ONE OF THOSE FIRST 5 CLOSE BUSES IN THE FOREGROUND MAY HAVE BEEN OUR OLD BUS BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE WE PARKED
I debated with myself whether to say any more about my thoughts on the new version of Live Writer. I really don't need any more 'personal' attacks but, because I think highly of Live Writer I figured why not comment about a program I really like. I've been using LW for over a year now & I liked it right from the start. I can scoot around in it like a water spider on steroids. It has been easy for me to understand & navigate around in. It still is, & I thoroughly enjoy the program itself. No complaints there at all. Great well thought out piece of software, especially in the easily readable & navigable tools department. But.........Microsoft released a new version of Live Writer a short while back. I hear they have added some groovy new features but I haven't been able to get that far yet. This is not a rant but I do have a few very simple questions that maybe the great powers at Microsoft could answer for me.
MAYBE MICROSOFT COULD FOLLOW THE LEAD OF THIS AIRLINE COMPANY & MAKE THINGS EASILY READABLE FOR EVERYBODY
With great anticipation I downloaded the new LW a couple weeks ago but was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the new design layout!! This is where my logical & always inquisitive mind kicked into gear.
THIS (MALLARD?) DUCK WAS ENJOYING ITSELF AT THE BASE OF A SMALL WATERFALL
I need someone to explain to me why the designers at Microsoft saw fit to take a perfectly well laid out program & shrunk all the printing, icons & graphics that had been in the easily readable right hand column & crammed them into a narrow tool bar across the top of the program. I'm not exaggerating here when I say that the uppermost left hand icons are all but invisible as they blend into the background. The icons up there are about the size of wristwatch number. And no, I am not blind as a bat!! I would really like a reasonable, responsible & logical answer as to why the designers did this. It's not like space is at a premium. Not at all. The original Live Writer took full advantage of the abundance of monitor space & had a nicely laid out program. They made good use of the whole computer screen. Then why did they shrink everything into a small area???? Is it the 'cool' thing to do nowadays?? I would hope the Microsoft folks would know better than to fall into that. I sure hope Google doesn't follow suit & mess up their very user friendly Picasa program the same way!!
ST MARY'S 'SUNSET DINER'....I HAVE FATTENED MYSELF UP WELL HERE OVER THE YEARS WITH MANY B&E BREAKFASTS
So there it is.....I'm not ranting & I'm not condemning, I'm just asking a few basic simple questions in hope that someone out there can help me see the light here. I would appreciate some very logical answers for a change. Until I am enlightened as to the error of my LW perceptions, I will stick to the original Live Writer format & be totally happy in doing so. I will patiently wait for Microsoft's 'next' new LW version & hopefully by that time more common sense heads will have prevailed on their design team & they will come up with something genuinely user friendly again. So, sock it to me Microsoft, show me what I don't understand & please turn on a light for me here.......please!!
MIRROR IMAGE......OR 2 YELLOW TRUCKS COINCIDENTALLY PARKED BACK TO BACK?
And a quick word about Windows 7. I don't doubt that this is also a fine program. The techno heads have said it is & who am I to argue with that. I don't have those kinds of smarts so I take their word for it & believe they are right. I transitioned from Win 95 to Win 98 with little difficulty. The jump from there to XP was relatively painless as well with each platform being better than the one before. There was a common factor between those 3 platforms that made the transition easier because they all had relative similarities. But, I was stymied right off the bat by Win 7 for the exact same reasons I was stymied by Live Writer. It is the same company designing these two programs & I suspect maybe some of the same design team people. Keeping with the 'cool' theme they reduced the size of the printing, icons, & graphics once again making it harder to read, navigate & understand. No problem if your a Geeker but there are a lot of us folks out here who are not. I am a very visual person & am more interested in the ease of navigation than I am in how many Gigglebytes, Terrabytes or Alligatorbytes a computer has.
KIND OF A PRIMPING & PREENING DAY
Eventually I will have to 'get on' with Win 7 & Live Writer & will probably reach a point some day where I will look back to this email & say, "hey, what was all the ruckus about." That's why I wanted to write this now.....as a newer person looking at these programs with new eyes, thoughts & opinions. Looking at things from a technically challenged seasoned Newbie standpoint sometimes has the advantage of seeing things from a perspective the techno heads have long ago overlooked, overrun & forgotten:))
WHO SAID PEOPLE CAN'T WALK ON WATER!!
I have a suggestion for you Microsoft.......hire me, & I'll come down there to la la land & offer my input, advice, & suggestions as to how you can design a user friendly interface....or happyface, or whatever kind of face it is you people seem to be having so much difficulty designing lately. Or, maybe I am totally barking up the wrong tree altogether here. Maybe I should have taken the advice of the wise one's years ago & simplified my life with..... a Mac:)) D'ya think!!
GROANER'S CORNER:((
Leroy and L'Quiesha go to a revival and listen to the preacher. After awhile the preacher asks anyone with needs to be prayed over to come forward to the front at the altar. Leroy gets in line, and when it's his turn, the preacher asks: "Leroy, what do you want me to pray about for you." Leroy replies: "Preacher, I needs you to pray for my hearing." The preacher puts one finger in Leroy's ear, and he places the other hand on top of Leroy's head and prays and prays and prays, he prays a blue streak for Leroy. After a few minutes, the preacher removes his hands, stands back and asks, "Leroy, how is your hearing now?" Leroy says, "I don't know, Reverend, it ain't till next Wednesday!"
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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UN-AWAKENED"
It's not the concept of God I have a problem with.......it's his fan club!!
OUR BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/
OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
AL'S SMUG MUG PHOTO GALLERY http://stargeezer.smugmug.com/ (a work in progress)
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.
This should tell you just how much attention I pay to Live Writer, or for that matter...anything remotely connected with the fine tuning of computers:
ReplyDeleteYOU MOVED TO BAYFIELD ON HALLOWEEN??? HOW COOL IS THAT??? I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!
That should frustrate 90 per cent of all bloggers...But...this is who I am...clueless..It's a wonder I get a blog published at all!
Al, I'd say go for the Mac. But I just read your entire entry for today and the pictures still haven't loaded. I don't know if that is a Mac problem or a Gypsy problem. I agree with you completely about Microsoft. They lost me with Vista and I was so frustrated I didn't stick around for Windows 7.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, at my stage of the game and loss of interest in being on top of everything, I don't use the Mac to anywhere near its capabilities. That is probably the downside of getting it. I could do so much more, but I don't want to do more, or at least I don't to work so hard to do more, so I just skim the surface.
Someday in the near future these companies are finally going to "get it", and that is that there are a whole lot of us who are fed up - not that we don't appreciate innovation. But I want something I can read quickly and easily. My mind is still sharp, but I don't want to bother taxing it with crap that someone has decided is cool and different, for cool and different's sake. I don't want pictures of things, call them icons if you want - I can read well and if it isn't microscopic I can read it and understand pretty quickly.
No one is listening though, and people who think like us get slammed for it all too often.
Al, I loved your pics today! Especially the duck ones.
ReplyDeleteHey no problem with the rant with LW new version. I am doing ok with it, but have a lot to learn about it yet. Yes it is formatted a little more complex and not as user friendly and I haven't got all the ins and outs yet. But hey I guess it is Progress/
Mike & Gerri
It's no rant, Al. It's your opinion based upon your ease of use (or lack of ease) of the program. Without Rick's tutorials, I would have been totally lost on new LW. Still, I can't do half of what it is supposed to do. I'm still trying to figure out Paint (or whatever) in order to center my header pics. Guess that will have to wait until we blow this joint and get down to Pismo Beach.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, I enjoyed the pics of the ducks best! Nice work.
And I thought it was MY new lenses that made all the Win 7 tools smaller and dimmer! Now that I know it's Microsoft, I'll reconsider that huge magnifying glass I ordered. People are 90% visual...so what's up with Microsoft that the designers can't "get" the picture????
ReplyDeleteEmjay
I think the icons could be a bit bigger but they don't bother me that much. I used the option to move the Quick Access Toolbar from the top left corner you mentioned to the area just below the main Ribbon Bar. Then I opted to not display the Main Ribbon at all and instead I added all the options I use to the Quick Access Toolbar. So, now I have a nice, clean, simple look - and everything is all in one place, on one line!!
ReplyDeleteI guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder because I love the new Live Writer setup and if I forget what the icons are, I just have to hover the mouse over it and the text explanation will tell me right away.
Microsoft probably gets more feedback and suggestions than any other company in the world. Much of what they've produced is based on that customer feedback. In fact, a lot of it is to make Windows more like Apple, which in some respects, Microsoft has done. Customers wanted less clutter on the screen and better organization.
In my view, Microsoft has achieved that goal both with Office 2010 and Live Writer. Obviously, judging by your comments, and Gypsy's too, they haven't been able to please everyone.
As for Windows 7, it is the fastest selling operating system in history, so Microsoft must feel they are on the right track and doing something right.
Again, this is just my opinion, others may, and will, differ!
Al, you're right on target about the problems with all the Microsoft "improvements".
ReplyDeleteThe worst part is how they render the current system that you are so used to obsolete and eventually you have to buy the "upgrade". By the time you finally learn the new system and are comfortable with it, they pull the rug out from under you again.
Why not stick with something that works and leave it alone?
Oh my - I tried LW a year or so ago, got toally lost, and moved back to writing my blog in Blogger. Does anyone mind? Haven't heard any complaints yet.
ReplyDeleteMoved to Mac about a month ago ... love it ... but there is no LW for Mac, and no comparable software that comes even close IMHO ... aside from that, no complaints.
ReplyDelete