mindflayer.net

Odd issue tonight – I was working on a spreadsheet when it first manifested. When cutting and pasting different cells and rows, the main Excel window would disappear. I was still in the app, but running blind. Click on the Finder, back to Excel, and it would magically appear. Annoyed – but intrigued – I fired up Safari, and experienced the same thing. I try a few more apps, with similar behavior. I had to get the spreadsheet done, but as soon as I was done, I messed around with the machine a bit more. No amount of trashing preferences seemed to work, so I ended up doing a clean install. It’s been a while since I’ve done that on this machine, and it’s my “dirtiest”, so it was probably just time.

These kind of events are great for cleaning up the cruft, and going back to the apps you really use, and which ones are the most critical. On my Powerbook, the first apps installed were Adium for IM, Growl for system notifications, iTerm for my terminal app, MarsEdit for blogging, Microsoft Office, X-Chat Aqua for IRC, and Quicksilver. Other than Office, which is on a DVD, those are all lightweight downloads.

If you’ve never used Quicksilver, do so as soon as you can. It’s a wonderful system tool, and no amount of typing in this blog would give it justice. (Yes, yes, there is also Launchbar which has its adherents, too. I am used to QS.)

Tomorrow, NetNewsWire, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, AOL Radio, and Skype go on next.