Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Power tools under used (mostly to look at pictures of cats)

Q: If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?

A: I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man.
I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers. (by user nuseramed)

[Source, Reddit, AskReddit]

I purchased the Omnigroup tools to get my professional (and personal) life in order. I am now heavily using Omnifocus and loving it! One of my favorite features of Omnifocus is the location based reminders. I can set a reminder for the Office so that when I arrive at work, the reminder pops up on my phone (and in turn on my Pebble watch). Now wait, doesn’t the iPhone have this same functionality in its built-in Reminders app? Yes it does! But I’ve never used it. Omnifocus differs from Reminders in functionality. Apparently the iPhone Reminders app has a tighter radius on the location awareness. Back to function. Reminders is simply a reminders list. Omnifocus is adaptable to whichever productivity management style you have. It was written primarily with Getting Things Done in mind but will work well with Covey’s First Things First and many of the other productivity structures out there.

I find myself leaving my Narrative camera at the office frequently. Today I decided to setup a location aware reminder in the iPhone Reminders app to warn me when leaving the office with a daily reminder "Got Narrative?"

Why did I choose Reminders over Omnifocus? Simply because when I look at my list of daily todos, I do not want it cluttered with a recurring reminder to do simple things. However, I want that daily reminder to do simple things and this is a fantastic use of Reminders. I will be using this heavily now. I will use the location aware contexts of Omnifocus for important reminders that do not regularly recur such as "Drop child’s lunch check off at the elementary school" which would pop up as I drove by the school on the way to work.

We have these amazing tools for enhancing our lives but rarely exploit a fraction of their full potential. I bet your DSLR has a manual’s worth of menus and settings you’ve never even thought to explore. When I speak of smart homes, automation, and a technological society, these simple tools like the iPhone’s Reminders program are much of what I am referring to.

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Bright and early

The students are on spring break. Amy’s school offered a trip to Washington D.C. so she got on a bus at 11pm Friday and returned at 5am today. Only the bus on Friday was an hour late and today it was an hour early. Amy, "I told Mom it was early." Me, "Did she reply? Considering she leaves her phone upstairs at night, perhaps you should have contacted both of us." Amy was not the last to be picked up but I had really hoped to have arrived at the school well before the bus. I like to step up and help unload luggage and talk to the other parents but c’est la vie. She had an amazing trip. And being up this early has reminded me just how much I enjoyed starting my day at 4am in the past. I’m just not certain I can do this on a regular basis.

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My regular morning 

I awaken at 4:30am. Head to the bathroom only to hear water running through the pipes. We have a leak which is one of the toilet valves. That’s a $14 part and an hour or two of my time of which I have neither so I mentally calculate the increased water bill and decide to live with it until the weekend. 

I make it upstairs to work. See I work two jobs: my day job and my freelancing on evenings and weekends. I get logged into my pc but the cats won’t leave me alone. I concede and feed them an hour early. The kitchen drips to further taunt me. And my MacBook decides it doesn’t want to boot. Ah, productivity!

Did I meantion I work three jobs? I’m also a full time tech support guru but I don’t pay myself very well.

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The morning thus far

Woke at 4am to walk the dog. Woke at 6:05am to wake the children. Over breakfast, dreamed of DIY and teaching my children all the things that I haven’t. Spent yesterday realizing that a half a decade has gone by send I taught my children Diamoku but never went beyond that. I want to teach them mindfulness. I have dozens of posts I want to blog. I want to revamp my blog to show all my content feeds. I want to refine my content feeds and get video casting and podcasting on a schedule with topics and introduce Amy and Evan to podcasting. Went to the elementary school to get a picture of the color guard doing the flags. Helped them but forgot to get the picture. Did a little programming on a client website. I downloaded Duolingo to my cellphone and began a Spanish lesson but realized I shouldn’t be doing that while driving. Committed myself mentally to completing my HAM radio license. Began listening to the latest episode of A Buddhist Podcast.

A great start to the day!

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Cannot stay awake

The animals woke me at 5:30am for walking and feeding. I was wide awake. Tried to convince myself to chant. Tried to convince myself to have coffee and read a book. Instead returned to sleep until 6:40 but on the positive side Evan and I missed the bus so we took it upon ourselves to start the flag rotation for the Webelos at the elementary school.