Goodbye Steve

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life — Steve Jobs

Timberline Estimating Software Review

While the thought of being a full time blogger is certainly romantic, the reality of my life is that of a construction project manager and estimator. As I become busy in my professional life, something has to give and I guess writing articles is *that* something that has to give.

Before any project gets built, the owner wants to know how much the project is going to cost. Most of the time we are providing cost estimates and competing with anywhere from 5 to 10 other contractors. In most cases, the low responsible price wins the contract.

On a $3 million dollar project, I will spend about 2 weeks putting the project estimate together. Estimating software is of the most important software that I use on a regular basis.

Recently, the company I work for tasked yours truly to oversee a new computer and software upgrade. This particular upgrade included a new company server, workstations, and estimating software.

Prior to the upgrade, we were using a product from Sage software called Timberline Estimating. I believe Timberline was the first mainstream estimating software. I personally have been using Timberline Estimating software for the past 15 years.

After enduring multiple webinairs from multiple estimating software platforms, I narrowed it down to two choices – ProEst and Timberline.

Timberline has the advantage of being a tried, true, and tested estimating platform by companies large and small. It also had the advantage that all of us at work have been using it for a long time. Because estimating software is the most important function for us at work, we desire to utilize the best software to help us with our estimating.

Let me make it clear that the estimating software is a tool that we use. We are NOT slaves to the software and the software does not “think” for us. I guess an analogy would be playing the guitar. You aren’t simply going to put a Les Paul guitar in someone’s hands and all of a sudden they become Eric Clapton.

ProEst has a great marketing deptartment. They are able to clearly articulate and demonstrate the great things that ProEst can do. Unfortunately, that is as good as it gets with ProEst. The program is slow and klunky and I personally ran into several bugs that, according to ProEst support, were being worked on and “would be fixed in an upcoming release”.

Our company went so far as to buy several licenses under the false pretense that we would be able to get some of our money back if things didn’t work out. Long story short, things didn’t work out. Nearly all of our estimating team found the software to be too slow and time consuming to use. Our estmating team consists of 6 who all have at least 10 years estimating experience. Once they have their hands on your money, they will not do the honorable thing and hand it back (as we were lead to believe).

Unfortunately, ProEst’s answer to our unwillingness to have them force feed their software to us was simply that we needed to sit through umpteen hours of their web based support. I beg your pardon? Hey ProEst, we’re not dummies. We recognize a sub par estimating platform when we see one.

What I can’t explain are all the favorable reviews for ProEst. The only thing I can think of is the people who are favorably reviewing ProEst are ProEst employees or folks that have not tried the more superior, refined, and FAST Sage Timberline estimating.

Like I said, Timberline estimating has been around since day one. The folks that put this fine piece of precision software together are not without their A-Game. The programmers who put Timberline together have obviously made it their priority to have people from the estimating profession give input into making the program function.

Timberline really excels with it’s excel spreadsheet integration (no pun intended), report writing, address/contact book, and did I say FAST! With Timberline you never more than two clicks away from entering an activity. ProEst on the other hand…Ugh! After opening at least 3 or 4 windows (I honestly lost count), you finally get the opportunity to enter an activity. ProEst is simply too slow of a process to contend.

If you are sitting on the fence in trying to decide which estimating software to use, look no farther than Sage Timberline Estimating. There is absolutely no comparison. Simply put, no other estimating platform even comes close.

Exodus

Our legislators are so smart here in Oregon. How smart are they? Well, for starters the previous democrat leadership managed to jack our taxes up so high that businesses and families are moving out of Oregon and re-planting themselves across the river in neighboring Washington.

The liberal leadership were told time and time again that if measure 66 & 67 (measures to tax businesses to the stratosphere and families earning over $250k) passes, these businesses and families would get the hell out of dodge.

And get the hell out they are.
In 2010 alone, approximately 15,000 families beat feet from one of the highest taxed states in the union (Oregon) to the lower priced and affordable Clark County Washington.

Rumor has it the not so top heavy liberals are caving toward repealling measures 66 and 67.

While they are at it, they should consider dropping the 11% income tax rate down a few notches.

Better late than never.

Making Work Pay

It’s tax season here in the good ‘ol US of A.

Having been self employed for a few years, I had a cpa do my taxes because there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to figure it all out. Now that I am once again working for the man, my taxes have become very easy to do myself.

So last night I was working on my Oregon tax filing and got the dreaded part of determining what I have to pay. I’m a freak about letting the respective taxing jurisdictions hold on to my money (since they don’t pay interest) and would rather that I be holding their money (which I don’t pay interest on either). That being said, I usually have to pay more taxes on April 15th. I’m fine with that because it’s usually under $1000 so it’s not a psychological money let down.

Google Chrome PDF Viewer

My favorite browser – Google Chrome, had a recent update that produced a new viewer plugin.  Prior to this update, when I would click on a PDF, the very speedy and very useful Foxit Reader plugin would activate.  After the update, Google’s plugin would activate.

My experience with Google’s pdf viewer was not pleasant. It is limited and it takes longer to render the pdf. My biggest complaint is Google’s pdf plugin would not allow me to click on weblinks within the pdf.

Since I had never had to mess with this plugin, I wasn’t sure how to get things back on track again. After a while of searching for the cure, I finally found it:

Up in the right hand corner of the Chrome browser, click on the little wrench icon which is your settings icon.
Click on “options”
Click on the “Under the hood” tab
Click on “Content Settings”
Click on “Disable individual plug-ins”
Disable Chrome PDF Viewer (and make sure your pdf plugin is enabled)

Photo Sharing With PhotoRocket

I recently came across an excellent program that I’ve been keeping my eye on for awhile that has been invite only and has just recently become available for download.

PhotoRocket is a drop dead simple way of sharing photos to various social network sites and will link your email contacts from outlook, google, etc.

You simply download the 12mb program, install it, and right click on any photo to share with Facebook or will email it (without the use of your email program).

Check it out, you will be pleasantly surprised. And the best part – It’s FREE!!

Having Fun At Fodey

During my web travels, I happened upon a great time waster that generates newspaper articles.

Visit Fodey.com to have a little fun.

This is a newspaper article I created to have some fun with some Oregon Ducks fans.

Google Chrome

As a consummate tinkerer, I’m always trying new software and different browsers. I downloaded the Google Chrome browser way back when it first came out but never did like it as much as Firefox.

It had been a year or so since I tried Chrome so a couple weeks ago I wondered how Chrome was coming along. I downloaded the newest version of Chrome and to my surprise, it had evolved into a very nice browser.

Google Voice

It’s no secret I am an admitted Google-aholic. I use it daily for both personal and business. Google integrates seamlessly with my HTC Incredible smartphone so it makes it all the more easy access to all things Google.

I got an early invite to try out Google Voice when it was still in beta and a few months ago, Google Voice became available to the masses.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Google Voice, it allows you to pick a local number and set it up to ring through the google answering service and will forward to whatever phone you want.

Libox

Having just wrote an article featuring a media streaming service called Orb, I was recently turned on to another media streaming service that I’ve been testing over the weekend.

Libox is a media streaming service that allows you to stream your music, photos, and video from your computer.

It works similiar to Orb in that you download their FREE software and sync whatever media folders you want.