Archive for the 'Work' Category

Office Zen

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on November 2, 2007
in Getting Things Done and Work
. 0 Comments

Over the weekend, I finally got myself in gear and bought a desk for my brother. It’s about time. The guy has been working for me here in town since July, and I’ve been making him work on an ancient typewriter stand that rattled when he typed.

Bringing the desk in on Monday touched off a weeks worth of re-arranging in the office. At some point on Tuesday, I made it my goal to rid the office of any sort of junk that I hadn’t used in months. Anything that I might possibly use was sent to the closet (which was emptied of pretty much anything not office-related).

I even managed to mount a ceiling fan on Tuesday, which really has improved the air circulation in here.

I’m not completely done yet, but I would guess that I’m 95% of the way there. Right now I have a very clean office that is a genuine joy to work in, and there is plenty of floor space, even with the two desks and umpteen computers. If somebody had told me two weeks ago if I could have gotten this much usable desk/table space in here and still been able to walk around, I would have laughed in their face.

Once upon a time, my father had a thingamajig that he kept on his desk that said “A cluttered desk is a sign of a genius” (or something like that). In the past few months, I’ve become a big believer in the idea that a cluttered desk is a sign of somebody who isn’t getting as much done as they could. I started trying to keep my workspace more clean a while back, but with this most recent cleanup, I really do feel more productive.

Some photos of my workplace zen:

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My Workspace

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Philip’s Workspace

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The Bookshelves and my Pipe and Cigar Stuff

Note: The rackmount server you see to the right of Philip’s workspace isn’t always going to live there … it’s just being prepped as my backup server, and will probably go live in the datacenter in the next week or so. It’s my fourth server! I never thought at the beginning of the year I would have gone from one server (running six virtual servers) to four servers (with two running ten virtual servers). Amazing!


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Greetings from Raymondville, TX

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on June 24, 2007
in Life, Photographs and Work
. 0 Comments

[Note: This was written on the evening of Thursday, June 14, 2007, while I was still in Raymondville. However, I'm going to have to wait to post this a few days, since I've not got access to an internet connection here.]

I have a confession to make. This won’t really come as a surprise to [some] of those who know me well, but I absolutely love visiting Rachel’s grandparents in the Rio Grande Valley. They live just outside of Raymondville, and I start to get excited inside a few months before we actually make the trek out here. Yes, I know … the Valley lacks one of the geological features that are generally a requirement for the “places Jeremy likes” label … namely mountains (specifically of the Appalachian variety), but heck … if I were going somewhere not in the mountains, this would be at the top of my list.

We’ve been here since Monday evening, and the closest I’ve come to rushing around is trying to get to a few locations to snap photos when the light was right. The following two photos are my two favorites from this particular trip.

The first is of some prickly pear cactii by the fence separating the little town of Port Mansfield from the King Ranch. I sort of stumbled on this shot … I was poking around looking for something to photograph while my father-in-law and brother-in-law were fishing, and more or less aimed the camera blindly at this large cactus, and took a long exposure shot, and ended up with this …

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At least for us amateurs, getting a great shot like that while shooting blindly is rewarding. After all, most of the time (at least for me) I just get lucky while shooting things and come up with a really great shot. This next shot is the kind that (so far) has only happened to me a few times …

This one is a photo of the gin at Lyford, TX. I’d been by it a few times in the last few days, and thought to myself that it would make a really awesome shot at night with the sun having just set behind it … especially with the motion blur of a grain truck passing by.

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Well, I got exactly what I was looking for, and boy am I happy with it.

Side note … I was out across the road about 35 minutes waiting for the light conditions to be just right for this shot. My poking around bothered the guys at the gin enough that they sent a fellow out in a truck to see what I was up to. I’ve sent them an 8×10 print of this photo … hopefully they’ll like it.

Saturday Wrap-Up

Published
by
Jeremy Clifton
on March 31, 2007
in Geeky Stuff, Getting Things Done, Life, Small Business and Work
. 0 Comments

Well, this Saturday almost went by without me doing any for-profit work. It did go by without me doing any for-profit programming work. What that means is a) I did do for-profit work, but not programming; and b) I did do programming, but not for-profit programming.

The not-for-profit programming work I did wasn’t extensive. I wrote a quick and dirty survey form for the church; the long-range planning comittee is trying to get an idea of what people in the congregation think needs to be done to improve our existing facilities. It may have taken me an hour and a half, if that much

On the for-profit end of the spectrum, what I did was continue to work on getting myself back into a good “Getting Things Done” rhythm … by forcing myself to learn a new GTD application I downloaded last week.

The application in question is iGTD. When I downloaded it a few days ago, it was at version 1.2.2. However, I went back to the web site to see what I could find in the way of documentation (more on that later) and was thrilled to discover that version 1.3 had been released today.

I haven’t done much with it so far except start entering tasks and processing them, but it seems like it’s on the right track. It’s definitely faster than Midnight Inbox … which isn’t much of an accomplishment, but hey … it does count.

Since giving up on Midnight Inbox in frustration a few months ago, I’ve been using OmniOutliner (without the Kinkless mod) to keep up with my task list. It’s basic, but all it does is allow me to group my tasks hierarchically. I don’t have any “inbox” or context-type functionality.

Yeah, I tried Kinkless, but I just can’t get used to it. Perhaps when Omni’s OmniFocus is done, it will be slick and worthwhile … but they’ve yet to produce a public beta yet (though all indications are that one will be coming soon).

For what it’s worth, Midnight Beep is promising an update to Inbox in the very near future … as in days, from what I’ve read. I’d love to use it, since the interface makes me drool … but I can’t abide (to use an old North Carolina expression synonymous with “can’t stand”) the glacial slowness and weird quirks of the current version.

iGTD does a number of things well … maintaining contexts and projects, letting you set priorities, etc. There is a nifty QuickSilver plugin that allows me to easily add items to my inbox with a few short keystrokes. For each item, I can add extensive notes to help me remember what I’m doing. I can drag and drop stuff into the program. It integrates with iCal, which is super-nifty.

The down sides … documentation is lacking. As in … there ain’t any, outside of some tips and tricks, and a limited discussion of features on the web site. It would be nice … but hey, it’s a free project, so you get what you pay for. And, in this case … you really get a lot, even despite the missing documentation. Also, when you process items in the inbox, there doesn’t seem to be any way to select a project to place them in, although the pane you’re working in seems to indicate that such a feature exists. Other than those things … it’s been smooth sailing so far!

Here’s a screenshot of iGTD, just for good measure:

igtd-1_3.png

I Feel Caught Up

Published
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Jeremy Clifton
on March 30, 2007
in Getting Things Done and Work
. 0 Comments

This past Wednesday, an amazing thing happened.

When I finished my work up for the day, I realized for the first time in a long, long, long time, I felt like I was more or less caught up. Specifically, I felt like I’d reached the point where my workload was manageable within the constraints of a 40-45 hour week. Yes, I’ve still got plenty of work to do, but but overall, my tasks are getting done on time (or pretty close to it), and new projects aren’t piling up faster than I’m getting things done.

What a nice feeling! I partially credit the GTD methodology for getting me to this point, even if I did ‘fall off the wagon’ for a bit … because it’s helped me see the big picture better, make better decisions, and not forget little things that needed to be done. It also helps that I’ve been running in the black now for a few months, and cashflow isn’t nearly as much of a distracting problem as it was at this time last year.

I think it’s high time I give some of my personal (read: ‘non-paying’) projects some attention. I’ve got a number of libraries and goodies I’ve developed over the last two years to aid me in creating my projects, and I’ve been wanting to write up documentation on some of them and release them under the BSD license. The time has come to start doing that, and the first one that will get my attention is a little project I call “IntuiSite” … a handly little web app framework that I’ve been tweaking for a little over a year now. So far, I’ve used it in seven standalone projects, and I’m currently using it as the basis for my “big” personal project … one that will hopefully be unveiled in the next few months.

Keep your eyes peeled … I’ll post more information about IntuiSite here in the next couple of days.