Priscilla’s Usage of Chandler 0.7 Alpha2 in June 2006

Here are some top issues this month:

• After the data wipe in Cosmo-demo, I did not realize I could back up my data. It was not clear that I was able to do that until informed by Katie. Took me a little while to set up and get the outbound account information correct. There were some hurdle in syncing, Chandler crashing, though I believe these bugs were logged and fixed this past month.

• 'Send' button not clear enough to indicate the message/event was sending.

• Feedback information on Google uses their 'Add invitation' from Gmail to Google calendar.

• Currently as it stands, I've realized that to be able to set up Chandler, you need have some technical knowledge about networking etc. Network settings are confusing and the error messages on what to do to fix them are confusing.

“It was all very frustrating just to set up so both of my Chandler calendars (my home and my work machine). What was frustrating was even though I had wiped out my repository, I had subscribed to my calendar and added it to 'my items' and it was very confusing which items were in my task list vs. things that were in my calendar. The events in my calendar were not displaying in the 'All' area. It's been frustrating because I feel most people would still need to be very technical to set up and use this application.”

• I’m having difficulty keeping up with the GTD working model and am retreating back to using my paper calendar to come up with my 'to do' lists. I find myself taking too much time 'pruning my 'to do' lists' and I've made the mistake of forgetting and missing a gallery event.

• Wanted to send out an event item to everyone in the whole office from my personal calendar, but then realized I had personal notes on the event item that did not need to be part of the message. Luckily for me I realized I should have recreated the event in the Office calendar and not my personal calendar, but what if I was to send it from my personal calendar? How does one distinguish between personal note on an event item and a public note to send out as part of the event information?

• I made the mistake of not renaming a collection right after subscribing to it and was at a loss on who the collection belong to.

Notes:

6/1/06 --10:41AM Finally got my outbound account correct. I kept forgetting my password. Ugh. I sent my first email on Alpha 0.7 today. I think I hit the button about 5 times before realizing it is indicated on the bottom right that my e-mail was being sent. The sent button was still still click-able so it might have been because of the network.

6/3/06 --11:12PM Decided to put in all the dates for lighting the Yahrzeits candles for a family member. So it was the first time I thought about using the 'go to date'. I started at the 'collection' menu first and randomly moved to the 'view' and found it three layers in. Since I had to add several dates, I appreciate the keyboard short cut and added in the dates pretty quickly.

-6/7/06 --11:24 AM So I'm using Google 'add' invitation for the first time. I just wrote to my friend who also has a google account about a movie tomorrow night. I clicked on the 'Add' event info. I like how it just displayed the hidden event information right under the subject line. But then I found a 'more options' like after entering my information. And another window popped up. And the header for the 'options' area was in a field which was hidden. That was annoying. I had to click on the link that opened up the 'more event options' area.

When I went ahead to send my event information. My email was still in another window, unsent. And the event pop up window after clicking on 'save changes' twice was still opened. I also noticed their logo is fuzzy (understandable it's in beta) but it reminds me I'm still a designer who cares even if it's not a product I'm working. Logos and branding is important. Anyway, I'm thinking to close the calendar 'event' window, but probably go back to my email and send– just incase right? Or was the information in the event already sent? So why do I need to also send my email? Hmm...

--3:31PM today Chandler crashed. I was in the middle of inviting a bunch of people to a movie and guess what! Even the last e-mail person I invited was still on the list so I was happy!!! Ecstatic to be exact! I don't have to retype peoples names in the fields. Thank you!!!

6/12/06 10:46AM DANG!! So I tried to open my Chandler this morning, and it just wouldn't open. I had tried to re-publish my calendar last Friday, but the server timed out. I didn't realize I could back up my file as an .ics file. So here I am starting fresh again in June! Luckily some of the information is still being displayed in my iCal. Had to copy all the events from iCal back into Chandler.

--12:49 PM Well spent all morning putting all of my events/tasks back into Chandler. And I was amazed at how fast the performance is with 'only my calendar'. I even started to add my calendar events and tasks in the 'All' category. Right before lunch, I think I was trying to sync back to cosmo and update it onto my iCal and it seemed to have problems. No beach ball, just sorta froze. I thought maybe I was syncing too many times and it needed a rest. So I went out to lunch and came back and tried to move back from the calendar pane to the 'All' pane. It still seemed to have froze. I quit the application and restarted.

6/17/06 --10:40 PM Lots of stuff running through my head the past few weeks. A few things about the GTD list I'm maintaining on Omni outliner. Like a lot of things, it's like pruning a bonsai tree. I'm finding myself spending way too much time reorganizing my damn 'to do' list. Where as before, having a small list in my paper calendar helped me focus on the short list of tasks at hand and then I could 'mentally' feel good (as in the Executive Assistant) “I feel great crossing things off my”. It mentally feels great!

So where am I going with this? Well, in the dashboard when one has to decide if the items that fall in my 'inbox' as manual items which I have to decide if I should be doing now or later? Well, I hope Chandler would learn my behavior. Or to set up rules so I know what is to be done now, what's recurring, and everything coming from this person is 'later. Is that too much to much to ask from a software application? I mean machines are supposed to make life easier right? And maintaining a constant ongoing to do list, well mentally it’s just not for me unless I have the satisfaction of knowing I’ve completed these set tasks for today. And btw. I missed a gallery event while maintaining this list. Somehow it slipped through somehow, even with an alarm etc. Perhaps it was all the clutter of other things I needed to do?

I've personally been having a hard time with a few things ever since they wiped cosmo demo. I've realized that it's still very much for the technical person to be using Chandler. I was trying to set up my smtp outgoing mail or any of my account information and the error messages were still in technical jargon. When I happened to select SSL opposed to selecting TLS, it said (0, 'unknown protocol'), or 'Connection was refused by other side: 22: Invalid argument'. What are you saying? It's been frustrating because I feel most people would still need to be very technical to set up and use this application. So the question might be, who would be setting this calendar up in the small business/organizations? Network settings are always so confusing unless you are the one who set it up.

It was all very frustrating just to set up so both of my Chandler calendars (my home and my work machine). What was frustrating was even though I had wiped out my repository, I had subscribed to my calendar and added it 'my items and it was very confusing which items were in my task list vs. things that were in my calendar. The events in my calendar just were not displaying. It's been frustrating because I feel most people would still need to be very technical to set up and use this application.

6/21/06 - 12:44PM I was about to notify everyone about my dentist appointment this friday. I had already put in the information on where my dentist is in on my calendar. You know, address, cross street time etc. When I was about to stamp it and send out the notification, I realized I don't want to send all the information out to my co-workers. I just want let them know I'll be at the dentist from this time till that time. Do you understand the dilemma? Where somethings noted on the event are needed for a 'private' scribble to one self and the other part of the event I would like to compose as part of the notification to everyone I send the event item to. So instead I will create two events of the same thing and send one of them out. (This is a bad work around btw.)

Wait a minute. I just realize why I never ran into this problem before. I usually do this from the 'Office Calendar'. Not 'My calendar'. Hmmm. I wonder how easily people would be confused as to where to send it from as you have more then one collection? I used the copy and paste from one calendar to the other and it did the right thing! Yeah! Though earlier, I did try to copy and paste (using the short commands on the keyboard) within in the same calendar and it wasn't doing the right thing. =(

6/26/06 -9:45AM I realized that I had subscribed to a calendar and since the name of that collection is from that person's calendar. I did not rename it after subscribing to it and now I forgot who's collection this belongs to. Is says 'work' and I can only guess who's it is now.

-- PriscillaChung - 10 Jul 2006