• I don’t pay much attention to Twitter anymore.  I’ve gone from constantly checking my timeline throughout an entire day (so I didn’t miss a thing) to casually checking it every few days.
• I’ve disabled the majority of push notifications on my iPhone which has resulted in fewer interruptions at work.  Of the ones still enabled, they’re almost all “badge only” which is passive when compared to a loud sound or pop-up.
• Along those same lines, I’ve switched my settings on my iPhone to manually check my email accounts.  In other words, it’s not checking for new emails throughout the day, but only when I open the email application itself.
• I deleted my email archive at work.  I had been keeping the majority of messages sent and received for the last 5 years, resulting in a gigabytes of data.  I took a further step by configuring Outlook to permanently delete trashed and sent items that are over 60 days old, preventing the archive from building up again, but keeping enough email around just in case I need something.
• Instant messaging is now turned off at work.  Most people don’t realize that interruptions are one of the best ways to kill productivity.  The same thing goes for phone calls.  So, if someone needs to talk to me, they should use email, which is what I’ve always preferred they do.
• I’ve returned to working one day at home every week.  This has helped get me out of the office, which is a loud, distracting place.  As much as I truly enjoy all of the people I work with, I also enjoy having a smaller “to do” list now that I am getting some more things done throughout the week.
• I’ve stopped trying to multitask.  No one is actually good at it, no matter what they claim, especially me.  I’m more productive by concentrating on one thing and doing it right the first time, as opposed to doing it wrong and having to waste time fixing it later.  There’s also less stress because I’m not worried about a bunch of other tasks, except the one at hand.

These changes came about after recently reading a couple of books: Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson; and, The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.  They’re both excellent reads that I recommend to everyone.

By no means do these changes make me the most productive person.  No one is perfect and I don’t care to be that person, anyway.  I still enjoy chatting about non-work things with friends at the office, check Facebook and Google Reader when I have time, and still check my work email more often than I should.  Yet, I feel less overall stress and that has resulted in better work.

Sadly, I never finished college, but the knowledge and experience I managed to get under my belt while at Ball State have been worth it anyway.

As it turns out, he belonged to one of the neighbors, but they kept him outside all of the time, which is definitely not healthy for cats, so it was no shock when I took him to the vet to learn that he had a parasite.  Thankfully, the treatment was extremely easy and now Charlie is a healthy boy.

In work-related news, I took a trip up to Detroit to attend a one-day conference put on by one of our vendors.  They invited me up there to do a 90 minute presentation about what we do at work, how we use the vendor’s product, and how to use the vendor’s online self-service tools.  Overall, everything went very well, and it was a lot of fun.

Lastly, last month I went to go see Shiny Toy Guns at the Music Mill up on the north side.  It was my first time at the venue — very nice.  The show was great; they played all the songs I loved, including some new ones on their recent album.

That’s all for now, folks!

Today I decided to switch to fervens-a by Design Disease. I found it pretty quick and knew that I wanted to use it as soon as I saw it. It’s a clean design and not complicated. I like that there are page links at the top and two sidebars for me to use.

While changing to the new thene, I created an online activity page. You’ll see a link to it at the top. This is basically nothing more than an embeddable widget of my FriendFeed activity, which is perfect for the blog.

Another new feature that comes with the theme is a preview of my recent Flickr photos. You’ll see that on the right sidebar.

Anyway, I think I’m still going to make a few tweaks here and there, but I’m generally happy with the way things look now. I hope you like them too.

BRAINS!

I asked Andy P. and Laura to model for me.

Saturday was a family day, for the most part. It was my nephew Jake’s 17 birthday and the whole family got together for it. My sister and brother-in-law from Louisville even brought their parrot for the party.

After we sang “Happy Birthday!” and ate ice cream cake, I took Jake to Fry’s up on 96th Street to buy him a new keyboard and mouse for his new computer that we built a few weeks ago. This set was the replace the old, nasty set he had been using.

Saturday night was also a good time. After working a bunch in the afternoon, I met up with my friend Pete for some late dinner at the Old Point Tavern. After sharing a huge plate of nachos and downing a few mixed drinks, we did the obvious thing and went over to the homo bar — to drink some more, of course.

I ran into all kinds of people I knew. What I don’t remember, for sure, is the reason why I was in a face-slapping contest with my friend Carlos. Oh well!

The rest of my weekend was mostly work and sleep, which seem to cancel each other out, as far as I’m concerned.

Its one of those online financial aggregators that connects to the web sites of your accounts and pulls all the data together into one interface. The only other one I’ve tried is Mint, and it wasn’t capable of accessing my checking and savings accounts, but Quicken Online does it without any problem. They were even able to access my Health Savings Account, which left me surprisingly pleased.

It’s a recently launched tool, so I’m expecting some great improvements down the road. I hope they add support for more than just bank accounts and credit cards. I’d love to have my student loan and 401k accounts in there.

I got a Canon 4400F scanner for Christmas this past year. Not only does it allow me to take high quality scans of my old photos, but I can import regular documents directly into PDF documents.

So far I have imported all of my old tax documentation (forms W-2, 1099, etc.), as well as stuff I need to make a travel insurance claim for my delayed baggage during my trip in Italy. I like the idea of not dealing with FAX machines, and just using email.

Having electronic documentations means that I can rid myself of paper copies. As long as I have a backup of my data (and I do), I don’t have to worry about losing anything. If I need paper copies, I can simply use my printer.

Easy pie!

I immediately running through all the consequences in my head. I was first a bit angry that I might have yet another hospital visit. I’ve had two of them in the last two years: to have my appendix removed and an emergency room visit due to a worst-pain-ever kidney stone. I was like, “Oh, please! Not AGAIN!”

I knew that if I had surgery, I’d end up having to fork over a lot of money. Insurance will only cover so much. I would prefer to use the money elsewhere (such as paying down my debts), but it’s my health and it isn’t worth sacrificing. The other thing I dreaded was that I’d be out of the office for the rest of the week, at least. The idea sucked because I have a lot of shit to do, but it certainly isn’t that big of a deal. My boss is very understanding and would prefer that I heal.

So, you know what bothered me the most about possibly having hernia surgery?

Since someone would be coming into my condo to pick up things for me, including Bess, I was concerned about the slovenly display of candy wrappers on the table next to the sofa, the boxes of opened Christmas gifts on the living room floor, and the dirty kitchen from last night’s cooking fun. I actually considered stopping by my home before going to see the doctor in order to clean it up. God forbid someone like my father saw my messy home!

Anyway, the pain turned out not to be anything serious. You want to know what was wrong?

After about 30 minutes or so, I farted and suddenly felt a lot better.