BoofleBlog

There has been a big hoo-hah recently over blogging in the workplace and what people should and shouldn’t say about their jobs in their blogs. You will find nothing here about my place of employment. Why not? Simple. This site is accessible to anyone, including my co-workers and my bosses. Will any of them read it? Probably not. Is there a chance that they will? Yes.

It’s not like I’m going to be anonymous if they find this site — they’re not going to spend too much time wondering which of their employees is writing at jtgrimes.com. Best not to bring up anything (too) work related. I may say “my company is interviewing and too many people are being stupid about X.” I may say “coding standards at my work are pretty loose.” I will not say “I work with a bunch of poopie-heads and the people running the company are dumber than a box of rocks.” I won’t say it because it’s not true and I won’t say it because even if it were true, it would be stupid to say.

For similar reasons, we won’t find anything personal about my family and friends here. I don’t know who’s reading what, but I’m not going to embarass anyone. It’s just more hassle than it’s worth.

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This is going to be my nice, straightforward to-do manager. It’s called the Elephant for two reasons:

1. “Elephants never forget.” I doubt that’s true, but enough people think it’s true that it doesn’t matter. In any case, the plan is for this Elephant to keep me from forgetting.
2. “Eating the elephant” — there’s an old story or joke that floats around the back of my mind — I can’t remember any details, but I remember that the only way to eat an elephant is piece by piece. This list should help me break up the pieces of the elephant into managable chunks.

This is also going to be my first PHP project — I’m looking forward to it.

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If your pc runs Windows, you should be using Firefox.

1. Internet Explorer makes you more vulnerable than Firefox. Firefox may have just as many holes in its security as IE (though I doubt it), but because fewer people use it, fewer nasty people target those holes.
2. Tabbed browsing is really cool. If you’re like me (you’re probably not, but just pretend for a minute), you usually have several websites open at once. You’re reading an article which has a link to another article and you know you want to read both. My solution was to right-click and say Open in New Window. Then I had two copies of Internet Exploder running. With each extra article, I’d have more and more open windows and less and less sanity. With Firefox, you can elect to open pages in new tabs, so they’re all in one program and much easier to find.
3. Extensions rock!Firefox’s programmers made it easy to write programs which work with Firefox to improve your surfing experience.
4. Firefox squashes pop-ups. Internet Explorer has gotten better about stopping pop-ups, but Firefox is the absolute champ. There’s also a plugin to block banner ads so that you never have to see them again.
5. Google search is built right in. There’s a little search box, always available, which launches a Google search. No more going to Google and typing. No, no. That extra click is just more time than we’re willing to waste.
6. Live bookmarks are neat, even if you don’t bother with them. This is something that’s on the list because it’s cool, not because I find it useful. For those web-savvy folks out there who know what RSS is and who read syndicated pages, you can bookmark a feed and have the list of recent posts displayed when you click the bookmark. It’s neat, but I’d rather just use Bloglines.

Now that I’ve convinced you to use Firefox, let’s take a look at some of the best extensions:

• Adblock hides ads on webpages
• IEView lets you right-click to open a link in Internet Explorer (for the handful of sites which work better with IE)
• Tabbrowser Preferences let you have tighter control of your tabbed viewing
• ImageZoom lets you zoom in on images without having to save them first
• FoxyTunes gives you controls for your media player inside the browser — no more clicking around just to replay the last song.

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A hack is a way of doing something fast to make a computer program work — a quick & dirty solution. A life hack is a quick and dirty way to make something in real life work better.

Merlin Mann’s excellent 43 Folders wiki has an excellent, growing list, and is a great place to post your own. Here are some examples:

• To remind yourself of something when you get home, leave a message on your answering machine. I do this one all the time. In fact, most of the messages left for me during a work day are me saying “bring in the book for Margaret” or “send Jim a birthday card.” This works best if you live alone or have a housemate/spouse/offspring who can be relied on to give you the message.
• Take a picture of any really good haircut you get so you can show it to your barber/hairdresser the next time and say “this is what it should look like.”
• If you have something that gets lost and it makes you crazy (or it drives you insane when it’s broken), buy two. TiVo remotes are a good example.
• Copy your cds if you’re going to take them anywhere. I’ve got half a dozen cds that I’ve copied to keep in my truck. If they get scratched or stolen or someone wants to borrow them, no problem. The originals are still safely at home.
• Make yourself a “sick box” and keep it next to the bed. Kleenex, Tylenol, pink stuff, phone numbers of people at work, something to read, anything you’re not going to want to get up for when you feel like crap.

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I’m moving my old posts from blogspot. We’ll actually have some stuff up here soon.

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