An old habit dies… hard.

I have a confession to make: I’ve been using the same email user agent for about eighteen years. Yes… EIGHTEEN years. How many software products from 1990 do you still use?

In 1990 I was using a Macintosh IIsi, System 6.0.7, and Eudora 1. If I recall correctly it was version 1.3 or 1.5. I used my wife’s student account at the University of Washington to get online at first. A shell account on a UNIX host, a newsfeed (Newswatcher!) and trusty old Eudora for reading mail. I had a Hayes 2400baud modem at first, then I joined the 90s eventually with a Prometheus 14.4k modem, with built-in fax AND voicemail. (I was doing full-blown telephony in 1991!)

But trusty old Eudora was my mailer. It stayed my mailer.

I went through many machines (MacII, Centris 650, PowerBook 170, Duos, the infamous green 2400c subnotebook, iMacs, G4s, a TiBook that wheezed itself to death eventually, and now my current, though aging aluminum G4 PowerBook.) But Eudora remained my mailer.

I upgraded operating systems (System 7, OS8, did my best to skip OS9, jumped to X when it finally stabilized, through all the iterations of OSX up to 10.4) and Eudora kept on chugging. I managed to keep just about every bit of mail I had sent or received from about 1994 through 1998… when the great Jaz drive failure hit me as I was moving machines in the UK. Did I give up? Nope, I just started again.

Now I have just about every mail I have sent or received since 1998… all carried around in a pair of “Eudora Folders” on my hard drive (and backed up here, there, and everywhere!)

I have adapted to Eudora and it has adapted to me.

I have two distinct mail modes: work and non-work. I don’t read non-work email at work (except around lunchtime) and I TRY not to read work-related email when I am not at work, at least not on my laptop (that is what my Blackberry is for!) I have YEARS of well-tuned mail filters built (I should screen-shot them… they would astound you! Want to see them? Ask in the comments) and a signature file that is very long (it is how I have packed the “random quotes” here on my site.)

Unfortunately Qualcomm announced Eudora’s demise a while back and I knew this day would come. I test drove several other mail clients, but to be honest… all of them sucked. I know people think Eudora sucked, but it worked for me and I liked it. Hell, I stuck with it for EIGHTEEN YEARS!

I thought about Entourage. Yuck. Way too MS Office-ish. That big honking monolithic mail database terrifies me. Eudora has always stored mail is unix mbox format – plain old text files. Dealing with a corruption was just a matter of firing up BBEdit or vi. Clickty-click. I think that has happened to me three times in 18 years. I have known way too many folks who have had one form or another of Microsoft mail database files go tango uniform on them at inopportune moments. Frequently. No thanks.

I tried Mail.app. I really did. Inertia almost drove me there. It was the one I have test driven the longest. But the rules/filtering is just abysmal compared to Eudora. The mailbox handling lame. And I noted that it becomes a complete pig when you try to deal with large volumes of mail like I do. Searching through my multi-gig mailing list archives for some string of words? Seconds in Eudora! Minutes or a system crash in Mail.app. Yuck.

I’m planning a jump to OSX 10.5, mostly so I can support my family members who all use it. There have been issues reported for the last version of Eudora (6.2) on the latest OS from Apple. I figured now is the time to make the leap away from my old friend.

I thought about Odysseus, as it is billed as a modern replacement for Eudora. However it seems to be in perpetual beta, that seems more like alpha from the users I’ve talked to.

I looked at Thunderbird. No thanks. The UI is just … well… bleagh.

I stumbled across a likely little application that seems to fit the bill: Gyazmail. It has a very flexible UI that allows me to make it behave very Eudora-like when I want it to. It has very good search, rules, and filters. It can import all my old mail(!)

I’m test driving it at the moment and liking it so far. Switched my work mail to it late last week, and my personal mail is still coming over one account at a time. So far so good. If you regularly contact me via email be patient while I work through this transition period.

Good-bye Eudora… it has been a good 18 years.

Car Photo of the Day: Summer drawing to a close.

It is still sunny here in the Pacific Northwest, but we can tell the wet season approaches as our mornings are getting foggy. I remember snapping this photo one winter of a beater old Triumph I used to see on my daily commute. It was bondo-ed up the wazoo and I imagine its top leaked like a submarine with a screen door. Yet somebody drove it down I-5 every day through Everett.

Yes, I’m backfilling my 2008 GTTSR stories as fast as I can every night before I go to bed, so expect a summary post with links soon. Meanwhile you can go back and view them if you like via the “2008 GTTSR” link to the right, or just scroll down and go back. Once that’s done I’ll have a whole new slew of “name that car” posts and whatnot coming soon. Thanks for your patience.

Apologies to my readers…

I have not done a very good job of keeping this site updated during the past week on the Going To The Sun Rally. Not up to my usual standards. I managed to get the JagCam movies posted almost every day, but really haven’t been able to keep up with writing and photo editing. I will admit to having some serious challenges with JagCam footage editing… mostly to do with my now 4 year old laptop and cranky editing software. Import & Rendering times usually stretched to many hours and iMovie frequently crashed. It got to the point where I could not insert any titles or effects for fear of ruining the output, or just having hours of work vanish in a blink of an eye.

So… often I would just give up and go have a drink.

I’m back at home now and have a pile of work to do, most of it lots of finish work involving the deck and painting, plus some BioDiesel processing… but I promise I’ll set aside some time (and the bottle) and plow through the writing and photo editing backlog as fast as I can. Thanks for your patience!

–chuck

2008 GTTSR: Going Home. Spokane to Arlington via SR20.

Here is the JagCam video from our last day’s journey:

Check out yesterday’s video here.

I’d love to post a Google Map image of our route, except I can’t get our route to work, since SR20 closes over the winter. Go figure. Whenever I try to create the route it sends me south to Stevens Pass. Weird! Oh well.

Continue reading “2008 GTTSR: Going Home. Spokane to Arlington via SR20.”

2008 GTTSR: Going Home. Autobahns & Roadside Rescues

We’re in Spokane, having driven from Bozeman… the long way. Our day in a nutshell: Triple Digit Autobahn runs, a scenic side trip to a quintessential Montana spot, a roadside discovery, and finally, a roadside rescue. A critical part (a bolt) fell off a critical part (brakes!) in northern Idaho. While we were diagnosing the parts store closed… but we were rescued by a fellow Car Guy. He found us, invited us to his home workshop, gave us the part from his bin, and saved our day. Click the ‘More’ link below for the full story and photos.

Here is the JagCam footage. I’ve tried something new, namely a longer movie (1 frame every 3 seconds instead of 4) with a mixed soundtrack. Too long for YouTube, I had to use Google Video. I’d love to hear feedback on it. Enjoy.

Continue reading “2008 GTTSR: Going Home. Autobahns & Roadside Rescues”

2008 GTTSR: Going To The Sun Rally, Day Five: Wind & Rain.

Another touch and go post here from the hotel in Bozeman. Yesterday’s JagCam footage from Missoula, down to Lost Pass, then over to Big Hole, Jackson, Virginia City & Ennis:

You will note it was VERY windy and the cam got wobbled around a lot. In fact it fell off a couple of times too. We eventually shut it down as we drove into the teeth of a big storm.

Continue reading “2008 GTTSR: Going To The Sun Rally, Day Five: Wind & Rain.”