Got a few new toys to play with from my department's MSDNAA agreement. First I grabbed a copy of Project. Project is one of the few remaining Office-family apps that I haven't really played with to any extent. Project seems pretty useful, and it reminds me of a particular app that I've been looking for, but can't seem to find. I've been hoping to find a nice TODO list system that can keep track of start dates (as a full-blooded procrastinator it helps to know how many days it has been since a task was first assigned), deadlines, recurrences, and calendar overlays, and just haven't been able to find something like that. I think that I'm just going to have to keep waiting for "Lightningbird" and hope that most of my wants get implemented (or are easy to code an extension for).
The second toy is Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (formerly a product from Connectix). This is a fun developer tool. I'm typing this blog entry from Firefox within an install of Foresight Linux (version 0.8, a Gnome-based, Mono-Out-of-the-Box distro), contained in Virtual PC on my XP Pro Desktop (my pal Quiddity). Really cool and much easier than a dual-boot install. My biggest problem right now is that Quiddity definitely needs more RAM... then some more hard drive space, but the RAM is the big show-stopper right now. So, congratulations to me, I now have my first Linux install running on my Desktop computer (albeit, emulated, but what's a degree of abstraction between friends?). Now Virtual PC has me nostalgic and I'm contemplating digging through my parent's basement for my old OS/2 install disks and seeing if I can see that old familiar face.