TNSFF

Tech, music, sports, and other stuff.

02 Sep 2010

Twitter Updates for 2010-09-02

  • First hybrid tank: 41 mpg (with ~3 hours in stop and go NH traffic). We'll see how long before my next fill up. #
27 Aug 2010

Goodbye, Dorkmobile

Goodbye, Dorkmobile.

It seems like it was just yesterday (it was 7 years ago) when I made a ridiculous decision to buy your boxy ass. I had seen you on TV and on the internet and you seemed like a perfect fit.

goodbyebuddy.jpg

You had loads of space. I needed a place to carry my softball and basketball stuff!

inside.jpg

You got ok gas mileage. I liked not spending a ton of money on gas!

And so it began. Me and you, through some of the biggest years of my life.

  • You helped me move into my first solo apartment, carrying both a washer and dryer (for 25 bucks!) in your ample belly.
  • You carried me and Katie on our first long car trip to a wedding in Virginia (14 hours both ways!), keeping us safe during a drug bust while we filled up in West Virginia
  • You got your first scar during a crazy winter storm when I 360'd on 93N, heading home from a Celtics game. Your fender grazed the guard rail, keeping me from ending up in a much worse scenario.

    scar.jpg

  • I never figured out where you got your second scar, a busted up front fender guard, but I'm sure it was doing something to keep me happy or safe.
  • You took me to the hospital when I busted up my nose.
  • You carried my niece and nephew to their first trip to the aquarium!
  • You helped me move out of my last apartment and into my first home, carrying couches, chairs, whatever I could jam in you.

You've been there for the good and the bad, but your age is showing. I've had to replace your brakes a couple of times (even though I don't drive all that aggressively). I've replaced your tires and your struts more than I should have had to. Your driver's side door lock works too well--sometimes I can't get the door open.

Finally, your AC went. It was going to cost a lot to replace it. I started looking at new cars. I couldn't get another Element--nothing could replace the Dorkmobile.

So, I settled on a Honda Civic Hybrid. I won't have to fill it up with gas nearly as often. My ride will be much cooler, now that the AC will work. It'll be quieter too, as the years had caused your shocks and frame to creak and rattle a good bit. The whole environment thing.

But, I promise, I'll be sad when I trade you in. I already am. You're little car face will make me sad. It'll make me sadder the first few days when I walk outside to drive to work and see my neighbor's nearly identical Element (your cousin) sitting there. I know I'll try to get in it once or twice.

cousins.jpg

The good news: you're going to get fixed up. Some cosmetic surgery to fix your scars. Probably a new driver's side seat. Some nice new parts to make your ride smooth. You'll be a new Dorkmobile.

It'll be a fresh start for both of us, and you'll get a chance to make a new dorky owner happy.

Happy trails, Dorkmobile.

face.jpg

24 Aug 2010

Getting Organized with OmniFocus

My job tends to be a little ... disorganized. It's incredibly interrupt driven (we're an internet company, and I end up working on projects that are either very time-sensitive from a "need to get this done now" perspective or from a "uh oh, many many customers are in need of a fix" perspective.

In both cases, that means whatever I was working on gets dropped, back-burnered, ignored, whatever. I used to deal with that by leaving emails flagged in my inbox, writing emails or post-its to myself, or, wellll ... just forgetting what I was working on before.

In any event, it was not a particularly good way to manage my time.

People have been hyping the "Getting Things Done" methodology for the last few years; it's been almost impossible to avoid the hype in the tech corners of the internet. It seems to be a pretty good philosophy for keeping track of what you're working on and working on the right stuff. In a nutshell, you either:

  • Do it right now
  • Ignore it completely
  • Put it somewhere that you'll know to do it later
  • Make someone else do it

Nothing groundbreaking, but a good framework.

The problem was, I was doing that all through email, which meant that (on good days) my inbox would be flooded with 10 or 12 flagged items (reminders to do stuff), with more stuff piling on top. Manageable, but not a particularly good way to do stuff (and it ensured that certain things would never get done until someone came and bitched at me).

Then OmniFocus came out for the iPad and I saw some videos and I said "a-ha!" This is what I need to manage all of the crap that flows into my inbox. I grabbed the Mac download and tried it out for two weeks. I spent a couple of hours on a Saturday morning throwing a bunch of my to-do items into the inbox, organizing them, setting up projects, and adding due dates.

It took a week or so to get the hang of it.

And that's what the folks at The Omni Group expect. They give you a two week trial so that you'll dump your life into it, get the hang of it, and then need to pay them a reasonably high price (but, so far, worth it) to keep it going.

Now, every morning, I run through my to-dos for the day. Anything that isn't pressing, I'll either take the due date off of completely (so that it's not in my face), or I'll push it back to an appropriate day. As stuff pops up in my inbox, I grab it and throw it into OmniFocus and then clear it out of my email.

It's a nice system.

It goes a lot deeper than that, but even if you just use it for breaking down your tasks, that's probably worth it.

Rather than having 20 flagged emails in my inbox, I head to work and look at my work to-do list, and I've got the list of things that are past due, due today, and due over the next few days. When someone asks me "hey, do you have time to work on X", I can give them a quick rundown of what's on my plate and ask them which stuff can get pushed off.

Throw in the fact that I'm also managing all of my personal tasks (buying groceries, remembering to clean the kitchen floor, calling to get my wisdom teeth out), and you can pretty quickly see how the value adds up. Oh, and fun stuff like recurring tasks ... say, posting to a blog that you've left wilting on the vine.

OmniFocus just happens to be the app I ended up on. There are others out there (as well as a million and one ways to do it using Outlook, Gmail, text files, etc).

This tutorial is what got me hooked. If you have 30 minutes, see if the philosophy at least makes sense.