With the wedding Thank You notes finished and in the mail, it’s time for me to focus on the next project; the combined address book for both sides of the family. I have a rough version done – basically enough to complete a mail merge, so we didn’t have to hand address the envelopes on the Thank You notes. Of course, this isn’t going to be a quick and easy project, because I’m picky.

I’m not going to be happy with just a paper address book, as I want to be able to do a mail merge for envelopes on Christmas cards. With over 50 people on the Christmas card list this year, there is simply no way I have the time to hand address them all. However, I don’t want a lot of redundant information – I’d like to be able to list the mailing address and telephone number for each family once, rather than duplicating it for each member of the household. This has prompted me to try a sort of 2 part address book – one part being the “Household” information (household name, mailing address, telephone number & Christmas card records) and the other part being the “Individual” information (full name, birth date, anniversary, cell phone number, work phone number, email address(es), website/blog, etc.), with a way of linking the Individuals to the Household, so I know where everyone belongs.

With all the information in a database, I’d like to be able to generate a few different reports. Ideally I could create a Birthday List, with all the individuals listed chronologically by calendar year. I tried doing a birth date report before, but unfortunately it factored the year in, as well. Rather than having all the January birthdays, it had January of 1967, and then maybe July of 1976, and then January of 2005. I would like it to list January, then the date with the person’s name and maybe the year in parenthesis after that, so I know how old they’ll be.

Another report I’d like to generate would be an address book page. I know I can’t be at my computer all the time, and having a physical copy of an address book is convenient sometimes. Having all the information in a database means I should be able to generate a view I’d like; what I want is to be able to have one page per household, with all the household information at the top, and the individuals belonging to that household and their information below. That way when information changes, I can just print out a new page to replace the old one.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. I have a basic idea of what I need to do; I have a database set up with 3 tables – one with Household information, one with Individual information, and one linking Individual id’s with Household id’s. In some cases, it feels silly giving an individual an entry; some people I have little contact with outside of the annual Christmas cards, and so the only information I have is a mailing address and the names of individuals living there.  Figuring out how to generate and format the reports exactly how I want will also take a little doing. But I think that in the end, it will be worth it to have an address book that manages all the information I need, in a format I want.

I’ve been lax in updating my blog of late – what with the holiday season upon us, and the various projects that entails, I just haven’t been able to really squeeze in the time to write for my blog. We finally got the tree up, but it still needs decorations. Of course, I have to sort through the boxes of tree decorations from my childhood, and divvy them up into 2 boxes; ones that can go on the tree, and ones that I want to keep, but don’t want on the tree. And of course I need to finish the address book (with BOTH sides of our family), finish the Thank You notes from the wedding, and get the Christmas cards ready to go in the mail. Then I need to finish Christmas shopping (for both sides), and wrap all the presents. Let’s not even talk about the craft and photo archiving projects that have been languishing on the back burner for far too long now.

And on top of all that, I think I need to re-purpose my blog. I’m just trying to accomplish too many things with it, and I don’t really have any kind of theme to pull it all together. I have a few ideas floating around in the back of my mind, on how to consolidate a few things and tie it all together. Of course, one addition I was thinking of adding may require some site/theme redesign, unless I can find a way to accommodate it somehow. We’ll see how it pans out – in the mean time, I am still alive, even if I’m not posting.

It’s been a while since I actually finished this book, but I figured I should get my review up before I finish reading my current book. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is not a book I would have chosen on my own, although the premise seems intriguing; do the rich really have some insider knowledge that the rest of the world doesn’t, thereby furthering the economic divide between the rich and the poor? Trust me, a book on finances and money would almost never be voluntary reading for me – I only read this at the strong recommendation of a friend, who had it and offered to lend it to me.

If you’re looking for a how-to book that will teach you the tricks of the rich, this is not the book for you. If you’re looking for a book that will introduce financial literacy through childhood experiences, this is more your speed. Most of the lessons are simple, like don’t spend more than you earn. Some of the more thought provoking points, though, involved how one defines concepts like wealth, assets, liabilities and financial independence.

Overall, I was somewhat disappointed in this book, mostly because it wasn’t what I expected. What financial advice there is comes in the form of anecdotes, which seem ill-suited for a book on money. I understand the use of anecdotes to make the topic more approachable, but in this case it seems to have been the worst of both worlds; the stories were so dry as to not hold my interest, and most of the advice distilled from the stories was overly simplified. Basically, the book gets you motivated to make money work for you, without really giving you a direction.

The real value of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, however, was not in the financial advice, but in the inspiration and motivation it provided. Before reading this book, I’d never really thought of how to make my money work for me, beyond a simple savings account. I’d never thought about investments, or whether a house was an asset or a liability. What this book did, was make me think about money in a new way, and motivate me to start planning financially for my future.

I’ve been checking out photo gallery software online, trying to find one that does exactly what I want. Of course, part of that search involves figuring out exactly what I want from gallery software.

Currently my gallery is powered by Gallery2, and while there is nothing wrong with it, I wish it did more. The organizational structure (nested albums) lends itself well to event-based photography, which until recently was all I ever had a need or desire for. I love that it’s customizable; I can change themes, and install modules until it looks like I want, and does almost anything I want. Permissions can be assigned to nearly every task, allowing only registered members to vote on photos, or requiring a password to view certain galleries. Basically, I love that I have complete, neurotic control over every minute detail. But while I like the control, I’m starting to outgrow the nested album style of organization. Sometimes I’ll go for a walk, and take some silly pictures just to play with settings and learn what I can do. If they turn out nice, I’d like to post them to the gallery, but where? They don’t really fit into any of the existing albums, so do I just leave them loose, on the top level? Or do I make a “random” album and drop them in there? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit neurotic about having things all put away and organized.

This is where Flickr tempts me. I don’t like the loss of absolute control, but I really prefer the organizational style. It’s like my Outlook to Gmail conversion; while Gmail has been my primary email address for a year or two now, I’ve only recently converted to using the web interface. Previously, I had been using Outlook , with it’s directory-style email storage. With the switch to the web interface, comes the use of Gmail’s organizational scheme; labels rather than folders. At first I hated labels, just because I was used to folders. But then I discovered exactly what I could do with labels, rather than folders. Email messages could have multiple labels, and show up under each label without needing to copy the email message to multiple folders. Flickr has tagging (which can also be accomplished with Gallery2, via plug-ins), but it also has sets and collections. A set is like a folder, and yet not. Photos can belong to multiple sets, a single set, or to no set at all. The sets can be grouped into collections, and those collections can be grouped into higher order collections. A good example – I took photos at weddings this summer. As I am wont to do, I ended up taking some photos at the wedding, that had absolutely nothing to do with the wedding (nature shots of the outdoors, etc.) With Gallery2, I would need to decide if they were going in the album with the wedding photos, or in another Nature shots album, since they can’t go in both. With Flickr, I wouldn’t have that problem – the photos could go in the set of photos from that wedding, and whatever other set I wanted. I could create a Collection of sets for Family Events where each set is photos from an event, and another Collection for Wedding Prep, with the actual Wedding Set belonging to both collections.
So this is my conundrum; I like how Flickr organizes photos, but I prefer having the control of Gallery2. I would actually consider springing for a Flickr Pro account, because honestly $25 a year isn’t bad for unlimited photos and unlimited bandwidth. But if I could find a free, self-hosted alternate (like Gallery2), I would seriously consider that as well. At the moment I’m trying to determine if there’s a way I can make Gallery2 more like Flickr, but I suspect it isn’t possible. So, do I sacrifice absolute control to get an organizational scheme I like, or stick with absolute control but remain unhappy with how photos are stored?

The other day I was thinking. I know, bad opening, so sue me. At any rate, I had just been to the local library to pay a late fine (all of 10 cents!), and the thought struck me; wouldn’t it be great if there was a Netflix, only for books? No late fees, keep a book as long as you like; mail it in when you’re done and they’ll mail you back a new book from your list. But what would one pay for such convenience? I was checking out options online – surely I wasn’t the only one to think of extending the Netflix concept to books? As it turns out, I wasn’t; there are quite a few businesses following the Netflix model.

Two businesses, Bookswim and Booksfree, have an actual book rental program, starting at $15 and $10 a month respectively. For that price, you can keep 2 books at a time, for as long as you want, and mail them back to get new ones. Two others I stumbled upon, PaperBackSwap and America’s BookShelf, are really more of a book sharing program than a rental service; in order to get books, you need to share the books you have currently.

My problem with both of those models is that a) I’m cheap and b) I’m possessive. I’m not going to pay $10+ a month in order to rent books, when I can buy a new book for that price. And I’ve never been the type to trade in old for new; not with video games or movies, and certainly not with books. The only time I’ve ever gotten rid of a book is when I outgrew a children’s series (The Babysitter’s Club books, The Goosebumps series).

Clearly what I need is an improvement on the current (free) library model. I can understand how it would be cost prohibitive for a library to ship books to individuals, so I understand that would probably never be implemented. I also understand that they have a finite quantity of individual titles, and can’t let someone keep a book forever when other patrons are waiting for it. What they CAN do, though, is improve their online interface and introduce a queue. In this day and age, I should be able to update my mailing address, email address and other contact information online – they have my email address linked to my library card number, as I can receive alerts when a book is due. Once the online interface is brought up-to-date, a queue of books and authors you’d like alerts for should be easily done. The “hold” system already manages this to a point – you can basically reserve up to 10 books, and you’ll be alerted when they’re available. The queue would be like a pre-hold; books you’re interested in reading at some point in the future, but not immediately. When you’re ready, you could move the book from queue to hold, and pick it up from the library when it becomes available. I don’t think these type of changes would be too terribly difficult to implement, and would go a long way in increasing the usability and convenience of the library.