{"id":1212,"date":"2008-05-01T21:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T04:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/05\/01\/disappointment\/"},"modified":"2008-05-01T21:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T04:37:00","slug":"disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/05\/01\/disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I was all excited earlier this year when I heard about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/calendar\/bin\/answer.py?answer=89955\">Google Calendar Sync<\/a>, which would not only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/calendar\/bin\/answer.py?answer=37111\">export<\/a> my calendar data, but actually sync it with another application.  Unfortunately, it only syncs with Microsoft Outlook, and I use Palm Desktop (with my Sony CLIE PEG-NX70V.  Long story.  Don&#8217;t get me started).<\/p>\n<p>Surely, I thought, there must be a better solution!  I knew lots of companies make third-party conduits for syncing various data sources with Palm OS devices, so I finally went looking tonight, and sure enough, CompanionLink makes a product to sync directly between Google Calendar and Palm Desktop.  I immediately downloaded the 14-day trial, and while waiting for the file, read their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.companionlink.com\/support\/clg.html\">setup guide<\/a>.  It all seemed pretty standard until this part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For <u>Password<\/u>, fill in your password. (NOTE: This must contain only alphanumeric (A through z and 0 through 9) characters. If it contains anything else, then you will not be able to use CompanionLink for Google Calendar at this time.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What.  The.  FUCK.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not giving anything away when I tell you that I include punctuation in my passwords.  You&#8217;re telling me that in order for me to use your product, I have to <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">change my password?<\/span>  And not only that, I have to change my password to something <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">less secure?<\/span>  Are you out of your mind?<\/p>\n<p>I really can&#8217;t think of a single good reason why they couldn&#8217;t support non-alphanumeric characters in passwords.  It can&#8217;t be a transmission issue; hell, HTML includes escape codes for any damn character you want, and a whole bunch more you probably don&#8217;t.  Are they lazy?  Incompetent?  Or just uncaring?  In any case, I&#8217;m not wasting my time or money on them.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m still looking for a good way to sync my Google Calendar with my PalmPilot (yes, I still call it that, and yes, I&#8217;m going to keep using it until it dies).  I may just break down and use the Google utility to sync to Outlook, then buy PocketMirror or Intellisync to sync Outlook with Palm Desktop.  It&#8217;ll be kludgey, but still less offensive than the alternative.<\/p>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I was all excited earlier this year when I heard about Google Calendar Sync, which would not only export my calendar data, but actually sync it with another application. Unfortunately, it only syncs with Microsoft Outlook, and I use&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci-tech"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}