What the E!

I post content to a couple of different websites and many times people provide the original content in a MS Word document. Nothing wrong with this, but it can be a little bit of a hassle to convert the Word document to html in a clean way.

You can’t paste the document directly into the WSYIWIG editor or you will get really funky formatting and MS Word HTML is what you might call “interestingly dysfunctional”. So normally I hand code the documents in notepad or UltraEdit. This works well, but can be very time consuming.

So after looking at a couple commercial services/software that claim to do the trick, I found this website word2cleanhtml.com. It does exactly what the title implies and does a pretty good job. You simply copy your word document onto the site and hit the convert to clean html button. You may need to clean up a few tags, but generally the code is clean, properly formatted, and ready to go. It can save you a few minutes and help keep your frustration down to a reasonable level!

Lots of times people need to capture screenshots.  Just pressing Print Screen on the keyboard and pasting into Word works when you just need to send a screenshot of an error message to your favorite computer nerd:)

There are a number of paid programs out there that work well, but most of dont need the features of many of the paid programs.  We just need to take a few screenshots a month to stick in a powerpoint or a training document.  Then PrintKey 2000 is the tool for you.  I have been using the tool for at least 5 years now.  It is a great tool that is one of few screen capture tools that works well with multiple monitors.

The software is old and if want a new version that looks a little better you can always send the developer some money via Print Key Pro

We are switching 401k providers at work.  The switch is actually a good thing; vesting is happening sooner and matches are happening during each payroll cycle.  All great improvements!

However, the new options for investing are not award winners.  We had the normal visit from an investment adviser who claims to have a fiduciary relationship to us.  I think the adviser is a decent guy, just trying to make a living, but it is hard to believe that all his choices for mutual funds are going to be great.  He even said in the meeting that he will on a quarterly basis change out “under performing” funds.  He didn’t mention that chasing fund performance has been proven to be a very poor strategy.

So if you follow the link it sums up a bunch of really good academic research about active fund management.  For those of us who would like to follow this strategy, we strongly asked for a couple of low cost index funds.  I think we might get a couple, but we will see.

The best investment advice you’ll never get | San Francisco online

What if some one told you that they could save thousands of lives, implement the change in two years, and it would only cost $2 million dollars.  Well that is exactly what a new approach to medicine is suggesting.

In many of the more common (not simple) procedures that take place in our hospitals the “best practices” are fairly well documented.  You need to do steps 1 through XYZ to ensure the best outcomes, reduce infection, limit the number of days in the hospital, risk of serious complications and reduce the overall cost of care.

We all assume that our doctors, nurses, and the rest of the hospital staff are giving us the best care possible.  However, this isn’t in the always the case.  Check out these two articles below and see what they have to say.  They are a little scary in how basic steps are not being taken to improve care, but also the pioneering efforts of a few groups to get changes made.

Annals of Medicine: The Checklist: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

In Bid for Better Care, Surgery with a Warranty

I follow and read a number of other blogs, but this recent article from A List Apart is really cool.  I do some web design, mostly as a volunteer for non profits.  Most of my testing (I wont use the word designing) is done by the make a change and view in a couple browsers method.

This article was a real eye opener for me in ways to effectively manage what style sheets different browsers actually see.

A List Apart: Articles: Progressive Enhancement with CSS