I found a really nice journal application for the HP laptop. It is called “The Journal”. It is simple to use and from my perspective feature rich. The Journal contains two main section. First is the daily journal and the second is a notebook. Text entry has a look and feel similar to Microsoft Word. The realtime spelling checker is really nice. I really depend on the spell checker to help me not look stupid. Navigation among entries is a simple matter of moving through a tree view of entries presented in the left margin of The Journal’s window. The addition of tables and images is a snap. There are many other features, and if you are into journaling you should really check this one out. One feature was the ease of importing journal entries form other tools. In my case I imported entries from MacJournal. In my case I just exported the MacJournal entries into a rich text file format, change the file name with some Perl script to a date format of mm-dd-yyyy, emailed them to myself, and within seconds imported each to The Journal. Another feature I really like is that I can post notebook entries to my blog. The notebook is a great editor, and the page provides a nice history of what I have blogged.

Here is the Perl script …

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use vars qw($dirtoget @thefiles $file $newname @filenameparts $filenameparts);
$dirtoget=”C:/Documents and Settings/Michael/My Documents/My Journal”;
opendir(IMD, $dirtoget) || die(“Cannot open directory”);

@thefiles= readdir(IMD);

closedir(IMD);
chdir(“C:/Documents and Settings/Michael/My Documents/My Journal”);
foreach $file (@thefiles)
{
unless ( ($file eq “.”) || ($file eq “..”) )
{
@filenameparts = split / /,$file;
#$newname = $file;
#$newname =~ s/([a-zA-Z ]*[0-9]*)[a-z]{2}(, 2005\.rtf)/$1$2/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/January/01/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/February/02/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/Februry/02/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/March/03/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/April/04/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/May/05/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/June/06/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/July/07/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/August/08/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/September/09/;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/,//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/th//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/nd//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/rd//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/st//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/ //;
if(length($filenameparts[1] < 10)){$filenameparts[1] = "0$filenameparts[1]";}
$newname = “$filenameparts[0]-$filenameparts[1]-2005.rtf”;
print “$newname\n”;
rename($file, $newname) or warn “Couldn’t rename $file to $newname: $!\n”;
}
}

My transition from Apple Mac OSX to PC Windows is almost complete. Today my iBook G4 sold on eBay and I have 8 bids on my Mac-Mini. By the end of this week I will be Mac less. It’s a scary feeling. I have not been in this position for many years. If the withdrawals get to bad perhaps Sandy will let me use her iMac G5. From now on I will only have this HP Pavilion zd8000 …

I expect this transition to be short lived. Once Apple completes its move to the Intel architecture I plan to transition back to a new Powerbook. One that will, hopefully run windows natively. As a .NET developer I really need the native windows feature. Virtual PC was just to s l o w.

We are back in the Holiday Inn in Las Cruses, NM; only 5 hours from home. It will be so good to get home … 20 days away is a long time.

For this trip I took along a new HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop instead of a Mac PowerBook G4. I love my Mac, but must admit that the HP performed admirably. I burned the book “Linked” to CDs using iTunes, three times faster then on my Mac. Windows Movie Maker was disappointing when compared to Apples iMovie and iDVD. However, I purchased Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0 and Premier Elements 2.0 and found they provide all the features of iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, and more. They were easy to use and fast. The HP has the serious advantage of duel Pentium 4, 3 Mhz processors while the PowerBooks is only a 1.2 MHz G4. The operating system, Windows XP Professional is OK, OS X is much better. The constant threat of worms, viruses, Spyware, Rootkits is really a pain. As a Mac user I am just not used to all these threats. The HP is running Symantec AntiVirus, Internet Security, and AntiSpam, along with Microsoft AntiSpyware. Am I protected? Doubt it …

Spent New Year’s Day at Moms. She fixed one of her great dinners, after which we played cards for several hours. I managed to win the first game while Sandy eked past Mom to win the second. Mom is really getting good … if we could spend a few more days with her she would start winning on regular bases.

Tomorrow we begin the drive home. Our visit with Mom has been wonderful, Christmas and New Year’s was great. We really hate to leave, as it seems like we just arrived. But every visit is to short. For our trip home, I have scheduled stops in Mobile, AL, Kerrville, TX, and Los Cruces, NM. We have only one long driving day of 713 miles.