Earlier in the week at LawNet, Rick Klau introduced me to Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords fame.  ActiveWords is just cool...a definite power-user tool.  The most simplistic way to describe it, although this comes nowhere near doing it justice, is AutoText on Speed.  Basically, AW allows a user to define keystrokes (think "goo" for Google, and other abbreviations) that fire certain pre-defined actions on the machine.  For example, when the user types "goo" (followed by the appropriate number of spaces) she is immediately taken to the Google page in her browser; typing MySig will insert my standard signature information anywhere; selecting text and typing, say, olnm could launch a new Outlook message with the selected text in the body...it's just cool.  This works from any interface on the machine--I saw it demonstrated from standard Windows apps, from notepad, from a cmd window...as someone who cannot stand using a mouse, this is huge, as it is faster than many of the other keyboard shortcuts out there.  I will be checking it out.

Back from LawNet.  It was a great week, all things considered...tiring, of course, but I managed to attend a few really good sessions and see a few new products that, if I had an unlimited budget at the office, would have left me very excited.  I think the conference promises to be even better next year.

Traveling back and forth to the conference was an adventure, though.  I mentioned before that I had trouble booking my flights.  What I did not mention was that, the day after that experience, I was asked to be at conference a day earlier, which meant I had to change my itinerary.  Attempting to do that on US Airways was not even an option, so I ended up flying down to Ft. Lauderdale on Jet Blue, my favorite airline.  Of course, the flight down was on Saturday, and much of the nation was still recovering from the Great Blackout of 2003.  My flight was delayed by about two hours.  Inconvenient, yes, but Jet Blue came through once again, giving all of the travellers an $8 meal voucher in the airport and a $50 voucher towards our next flight.  That airline just Gets It.

Returning home, my flight was on time but oversold.  US Airways asked for volunteers and offered a free round-trip ticket to those who were willing to take a later flight.  I volunteered, and the gate agent was really great, booking me on a flight back to DC that connected through Pennsylvania and got me home a few hours later.  He was friendly and just plain nice--exactly what you'd hope for in a gate agent. 

My flight to Pittsburgh left about 30 minutes after the original flight, so I grabbed a quick breakfast/lunch and walked over to the gate.  Not 20 minutes after I arrived, the gate agent at the Pittsburgh flight announced that it was oversold, and she was looking for a volunteer... My first thought was to volunteer again, but I figured I should let someone else have a shot.  Not five minutes later, she paged me and asked me if I'd be willing to take a flight through North Carolina instead, which would only delay my arrival in DC by 30 minutes.  The gate agent from the Pittsburgh flight had called her and told her I'd likely be willing to change.  !! 

It was a pretty lucrative half hour, really, and the friendliness of that gate agent has completely changed my opinion of US Airways.  Their website is still impossible, of course, but their people and customer service more than make up for it.

Now, I have a few hours of website maintenance to do, plus close to a week's worth of news syndication to skim (I had no interest in running Radio over a dial-up connection in my hotel room, and the hotel's high-speed access was crippled multiple times by the worm.)i