Over the course of the last year, I’ve been very busy with a migration effort for one of our clients. For those of you fortunate enough not to work in Information Technology (aka IT, MIS, or those jerks who break our computers), a migration effort is one of those “big deal” type jobs. The type where you are in the office for 32 hours over the course of a weekend, and the type of thing that people routinely lose their jobs over when they are done incorrectly.

In the last year, we have migrated the development systems for this client for both the Americas and for Asia-Pacific (also known as APAC, which includes Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan) as well as the production systems for these same regions. The only outstanding migration task is to move one minor subsystem (well, it’s not minor to them but in reality it’s not a big deal) and to decommission the old machines (read that as “turn off and sink in the ocean”).

This bit above is - in a nutshell - the reason for the longish gap between posts lately. Friends of mine can see the paragraphs above for the reason I have not had a chance to call them back, stop over, or do anything with them of late. I would advise my family to see the paragraphs above, but they already know. And they are still talking to me, so this either points to how much they love me or how tolerant they are. Or a bit of both. Probably more the later than the former.

Over the course of this work another thing I neglected was keeping up on my journal, my wellspring of pithy ideas to place in this online forum read by an audience of none. But, fear not - I have come up with a number of ideas while being trapped on an airplane for 6 hours flying home from the west coast that I have noted down on the back of my plane ticket and that I am just dying to explore here in this forum.

One other thing that I am thinking about doing is carving this site up a bit - I want to break things out by area of interest. There are some more technical things that I’ve been making notes about, and some more time-management related things that I’ve been looking into and would like to explore. My thought is that by breaking the site up a bit I can devote an area to each part and then link back as needed. One of the main reason is that I know people who may be interested in how I solved a particular vexing technical problem that don’t really care about what I’m doing in my personal life or with my family and vice versa.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get this in place within the next month or so - this will require that I read up a bit on how Tinderbox exports text and html and how to handle the stylesheets that this webpage uses. This is something that I’m not viewing as being all that difficult to do, but it is something that will take some time. Which has been scarce of late.

Well, I’ve been using my brand new PAA (Personal Analog Assistant), aka my Mini-Moleskine Notebook for about a week now and I have to say that overall I’ve been very satisified with it.

My current configuration actually relies on two notebeooks - the mini-notebook sports a number of avery stick-on tabs that deliniate various secionts that I have setup in the notebook. The full size notebook - which used to be devoted (at least through the first 40 or so pages) to a daily log of my work life (boring) is now my “official” journal, in which I jot down my pithy observations on a daily basis. Some of which is interesting…..some of which is rather mundane.

The appointment book (mini) is broken down into sections that mimic (at a very loose level) the David Allen GTD (Getting Things Done) Philosphy. It’s not 100% down with what he talks about but it is working for me. I have sections for the current work that I need to do with regards to the various facets of my life (such as Clients, Internal Company, Home, Family, etc). I also have sections to mark down recurring weekly and monthly tasks (ie, take out the trash, change water filters, give the dog a pill), put down log term goals (such as owning a tropical island where I can live without working), and a whole big section for notes while on the phone, in meetings, etc.

You can’t just write in a Moleskine with any pen though, so of course I had to run out and buy myself a matte black Fisher Space Pen. It folds up into a very small package and will pretty much write on anything at any angle. (Trust me, I’ve proven this theory already - I always try and push the envelope, usually involving stupid things like pens and computers. Overclocked PII anyone? Yeah, I did that….)

For some reason I’ve discovered that it’s therapeutic to sit down with the pen - to turn away from the computer, tune out all the distractions, and write in the journal. Usually it’s nothing important, but the simple act of writing makes it all the more pertinent. I have noticed that my entries are getting….well, I guess better is not the correct word, maybe “more real”?

I’m excited to see where this leads - I guess one area where I would like to see it go is to help provide more balance in my life, adding a bit of analog back into the digital world that I seem to be spending more and more time in.

Technorati Tags: TimeManagement

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later - my beloved Palm Tungsten T has finally bitten the dust. The digitizer has been a bit flaky of late requiring fairly regularly (ie, every time I turned it on) calibration - so it’s not really a surprise. But it is somewhat of a pain, because now I have to do something about it.

My first thought was to replace it with a new Palm device - the Tungsten T5 doesn’t excite me too much based on the less than stellar reviews out there, but I liked the looks of the Tungsten T3. But to be honest, I’m starting to get a bit leery of Palm, Palm One, or Palmsource, or whatever they are calling themselves now. They seem to have no rhyme or reason to the handhelds they release. The Tungsten and Zire lines seem to be very muddled, with very little differentiation between them (in some cases) and very radical differences (such as the Tungsten W) in others.

OK, so if not Palm maybe Windows? I looked a bit at the new line of Windows based PDA’s - but there are still a few things holding me back from making the jump. First off, there is the investment in software I already have for the Palm OS platform - easily a few hundred dollars. Second off, there is the data issue - I really don’t need to go through a conversion process with the data I already have. And then, there is the issue of synchronization with the Macintosh. One of my big issues with the Palm Tungsten T near the end is that it seemed that it didn’t play very well with my Macintosh - applications like Docs to Go or Adobe for the Palm would crash out on sync. So windows was out.

Then there is the Tapwave Zodiac - it’s Palm OS without being tethered to the Palm hardware. There appears to be almost a cult following among the users of this PDA, with people singing its praises as a PDA, game player, music player, and video player. It runs a custom version of Palm OS 5 that takes advantage of the particular control setup on the unit, and that drives a 320×480 screen that displays in 16 bit color. The unit also has built in bluetooth, dual SD cards, and boasts 128 MB of RAM (which really makes me jealous as the Tungsten T only had 16MB).

Of course, there is always the paper option - I could just go back to working out of a notebook. I have two very nice Moleskines just sitting here waiting to have more thoughts dripped into them. To be completely honest, I enjoy the feel of writing into the notebooks but am constantly reminded about not only just how slow I am at writing by hand (either printing or cursive) but also how bad I am at it. I’d be surprised if anyone can read what I write in these notebooks. I mean, at least with DaVinci you could get a mirror and (if you could read 16th Century Italian) read what he was writing. No such luck with me.

The other neat thing about the Moleskine is what people do with them. Just a brief visit out to the Moleskinerie is enough to make me feel downright pedestrian for just using mine for notes, todos, and the occasional journal.

I’ll be posting more as I try to figure out what to do. For now, I’ve got something to prop up the short leg of the couch…..

Technorati Tags: TimeManagement

Working at home removes nearly all the interaction that is common in an office job - such as stopping by the break room or someone’s office to BS about sports, the weather or politics - and compresses that interaction down to phone calls and emails.

And that can get very, very boring after a bit.

One solution that has helped keep me sane is Instant Messenger. I use a tool called Adium for the Macintosh. The great strength of this program (other than the cool ducky icons) is the fact that it will communicate on all the major IM networks. So I can talk to people on Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and ICQ. It even will handle IRC, although I don’t use this funcationlity much.

Oh, you’ll read all sorts of things online about how IM “saps work from companies” and “ties up workers time” and “lends itself to possible loss of trade secrets.”

OK.

Now - I guess my thinking on this is that if you will goof off at work (the ’sapping productivity’ and ‘tieing up time’ parts) you’re going to find some way to do it., IM or no IM. And if you will start auctioning off exactly how that Widget is made to the highest bidder on eBay - well, I’m guessing you’re going to figure out a way to do that as well.

For me, IM has become sort of a sanity check. It gives me an easy way to check with my friends, ask them questions, and have some sort of normal interaction while I work at home. And on the work angle - well, since our main client works with all offices in the Pacific Rim (Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc) it is more convenient to have them send me an IM than it is t o have them pick up the phone for each question.

I have several different categories in my IM list - Friends, Family, my team, and people from our client. These are all nicely color coded and separated out - for example, I have different rules setup for each series of contacts. This helps me better manage my interaction on IM by prioritizing how important each conact is - in terms of the day of the week, time of day, etc.

I’m usually involved in 4 or 5 IM chats during a given day - usually I start my morning by chatting with a colleague in the UK about what is happening with work, and then move on to talk to the members of my team based on the US to catch up on the various projects and support tasks that are underway. At least a few times per week I talk to my friends - some local to my area, some out of state.

Chat duration? Most chats are very quick and of the “hey, what are you doing this weekend” or “did you see this on the news” variety. On the work side, they are more concerned with “did you get this ticket done yet” or “sorry to bother you, but the entire system seems to have locked up”. That’s not to say there aren’t marathon chat sessions - but for everyone of these there are probably ten sessions where the total chat output could be put into a page or two of email.

Sure there are downsides - sometimes it’s too easy for people to get access to you if you stay on IM. But, I think you have the same issues with the phone, with email, with pagers, with being in an office…so I guess I see the problem as being one of prioritization of communications generally as opposed to something directly attached to one sort of technology, be it IM, email, or other.

Technorati Tags: TimeManagement

You know, it’s a bit disconcerting to go to update your weblog and realize that your last post contains a date from last year…..in November.

Not that it really matters that much - I think that I’ve only had two people point this out to me over the intervening 4 months. And I would have to assume that their angst at this page not being updated was something that didn’t cause too much grief.

So what is going on in my amazingly exciting life of late? Nothing too exciting - we spent the weekend in a celebration of Alex since he just turned eight. I’m not exactly sure how, but he managed to worm about three days of celebration into his birthday. Beth is sick - apparently it’s her turn in the rotation - I’m just getting over being sick from the last few weeks, as is Alex.

We’ve managed to acquire a new cat named - appropriately enough - Dante in the last few months. This is Malinda’s new friend, but of course she’s always away at school or at work so he’s my new best friend down in my office. One issue with this cat is the fact he has some very sharp claws….for now. A visit to the Doctor is in the cards after which this will no longer be a problem.

There was a vacation in the last month to report on as well, a trip down to Universal Studios in Orlando and a trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to observe the launch of the NASA’s Deep Impact cometary mission.

Universal Studios wasn’t too bad - there were some high points, like the Men In Black ride and the Spiderman ride (which Alex managed to ride at least twelve times). But overall I didn’t find it as nice or as friendly as Disney. I also felt that Disney had the edge on the quality of the attractions. Part of this may be the fact that I was spoiled by visiting the California version of Universal which is much, much more interesting.

NASA’s launch was one of the highlights of the trip - the launch was much like you see on TV except it was happening right over our horizon. The sound of this rocket - a relatively small Delta-II - was still fairly loud, even from where we observed the launch eight miles away.

Beth has put together a roll of pictures from the trip, and later this week I plan on putting them up on the pictures site so that friends and family can spend the obligatory time looking at one or two pictures and sending an email noting “how nice”.

Hopefully it won’t be more than a week or so before the next update - I’ve created a rotating event in my planner to (depending on how you look at it) either help me remember or guilt me into remembering.

Cheers,

Jason