Moneydance for Mac? 2006

Hey, anyone have an opinion on Moneydance? I'm finding that even after all this time my Quicken-soaked brain has never adapted to Budget and I need to go back to something a little more like how Quicken used to be back when it wasn't a buggy piece of crap.

Seems like since I don't go to the beach that often, the apparent increased risk of zombie attacks isn't enough to scare me off giving Moneydance a try.

Filtering SPAM in Gmail 2006

Am I missing something here? Gmail now puts my email arriving in Gmail now has "***SPAM***" in the subject line of junk mail which makes it very visually identifiable to a human. It seems to be entirely accurate so far in what it marks in that fashion really being crap.

However when I decide to trust it and set up a filter to fling all those messages into my SPAM folder so I never have to look at them, it appears that the asterisks are some sort of wildcard and I can't make a query to identify those messages without grabbing everything that has "spam" in the subject (e.g. "Re: your question about spam filtering").

Was someone at Google just not thinking? Or being too obscurely clever for the rest of us to follow? Tips appreciated.

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Kevin set me straight. (Thanks!) It must be coming from the TextDrive mail handler, so it's a case of incompatibility between their flagging and Gmail's search functions. I'll put in a request for a change for a different typographic treatment when the flag gets added.

Buying a new phone and/or camera 2006

I'm frustrated by the picture quality of the camera in my Treo 600. I also find it kind of large and heavy and am no longer really using the PDA features that often since 9 times out of 10 I have my laptop with me.

I have two choices:
- buy a tiny little phone and a separate tiny little camera
- buy something like a Samsung MM-A940

I'm tending toward the latter because I'm not that fussy a photographer and mostly want decent snapshots easily sent to my Flickr account. I'm probably not going to do any cropping or other processing so taking the photos from the camera to the laptop is an extra and unneeded step for me.

Anyone got any thoughts on a good camera phone?

I've got Sprint now and can get a rebate for being a long-time customer, so I'm sticking with their San Francisco phon selection (though I could also go to anything Nextel now that they've merged). Only feature I care about beside the camera is that it might be keen to have Bluetooth, but it's not necessary. Don't want tv on my phone or fancy-ass ringtones or any of that cruft.

Getting Things Done: how I'm using it 2005

I put a stake in the ground October 6th and started using Getting Things Done [quick overview of GTD] to manage my activities. I moved things out of my email inbox into the appropriate places (I "processed" my inbox, in GTDspeak).

Having that clean slate is proving tremendously helpful to keeping me focused and motivated. I am much less stressed since the change and finally making headway on a lot of old tasks.

Since I'm a software product manager and the go-to person in the company for my products, I am both working on detail-heavy, rapidly iterating projects and very, very frequently interrupted with questions, some of which need immediate response and some of which are more theoretical "wonder if we could make the software do this?" ones. GTD is proving very helpful for me in keeping these details from being lost, staying focused on what needs to be done now, putting the energy and resources I have to work on the actions which I'm best able to be productive with at the moment, and keeping my sanity.

Here's how I'm configuring things:

My email inbox in Thunderbird represents incoming information and the tasks I want to work on today:
--- I use a red label for URGENT/DO NEXT items. (I assign labels as part of my processing step).
--- an orange label is a 10 minute task (should be able to move this task forward or even finish it with a quick burst of action)
--- a green label is a 30 minute task (needs a longer chunk of focus)
--- an olive label is a project which needs its next 10 or 30 minute action identified (I find these just sit around not moving forward until they get a clear next action that can be done quickly)
--- a purple label is waiting for someone (but expecting either that it will come back to me today or that I want to remember to nudge that someone on if I haven't heard more by end of day)

- I have placed a physical inbox on my desk for incoming papers, in-slips (see below) and physical things to deal with today.

- I also have a dedicated "inbox" pocket in my laptop bag which is used for taking inbox items for work from home and vice versa.

- I have "@waiting on someone" folders in both Thunderbird and on desk for "waiting, not expecting action today"

- I have a tickler folder in Thunderbird containing 43 folders, emptied into the inbox each morning

- I use iCal for "hard landscape" appointments like meetings and conference calls and recurring tasks (e.g. every week send a business development activities update to the person who combines everyone's into one update for the executives)

- KGTD for management of projects, somedaymaybe, and to some degree a quick way to see the status of things

- folders in Thunderbird for reference (e.g. by customer code, by release & within that line item code, plus some "other people's products" and "other departments" folders)

- physical folders for reference (these are only made as needed: for each release & within that for each line item we have meetings on or for which I have other physical notes, a handful of non-release-specific projects which have physical notes, and the general year folder. The general year folder receives all other physical notes or event agendas, which are added in in chronological order with the latest in the front. I guess this is Noguchi method without the shuffling based on last use (since I think it's harder to remember last use date than creation date)).

I have a whole lot of little yellow slips of paper close at hand at all times. In fact, I have a big stack by my inbox, a small stack with a pen right under the front edge of my monitor, some in my wallet and some on the little table next to my couch at home. When something pops into mind "Oh, I should call Hepsibah about the status of the Foo project", I write it down and put it  in my inbox. I don't do it or add it to KGTD or anything, I just get the idea collected and get on with the action I'm actually trying to do when my brain veered off.

Note that this is for all kinds of ideas from "print the directions to the party" to "write a book about Discardia". It doesn't matter, just capture the idea - if it's a lot of stuff, do a quick mind map on a bigger piece of paper - and then I decide what to do about it later when processing the inbox.

 

I think there's still some overlap between what gets tracked where; I'm definitely in the stage where this is all shaking down still. I was using iCal to mark out time to do things, but it made me look completely overbooked all the time and meant a lot of scooting things along. Ticklers work better. I'm moving "soft landscape stuff out of iCal and into KGTD as part of my collection process. The next step will be to only use Thunderbird for things where I need the email information as reference or it's a less than 10 minute task so it isn't worth logging in KGTD. I've just started using the start date in KGTD and will probably give that a tickler role (rather than writing a one sentence email draft and filing it in a tickler folder).

As Merlin said in at least one 43 Folders post, it's not the details of the system, it's the act of thinking about what you want to do and then deciding what to do right now. So far this is sure working better for me than anything else I've tried. I mean a LOT better.

Mmm, this GTD Koolaid is super tasty.

Getting Things Done 2005

I'm just getting into David Allen's Getting Things Done again and finding this time that I'm really going to be able to implement it. I had adopted some of his approach philosophically on a prior reading, but now I'm ready to put the full process in place. The glory of the clear desk, empty inbox and focused mind await!

In addition to reading the book, I recommend reading Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website (introduction to his take on GTD, all GTD posts) and Mac users should check out Ethan J. A. Schnoover's Kinkless KGTD (introduction, endorsement from Merlin).

I'll be writing more about Getting Things Done in the coming months, I know. I am already feeling the benefits at work.

ICE - In Case of Emergency 2005

Here's a good idea which I found on the blog of a man in New Zealand I've never met and who's site I can't remember how I reached:

Add an entry in your mobile phone's contacts for ICE with name and contact info (e.g. "ICE - mom" and then her name and phone number on separate lines below). Emergency services can use this to contact the appropriate people should you have an accident and need medical authorizations, etc.

This got me thinking that it's also a good idea to have an entry for Home or Mom because if you lose your mobile phone, many folks (e.g. lost & found coordinators at Filco festivals) know to look for that and call to say they have it.

And on the same concept, it doesn't hurt to have your business card in your wallet and in a pocket of your backback with "this is my wallet" and "this is my bag" written on it. Lots of people who find lost things like reuniting them with their rightful owner; make it easy. (But don't put your home address in there; there's no reason to give an invitation to further robbery to the person who snagged your wallet at that crowded festival and knows you aren't at home).

Fine hosting, for the discerning web geek 2005

The TextDrive hosting for life offer returns for a limited offering. Get in while the gettin's good.