The Slob Within

By David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2004

There are many divides and gaps that separate us from one another – really heavy issues that cause deep discord. Like cat lovers versus dog lovers. Or people who like chocolate ice cream versus people who like vanilla ice cream. And of course, Yankee versus Met fans. Oh, why can't we just all get along?

Fortunately, there are those in society with the foresight to try and do something about these dissonances, which would otherwise have everybody at each others' throats. That chocolate-vanilla thing, for example; that's why they invented ice cream sundaes, where you put chocolate syrup on top of vanilla ice cream. Dogs and cats are a little tougher, but many households will attest that fans of both can and do live in peace. And as far as New York baseball rivalries are concerned, all New Yorkers are united in their loathing for anything having to do with Boston, far more than they hate each others' teams, at least this year. So things aren't hopeless on that front, either.

But unfortunately, there is one gap that is unlikely to be bridged in our lifetimes; the gap between neat fanatics and the rest of us.

It's an obsession, I say, and an unhealthy one at that. They, who pride themselves on having a place for everything and everything in its place, with their uptight attitudes, robotic filing systems, and anal-retentive ways, are responsible for much suffering on the part of happy-go-lucky types like myself, who stop to smell the coffee, even if some of it spills on our shirts occasionally. I mean, who would you rather be – fussy Felix Unger or fun Oscar Madison?

At home, they obsessively fold their clothes, instead of flinging them on the floor like the rest of us. In the kitchen, they make sure to clean up spills and messes off the floor right away – which leads to animal cruelty. What is the cat supposed to eat, I ask you? At work, their desks have nary a paper on them – meaning they are wasting hours on end of real productivity time in feeding their obsession. When do they have time to actually do some work if they spend their time filing and refilling?

And of course, their computers reflect their neat ways. Whereas I, and probably you, save our files in one or two common folders or directories, "they" classify their work with all sorts of fancy filing systems, by date, project name, whatever.

Which just points out the failings of the obsessive orderliness of these "neats." Over time, you rack up lots of files and projects on a computer. If you try to organize your files by project name, how are you going to keep track of all the names? Those who use codes representing names or dates are even worse off; how can they possibly remember what all their code names or numbers represent? Despite their fervent wishes, the human mind doesn't work that way. Obviously, they have to use multiple lists or virtual index cards to keep track of everything; sort of like a Dewey Decimal System for the PC.

Ah, but if they did things my sloppy way, they tell me, they would spend hours on end searching for files and data. Their way, they say, allows them to instantly come up with the information they are seeking, whether it's a cross reference in an old text document, the amount of money listed in a spreadsheet from five years ago, or an archived Web page with information relevant to the topic at hand. All they have to do is look up the information in their handy-dandy filing system data key; I, on the other hand, am doomed to spend hours on end on a deep-data search that will end up yielding frustration, they say, sneering all the while.

See what I mean? It's bad enough that they try to act "uppity," showing off their obsession to anyone and everyone – but they get downright mean about their alleged superiority, as well. They'll look at your paper-strewn desk, look you up and down with their snooty attitude, and come up with some snide remark that they think is witty but is really just obnoxious and puts on display their frustration and uptightness for all to see.

Well, it so happens, Mr. and/or Ms. Neat Freak, that I, and the millions of normal, sloppy people out there, can find the information we need on our computers just like that (I just snapped my fingers)! Agent Ransack, the superior, comprehensive, and free PC data search tool is all I or any person interested in maintaining spontaneity and free-spiritedness need in order to keep order on our machines.

Microsoft, Apple, and the makers of various Unixes recognize the importance of having a tool that can search for files and/or text within files; every operating system comes with one. So right away, we realized we're dealing with a PC basic; sooner or later, everyone's memory fails them, and they have to rely on a file or text search tool to ferret out the document or text that is eluding them. In my Windows XP machine, there's a friendly little doggy that comes around when I need to search for some missing data. The doggy, an iconic representative of Windows Find File tool, does an adequate job, I suppose – or I supposed (past tense), until I started using Agent Ransack.

The truth of the matter is that any search tool is as good as another when you know what you're looking for. You don’t have to bother downloading a special tool in order to search for a file by name, or even by date or size. Windows' Find File is perfectly fine for that type of search.

The problem with finding stuff pops up when you don't exactly remember the name of the file, or when you're trying to search out something using one work or sentence that you remember appeared in the file. That's where a program's deep-dish searching skills come in. You want a program that's going to be fast, accurate, and capable of digging up all occurrences of the text you're searching. Yes, I too, like you, have had Find File throw back a bunch of results that did indeed contain the text I was looking for – but still happened to be the wrong file.

That's where Agent Ransack outshines Find File. Ransack can do straight file searches (also by size and date), and can also search within files (and is a far sight faster than Find File, I might add). But Ransack is much more versatile when it comes to searching within files – because it uses "regular expressions" in its searches. A regular expression is a way of writing a search string using variables, and is much found in Unix systems. Basically, you put together a list of character variables in order to narrow down the possibilities the search program returns. Regular expressions are wildly popular among programmers and Unix system administrators, but you need not be either one in order to use Agent Ransack's touchy, feely version of the tool; the program has a wizard, which will direct you in putting together a search for file names or text within a file. So, of you're looking for a file that you know deals with a person whose name you can't quite remember but you know starts with a "w" and has a "c" and "m" somewhere in the name, you will be amazed at how quickly Ransack finds exactly the data you're looking for based on the few clues you can provide.

But Agent Ransack has another great advantage over Find File, one that I find indispensable. Even on the straightforward text searches Windows Find File successfully executes, you still have to open a document's application in order to display the actual text. Find File will provide you with a list of the possible files; if the text you're looking for is in a Word file, you'll have to double click the file name and open the text in Word in order to verify that it's the right one.

Not with Agent Ransack, though; when you click on the candidate file, you find that the program displays the content of the file without opening the document's application! This is not only a great timesaver – you don't have to spend time waiting for files to open and close – but a great memory saver too, because if you're not even sure which application the file you're searching for was created in – or even if it is in application that you have already uninstalled, meaning that you will not be able to open the file no matter how many times you click on it, you can still see the contents of that file!

Ah, but wait – what about that other premier find file tool we discussed not long ago, Google Desktop Search, the one everyone's going gaga over? Google Desktop Search is certainly better than Windows Find File, and has the added advantage of letting you search your hard drive using all those cool Google methods we wrote about a few weeks ago when discussing Internet searches. But you still have to open an application to see the whole contents of the file (although the Google search page does display the line of the file your search term appears in). And in addition, the Google system creates a cached page in your Web cache folder – a folder that has to be cleaned out at some point, which means that you are forced to engage in the drudgery of cleaning house, at least occasionally, with Google Desktop Search, which makes Agent Ransack, which doesn't store cached Web pages on your searches, the preferred tool of lazy slobs everywhere. Be free, my messy mates – don’t let the "neats" dictate the way you live. With Agent Ransack, you can make your PC the pigsty you've always dreamed of!

Download Agent Ransack for free from http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack; for all Windows systems. Agent Ransack can search through regular text files, but the site also offers FileLocator Pro, which can search inside Zip files, PDFs, etc. Shareware, $24.95; download from http://www.mythicsoft.com.

ds@newzgeek.com