Hi there!
"Busy season" is a good description for this time of year in the construction business on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. "Why?" you may ask... Because there is a construction ban in most areas on the coast from the beginning or middle of May to the end of September or mid-October. Things are rockin' along now, and will only slow down if/when the weather turns really grotty; heavy snow, long term deep sub-zero temperatures, that kind of thing.
What's on our schedule? A visit to the area in February is the most important item. We will spend some time investigating prices, but probably more looking over the work on some new apartments I've talked about before, the Hypnotic Apartments on the Nessebar South Beach. We should be able to publish the website just as soon as we have some additional information on the details. The website will be at http://www.hypnoticbeach.com/ when it's available. You can see some previews at http://hypnoticbeach.tenuta.info/, but be aware, the prices as well as all other information are preliminary and the plans do NOT show the designs that will be erected in the building! As I wrote above, we hope to be able to complete the site information by the end of February 2008.
Speaking of seasons, for those of you who live in the US, happy Thanksgiving (one day late) and happy shopping today! For everybody, we will say it later with certainty, but the best from us for your own special holiday season!
Elena and Craig
P.S. There are some new clippings on the News Clippings page on the website - use this link to get there Good2004.biz/news_clippings.htm.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Computer nightmares -- AKA "bye-bye MS!"
Hi there!
I made the mistake of thinking that the pc that we use in the shop in Marsciano (Italy) was too small and too slow for what we need it to do (it really was, because we loaded it up with lots of other garbage). So (natural sequence of events) I bought new ones (1 for the shop and 1 for the B&B). First priority was the shop because we're coming into the busy season (Christmas etc.).
I don't know if you've noticed, but these days, it's almost impossible to buy a computer any way but with the operating system pre-installed. And that means MS Vista(R). Which means that your old office equipment won't have drivers for it, the office software will probably not function any more, and even Norton Ghost (now Symantec Ghost Suite) won't function so you can make a clean transfer unless you have one of the expensive versions of Vista (the "home" Vista packages don't work here either). Also, most likely some of the new devices in the PC also will not function without Vista installed. In other words, you're locked into the Vista, like it or not.
I've spent the past week (7 days, not 5, averaging between 6 and 10 hours per day) trying to get the new machine to the point where my wife can use it without me standing at her side the full time she's on the machine. Two things happened that Microsoft will be unhappy about if they ever happen to read this:
I made the mistake of thinking that the pc that we use in the shop in Marsciano (Italy) was too small and too slow for what we need it to do (it really was, because we loaded it up with lots of other garbage). So (natural sequence of events) I bought new ones (1 for the shop and 1 for the B&B). First priority was the shop because we're coming into the busy season (Christmas etc.).
I don't know if you've noticed, but these days, it's almost impossible to buy a computer any way but with the operating system pre-installed. And that means MS Vista(R). Which means that your old office equipment won't have drivers for it, the office software will probably not function any more, and even Norton Ghost (now Symantec Ghost Suite) won't function so you can make a clean transfer unless you have one of the expensive versions of Vista (the "home" Vista packages don't work here either). Also, most likely some of the new devices in the PC also will not function without Vista installed. In other words, you're locked into the Vista, like it or not.
I've spent the past week (7 days, not 5, averaging between 6 and 10 hours per day) trying to get the new machine to the point where my wife can use it without me standing at her side the full time she's on the machine. Two things happened that Microsoft will be unhappy about if they ever happen to read this:
- I erased the MS Works (R) and MS Office 2007 Home and Student edition 90 day trial software that was pre-installed on the machine.
- I installed an open-source office package (Star Office) that looks more like the software my wife is familiar with than the Office 2007 applications ever will!
The one thing I was not able to do was to get the Outlook 2000 e-mails into any new mail-server program (Outlook does not even exist in MS Office 2007 H&S edition). If someone has a solution here, I'm interested!
The end result is that MS lost not only the short term (relatively low price) sale of a new Office installation, they also managed to destroy my 20-year affection for MS products!
Good work guys!
Ciao for now...
Craig
P.S. I also got a new 22-inch LCD for displaying product pictures for the shop when not in use for other things (screen-saver). It's terrrriffic !!!
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