We really should. Really. And I feel like there's not one single day I couldn't have found some things worth improving. Let's have a look on the last couple of days...
I recently finished my Diploma-Thesis on "Indicators towards a successful market penetration of mobile services". I was a little astonished, when Chris T. stated, he'd write his one in LaTeX (he's a good guy, but not experienced with LaTeX) and LyX but after all, I also thought it might be a good idea to write with and learn LaTeX a little. So I got myself MiKTeX and TeXnicCenter and started.
After some days of hard work getting my document look like I wanted it to look, I really was enthusiastic about that decission. I ended up with some little problems in my document, but they were just so minimal I could disregard them. I think, it could have saved some time but I also think it SHOULD be a little easier. Especially with tables or URL-hyphenation. Anyways - my first expedition into LaTeX was interesting, annoying and in fact not really faster than I would have been with Word. Sad but true.
Next. My mobile phone really was crap. Nobody could really talk to me on the phone since they couldn't understand what I was saying. I spend nights on research but I ended up - YES - finding an adequate smartphone but - NO - couldn't find an adequate carrier with adequate data-packages. So I waited and waited and waited and waited and ... finally couldn't wait anymore.
So...I went to a local shop and got the cheapest mobile available - a Samsung SGH-C270. Unlocked for € 25.-, including a € 5.- prepaid SIM-Card. Sounds not so bad, but - after all - is so bad. Then, I wanted to migrate my (old) mobiles contacts to my new mobile. I tried to I bought a USB-Cable and tried to connect - NOT possible, since Samsung seems to distinguish a lot from model to model. So I thought - get the new SIM into the new phone, send your contacts from your old phone with your 1000 SMS-flat-fee-packet, one by one, to the new phone. I started and: failed. Because the SGH-C270 cannot handle vCards. Some hours ago, I ordered another data cable one via eBay, hopefully this will work or I fear, I'll go crazy and send this VERY-UNsmartphone to hell.
Next disappointment: Google, again. Alongside trying to migrate my phone-contacts, I uploaded all my contacts to Google Contacts. It's very easy and you can also migrate these contacts birthdays to Google Calendar easily (what encouraged me to delete my Google Calendar Birthday-Calendar, since it was redundant). BUT: you cannot share this new, LINKED calendar to your Google API-Connection like e.g. in your Website.
So I thought, I should not connect to Google Calendar in order to retrieve my contacts birthdays, but to Google Contacts itself. I ended up having a very COMPLICATED and very UNperformant script doing this for me, still not able to sort these dates.
This is 2009, I guess. We should be able to say "Okay, ...
- I have Google Contacts. I want to retrieve the next 14-days birthdays in just ONE query.
- I have a new phone. I want to up- and download my contacts.
- I want to have a LaTeX-table over two pages without spending nights on research.
Why can't I?".
