Minimizing Distractions

Published on
This is the third post in an ongoing business series I'm going to be writing. You can view them all by visiting here. A few years ago I read a book called The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, an interesting book by Tim Ferris. Since that time, I've seen Tim talk at least once (maybe twice?), and have read a few other books with similar concepts as the ones presented by Tim. While there are a few things in Tim's book I don't entirely agree with, some of his core concepts are fairly important if you're thinking about branching out on your own. For instance, Tim ...

How Often Do You Check Your E-Mail?

Published on
I moved my desk at work to a recently vacated spot by the window. It's a nice change being able to look out over Vancouver while I'm at my desk. I have a few minutes to kill here, so I thought I'd post a poll. Here's today's question: [poll id="15"] Also, if you're doing anything fun this weekend, drop a comment! ...

Mobile Me-Too

Published on
As most people now know, Apple released a full suite of online web applications similar to Google's offerings just a few weeks ago. Those products, launched under the name "Mobile-Me", were touted my Steve Jobs as being crucial to the future success of Apple and the iPhone. I've been using Mobile-Me for a few weeks now, and I thought I'd give some feedback. Truthfully, it's a very shoddy alternative to Gmail. I find the website extremely slow, and I have had loads of trouble even logging into the service. The only reason I'm still using the service at all is because Apple offers PUSH ...

Spammers, Give The *%(#& Up Already

Published on
Seriously. I look in my spam folder of my gmail account and on my blog every few days, and it's absolutely ridiculous just how much garbage ends up in it. Between the two I see about 100 or more combined comments/emails per day. It's just insane. No, I don't need viagra, or 100 different types of drugs, or some girl in YOURCITY to come over, or to come to your shitty seminar. Please give up already. It's not like any of these are intelligent either. I bet I could wire up a resistor, a few capacitors, a nine volt battery, and a piece of chicken that would catch 99% of them without any fancy algorithms. ...

A Day Without IM

Published on
Yesterday, partly by chance, and later by design, I found that I didn't log into an IM client for nearly the entire day. No Jabber, no Yahoo, no Windows Live or whatever they are calling it now -- just me, alone with my machine. And it was everything that I thought it would be. Now let me just tell you what a typical day is like for me on IM. I have, quite easily, well over 100 people on my IM client. A small percentage of these are personal (friends and family), but without a doubt, the majority are business related. During a typical work day, I'd say 70 of them or so are online and working in ...

When Email Just Isn't Enough

Published on
So last night I headed down to the Alibi room for Keri's 29th birthday party. I got the official invite via a myspace bulletin a while ago, and slotted it into my calender. The piece I apparently forgot I guess was the "RSVP via Email" thing at the bottom. So tonight, I got all dolled up, and headed down there for 10pm. Only problem was nobody else was there.. So, I got myself a drink, and waited. After an hour I realized there were a few holes in my original plan.. Unfortunatley, my cell phone was recently fixed, and I don't have many numbers in there yet, so I had no way to contact ...