(no subject)

[ocelot]

koyote has decided we have to get our lives more organized, and has bought us bigass planners we have to carry everywhere.

I suppose that if I have to carry this thing around everywhere, I may as well use it.

The problem - we have planners, and we have PDAs/computers. PDAs and computers sync well as it is, but I know I'm going to have a hard enough time keeping records in one place, let alone two. Problem 2 - we may soon want to integrate non-Mac users into the calendaring portion of things (and I'm not sure we'll want to keep renewing .mac endlessly). Switching to gCalendar would make this relatively easy, but can all of this sync all together?

The easiest option at this point for syncing the paper/electronic stuff is to print out calendar pages every so often rather than using the included ones (they're standard half page, we have a hole punch, it works). That way I don't have to try to write in all the regularly reoccuring stuff, just new things that come up.

The other easiest option is to just give up the electronic part, but that means a lot of communication and repetitive filling in records.

Comments

[dartpoly.livejournal.com]

occasional prints w/ manual add-ins seems like the best option there...

[koyote.livejournal.com]

also, web calendar dumps can be piped to most office programs and then printed oout in whatever format you choose.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

after years and years of trying, I've almost given up on electronic PIMs. The old old hp system worked fantastically and was easily shareable, but no one uses it anymore.

paper is endlessly customizable.

the argument in favor of shared web based calnedars is you can look up stuff you would not want to write down otherwise.


the 15 minutes a day organizing and manually writing things down, and an extra 10/20 a day with your partner doing the same could be considered a benefit in many ways- settings things in your memory so you don't get blindsided because you filed it and memdumped (both of our best friends do this to an extreme level and get frustrated because of it). The time to settle in, ground and center yourself, talk to your partner- these are all good things, too.

the downside is mostly in - well, in having to remember to check 2 places for things often.

[tarzxf.livejournal.com]

I have my ical dumping a file via WebDAV (.mac-esque) to where gCal picks it up and shows it alongside other calendars. I alos have this working in reverse: made a calendar in gCal that iCal is subscribed to and will reflect changes made.

[jabberwokky.livejournal.com]

The forcing of communication is a Good Thing. I use paper (an 18 Month Moleskine planner), and Sarah uses a Palm. We sit down once a week and do our weekly review together. That means we discuss each item, and it makes for easier events (since we're both in the same mind as to what we're doing), plus it forces us each to do a weekly review.

Think of it as an intentional hurdle that forces a discussion. You can easily avoid it, but by doing so, you also make it possible to avoid talking about each other's schedule and how they overlap. We usually do it Sunday night or some morning early in the week and it takes less than fifteen minutes.

Of course, expanding it to more than two or three people rapidly becomes impossible. That's when the overhead switches from a benefit to a liability and a software solution makes much more sense.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, expanding beyond our family is exactly the issue :)

[koyote.livejournal.com]

no, not really :)

the Goal was for Us.

the fact that House Nonesuch is starting and we need to schedule extra stuff and people in, too, is another issue.

I have 3 solutions:

potlucks and regularly scheduled dinners/meetings/etc just go in the planner.

Things we need to present a united front on, or where we differ in our own views, we need to discuss first anyway.

Anything else I treat like a client issue. *shrug*

:)

I *definitely* agree with the wokky about forcing communication.

and I wish Moleskine made a binder.

[nuitfaerie.livejournal.com]

Last I checked, Sunbird (mozilla) and iCal play nice together. I've published iCal calendars on ifreebusy.com and icalexchange.com (for free) and traded them with other mac and PC users. ifreebusy does a microsoft calendar conversion, though I haven't tried it. I'm also not sure about Sunbird and Palm syncing. The problem is that there's no easy way to let multiple people edit the same calendar. But giving someone else access to your calendar, regardless of their platform, is relatively simple.

(Sorry about the accidental anonymous comment!)

[koyote.livejournal.com]

hrm.

I think that the calendaring hacks are a problem, actually. If being forced to do shared electronic calendars at all, I prefer to use squirrelmail's plugins or google.

The problem with iCal is that we are trying to move to a less computer dependent lifestyle (kids, activities, standing up, riding bikes, stuff) and having to carry your ical is hard.

And I haven't seen anything useful for transmogrifying format x to blackberry over-the-air

[nuitfaerie.livejournal.com]

i'll be the first to admit i know nothing about blackberry stuff. and yes, i understand the ical/life conflict. when i had an office job i was a meticulous updater. now i have a paper calendar because i can't ever remember to update ical when i'm home, and half the time i'm not home my PDA is either being grumpy or not in my bag at all.