Another Essay Thing AKA Promotion of Google Calender

I'm an avid user of Google Calender (I usually have a tab open on any computer, as well as syncing to my phone). I have 11 (yes, eleven!!) separate calendars. This might be a little overkill, but I have one for nearly every category I can think of: general things that I "share" with people who need to know my schedule, personal things, work, class schedule, assignments due, bills due, etc...

I love this method so much because I can focus on one calender if I need to, or view them all and get an overview of the whole week. Aside from that, each calender has default settings that can be changed to a variety of things. For example, any time I add something to my "class assignments" calender it automatically creates a couple of reminders, example, email me 3 days ahead of due date and email me the night before (just to make sure it's done :]).

Like I said, it might be a little overkill for some, but for those like me who thrive on visually seeing everything laid out and could use automatic email reminders, I find this method quite helpful.

So, I had to write an essay AKA Work-Life Balance

So, I had to write an essay... thing... for one of my classes. It was based on a few essential questions responding to a Computerworld article that we had read. I might have gotten a little carried away, I sound like I've been reading too much Zen Habits (I don't know if too much is possible, but I do read a lot there...). Anyway, it amused me enough that I thought I'd post it. And here you have it...

Work-Life Balance

My current work/school/life balance is undergoing significant change as of this week. I will address this discussion as of last week and the first half of the semester and talk about what led to the current changes. Today, Monday, is my first day unemployed/ being only a full-time student in several years. Prior to this weekend, I have been working 20 hours a week in an IT position, finishing my CIT Independent Learning courses, working on several bi-terms classes, working on one full-term class, trying to keep up a house solely by myself, attempting to take care of myself mentally and physically (sleep?!, what’s that?), planning for graduation, planning a wedding (not to mention trying to find time to spend together), preparing to move, and looking for a job in new location. It has been literally impossible to do everything, on a scale of one to ten, I felt like I was at about a 9; something had to give.

I would say I took the advice of the first suggestion listed in the article, Ten Tips for Achieving a Better Work/Life Balance, to establish and maintain my own priorities. Once I realized that my work/school/life balance was insane, I took a look at my options and had some serious discussions with the important people in my life. While the article is suggesting maintaining one’s priorities to realign work tasks, etc, I took it a step farther and put in my two weeks notice. As my position was considered that of a student worker, I would have found myself unemployed upon graduating in a matter of 7 weeks or so, anyway. Due to this and other personal factors, my fiancé and I decided it was in my, and our, best interest for me to go ahead, quit my current job, focus on finishing out my classes, and start the task of looking for post-graduation employment. This priority change comes with the obvious downside of several months of serious penny-pinching, but we both feel this is worth dealing with for the benefit of my sanity.

Beyond this, I will still be in need of balancing personal work, school, and the impending rest of my life. A suggestion that I’m going to recommend to myself, and anyone else facing similar days of “unstructured time,” is to create and stick to a daily routine that will form constructive habits and have some semblance to “normal life.” This is appropriate for me, personally, because I know myself well enough to know that I would quickly slip into habits such as going to bed at 2-4 AM, getting up at noon, never really getting dressed, and procrastinating on homework worse than ever. To implement this suggestion, I started this morning, as this is Day One of my new plan, by getting up at an acceptable time, writing down the specific things that I did and making a list of things that I wanted to accomplish (actually make the bed, cook breakfast, get dressed (whether I plan to go anywhere or not), read for X amount of time, make x number of posts, etc). Tomorrow I plan to look at what I did today, tweak my daily timeline where necessary, and focus on making constructive habits out of my daily routines. I feel this will help me gain control of my unbalanced life and continue to accomplish my work/school/life priorities.

Win 7 Logon Screen (No Hack) AND Win 7 GodMode

More evidence of how much of a total nerd I am...

Tidbits of geekiness that has turned up today.


"Finally Microsoft has incorporated a new feature in ... Windows 7 which supports the end user to change the logon screen background without using any hacks or third-party tools."

How To Change Windows 7 Logon Screen Easily [Without Using Hacks & Tools]


"“GodMode” ... provides a single place to access all Windows settings without needing to browse options and folders in the Control Panel."

How to Enable Windows 7 GodMode

"Merging" Bookmarks from Separate Firefox Profiles

I recently found myself needing to move a few bookmarks from an old Firefox profile (on an old drive) to a new profile (on the current drive). I didn't want to replace the bookmarks in the new profile, only add to them; nor did I want all of the old bookmarks, only a few significant ones (for which I did not know the URL, nor were they easily Googleable).

Firefox 3+ has switched from storing bookmarks in a fairly easy to navigate html file to now storing them in the places.sqlite file. To manually browse through this file, I found that SQLite Manager works quite well.

I messed with this for a while and didn't have any luck actually extracting the URLs from the sqlite file. After working through a few other self-devised plans, nothing succeeded and I moved on to solving the problem rather than understanding why I was failing. I think what made this difficult was that I didn't want to lose what was, and didn't want all of the old, just to merge the two. Anyway...

Best solution:
I made a backup of the current bookmarks. Imported the last backup of the old bookmarks. Opened the pages I wanted in separate tabs (was only like 10ish). Restored the backup of the "current" bookmarks. Proceeded to bookmark all open tabs and then reorganize as needed.

Solved. ^.^

Shooting

This was my first time ever shooting a handgun.

I've gotten better.

You should stay out of my house.

posted from Bloggeroid

Many Roles

I play many roles in life.

Contestant
Student
Photographer
Etc...



I'm working on going through, cleaning out junk...

posted from Bloggeroid

New Step in Life

Well, I put in my two week notice today...

"Do you have a job lined up?" No.

"Isn't that a bad idea?" Er, well... it depends on who you are, your particular situation, and what you want out of life.

I have no guaranteed plan in place... But I have plans, if that makes it better?

I'll get three more paychecks between now and when... well, when I don't.

I'm going to minimize my spending, bills, etc.

Place more focus on finishing my final classes on high notes.

I'm going to put quite a bit of effort (almost job like) toward selling (eBay, Craigslist, Etsy, classifieds, ...) as much of my stuff as I can - a) to make money b) I need to get rid of a lot of junk (aka valuable possessions to someone else) and c) so I have less to move in a couple months.

Going to try working through what I want to be when I grow up. Or maybe more of how I want to earn a living between now and growing up. I've decided that I definitely want to enjoy what I do. I've known that, but I'm realizing how important I think it is in my life. I'm not sure what that means for me yet, but I'd rather live a life where I need less money than needing to play corporate politics to make what I need for how I live. I suppose that's nearly as much mindset as occupation, but none-the-less, I want to do work that I want to do.

I'll spend some time wedding planning.
And as soon as we know where we're going (or not going), I'll start doing what is necessary for us to go in that direction.

So, no, I don't have a "job" lined up, but I do have some life lined up that needs to be worked on.  And anyway, I'm just getting a 7 week, or so, jump on my already impending unemployment, upcoming with graduation.

New step; next step; life's a journey...