Anyway, somewhere along the way Chrome became the OS default browser. I didn’t want that, so I change the default in “Default Programs” in Windows 7. The trouble was, the one application (Lotus Notes 8.5.2) that I needed to have open IE by default wasn’t. It wouldn’t let go of Chrome.
I reflected on this. It could be a philosophical stand by IBM against Microsoft, but this seems somehow an unlikely and obscure venue for battle.
Instead it turns out to be a bit of bad programming that points to some Registry Entries that don’t get updated when you change your defult browser. It took me a long time to fins the answer, but find it I did.
Manually modify the following registry keys to remove Chrome and
point it to
iexplore.exe:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command\
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command\
HKCU\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\command\
HKCU\Software\Classes\https\shell\open\command\
… and from there you should be golden. If you want to change your browser to Firefox or back to Chrome I imagine you’ll have to edit those entries again. When I edited my registry (and you will make backups, won’t you?) only two of the four entries had to be changed.
This post can use a serious refactoring all by itself. I won’t. This is more of a thought experiment, internal discussion open to all, and a mild rambling brain dump. If anyone gets any value out of it (including me), excelsior!
I use Emacs‘ Org-mode for my GTD workflow. Emacs is ubiquitous for me on my computers. Org-mode is an add-on that I place a lot of stock in for information management and GTD. Mobileorg, the method/app that gets the Org-mode data to and from smartphones and tablets, is installed on my mobile devices.
Right now I use Org-mode mostly for work. Everything is in three basic files: inbox.org for capture, notes.org for note handling, and todo.org for task handling. These are more theoretical than practical. For example, I configured the org-capture function in org-mode to completely miss the inbox and place captured notes and tasks into their respective files. They should go instead into the inbox where I daily and weekly review and refile.
I also need my personal life captured in here. The line between personal and business time is beyond blurry. It’s more of a wind blown wave in the sand. Because of that and the highly similar nature of my day – it’s usual if not common for me to step out of the office for an hour or so to run an errand while I can be up the wee hours in my home office or hotel room working on budgets – I need to reflect my whole life in there and obliterate the microscopic distinction between the two. Plus my work life is generally more interesting of the two these days. Correcting that is a task in the new system.
This leaves me with a few open questions I’ve been pondering for a spell:
Is org-mode the right choice?
Is a one large file approach, several files approach, or a file per topic/project approach going to work out the best for me based on my current understanding and assumptions?
How will I share this information with others as needed?
How important are contexts in this new mix? For instance, will I care if I’m in the office or at home when doing most tasks? Do I care about a phone context since I always have at least one phone nearby? Same with a computer (though a keyboard context for writing might be good).
How much of the rest of my time is spent in Emacs?
How to keep safe, secure, and available?
The last shall be the first, the first shall be the second, and the rest shall fall where they may.
6 – I will keep my org files in Wuala. My mobileorg publishing will be done with Dropbox. Both are cross platform and cross OS options. Wuala is encrypted for data in transit and data at rest with me holding the keys. Dropbox isn’t as secure, but it is the only method I can make work of disseminating the data between my device platforms. Mobileorg allows for simple encryption for the data in transit. I hope the developers continue to improve it and maybe offer different cloud storage options. I don’t like using external services for such things. There is no similar solution in-house, and no explicit prohibition of a public option for tangentially relevant data. Until there is a viable internal option I am using the tools that are available. Having two separate solutions will allow provider diversity, though I could integrate an internal SharePoint option later. I continue to take appropriate actions, such as checks for data integrity and
1- I think Org-mode and Emacs will stay my tools of choice, at least for now. I need to affix GTD as a habit more than I have. The tool used is largely irrelevant. When I bust out org-mode I not only feel like I have a better grasp on what I am doing, I actually accomplish things in a more strategic fashion. This is especially true in comparison to my Inbox. I always get burned when I use my Inbox as my todo list.
5 – Quite a lot of my time is spent in Emacs, actually, considering that my technical role is wafer thin. It is almost always running. Probably my best use is again with org-mode, but for doing presentations. I like drafting it in org-mode before subjecting it to MS PowerPoint or Keynote. It’s my external editor for Lotus Notes and my default for many file types in Windows. I used to use it for my Twitter client. I should dust that off. Emacs’ w3 is a great distraction-free web browser.
4 – I will ditch contexts in my GTD except for two – detached and keyboard. “Detached” (or maybe untethered) is for those times when I don’t need a network connection to work. These contexts should have all of the information needed stored locally. The other, keyboard, I need as mentioned above. Other tasks I can complete using an iPhone, iPad, Android device, or whatever. These contexts will be managed as tags on existing entries prefixed with the ‘at’ sign (@).
3 – Sharing information outside of org-mode is both incredibly easy and insanely difficult. org-mode uses flat text files. Internal logic presents the data in an efficient manner. While any old program can open text files, they can’t necessarily understand them. I think I can get around this by setting up agenda views published to HTML on the corporate SharePoint portal, for example. My group uses Lotus Notes for email and calendar, so I need to come up with a workable way to share at least the calendar stuff. Email I’m less concerned about at the moment, though if I can convince the powers that be to turn on secure IMAP …
2 – How to structure the file(s)? This is really where things go wonky for me and why I kept it for last. I love the idea of "one file to rule them all". A monolithic file will eventually get too big, too unwieldy, and too vertical for me to get Emacs and org-mode to handle it all. Too many small files takes the vertical problem and makes it horizontal. Having a separate file for each project, for example, is a great idea until one note or one task needs to be shared between two or more projects. My current sparse files option might be the best, but not how they’re currently setup. Notes and tasks need to be together.
I think my inbox.org concept is sound if I just use it.
I will kick things off with three main files: inbox.org, world.org, and archive.org. All of my daily capture will go into the inbox. All of my current stuff will reside in world. Nothing should go into world directly. Older items will go into archive. Daily I will empty my inbox. Weekly, monthly, and annually I will review the world. I will quarterly and annually review the archive. I will also have a “Someday/Maybe”-type file and a “reading room”-type file. I was going to have some miscellaneous files, but I don’t want to go too far afield on what I can see. Miscellaneous files may end up being out of normal view. I will reconsider this as things go.
I will keep my work calendar in Notes for the time being. If I can figure out a way to automate sharing the calendar between that and org-mode/Emacs calendar I will do so.
I will make projects contexts, tags prefixed with a ‘@’. A note or a task can be tagged with as many as needed.
Another thing I can do, and this is something of an aside but an important one, is I will be able to open notes and tasks associated with my team (and others). So, when I’m with them on the phone or standing at their desk I should be able to pull everything up about them as a tag filter across projects and everything. That kills off the far too frequent "What was that other thing I wanted to talk with you about?" query.
This reflection and rambling course of action brings up another issue, one that is not specific to any tool or method. I need to capture better information. I had a conversation with one of my bosses not too long ago. It was a long chat. There were many concrete tasks I needed to deliver. One item should have been concrete and easy to do but I wrote it down incorrectly. By the time I got back to it in a late review I couldn’t remember the "what" and "why" of the conversation though I had a time frame.
I may have mentioned somewhere that I was a Journalism and Broadcasting major in college. I trained for capturing accurate information. I did this by asking six simple questions:
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
Why I don’t do this at certain times is fodder for yet another post yet another time.
Some of you may ask, "But I don’t need all of those when capturing data, do I"?
No. A good rule of thumb is no fewer than three. In my vague example above what, when, and why would probably have been sufficient. Who was a given value of "me". Where and how wasn’t part of the equation.
My management style rarely has a "How" or "Where" component to tasks I assign, though from time to time one of those can be introduced. Since I travel constantly for work, the "Where" bit can play a role.
Before sharing your data with others, especially higher ups and customers, you need all W’s answered. You should have references where possible.
I think the most frustrating thing around this process is that it’s not as simple as it should be. A colleague of mine constantly rails against managing to the exception (pot-kettle-black; another post), and he’s right, but how do you define what constitutes an exception. That takes us off into yet another post for another day.
Am I addressing my personal life, such as it is, in this? Is this actually going to help or hurt or make no difference? I won’t know until I take the plunge. One thing that I might alter will be the Someday/Maybe stuff. Items for my employer I will want to separate from my personal stuff. There will be an occasional overlap. I’ll deal with those as they come.
Another issue that is still out there is the data. If I leave my employer, who owns the data? If I mix the personal with the professional with the employer-specific stuff, how do I divorce it if need be?
I need to make a task to roll in my aborted OneNote experiment. I tried using OneNote. It’s a surprisingly great tool. The lack of an easy-to-use internal reference system, the inability to dock it at login, difficulty in reorganizing or refiling data, no overarching view of tasks, and its GUI-only nature limits its usefulness. Maybe if I was on Outlook & Exchange and never left a Windows/iOS environment it would work better. It does have a lot of things I quite like: templates (though not as easy to use as they should be), audio capture as part of note taking, tabs & pages & notebooks as its metaphor, OS-integrated capture, some third party tools to fill some gaps, and integration with SharePoint and MSN/MS Live with strong encryption for the data in transit (not sure about data-at-rest). I can see using it as a replacement for org-mode, but it will take a lot of work and decisions by people senior to me to make it a true replacement for work.
Two other things play a role in org-mode: Emacs calendar/diary and BBDB. The calendar is as described. The Big Brother DataBase (BBDB) is another animal. BBDB is a contact list. More value comes from using it in an integrated Emacs environment. My contacts are all over the place and in serious need of review. BBDB will be my main contact repository. I can move things in and out somewhat easily.
This post exceeded any reasonable expectation for length, breadth, and buckshot content.
It brings up another important point. I should be able to edit posts in Emacs, too! Someday/Maybe, perhaps. There must be a WordPress option for Emacs.
I have some concrete deliverables from this, some things to work on, and some “nice-to-haves” down the road.
In the start menu, search for ‘network connections’ and press enter.
In the window the comes up, use Alt-key for menu. Choose Advanced. (alt-n-s) On the Adapters and Bindings tab, re-order the connections, putting your wired connection at the top.
This seems to do the trick so far. I’d like to find how to do this via “netsh” since the above isn’t at all intuitive. I also want to spend some time digging into these advanced options.
The other day I took 100 bottles and cans to the local liquor store for a refund. Here in Michigan we pay a ten cent deposit on every soda pop, beer, and other beverage containers. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. The deposit makes a difference. After having spent 5+ years in a no deposit state (Oklahoma), a $0.05 state (Connecticut), and the afore mentioned ten cent Michigan, I follow the deposit refund options far more religiously in the Great Lakes State.
But that’s not the point of this post, either.
The point is that the other day I took 100 bottles and cans, some beer and some soda pop, to the local liquor store for a refund. That is $10 in a refund that I invariably spend on more soda pop and beer. I like high quality local breweries, so $10 will often not quite cover a six pack just in that. After having dropped the containers off the store employee in charge of returns, Robert, chased me down to admonish me for my containers.
The way the MI law is written, stores only have to accept containers that they sell. The stores with automatic return machines enforce this. That’s why I take mine back to this store – no machines policing the returns. The store itself offers a decent beer selection, albeit smaller and a little more expensive than the other stores where I shop. I always end up spending more in the store after a return run than the refund.
When Robert flagged me down and lectured me loudly in the store on how hard it is for him to get $0.10 on a bottle they don’t carry from the store’s distributor, I argued. Uninterested, he dug through every neatly packed bag (and I do rinse and orderly arrange things). After everything was reviewed only 12 bottles out of the 100 were questionable. Since I had in my hands two six packs of beer and one 12 pack of pop worth $23 before tax and deposit, Robert was arguing about 5% of my total spend with them on that trip, $1.20.
Again, Robert was not wrong. A store’s obligations under the program are laid out. While I argue that such limitations negatively impact the effectiveness of the law, the law is plainly written.
Nevertheless I put the $23 of stuff back on the shelf and walked out with $8.80 in deposits. I let Robert keep the extra bottles. I spent that $8.80 plus more at another store. That was a loss of $31.80 (the $23 I was going to buy plus the deposit I was entitled to) instead of a $21.80 in sales (presuming the store had to eat the $1.20).
Since I was treated so poorly I later returned another 27 containers for cash at that store on my way to another store where I spent $23 in more of the same. That’s over $50 dollars lost for the sake of $1.20. Once I exceed $120 dollars I will talk with the owners.
For me I spent next to nothing on the extra fuel since the other options are less than a mile away. I saved about $1.50 on my purchases.
This illustrates “Penny Wise & Pound Foolish” very well.
I would be a fool if I didn’t cast a critical eye on myself. What have I done that, in retrospect, was penny wise & pound foolish?
At work the big thing that leapt out at me, fit for public consumption, was being so far behind on my expense reports. It always takes more time to complete them the longer it takes me to do them. It takes money out of my pocket both in covering the expense in a timely fashion as well as in any late charges that I have to absorb.
At home I just went through a big refresh in various parts of my life, so it is too early to tell there.
“Penny Wise & Pound Foolish” is another way of describing the Law of Unintended Consequences. How much time and effort would it cost to ask “What happens if …?” before making a decision?
Or “It must be worth losing if it is worth something”.
I’ve had my TouchPad since 1 July. I picked it up on my way to the airport to visit my folks and family. I’ve now had a solid seven days of use. I have formed opinions.
First, the multitasking is top notch. The card metaphor works brilliantly. The interface inside of email and other apps, the multiple panes that can overlap and expand, is impressive to behold and mostly intuitive to use.
Second, the speed is good. It is better if you install PreWare from webosinternals.org and several patches to reduce the amount of logging to speed things up just a bit.
Third, they need more apps. I think H-P hurt themselves by not embracing what HTML5 apps exist today. They could have focused more on apps users would want off-line data for, Read It Later and Google Reader. No document editing day one is a critical flaw. The browser seems inclined to invite full page renderings instead of a more gesture-based interface. H-P should have partnered with more providers or embraced more homebrew solutions.
Fourth, no Amazon Kindle or MP3 store at launch. I get that H-P is working on their own music app. I’d like diversity.
Fifth, the App Catalog and Pivot are great. I like the layouts and the concept. In the app catalog I’d like to be able to search exclusively for apps “made for TouchPad”. I’d also like to zoom in on the screen shots.
Sixth, Bluetooth tethering with my Pre 2 and bluetooth keyboard worked flawlessly. I have yet to have an SMS appear on my touchpad, but I haven’t really gotten into it.
Seventh, I like the backwards compatibility mode. I wish it could rotate with the tablet. I wish it could resize to full screen. I wish I could “Just Type” in them. I wish I could load more apps in that mode.
Eighth, no GPS in the WiFi version is a glaring oversight,
Ninth, I couldn’t care less about a rear facing camera, but I get why other people do.
Tenth, bring back the gesture area. Being able to swipe between apps without going to card view was one of the “wow” moments from other smart phone users.
I’m sticking with the TouchPad, and webOS in general, not because of the advertising H-P has put behind the launch (which I’m on board with) or their refrain that webOS will be crucial in phones & tablets & printers & PCs (though that’s good, too). Its because of the developers and the Homebrew community. I expect a lot of the interface issues and missing features will be implemented by the community and not by H-P initially.
I do like that a company as big as H-P seems to be making a gamble on webOS. I don’t think they’re doing it to cut into Apple or Google, through I’m sure they wouldn’t mind that. I think H-P is looking to make this a three horse race. If they can make a play that knocks Microsoft/Nokia and RIM back a few steps, they can make a go of this.
What do you think? Is H-P tilting at windmills? Or is there a method to their madness?
My professional career started in retail. Specifically, I started in food service. I was a fill in for three weeks, then discarded.
I then went to Best Buy. I quickly climbed the ladder there in the computer department from part time sales associate to department manager.
I left Best Buy for personal reasons, then found myself back at the same store one year later. I was hired back in as a sales associate. Two weeks later I was promoted to assistant supervisor. Two months later I was promoted to supervisor. I was moved from department to department where I was needed. Eight months later I was promoted to manager.
I did the manager thing until I found myself at the top of a step ladder during the Christmas shopping season directing people to the 14 or so checkout lanes we had running. My department, the cashiers and customer service, processed well over a million dollars worth of transactions that December of ‘96. From atop my perch I herded the customers like cattle, each into their own financial abattoir. I dealt with people returning new-from-the-factory computers with bricks in them, people with electronics infested with insects and vermin, people with equipment we never sold demanding us provide them with satisfaction.
By January, the return season, I had quit and moved my family to Michigan. That story is one for another day.
Sitting in the Apple store in Troy, Michigan today I was reminded why I hated working in retail. It’s loud. It’s crowded. Customers are crazy. At least Apple has incredible margins that PCs don’t have.
The retail plus was the immediacy of the numbers. You didn’t have to wait for month’s end to see how you were doing. You didn’t have to wait for the end of the week. Every morning a fresh set of numbers were ready to great you on your previous day’s performance. You knew about that day in the week’s context, the month’s, the year’s, and the previous year’s day.
As a supervisor or manager, it meant that you could immediately adjust your approach, and your team’s, to the numbers. That was also the drawback if you only relied on the numbers.
The numbers wouldn’t tell you that the University of Oklahoma was in a crucial game, keeping attendance down. The numbers wouldn’t tell you there was an ice storm last year. The numbers wouldn’t accommodate for half the staff laid up with the flu.
The numbers certainly weren’t forgiving in cases of fraud or outright theft. That was what the twice-annual inventory audits were for. Back in the day there was a department supervisor taking tens of thousands of dollars of gear out the back door. As is often the case with thieves, the supervisor got greedy and took enough to get noticed. Even though that person was prosecuted to the full extent of the law, store management was held responsible for the loss, or shrinkage.
There are things that I miss from my retail days, but they are few. I am still extremely happy not to be in that space any more.
Have you worked in retail or still do? What do you like or miss about retail?
Over the last several weeks my Firefox 4 kept asking me to upgrade to 5 Beta. You have two options available to you, upgrade and ask later. None of the additional information actually exists. It’s annoying, especially when you’re using your browser for a demonstration in front of an audience.
Here’s how to turn it off.
Type ‘about:config’ (without the quotes) in your location bar. Search for ‘beta’. There may be several items that come up. You want ‘app.update.channel’. Double click that and change ‘beta’ to ‘release’.
I am the global Network Infrastructure & Information Security manager for Magna International. The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Magna's positions, strategies or opinions.
