Note: I’m just writing this to validate the many hours I’ve wasted checking this stuff out. Hopefully somebody thinks some of this stuff is cool. I actually feel better than I did though, because now I’ve resolved the issue, as opposed to spending hours and having no results. Plus I really haven’t suffered anything for it. I’m practically running ahead of schedule in terms of school. You’ve been warned, anyway.

        So after finding Rainmeter a few weeks ago, feeling like I didn’t want to fiddle with it, running around looking for all kinds of ways to do stuff, I went back to Rainmeter and realized the default Gnometer skin had everything I wanted.

        I tried Snarl, and using it requires installing plugins and keeping your program open - so if you want to know that you have new e-mail in Thunderbird, you have to keep Thunderbird open all the time. You want notifications from something else? That’s another program running idly in the background.

        I read that Growl for Windows uses more resources than Snarl, which is frightening, because Snarl uses twice as many resources as Rainmeter is using right now. Plus running whatever programs.

        So I had to start using Gmail because it seems far more popular among Rainmeter folks, and I may have to fiddle a little to get perfect access to stuff on the top of my screen while running Rainmeter, but aside from that everything is good. So. My current technology set up:

- Google Calendar for tasks and events - desktop access via Gnometer (Gcal pop-up)

- Gmail for e-mail - desktop access also via Gnometer (Gmail pop-up)

- Gnometer’s iTunes pop-up for knowing what I’m listening to

- GReader on iGoogle - keeps me from checking shit all the damn time

- Aerofoil, which turns off Aero Glass when I switch to battery life - have yet to test if that’s beneficial at all

        So I’m uninstalling Thunderbird (e-mail with calendar add-on - I’m not going to waste my time teaching it to send e-mail) and SpiceBird (Thunderbird+) and that’s all well and good. It’s not like I need a dekstop program to access my internet contents. I’m going to check out Remember the Milk, Teux Deux, and Toodledo to see if I like any of them better for managing a to-do list.

        Now I’m off to eat lunch, brush my teeth, have a shower, and go meet a researcher to talk to her about being in french immersion :D I wrote a paper about it, she was about to start doing research for her Master’s, I approached her to discuss, and now I am a subject. Neat!