Good financial advice from the Wisdom Journal:

Are YOU prepared? The greatest opportunities are spawned from the most formidable obstacles and deep wisdom is born from painful circumstances. Good always triumphs and there IS something good that will come from these hard economic times. Be prepared for the coming opportunities by:

• Getting out of debt.
• Setting up an emergency fund.
• Establishing a common sense budget.
• Living within below your means.
• Updating your skills and resume.
• Having a prosperous mindset at all times.
• Educating yourself on financial matters.

Be careful, stack loot, and stay financially safe. It’ll all be over soon but don’t lose more than you have to.

Despite the fact that I’m not the type of person who needs new, cool things all the time, I seem to have found my way to several new electronic devices recently. One of these devices has changed what I do so drastically that it’s my obligation to talk about it.

http://www.joshcanhelp.com/images/blog/eee/eee08_sm.jpg

Asus EEE black

I bit the bullet and bought an Asus EEE 1000H (in black) and I’m psyched about it. I’m really uninterested in giving you a walk-through of every little, tiny thing so I offer the now-answered questions that formed pre-purchase, a couple of the drawbacks, and a few things I love about it.

This thing is friggen tiny

EEE vs. Vostro

That is the whole point of these new netbook computers, in the end. My old laptop was portable, of course, but portable in a “need another bag to take it to the coffeeshop” kind of way. I stick this thing in the padded, zip-up case it came with, stuff it in my bookbag, and off we go. I barely notice it when it’s there and the charger combo is so small, it fits right in a side pocket. I’m able to have this with me more often which lets me get stuff done everywhere and stay very well connected as well.

David vs. Goliath

The trade-off, of course, is the keyboard side. Someone told me the keyboard is “92%” the size of a normal one. I found it particularly difficult to type on when I first got it (especially with respect to the odd right shift key placement you will no doubt read about again and again if you are researching this computer) but I’ve gotten MUCH better. I still have more typos than a typical keyboard but I think I can actually  type a little faster on this keyboard because of the short key travel (how little it takes to press a key down) and how little my hands have to move. I’ve also gotten used to the right shift key and it hardly bothers me anymore. FYI, I look when I type about half of the time.

I will mention, however, that the screen size is quite small and a little irritating to work with. When I bought this little guy, I was not planning on doing anything too labor intensive. The width isn’t the problem, it’s the 600px height. It’s hard to get things centered just right and surfing the web (not to mention building web pages) is a bit harder than I thought it would be. Not like “damn, I really wish this screen was bigger” hard, just “I’ll do it if I need to” hard.

Windows XP on the EEE works great

I waffled back and forth about the hard drive versus the solid state drive and whether or not I wanted Window or Ubuntu Linux installed and, in the end, went with the hard drive and XP. I’m definitely pleased with this combination. Start-up is pretty good, shut down is really quick, stand-by is a dream (seconds from on to off and back), and the performance really leaves me wanting nothing more. I should mention that I replaced the included 1 GB of RAM with a 2 GB stick. The surgery was minor and I had no problems getting it to work.

Outpatient surgery

I can definitely tell the load time for certain things is slower, the one example that sticks out in my mind being Open Office. I leave the quick start option off (I hate it when programs want to install a start-up launcher as though their program is SO important that I need quick access to it EVERY time I’m on my computer… get over yourselves) so the load time is a bit slow. On my desktop, however, it comes up about 2 or 3 times as fast. This, again, is fine depending on your expectations of this computer. I expect it to do certain things great and other things not as well. I bought it knowing that and being perfectly fine with it. If you’re expecting 3.0 GHz performance out of a 1.6 GHz machine, you will be disappointed. I am getting really crappy streaming video playback, though which is annoying. I’m going to try a movie from the hard drive and see if that makes a difference. It surfs the web as fast as my desktop and I figured the network bandwidth would be the bottleneck.

ASUS EEE Battery life is excellent

Asus claims 7 hours of battery life with this thing and I’m inclined to believe that it’s possible but maybe not optimal. On full charge, I turn the screen down as low as possible (pretty dark but still perfectly legible) and switch the mode to “Power Save” and the battery life meter says I have almost 6 hours of power remaining. I have a few programs open but I’m not really doing anything on it. I’d say 5 hours is about the most you’ll get out of it with the screen at a usable brightness and working on a couple of things. Still, 5 hours is longer than most interstate flights and longer than I can stand it at any coffeeshop.

Random thoughts

• The touchpad seems to be an area of complaint for some people online but I have not had a problem with it. I can type just fine while keeping my wrists away from it. It’s sensitive but not too sensitive and the multi-touch functioning (zoom in, scrolling, multi-finger taps) are great (when they work properly). I have not spent a lot of time setting the touchpad up so there is likely more that I can do.
• The screen is GORGEOUS. The brightness goes up so high that it’s almost hard to look at in a dim room. Clarity is great, colors are excellent, size takes some getting used to.
• I don’t know what they did with the wireless in this computer but I’ve never had a computer or a phone that linked up so quickly and stayed locked onto the signal. If I put it on standby, go somewhere else that has wifi I’ve used before, and take it out of standby, it’s usually re-connected before the desktop comes up. Doesn’t disconnect randomly, gets great reception, and is just a pleasure to use.
• Yeah, so the shiny black case gets a lot of fingerprints. Be prepared or go with the white.
• The little zip-up case it comes with is great. It’s the perfect size and the outside feels “sticky” like soft-touch rubber or something. It collects a horrendous amount of dust but if you set it on the car seat, it doesn’t slide around and fall off. If this was intentional, it was ingenious.

A+++ would buy again

I went back and forth between this particular model and its competitors (Acer, MSI, Dell). I can’t say that I like this one better because I’ve never been about to try one of the other ones out but I can say that I’m really not left wanting anything more out of this machine. Performance was better than expected, interaction is excellent, display is great, portability is a dream… what more could I want?

I would definitely recommend this to anyone that needs a second, very mobile computer. What’s great about the netbook category of computers is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get great functionality. If I had, say, a dual-core laptop with a big screen and a DVD drive and so on, it would be a competitor with my desktop. I don’t need complete functionality on the go, I need connectivity, ease of use, reliability, and my core programs. I don’t need to play games (though I know someone who plays an old version Age of Empires on his), I don’t need to watch DVDs on a regular basis (though I can download movies to watch just fine), and I don’t need to do 3D modeling (ever). In the end, this is exactly what I needed and exactly what I got.

Mine

Well done Asus!

I’ve been on a quest to try my hand at a real programming language. I get the feeling that I’m really going to like what I learn. Said another way, I really hope that I like what I learn. My brain kind of works like a computer and if I can just figure out how a computer operates on the nano level, I’ll be one step closer to understanding myself.

That was a joke.

After a thoroughly inexhaustive consideration of available languages, I chose PHP to learn a few things. Since I’ve been doing work in Wordpress (written in PHP) and have had a few people express the need for database functionality in their webpages (PHP and MySQL can handle almost anything you can throw at it) AND I’m working on a site based on Pligg (also written in PHP), it seemed like the right direction to go. It also seems fairly simple to pick up (comparatively) and the support/community/documentation is quite robust (one of the few words I use despite the fact that I hate it).

Despite the many pages dedicated to PHP tutorials, how-tos, and tips/tricks, I have not been very successful finding exercises I can practice with. I’ve been a student for longer than I care to admit, I need homework to function properly!! So I searched high and low and put together this list of beginner PHP exercises. I’m also including a link to my results so people can see the results (no guarantee of accuracy).

Zend’s Beginner’s Guide to PHP is a  good place to start if you need a refresher or need some help.

From the Digital Point forums

1. Define a variable called ‘name’ containing the text ‘Mario’ and then write “I am Mario.” using the variable to write the ‘Mario’ part. You may only use two commands max!
2. Use the code from the previous example but add a check using an ‘if’ condition to check whether the name is ‘mario’. Place the text from the previous example in the ‘if’ condition.
3. Try changing the $name variable to ‘awaken’. You’ll notice that the previous script writes nothing (If it doesn’t, go back and redo #2, it’s not complete!)
4. Use a while-loop that starts at 0 and keeps running while the number is lower then 5. Write the variable to the screen after each run.
5. Modify the previous example to use a ‘for’ loop instead of a ‘while’ loop

From IT-UNIVERSITETET I KØBENHAVN

“Make a script that takes a number N as argument and prints out the N’th line of the file brixtofte.txt. If N is negative or larger than the number of lines in the file, an error message should be printed. Do not forget the rules about manipulating with files!”

From Huzilla.org’s PHP book

A quick note about this site. The “book” is very useful but on every page you’ll see a big headline that tells you that that particular version in not the most current. The current version took a minute to load and was in wiki format. I didn’t immediately see any of the quizzes or exercises so I’m linking to the old version.

I’m only listing the first few sections of quizzes (the beginner information). Each section listed in the table of contents has its own exercise bank.

• Quiz 1 (Introduction to PHP)
  
• Quiz 2 (Variables and Operators)
  
• Quiz 3 (Functions)
• Quiz 4 (Arrays)
• Quiz 5 (Objects)
• Quiz 6 (Forms)
• Quiz 7 (Files)
• Quiz 8 (Databases)
• Answers to all quizzes

From Iowa State University

“Download the yeast.txt file from the website. Write a script that displays the names of all the protein-fragments contained in the file [the block of capital letters only].

“Adapt [the script above] to construct an array while you read through the file that contains all the titles of fragments. Now encapsulate that functionality in a PHP function GetFragmentTitles($fn) whereby $fn is name of the file and the return result is an array containing all the titles. The pseudocode for this function is as follows:

function GetFragmentTitles($fn) {
// open file $fn
// create a new array $titles
// for each $line in file $fn
// if $line represents a title
// add the title to array
// close the file
return $titles;
}

“Construct a form where the end-user can enter (part of) the name of a fragment. A second script subsequently searches the titles to see if (part of) the name occurs in the file. Report on how many fragments are found.

“Simulate a BLAST-search interface: a user can enter part of a sequence and your script should report if and where the subsequence is found. Use really small fragments to see if they show up multiple times. What do you report if no fragments are found?

• Extra: What if the user enters an empty string?
• Extra: Can you think of a good use of the strtolower() function in this scenario?
• Extra: Can you highlight the found sequence?”

My progress so far…

why, it’s my Amazon Affiliates widget!

Introduction

There are two companies online that I like a lot (love?) and will always patronize (as long as they stick to their formula); Amazon.com and Newegg.com. Put simply, the prices are great, I’ve never had an issue, what I order shows up fast, and, when I need it, the customer service is great (Newegg’s service is off-the-charts great). As such, I also give them respect on here and by word-of-mouth.

Someone clued me into the whole Amazon Affiliates program where you advertise books you like from Amazon on your site. Since I wanted SOME kind of monetization and I like to show my support for things I really like, it seemed like the perfect combination. I think, however, it requires a bit of explanation so you don’t think that those are just random books. I actually picked them out and read them myself and now I think you should do the same.

I’m a newbie so what’s in it for me?

So, let’s say you’re a bit web savvy and let’s say you’ve got a lot to say so let’s say you start yourself a little blog. You start off slowly, write a few posts, get some momentum and now you want to see what you can do about raking in the dough.You get to researching blog advertisements and, BAM, too much information.

I don’t think you can go wrong with the Amazon widget, to be honest. Pick books that match your content, pick books you support and why wouldn’t people click on the links? I think it’s honest, it’s up-front, you can support something you agree with, and their widgets look great.

I’ll report back when I’ve retired off of the revenue and tell you how to do the same.

So what’s so great about those books?

In the spirit of being honest, I thought I might put a little review on here of each to prove that I ACTUALLY own these books and ACTUALLY read them (well, you don’t so much read a CSS guide or an Illustrator book.. I did read the XHTML one though). Here’s why I like them (I’m posting these on Amazon as well)…

The Elements of Style (Illustrated) by Strunk, White, and Kalman

I wish I could remember who originally recommended the original Strunk & White Elements of Style to me. If I could remember, I would find them and hug them unabashedly.

If you’re writing ANYTHING and care AT ALL about how it turns out then do yourself a favor and pick this one up. The organization is very strange (there isn’t any to speak of) and the writing style is very direct. The result is a no-nonsense book that teaches you to cut the crap out of your writing.

There are many, many valuable lessons contained in Strunk’s short and useful guide but the best ones, for me, are the ones regarding comma usage and his favorite command, “Omit needless words.” During everything I’ve ever written since reading this book I’ve heard a disembodied voice telling me to remove words. I’ve noticed while editing other people’s work that the piece can be improved dramatically by deleting all the words that say nothing.

It’s a quick read but a necessary one for anyone doing any kind of writing.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

As with “Elements…,” I’m not sure how I heard about this book. It was one of those odd series of events that ends with something in your mailbox. I read a few quick things about it online and suddenly decided that I must read the book. I’m glad I did because this was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time.

Anne has a casual but polished writing style that you can’t help but to get lost in. She writes like a close friend speaks to you, eschewing ego and pretentiousness to deliver her simple, personal message. It started out a  bit slow but the stories she told were very entertaining. By the time I reached the middle of the book, I was totally hooked and found the last half hilarious and very informative.

This book is, in the end, a guide on how to be a writer, not a guide on how to write. What I mean by that is you won’t really develop your style or improve your sentence structure by reading this book. What you will do, however, is come to terms with a lot of the obstacles facing writers at every stage of their careers. Her humor and her honesty makes you feel really good about contributing, failing, hating yourself, and moving on.

Though I would definitely recommend this book to anyone writing their own book, I would recommend it even more to anyone living in this world and doing the best that they can. She talks a lot about failing and self-hatred and giving up and charging through. I found myself particularly centered after reading about her embarrassing reactions and consequent success over jealousy and writer’s block. I learned more about my life and myself than I did about writing. I don’t necessarily consider myself a writer but I explore my creativity in different ways and this book really speaks to all of them.

Pick this book up, read it, and feel better about just being yourself.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Finally, a book with a history I can share.

This book was given to me by my dad, the king of business books and the fastest, most prolific reader I know. This guy blows through almost 1,000 pages a month on top of all the magazines, newspapers, and online sources he devours. Though our reading tastes aren’t completely aligned, when he recommends a book, I typically read it (or at least add it to The List in earnest).

This is the kind of book I don’t read. Though I find the advertising industry slightly interesting, I mostly hate it and wish it would go away (despite having a hand in it). This book, however, really cuts through the crap and explains positioning and branding in a way I’ve never heard before. In terms of marketing and branding, I pretty much live by the concepts in this book. Oh, and it’s about 30 years old. That’s how good this book is.

The  book shows you what successful companies have done to become that way and what other successful companies have done to screw it all up. With tons of examples and a very straight-forward writing style, this book will explain why certain products win and why others fail.

I read this book quickly and moved onto others by the same authors. They really know their stuff.

The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

This is the best book I’ve ever read and likely will ever read. Period.

I have suffered off and on from depression throughout my life and this book, the first and only book I’ve ever read on the subject, did so much for my understanding about the condition. I’ve really never read a book that explained what I think and feel better than this.

First off, Andrew Solomon is an excellent writer. He gets a bit verbose at times but I found each sentence, regardless of it’s complexity, an adventure in and of itself. He paints such an incredible picture of the feelings and thoughts that accompany depression. Like anyone able to describe depression, Andrew has been through it and reading what he’s suffered from made me realize how lucky I have been with my own depression. Andrew has seen hell, been through hell, and came out enlightened.

Strangely, I always find this book difficult to describe adequately. His words were just so well chosen and the research so personal and interesting, I feel like it’s a book that needs to be experienced to be understood fully.

If you suffer from depression, clinical or occasional or undiagnosed or anything, I completely recommend reading this book from cover to cover. If you know someone who suffers from this condition and are struggling to understand what they’re going through, this book will go a long way towards helping you see what they see. I’ve really never had a book that explained something as well as this.

The Non-Designers Design & Type Books by Robin Williams

I wanted to write a quick blurb about this little book that has gone a long way towards teaching me proper design.

I’ve been dabbling seriously in graphic design for about a year now and find it one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever done and also one of the most satisfying. It’s very subjective, hard to describe, very time consuming, very sensitive, and totally maddening. When it works, it really works but when it doesn’t work, it shows you the highest level of frustration possible.

Robin explains all the basics very well which puts you in a position to begin to experiment. If you just stick yourself in front of Photoshop and try to bang out a business card or a menu or a technical document (which you really wouldn’t do in Photoshop), it’s probably not going to work out well unless you’ve had some experience. If, however, you read this little guide and try it, you’re going to have a few more ideas and at least understand the contrainst you’re working with in terms of color, alignment, etc.

This book is great for people without any experience in design who want to improve the way their documents, webpages, application screens, and printed material looks. You’re not going to win any contests with this knowledge (and neither are her examples) but what you produce will immediately look better. The writing style is a bit goofy but I use what I learned every day in everything I produce from graffiti to webpages to technical documents to resumes.

CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer

A solid plot, well-formed characters, and an intriguing writing style make this… wait, what?

This is a boring, very useful book. I’ve read a lot about CSS on the web and nothing came close to the  explanation in this book. Instead of saying things like “we won’t bother you with the complex way this is calculated,” Meyer bothers you with the complexity. Each property I read made me really understand how it works and how it should be used.

I’ve been reading this bad-boy from cover to cover and I think I’m doing myself a bit of a disservice. I think I’m going to skip to the positioning section (everyone could use a better understanding of this mysterious and magical world), read that, maybe read a few other things I’m interested in mastering and then leave it as a reference. It makes a lot more sense to read the properties you don’t understand than trying to get through it all.

Learn (x)HTML and CSS online, then buy this book is you’re serious about getting into web page design.

Visual Quickstart Guide to HTML, XHTML, & CSS by Elizabeth Castro

I think I bought this book a bit late in my web design learning process but I still find a lot of use out of it. I use it as my general reference book and I’m constantly in the appendix and the chapter about forms.

Though I would recommend this book to people because I found it useful, I think there might be better books on the subject. I say this because it does not go into the level of detail you really need to master HTML. It does a great job explaining what it does but there are quite a few things left out or breezed over to keep the book and appropriate size. Also, combining HTML and CSS in the same book is probably a bad idea. The CSS book I reviewed above is bigger than this book and, ostensibly, covers 1/3 of the material.

If you want to learn enough about HTML to get by creating simple web pages or fixing your own, this is a great book for you. If, however, you want to really understand HTML and get into web development, I would suggest finding a book with a bit more content (probably something from O’Reilly [publishers of the CSS book above]).

Introduction

I was listening to a BBC program the other day that was talking about whether grandparents raising their grandkids was a good thing or a bad thing. Some people called in to say, yes, it was good but also bad. Other people called in to say it was bad, but also good. In the end, it seemed like the show’s host, whether on directive or personally motivated, was looking for “the truth,” in the sense that she wanted an answer - the answer. This is the format of most discourse in modern-day media, it seems, because it simplifies the issue down to the proverbial black and white. Instead of looking for some perspective on things, the conversation, apparently, always needs to come to a conclusion.

Self Help by hagner_james on flickr

I see this mentality a lot when I read the prolific “self-help” & “personal-growth” genre of blogs. There are “keys to success,” “paths to financial freedom” and, my favorite, “rock-solid ways to improve productivity.” If you’re familiar with blogs, then you’ll know the format of a catchy title, a hooky intro, and subsequent headers that are action-packed and full of information (cough). Knowing this, it’s hard to be TOO critical of the content because, hey, people are reading it and subscribing to it and linking to it and people are getting paid and everything is great. Still, there is something a bit funny about someone who discovered their path to productivity on their own but then shares it as the gospel of getting things done.

So, I’m going to share with you how I work. This method would/will drive certain people nuts. This method is not foolproof but none of them are. It also doesn’t work for absolutely everything, but none of the other ones do either. I read a lot of the productivity posts out there, internalize the message, and typically end up rejecting a lot of it. My system is probably a hybrid of all the things I’ve read about “making work happen.” Still, I modified it to be my own and, while I’m always changing and improving, it’s working well for me (ask the friends and family I don’t talk to enough).

I’m new to all of this… how can this help?

It’s so easy to get caught up on the “self-help” cycle of reading other people’s insights constantly and going nowhere in your own life. It’s also easy to get down on yourself if you just CAN’T meditate for an hour in the morning with a warm cup of white tea and visualize your day coming together. Some people work one way, some work another, and many don’t work at all. I want to tell you what I do to manage the chaos, live in the chaos, and use the chaos to my advantage. Maybe you’ll learn something, maybe you won’t but hopefully, by the end of this, you’ll at least feel OK about having your OWN system (or no system).

1. I work on what I want to work on

I’m simply incapable of being motivated and productive when I work on projects that don’t have my full interest. I’m still trying to figure out if this is just a human thing or a particular limitation of mine. Regardless if the origin is DNA- or species-related, it is something that affects my professional life profoundly.

Part of having a job of any kind is taking the good with the bad. This is, thankfully, true for rockstars, artists, programmers, teachers, and everyone else. We all have those moments, some more than others. So what to do when you get tired of something?

Move right along. Do the next thing. Stop what you’re doing before you ruin it.

If I can’t write, I don’t write and I try something different like web coding or maybe a bit of design or just run-of-the-mill organization. If I’m not feeling mentally capable, I do something repetitive. If I’m feeling competent and smart, I try to tackle something high level. Unless it’s due, people are waiting, or something’s on fire, if I don’t want to contribute, I don’t.

2. I jump from project to project, sometimes mid-sentence

This might be the most destructive of my tendencies but so far so good.

Unfinished and forgotten by Zach_ManchesterUK on flickr

I’ve been writing an email to someone, lost the motivation to type and switched to something else immediately. I wasn’t interrupted, the connection wasn’t broken, I didn’t change my mind, I just decided not to continue emailing. I often save drafts with unfinished sentences, let alone paragraphs.

Sometimes your inspiration to complete a certain task only lasts so long. Maybe the first couple paragraphs are gold and the rest are, say, crap. Instead of just pushing through for the sake of doing so, I stop and move on to come back when the motivation re-arises.

Now, there are times when it pays to sit down, drill in, and concentrate on what you’re doing. There are many things that require a strong train of thought and benefit from moving from idea to idea within a framework. There are more things, however, that simply don’t need that kind of attention. Emails in any form, documents, web pages… many things just need you to complete mental modules and then you can move on.

Never underestimate solid concentration with no interruptions for long periods of time. Don’t be afraid, however, to take microbreaks and split your project into chunks. The drip drip drip can, in many cases, lead to a better output.

3. I keep close track of (almost) everything

I’m on top of my shit, that’s all there is to it.

I stay in close contact with people and I do what I say I’m going to do. I’m frequently used by other people as their system of organization because I keep things moving and can remember where things left off. I’m not great with uber-minutia and I can’t possibly admit to always being on time, remembering anything, and making no mistakes. What I don’t do, however, is drop the ball.

I keep my inbox empty or as close as possible. I don’t move anything to a long-term to do list unless it’s a personal project. Anything client-related is up-front and center because I put it there. Things shift in priority, no doubt, but I don’t stop doing things because I forgot about them/. They either lost everyone’s interest or died off.

This helps me keep very current with everything I’m doing and helps me to consciously lose track of things that don’t matter.

4. I stay very organized

I wouldn’t say that I’m anal about everything but everything definitely has it’s place.

Emails get saved if they’re important and should stay as emails. Otherwise, their content gets stripped quickly and moved into an appropriate secondary system (like my contacts or my calendar). My USB drive is full and it’s easy to find everything that I need. My pictures are listed and sorted in a way that makes sense to my brain.

I don’t spend all day scheming up systems and sorting things around; that would defeat the purpose of having a system like mine. I take care of things immediately lest they fall off my radar. Documents are saved and sorted, bookmarks are sorted and printed to PDF if they’re THAT good, and personal information gets saved into Outlook (on my phone, synced at work, and exported into Excel to make sure I don’t lose track.

Again, I’m not the picture of organizational perfection but it’s hard for things to slip through the cracks. I make it that way so I can work the way I want to.

5. I’m quick to abandon a system that isn’t working

If my organization is the glue then this is the engineer to check to make sure my glue is holding.

I don’t “swear by” my system and I certainly would not go out of my way to recommend it (I would recommend SOME kind of system, though). I’m always on the lookout for better ways to do what I do because I always  like to save time and change is a good thing.

I try out new systems, software, methods, tools, etc but, more often than not, my day-to-day functioning doesn’t change much. This is because I re-iterate, check, and evaluate what I’m doing on a constant basis. This isn’t quite a conscious process, it’s more like something that’s in the back of my head. If a certain piece of software is pissing me off or I keep forgetting to do something or something is irritating me, a red flag appears and I’m ready to replace it.

Case in point, my email situation. I have too many damn email accounts to keep track of for no good. I have a business one that I access with my phone and Gmail. I also have a separate Gmail, separate Hotmail, separate Yahoo, and an office account. In the end, I feel no more connected because I have a million email accounts. I’m in the process of overhauling this system to make it work for me (expect a post about it).

That’s all

Yeah, just that.

Though the way I work is a bit unorthodox, I’ve shown many people how to make their lives easier using free/cheap software and a system to use it. I absolutely would not be as successful as I am without the technology that I use every day. If you’re interested in learning about getting your professional life together in a way that makes sense and isn’t a burden, get a hold of me.