Saturday, May 3, 2008

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

And an anal-rententive geek rejoices…

Organized Living, which closed last June when the company went bankrupt, is being replaced at Brentwood Square by a Container Store. If they carry Cargo pressboard boxes, I might wet myself.

The Container Store, a leading national retailer of storage and organization products, said Tuesday that on March 3 it will open its first Missouri store in Brentwood Square, on Brentwood Boulevard south of Highway 40 (Interstate 64).

As the kids say, "w00t!"

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Pleased am I

I've been in the market for a new cell phone to replace my nearly three-year-old handset, so last week I followed the herd of my friends who'd recommended it and bought my very own Treo 650. I can't believe I waited this long.

There are a lot of pluses. Foremost, I get to replace both my phone and my PDA with one device, in a form factor that's not too much larger than my old headset. It's also got a decent-for-snapshots camera (that plays nice with Flickr), so there's another device I don't have to pack everywhere. Secondly, Sprint offers a very reasonable service plan that gives me the voice minutes I need along with all-you-can-eat internet access, meaning I can use the Treo for e-mail and light web work when I'm away from the office but don't want to lug a laptop. (The inexpensive combination of voice and data service surprised me. It's only $3 more per month than my old plan.)

On those trips where I do haul along the iBook, though, the phone is really going to come in handy, since its Bluetooth capability allows me to use it as a high-speed wireless modem. That means no more shelling out outrageous fees for hotel or airport wireless and no more struggling to check my e-mail or update websites on a fluky, long-distance dial-up connection when I come home to visit my mom. Which is where I am now, posting this at blazing speed.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love living in the future?

Monday, October 31, 2005

Keeping it together, again

Regular readers (any left?) will recall a couple of months ago when I was casting about for a new to-do list management system. After playing around with Tadalist, Basecamp and Backpack (which seem like wonderful tools, just not for me), I downloaded and installed the simply-named Tasks, as recommended by the refreshing Bryan J. Busch and was almost immediately hooked.

It's the closest thing to ideal for me I've yet seen. It runs on my own server, so there's no monthly subscription fee. It integrates well with iCal, can generate RSS and isn't so feature-heavy or cumbersome that I don't actually use it. I highly recommend it. It has certainly helped keep me sane-ish these past few months.

Monday, August 8, 2005

Keeping it together

To-do lists have been very much on my mind recently and, in my continual quest to tweak and refine my own personal organization system, I've been on a quest to find the perfect task management system for me.

Notice I said "for me", for this sort of thing is a very personal endeavor. No one tool or system works for everyone and, as in my case, often no single tool completely does the job for anyone.

For a long time, I was very happy with Now Up-to-Date for the combination of calendaring and task management, but somewhere along the way to building a version that would run under OS X, they critically crippled some of the very features upon which I had relied. Still, it'd remain a pivotal part of my worklife if not for one damning flaw: For some reason, "alerts" just don't. I can't get the computer to make a sound, pop up a window, anything, no matter how forcefully I click the mouse when setting the alarm in the first place. I've re-installed, deleted preferences, checked my audio settings seven ways from Sunday...nothing, and no joy from the support department either. They're just as baffled as I.

Meanwhile, I've migrated to Apple's iCal for my calendaring. It's another flawed (but free!) program and has the added benefit of .Mac synchronization, which manages to keep the files on my home and work desktops, my iBook and my Palm singing from the same page.

For to-dos, though, iCal just doesn't have to oomph. There are a lot of things I like about Microsoft Entourage, but it's too much application, really. I don't need it for e-mail or contacts, and the real deal-breaker is that there's no simple way to synchronize across computers.

I'm test-driving three web-based applications, all by the same company: Tadalist, Backpack, and Basecamp. The last is a project management application, aimed at whole companies and departments; the former two are more personally aimed, Tadalist just does lists, while Backpack puts lists, notes and some modest file management, along with e-mail reminders into the bargain.

Each has its strengths and drawbacks, some of which I can already see after just a few days with them. And it's a bit frustrating that identical tasks (making and maintaining a to-do list, for example) are accomplished in three subtly different ways among the three applications. I'd expect more consistency from apps that came from the same place. (That said, they're also all three fairly young applications, so perhaps their feature sets and implementations will grow together.)

None of them will serve me perfectly, nor will I expect it to. Right now, I'm just looking for something to add to the mix, serve the need that's going unserved. But I'm slowly developing my idea of what the Grand Unified Personal Information Management Software for Brad is and when I have some extra time (ha!), I'll promulgate it and challenge someone to build it.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Yes, I know what this says about me…

How much joy could a piece of machine-molded plastic possibly bring to my life? (Shut up!) Ask anyone in my office how I squealed last week when my Flipfold arrived by parcel post. I was giddily running around demonstrating perfect shirt folds to everyone who couldn't shut their door quickly enough. Seriously, it may be the best $20 I've spent in a long time, judging by the amount of fun it's brought me. Certain of my friends will understand: You need to get one right now!

Last night, after a much-needed laundry binge, I had the best time folding my dozens upon dozens of t-shirts and stacking them neatly according to color and the occasions for which they are suitable.

Yes, I know.

Don't blame me. I learned it by watching him!