doug-miller.net > Doug Miller’s Weblog

Latest Updates RSS

Doug 6:30 pm on February 28, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: del.icio.us
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user demiller on 2006-02-28
- Free Up HD Space on OS X –
  Overview of several different applications and approaches to recovering disk space in OS X. Frankly, disk space hasn’t been an issue for me for years, but… Tagged as: OSX Storage mac reference software tips
- infiniteNIL Software - Packrat –
  OS X application for retrieving Backpack pages and allows them to be viewed offline. Doesn’t appear to allow offline editing, however. Tagged as: GTD OSX backpack organization software
Doug 9:57 pm on February 27, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal, Technology, Work

Based on my recent experiences at “F.C. Tucker”:http://www.talktotucker.com and now at “Wishard Health Services”:http://www.wishard.edu it seems to me that it takes (me, at least) the better part of a year when changing careers to research, develop, and implement a useful personal information management system. I had evolved a very effective and efficient system as a real estate agent for staying on top of all of the various types and sources of information I needed and encountered in my job in 22 months - though the last ten months were essentially incremental refinements of my approach. By that time I had a system that I’m convinced saved me hours of work every week and allowed me to provide the same level of service to a dozen clients at a time as one or two when I was just starting out. It also allowed me to communicate with a large number of potential clients while keeping close tabs on a few key metrics telling me how my business and marketing efforts were performing.

All of that was great - until I switched careers. For months I tried to hold on to methods and tools of information management that served me well as an agent. Too often, these approaches and tools didn’t fit well in my new role, just as the approaches and tools I’d brought to real estate from my previous career didn’t work all that well. Just as I had done when starting my real estate career, I tried and discarded a lot of stuff in an attempt to find what was going to work. I’m not there yet, but finally feel like I’m getting a grasp on how to “drink from the firehose” again. A few more weeks and I think I’ll be back to the point of refining things rather than casting around for what works best.

In the end, it seems like it takes about a year to get really productive again, and that’s in the case of someone like me, who is always looking for new tools and tricks. I suspect I’m in the minority in doing this. Most people muddle along until someone shows them something better or just do their best with whatever tools the organization imposes on them.

Stopping to think about it, the productivity hit incurred by organizations for each reorganization, layoff, or other mass shifting of positions has to be enormous. I also bet it lasts a lot longer than most leaders imagine.

Technorati Tags: productivity
Doug 7:18 am on February 27, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: Photo, Work

Off to work
Originally uploaded by Doug Miller.
Doug 9:04 pm on February 26, 2006 | 1 | # |
Tags: Mobile, Personal, Technology

Long-time readers of my various web writings will remember that I was an “early adopter”:http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/daybook.html of Moleskine notebooks and only “returned to using a PDA”:http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/tungstentime.html after nearly a year as a real estate agent. However, after starting to use a PDA again I took to it like a fish to water. While being an agent the PDA was useful - I was often away from the office, and the Palm T3 provided a useful mobile computing platform.

I’ve since upgraded my T3 to a device running Windows Mobile 2005, a device that set me back a princely sum, but that has a much nicer OS than the aging Palm OS of the T3, and has not only Bluetooth but WiFi connectivity as well. Unfortunately, it pretty much sucks.

I can’t sync the damn thing, for starters. I was able to sync the original Windows Mobile 2003 that I bought but “broke”:http://www.doug-miller.net/weblog/2005/11/20/ouch/. “Mark/Space”:http://markspace.com/ doesn’t have a version of The Missing Sync that will work with WM 2005 yet, and there’s really no telling when, or even if, they will. As a result, I’m reduced to manually entering data into the thing, or transferring vCards and files one-by-one over Bluetooth from my Mac. I can’t even reliably use the thing at work, since we use Notes and not Exchange, and WM 2005 really only syncs with Outlook reliably at this point.

So, my mistake for buying a device that is so completely proprietary. Worse, I’m coming to believe I don’t need the thing, even if I _could_ get it to sync. I find that I seldom need a mobile computing platform these days beyond my PowerBook, which is generally with me. If Apple released a tablet device or PDA that was essentially an ultra-portable Mac that seamlessly synced with my PowerBook I might change my mind, but there just doesn’t seem to be much point to the PDA when I have the far more useful PowerBook with me just about any time I need it.

Therefore, I’m going to try an experiment this week: I’m parking the iPaq in a charger and leaving it there. For those times I can’t carry my PowerBook with me, I’m carrying a “Moleskine Cahier”:http://www.moleskine-usa.com/moleskine-cahier-notebooks.html and taking notes in a style similar to the approach used by “Ed Vielmetti”:http://flickr.com/photos/edward-vielmetti/48871860/. My mobile address book is in my phone, which is also always with me. I’ll see by the end of the week if I really need the PDA or still feel the need to carry it with me. Simplification.

Technorati Tags: moleskine, pda, notes
Doug 6:30 pm on February 26, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: del.icio.us
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user demiller on 2006-02-26
- TagFacts - social knowledge base –
  Some sort of social note keeping application. Not too much information available from the home page. Tagged as: GTD Notes ajax notetaking service socialsoftware tags web2.0
Doug 11:20 am on February 26, 2006 | 2 | # |
Tags: Apple, Personal, Technology

Last weekend I finally broke down and added a third “Airport Express”:http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/ node to my network at home. We’ve become positively anti-cable people in our house, the result being that we have a proliferation of competing wireless signals. In the past few months, every time someone picks up the cordless phone or turns on the family room speaker system (with wireless rear channel speakers) my WiFi signal degrades or dies completely, which is _really_ annoying.

The other problem is the multi-level floor plan of our house, which tends to do odd stuff with wireless signals. The solution was to suck it up and add another access point on the main floor to the existing access points in the upstairs computer office and the downstairs family room. Once plugged in and configured, it was a bit shocking to realize just how much my network performance was suffering prior to installing the new access point.

Finally, I’m noticing that I can see more and more of my neighbor’s access points while inside my own home. I know this has long been an issue for urban apartment dwellers, but we’re out in the ‘burbs. It looks like my neighbors all tend to go buy a Linksys router of some kind and turn the power up all the way on it. I can often pick up access points that are several houses away - with a strong enough signal that I could actually use them, meaning they are more potential interference sources. Maybe I need to distribute some fliers or something…

Technorati Tags: wifi
Doug 9:08 am on February 26, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: Humor, Politics

“Secret Revolutionary â€“ The True Story of George W. Bush”:http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/secret-revolutionary-true-story-of.html:

bq. When George Bush Jr. was a Yale undergrad back in the 1960’s he had a secret love affair with a beautiful and brilliant young woman. But this young woman, who we will call Tanya, was no spoiled sorority queen, but a leader of Yale SDS. George spotted her one day, striding across the campus, bull-horn in hand, bra-less and mini-skirted. He fell immediately in love – a love from which he would never recover and one that would change his entire life.

bq. …

bq. We all know what happened next. Osama and the boys (with a little guidance from the Mossad, who had their own agenda) made the WCT fall down and go boom. This was the signal for George to go into action. He sent the military into that bit of soldier fly paper called Afghanistan, where they remain stuck. Then, he bankrupted government finances by giving billions in tax cuts to the rich and ballooning the war budget. Next, war in Iraq, now possibly Iran as well. The Imperial spandex is about to bust. The whole world now hates the US government and its corporations. George W. created the biggest demonstrations in the world. Latin America is in flames and daily Bush’s useful idiots like Rumsfeld and Rice pour oil on it. .

George is truly a happy man. The World Revolution is underway. In his daydreams he thinks, “Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, BUSH.

::shudder:: Dammit Larry, I was just about to eat breakfast…

Technorati Tags: bush, socialism
Doug 5:22 pm on February 25, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: Apple, Media, Technology

I usually don’t pay much attention to or get very worked up about all the rumors prior to Apple special events. Usually, the rumors are either obvious or dead wrong. However if “this bit from Mac Geekery”:http://www.macgeekery.com/opinion/screen_door_on_a_submarine/exclusive_apples_tuesday_release is true, I might get pretty stoked. Depending, of course, on actual details and capabilities.

_Update:_ Turns out this was “bullshit”:http://www.macgeekery.com/opinion/screen_door_on_a_submarine/happy_apple_fools_day and I got sucked in. That’ll teach me to give any credence to any sort of Mac rumors…
Doug 5:04 pm on February 25, 2006 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal, Photo

Today in Nashville
Originally uploaded by Doug Miller.
Doug 9:32 am on February 25, 2006 | 1 | # |
Tags: In the news, Politics

John Scalzi does a great job of “excoriating the Bush Administration”:http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004046.html for their utter incompetence over the UAE deal. What I like about John is how utterly rational he is about this sort of thing:

bq. Mind you, this has nothing to do with whether letting this particular company based in the United Arab Emirates have control of several major ports is actually a good idea. I honestly don’t know (and I’m willing to bet you don’t really know, either). It’s also not about whether swarthy Muslims, in general, deserve to be irrationally feared (as a class they don’t, any more than pasty-white Christians do). It has to do with how Bush’s people could be so tone-deaf as not to see how this particular deal could be (to use a singularly inappropriate cliche) a political landmine. Didn’t anyone in the Executive Branch look up from the Kool-Aid long enough to say “Hey, haven’t we been telling people Arabs are, like, bad? Is it possible handing the ports over to an Arab company might not play well”? At the very least, someone should have, you know, briefed the president about the deal ahead of time so he wouldn’t have learned about it in the newspapers like the rest of us slobs. Then perhaps he could have prepared for the inevitable backlash brought on by his administration’s own messaging.

Painfully spot on. That’s what’s so great about the Bushies - they’re _both_ malicious _and_ incompetent.

Technorati Tags: bush, port, republican, UAE