Technology ramblings from a dilettante of all things digital

In today's world of missed deadlines, project cost overruns, missed new year's resolutions, pounds of fat not coming off and so on, it sometimes seems like the most truly awe inspiring a human being can experience or witness is someone actually meeting a goal or deadline.

I'm sure that's a rather unrealistically negative viewpoint, but that's how I feel sometimes.  I know I take on too much or set my schedules or deadlines too aggressive and so I suffer the consequences of missing it, and then in my mind its a failure, even if I did my best and actually was very heroic in my efforts to achieve what I was striving for.  When the finish line is way out of reach, its disheartening to know you can't reach it.  Conversely, if you set it too low, its actually better because you're more motivated since the end is in sight, you're much more likely to hit the goal and then you get that mental high of achieving the goal you set out for.

Anywho, that is what I'm focusing on more, lately.  My organizational system, using GTD is working well.  I just need to apply another spoonful of reality when setting schedules.  I tried this out recently when I fleshed out my 5 year plan.  We've all had that question in an interview: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?".

Well I sat down and tried to answer that.  I busted out a trusty Google spreadsheet, making a row for each goal.  A goal can be specific "Conquer Canada" or vague "get more better in shape".  Vague is fine here because we'll flesh out the milestones in a sec.  I then made columns for every month from 1-6, then every year from 1-5.  In each cell I set a specific goal for the 5 year mark, then filled out every cell before it starting at 1 month.  I went over them again and again until it looked like I had a REASONABLE set of milestone stepping stones to reach the lofty 5 year milestone.  Then I took the 1 month goals and either made them projects on my GTD projects list or put them straight on my Remember The Milk to do list.  I don't know about everyone else, but I feel like I have to constantly be improving myself, even if its just a little bit.  So every day I wake up, I've bettered myself from the day before.  Its like level grinding in real life, which was actually one of my favorite parts of Diablo 2.  (Sidenote:  I can't wait for Diablo3 and Starcraft2!  I think I may take a week of vacation time just to play them right release)

Most people can remember a time in their childhood when one kid out of a group would disagree with how the others were playing and so they'd stomp their feet, yell NO and take the ball and go stand in the corner or just shoot free throws on one end.  Or maybe they'd take their ball and go home.  Maybe it wasn't basketball, but some other sport or game.  "Doesn't play well with others" would be the phrase I suppose.  Well that is how Microsoft is with the internet.  I wanted to take a look at the latest training certifications on Microsoft's website at microsoft.com/learning and what do I encounter:

A message informing me that I have no choice but to install silverlight.  There's no "html version" or anything like that.  Microsoft forces you to use their proprietary plugin.  <sigh>  This is ActiveX all over again.  You're required to use their latest proprietary crappy software, when you hadn't entirely recovered from their previous proprietary crappy software.

Think about the Java Applet.  It was a plugin actually done right.  It was on most platforms and for most browsers and everyone was happy.  Then Microsoft tried to break Java Applets by impregnating them with Microsoft proprietary crap.  Sun rightfully b*$#-slapped them back in their place and so Microsoft took their ball and went home.  They stopped including java support in their browsers.

Anywho, I wasn't planning on posting today, but this particularly irked me.

Weekly updates are probably the second most important part of GTD.  Which makes it less than or equal to good that I suck so horribly at it.  The hardest parts for me are probably A) getting around to it (kind of ironic, no?) and 2) taking too long to do it  (although I may be wrong on that count).

The biggest part of my weekly review right now is maintaining a spreadsheet listing out all my current projects and the steps for each, in order.  I then take the next step from each project and put it onto Remember the Milk.  It seems to work well.  It definitely helps keeping the spreadsheet because you really don't know all the steps for even a medium or small sized project until you sit down and list them out.  One of the crucial things for Getting Things Done (or GTD) is that everything on the actual tasklist is something you can do.  That was a big pitfall for me in the past.  I would have something like "achieve world peace" on my tasklist.  I'd take one look at it and go "ugh" and never get started on it.  Or I would want to do it, but I'd sit and ponder for a while thinking what the next step toward that monster project would be and I'd either A) not remember, 2) think of the step 2 steps ahead or C) waste too much time figuring out something I'd figured out last week.  The weekly review is Cyberdyne (and maybe an ad-hoc review here and there), but during the majority of the week, I am simply a task terminator.

Next I plan to play around with Mind Mapping, figure out why its better than using my whiteboard or Evernote and whether or not I really want to step up to THAT level of geekiness.

I'd like to take one final second to give a shout out to my favorite lunchtime web series, Man In the Box Show.

Well its been 3 months since I last posted about my desire to join the GTD world.  First I'd like to apologize to my readers, both of you, for my lack of posts.  So how's it all working out? 

Remember the Milk has been awesome!  Visiting its website is my main place for modifying my tasks.  I can easily see the whole list on each tab and reorg them with keyboard shortcuts.  For a daily summary, I prefer to use the plugin for the iGoogle page or the one for gmail.  And being able to add from my HTC Mogul phone is great too, although I mainly use it to review what I need to do when I"m out and about.  Its invaluable for grocery lists when I'm at the store and I know it has everything on the list since I can manage it from anywhere.

I've been experimenting with using RTM for work as well.  Having one list is optimum.   Plus I get a mental "aahhhhhh" from completing all my tasks for the day.  I'm still grappling with a few issues though.  I like my work task manager for its richer gui interface, more fields, easier ability to add notes and the ability to add subtasks.  I've noticed that I'm now motivated to do tasks I'd normally put off, if nothing else than to get my list cleared off.  It sounds a little goofy, but it works rather well.

Evernote is working out great.  It stores everything I throw at it and I've had no issues with its syncing so far.  My only gripe, and its a small one, is that I wish the new evernote firefox addin that lets me copy to evernote is missing the ability to include a link to the original webpage when it gets pasted into Evernote.  I also wish it were easier to funnel it into different notepads, but its easy to move a note to another notepad once its in evernote.

I think my weakest link right now is the weekly reviews of my tasks and projects.  Sometimes I miss them or don't do them right or rush through them.  I need to work on that.  I'll keep y'all posted.

Okay, so my memory is probably better than the average person as far as being able to recall things manually.  My internal alarm clock and internal todo list is HORRIBLE.  So to complement that (the todo list), I'm trying to embrace GTD, by David Allen and I'm a premium paying member of Remember the Milk.  That's working out well, except for the fact that I'm pretty bad about the weekly cleanup of my tasklist.  I think this habit is definitely a keeper and I will be able to refine it with time.  For my job, I use this ToDoList. 

Now, to address my normal memory.  Remembering all the details of something, like researching a big purchase, is impossible.  So for that I am trying out Evernote.  So far it seems like it a keeper.  Its still in beta, but its ability to sync between computers combined with its ability to capture things WELL from almost any source (computer clipboard, cell phone picture message that gets OCRed, etc) is awesome!  I'll keep you posted on how it goes as it progresses.  FYI, if you need an invite to the beta, post in the comments here and I'll get one to you.

After reading this post I decided its time to get started on my habit changing activities.  I posted my answer in the comments on that site and I'll post it here as well

1. The habit:  not following my normal workout schedule
2. The why:  I need to get in shape to be more competitive for outdoor volleyball season, to prep for indoor volleyball season, to make myself more attractive to my girlfriend and to improve my self confidence.
3. The difference: The deadline.  Its not the most enjoyable, but I work well with deadlines and pressure.  I'm going to find a volleyball tournament just over 30 days from now, sign up for it at one or two levels higher than I normally play.  For me to have a prayer of doing respectably, I need to definitely be in better shape than I am now.

Update:  Here's the tournament I think I'll put as my deadline:

http://www.mavolleyball.org/t06.html

I've probably lost all of my loyal readers (both of them) from my severe lack of posting anything on here.  Anywho, I just wanted to state for the record that I will start publishing frequently on here again.  Expect to see several posts over the next couple of days, as I boldly pretend to try to bring my pet projects and interests to fruition here at work.

I recently got this error mucking with SQL.  It wouldn't connect worth a darn.  So I managed to find this simple concise blog entry that fixed it and so I feel I should mention it here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2007/05/13/sql-network-interfaces-error-26-error-locating-server-instance-specified.aspx

For me, I just has to start the sql browser service.  Woooo.....

Just a quick note, if you happen to be running a service that will call automated tests like WatiN or IEUnit that need to open a browser or interact with the desktop in some way, you need to go into Computer Management, open the properties for that service and check the box that says "Allow this service to interact with the desktop."

This is just a minor thing, but there were some assemblies I needed in the GAC and wanted to reference them with minimum hasslehoff, so I just copied them out of the C:\windows\assembly\gac folder using the command prompt.  I got the solution from this post