Todd Mundt

My concentration is straying to our vacation, which begins on Wednesday and lasts into early next week. I tried to do up a little post over the weekend on Chandler and couldn’t think about it long enough to write more than a paragraph. Probably because it’s kind of ugly in its duckling phase. I’ve heard from quite a few people since I mentioned it here last week - comments ranging from “I like it a lot and I’m using it” to “It’s crowded” to “It doesn’t fit with what I’m trying to do” to “I use something else and I’m happy with that.”

I think I may still write something about it - perhaps while flying on Wednesday - but probably as part of something that more broadly assesses GTD workflow, which shifts as often as the sands, don’t you know.

My own view of Chandler is a mix of most of the above - it’s interesting to me because it’s ambitious, but other times the ambition seems like overreach, and the longer I live in the Mac world, the higher my expectations are about concepts like beautiful software design, marriage of form and function, and flawless performance. (I use WIndows XP at work and that’s fine; I’m not a hater.)

And let’s just say it: in this day and age, fundamental activities like email, document creation, calendars, and contacts must work and sync seamlessly across every platform, whether multiple desktops and notebooks, or to your handheld device. In this reality, software like Chandler or 99% of all those to-do list programs in the iPhone apps store that don’t offer seamless transfer are dead in the water with web workers. I’ve got a killer flow going on, from iPhone to MacBookPro to, yes, Windows desktop at work, and I hesitate to introduce a deaf-mute application into this connected, multi-lingual world.

What was that about vacation?

Chuck and I are going to San Francisco on Wednesday, transporting a couple of 30 year old bottles of wine with which to toast our friends, Michael and Bob, who are getting married. I’m still so surprised that this is actually possible. I mean, I was born and raised in the US; I understand that the concept of equality is designed to be available to some in this country. I just never expected it to be available to Michael and Bob… or to us. Well, one step at a time.

Our weekend includes a long-anticipated dinner at The French Laundry, and three days in Napa at Calistoga Ranch, guests of our friends. I expect to twitter about it, Brightkite it, Loopt it, Friendfeed it.

Heck, kind of makes writing a big blog post about it seem downright old-fashioned.