Fine-tuned even more

I have further fine-tuned my reminders even more.  I have most everything that I had before split to either a morning or evening to-do list.  On those two, I have included the things that had the other reminders for.  So, those interruptions are reduced to twice a day.  Now, I am down to a small handful.  The majority of them relate to either having me tag my time for the last hour in ManicTime, marking what each documented thing was so that at end of the day, everything will already be grouped into a total time for that activity; indicating when I should be working on an important item or urgent item; or an hourly reminder to put away the time waster and get back to work.  When these lists pop up, I also have the reminder do the actions involved, such as opening an IE window to record my time for the day, etc.  Also, on some of the now reduced number of minders left, I have turned off the display of the message and instead only do the actual action, such as playing a track that indicates something particular, logging off, etc.  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

 

 

Change in plans, yet again

 

From: Collins, Monica P. []
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 2:00 PM
To: Lacy, Robert P.; Collins, Monica P.
Subject: Conversation with Lacy, Robert P.

 

Collins, Monica P. [7:54 AM]:

hola

Lacy, Robert P. [7:54 AM]:

lolsup

Collins, Monica P. [7:55 AM]:

Next time you're up, detour by here

Lacy, Robert P. [7:55 AM]:

hmm

Collins, Monica P. [11:10 AM]:

I think that I've had a slight change of mind.  I think that the 1st pgm I'll attempt will be a C# to read my iTunes' XML (1/2 of what I originally planned).  Next will be to an attempt to create a WebOS pgm that will read a file that #1 spits out; at the same time, I'll modify the C# to spit out that file.  From there, I'll pick up the old list: 3) create pgm to read my HDs and list out music there; 4) modify C# to read list from #3 as well as #1, comparing the two lists and displaying differences.  After all of that, trying to convert that PalmOS Progect to WebOS should hopefully be a bit easier.

What think you, too ambitious?

Lacy, Robert P. [11:11 AM]:

a tad yes

i wouldnt even attempt the webos part

the xml reader seems fine, even the one to read drive contents

Collins, Monica P. [11:12 AM]:

oh, come on, don't say that

i want to be able to look at my entire list, wherever.  (big sigh) So, do you have an alternative suggestion?

Lacy, Robert P. [11:13 AM]:

hmm

needs some though

t

Collins, Monica P. [11:14 AM]:

you're supposed to encourage, not squash under the heel of your shoe.

Lacy, Robert P. [11:14 AM]:

its not going to do any good if you are overwhelmed, and even just reading that made me overwhelmed lol

Collins, Monica P. [11:17 AM]:

which book did you use?

Lacy, Robert P. [11:17 AM]:

that very first one i sent

the web programming with c# in 21 days book

Collins, Monica P. [11:19 AM]:

o.  I've got 'Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects' for the webOS.

Plus I have O'Reilly's 'Palm WebOS'

Lacy, Robert P. [11:27 AM]:

i se

Collins, Monica P. [11:27 AM]:

Like I said, I tried to order every book that I'd need for the next couple of years lol.

I've gotten behind in my studying the last couple of weeks, so I think that I'm going to try and take off before and after Memorial Day.

Lacy, Robert P. [11:28 AM]:

i hate buying the books though, the tech is outdated too quickly :(  bought some .net 3.5 books.....net 4 gets released 7 months later lol

Collins, Monica P. [11:28 AM]:

lol

yeah, but how late did you wait to buy the 3.5 books?

Lacy, Robert P. [11:28 AM]:

pretty late

Collins, Monica P. [11:29 AM]:

ah, well, that's your own damned fault then, isn't it lol?

Lacy, Robert P. [11:29 AM]:

i suppose

Collins, Monica P. [11:29 AM]:

I want to have C# under my belt by the end of this month.

It had occured to me a few days ago that I might try starting my pgm while I am going through the book, using what's in the particular chapter to get mine further along.

I might have a workable whatnot by the time I get to the last page lol.

Lacy, Robert P. [11:31 AM]:

nice

Collins, Monica P. [11:31 AM]:

oh, now I'll have to do that, since it got that kind of reaction out of you.

Collins, Monica P. [11:44 AM]:

I just had a weird idea

Collins, Monica P. [11:51 AM]:

I was thinking of going ahead and installing Visual Studio on my home PC.  Since I spend so much time in front of it, I figure that I might be more inclined to actually work on coding if it were there.  As it is, not only do I have to interrupt whatever has captivated me on the blue behemoth, I also have to get the other device out, set it up, etc.  My only concern is where to store my programs.  It just hit me: instead of storing it on some flash that I have to rut around for and possibly lose, I can store them on my phone.

Collins, Monica P. [12:47 PM]:

hey

Lacy, Robert P. [1:28 PM]:

sup

Collins, Monica P. [1:37 PM]:

did you see my prev msg?

Lacy, Robert P. [1:37 PM]:

ya

sup

Collins, Monica P. [1:44 PM]:

Just wondered what you thought.

Lacy, Robert P. [1:44 PM]:

hmm, depends...for instance here is how i deal with it

i have my big pc on my desk....and when i am there i am more inclined to play than actually work

Collins, Monica P. [1:45 PM]:

same here

Lacy, Robert P. [1:45 PM]:

so when i work on my personal site, i copy the solution files onto a usb, take the laptop to the living room and do it in the couch

big pc offers too many distractions

Collins, Monica P. [1:45 PM]:

lol

DVR is in the living room.  So, not only can I watch what I've recorded, as I can in my BR, I can also delete what's been watched.  Never mind, it was just a passing thought.

Lacy, Robert P. [1:47 PM]:

hmm

yea thats the rule, when im in the living room with the laptop, tv stays off

i might have pandora playing on the laptop...but thats it

pure silence

Collins, Monica P. [1:47 PM]:

I had three TVs on yesterday: BR, WR and LR

Pure silence bothers me, it seems.  After some time, I have to turn on the TV.

Lacy, Robert P. [1:48 PM]:

hmm

New game plan, once again

An argument with Duv this past weekend has brought about yet another change in my game plan.  I never did tell him about my bad PGW score.  He was not a happy camper.  He’s now worried that I might lose my job.  He had asked that I remove as many distractions away from work that I could.

 

So, here’s the new game plan:

·         I had wanted to get a 4^th, smaller iPod, since my largest genre had grown past the device that it was on.  Last night, I removed most of the videos on device #1 and moved the pop/rock genre onto it.  (I can’t put too much more on it, since there is only 18GB left.).  I’m left with some favorite commercials that I have saved (I love the Hershey’s Kisses commercials from about a decade ago), some music videos and some animated movies that I’ve seen so many times and know so well that I don’t even have to watch it; the track sort of becomes a very pleasant droning, somewhat.

·         I’ve moved my study time to 5pm, instead of during lunch.  This way, I can go with the guys to lunch, and not have to worry about not getting any studying done while I’m down there. 

·         I will not take out my netbook until 5pm.  I have set up hourly reminders to remind me to stop any time-wasters that I might be doing.

·         I’m searching for the Temptation Blocker software that I used to have installed on my work PC, to keep me from perusing Internet sites.  The newest version of the websense software we have installed still can’t block particular things for particular people.  Instead, it would be block everyone and set up exceptions.  Temptation Blocker allowed a person to set up sites that they could avoid trying to go to.  However, that person could override that decision, by keying in a very long randomly generated password.  I think that it also kept you from getting to the Task Manager, to just kill T.B., and I think that was why I took it off, since there are occasions where I needed to get to the Task Manager to kill a messed up process.

 

At the same time:

·         I have gone back to using my pseudo whiteboards in my office.  I have one marked with items due this and next week, and this and next month.  Another is marked with what is due today and tomorrow, and today’s #1.  After going without using it for some time, I’ve found that it really did help to be able to actually see it up somewhere.  A task list or calendar doesn’t show you all of it all of the time.

·         I have reinstalled Evernote again onto my work PC.  I had used it some years ago to capture all kinds of data, instead to taking a note here, scribbling a list there, etc.  Some years back, after a conversation with Don, I decided to try Microsoft OneNote instead.  That is the crappiest capturer that I have ever come across.  Evernote now has a mobile version and also keeps it data in  the clouds, meaning that any of my devices can connect to the same repository.  It now makes more sense to use it again.  I can capture on my phone and access it later from any of my PCs that have it installed, which will soon be all of them.  If it had alarms, it would be nearly perfect.

·         I’m condensing the apps on my phone, and at work.  I’m putting as much into Google as I can, since I can also access those via PC or phone.  I find that I’m still doubled up in a few spots, such as notebook apps.  Evernote allows you to combine notebooks into a group, however it has no reminder or alarms.  I could create a list in it, such as a task list but I can’t set a reminder for those tasks.  So, it’s either Google Tasks or another app I found.  The latter one lets the built list for the day display on my phone dashboard area, so that I can access it before the said alarm goes off, which is nice.  I have a project app at work that I’ve been very happy with for the last couple of years.  I can set numerous alarms on any given task or note within in, which is very, very nice.  If Outlook allowed this, I would still be using it to keep my work projects.

 

And another thing:

·         JoAnn’s group had always been big on using the forward planning that Bill McKenna had set up some years ago.  David had dropped using it, mostly because we weren’t hitting all of our meetings.  Scott is continuing the use of it.  Now that it’s in use and we are being diligent about using it, I really like it.  I believe that Scott prefers that we work the items in the order of the list, whenever possible.  That one-at-a-time process will help considerably.

 

Why, oh why, do I do this?

     

 

This is a reminder that I have.  I have it set up so that I can spend an amount of time cleaning out my inbox.  Most of the time, I ignore it.  On the rare occasion that I do actually take the time to do this, I don’t usually set the timer.  For whatever reason, I did today.  After 5 minutes of sorting through my overloaded inbox – it’s been a few weeks since I have cleared out anything – I found that, as usual, I did not want to stop.  I had to almost force myself to stop and move on to something else.  That hyper focusing can really drive me up the wall at times.

 

Change in plans

Instead of studying through lunch, I am going to knock off working an hour early, at 5pm instead of 6pm, and study then.  I’ve changed my reminders to log off then instead of lunch.

 

I also changed up my reminders.  A number of them will now not display a box, instead just do the task that I set them up for in the first place.

How did today go?