I drove the Nerd Van (myself, Asheesh and the interns) to Google.
I’m still recovering (and inflicting pain—CC board meeting today) and collecting feedback, but I think it was a really successful day. We learned some things we’ll do differently next time (yes, there will be a next time). Anyway, special recognition to the CC interns for live blogging the event and for generally doing anything asked of them. I feel like I should write more about the event, but I’m feeling pretty brain dead at the moment.
In an attempt to prevent additional git (or maybe just git-svn?) induced PTSD, Asheesh kindly created a git phrasebook. If you, too, are a Subversion deserter and want to figure out how the whole branching thing works in git, this may be useful to you.
Someday I’ll write up my thoughts on distributed version control and “convention versus configuration”, which seem to overlap in this deployment. But not today.
I really love task lists—especially the crossing off part—but lately they haven’t really been helping me out. Between the day job, consulting work, dating, and a more active social life than I had in Indiana, it seems like I never quite get to the crossing off part. This has become particularly clear at work where I use two simple labels for email: action and reply. I’m a little ashamed to admit that the action queue currently has 196 items in it, the oldest dating to August of last year. My CC inbox has 404 messages in it right now, of which 182 are starred. Starring is supposed to indicate something that needs my attention. Somehow this doesn’t seem productive. Mike, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. Believe me, I’m sorry.
So I’m trying something a little different. This evening I watched the Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann on Inbox Zero. While the second half played I managed to clear out my yergler.net inbox.
Tomorrow I’m planning to create an email DMZ and begin at zero with my work inbox. Just keeping the flow of information to a reasonable level is just the first step, though.
I’ve had a Remember the Milk (RTM) account for quite a while but never got in the habit of using it. After watching an introduction to Tasque, I decided to look again. Tasque is a simple task list application for Gnome, in the same vein as Tomboy for notes. I love Tomboy. I think I’ll love Tasque, too.
I don’t know if the RTM elves have been hacking away at the site since I last looked or if I just never really dug in, but it actually seems to have the features I want in a task list. And there’s even a handy blog post on how you can use RTM to GTD (get things done).
Finally, the piece that ties both sides together: their Firefox extension. My workflow this evening looked like this:
Go to the next email
Decide that had some action associated with it
Add the action label to it, which also created it as a task to RTM
Later, when skimming through the action list I saw one I could knock out in a few minutes. And when I finished and removed the action label, the task in RTM was marked as complete. Sweet.
At the laundromat this morning, waiting for the cover for my sofa to dry.
“Well, do you know? Do you know? I’m responsible for shutting that place down! That bar was drugging people and I figured it out! I went in there, and I know my tolerance, because I drank a bottle of Skyy vodka before, so I know my tolerance. And after just two shots I passed out. You know what that means, right? I was drugged! Drugged!”
I can’t take credit for finding it—that goes to Matt—but this video is a hilarious take on Facebook in real life.
Seeing this reminded me of something I’ve thought for quite a while: sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc all devalue the label of “friend”.
Some context: Facebook and Linked In are the only social networks I use with any regularity. I’ve had accounts on others (Orkut, anyone?) but those I haven’t deleted have long since gone fallow. I use Facebook and Linked In for two distinct purposes: connecting with friends and connecting with work contacts, respectively. For some time I’ve been taking a rather hard line in both respects. For example, working at Creative Commons gives me an opportunity to work with our international affiliates. One of them really wanted to be my friend on Facebook. The problem is, we’re not friends. I think he’s a perfectly decent guy, but I’ve never met him, never hung out, never done the things friends do. So I declined him, again and again, finally sending him a message saying “look, I get it, but we’re not friends”. His unexpected reply was not combative or offended but rather, “Oops, I was using the contact finder feature, I totally get what you’re saying” (note that I think this supports the idea that social networks enable socially acceptable spam).
So if you don’t want your mom (or co-workers, or boss, etc) to see pictures of you covered in “puke and piss”, do two things: learn about the privacy settings in Facebook and only add friends who are your, well, friends. Alternately don’t put yourself in situations where you can be photographed covered in puke and/or piss, but really, let’s focus on achievable goals.
