Email:

– GMail is my primary email tool, because of: remote accessibility, no fat client, tags, easy filtering, UI, and much more.
– Google Notifier: a Mac tool that lets me know the number of unread messages in my inbox and give me a message (similar to growl) when I have a new message, this means that I don’t have to check my email and can instantly determine if a new message needs to be addressed immediately or ignored.
– EDM (the UW Email Delivery Manager) for vacation messages (best vacation tool there is) and directing mail to deskmail and GMail
– Deskmail (UW Unix/IMAP for staff) & Webpine (horrible webUI) backup location for my email if I can’t access GMail.
– Imperium IMAP & SquirrelMail — tertiary backup, useful reference when at home and no internet connectivity.

Calendar:

– OracleCalendar: The calendaring server we have been using for years.
– Google Calendar: My personal calendars and subscribed to the OracleCalendar ICS feed of my work calendar. This has worked reasonably well (though Google fails to incorporate some events from my calendar).
– Google Notifier: Tells me when calendar items come up.
– iCal: subscribed to all my (and one of Alyssa’s) calendars, partially for sync to my iPhone and also for additional notification.

Largely because of the biases of the Exchange support team, I had feared that I would have to use one of the ugly, fat Exchange clients (Outlook, Entourage) at least some of the time. But fortunately because of the ingenuity of others that are trying to work around Exchange, I will be able to leave my interactions largely unaffected — and be able to add some functionality. Changes:

Email:

– Exchange: I created a rule to redirect mail to GMail (except invites/updates because that would cause an issue). Additionally, I have another rule to move the mail out of my inbox to my “realbox”, unless it was sent to a specific address (see iPhone).
– EDM: I created a rule to forward mail to a specific address to Exchange (see iPhone).
– iPhone: I configured my iPhone’s “Mail” app to connect to Exchange so any email in my inbox (only messages to a specific address) is pushed to my phone and I get notified. I’ll use this as minimal pager functionality.

Calendar:

– Exchange: this will be the canonical source for my work calendar (instead of OracleCalendar), but I’ll be able to ignore it to a large degree.
– Export Exchange Calendar to ICS: One of the groups that I work with and was migrated to Exchange before me, has come up with a server tool to provide an ICS export of our calendars. This means that Google Calendar and iCal will have full access to subscribe to my calendar with out me having to resort to running Outlook in a VM and regularly exporting my calendar to a WebDav file store.
– iPhone: I locked the iPhone “Calendar” app to Exchange, so I can create/edit/accept/etc meetings from my phone. The only thing I don’t think I can do is create a meeting and invite others (which I do a couple times a year so not a big deal).

So, E-Day was a big waste of time — but shouldn’t impact my ability to work. I’m still not looking forward to the next email I send to “outages” when I’ll get 20+ “Out of office” emails that I won’t give a damn about.

Then this morning because it was raining and I was running behind I headed up to 75th and 15th to catch the 373 bus. While waiting, I noticed that the light was out and began alternating cringing and shaking my head because of drivers not paying attention (running the intersection, tailing, not yielding the right of way, etc). Then finally a woman in an SUV was t-boned by an elderly woman in an older Lexus. The SUV limped out of the intersection to park south of me (at the bus stop). The Lexus was left in the intersection. I called 911 and eventually summoned police, fire, and an ambulance. The woman in the Lexus was clearly disoriented — most likely because of the airbags (according to the first episode of Burn Notice the blow from an airbag will save your life but it’ll disorient you enough to have your hands cable tied to the steering wheel). A couple other witnesses came out — one a white woman driving West bound on 75, and two Latino men (not sure where they was during the accident, but they had a large truck for construction work). The primary Latino man was talking to the elderly woman trying to determine her condition and get her car out of the way — the last thing we needed was another accident.

By this time the SUV driver was out of her car on the phone (I believe to her insurance company, but possibly 911) asking if the Lexus driver needed an ambulance. When she got off the phone she came up to me got my info and started asking about fault. I indicated that to me the collision was entirely the fault of the Lexus.

The Latino men and I pushed the Lexus out of the intersection to the East side of the intersection on 75th — and the Lexus had to be told several times to apply the brakes to stop her car, and then several more times to put the car in park and turn the engine off. The female witness spoke with the Lexus driver some.

A fire truck showed up first and the crew dispersed to each vehicle. The lead firefighter spoke with the SUV woman, me, and the female witness — the Latino seems to have disappeared (probably had to get to work). Then the police officer arrived and started taking statements. After speaking with me and taking my info, he let me go.

Of course I missed both the 373 and 72, so I walked to work to the sound of thunder booming in the distance.

I only have two followers — I have no idea who either of them are and since they are following tens of thousands of others I don’t really care.