FILEing for separation

Since my first day in the professional world I have gone out of my way to keep work and personal things, on my computer; separate. Files, email accounts, bookmarks, all of them are divided into two camps.

For files, everything either goes into folders titled AllYancy or AllWork. Easy as pie. This way I can point the corporate backup at AllWork and my personal USB drive at AllYancy.

For email, work email is work email; only. Well except for the times I wanted to show off and give out yancy_lent@lotus.com. I just don't get those who give all their friends their work addresses, and then they get a different job… and another. You can add ISP's to this as well. Around here the names change all the time or you get a better deal and have to change it. Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail seem like safe bets; ok, you never know about the first one.

For bookmarks and overall browsing things get sloppy. I use FireFox and like to keep everything forever, url history, type-ahead fields. The problem with all of this is when you have eyes over your shoulder or you're in a meeting and you start typing. This is where I switch to squeaky clean IE. Not because I'm hiding anything, I just don't want to take attention off the meeting topic. I work with someone that keeps all her bookmarks pin'd open. I really don't need like reading all of her diet website titles… but must.

To expand on the browser experience, for backing things up you can't beat FireFox, you need only copy two folders and you have everything, url cache, type ahead values and uname and password cache. Simply install FireFox on another computer then overlay the two folders.. iiiiiidentical.

This is where the separation comes into place. I have been using VM's for a couple years now as a way to manage my employers demo environment. I have gotten to the point where I trust the group of files that make up a VM to that of a PC. (I was always worried about file corruption; that's yet to happen).  So it occurred to me; why not create and use a personal VM?

This could make things very easy to manage. Backups, easy, one folder. Email, browsing, done, they're all done in a vacuum. Resources, the host would run SUPER clean for it would only need a couple base applications running. I could run all my apps in my personal VM and just save the ‘work' files to a mapped drive on the host. This way I can use work mail and IM; Notes and Sametime respectively, without having to switch back and forth.

It would take some time to get use to but seems well worth the exercise. It's officially on the list.

Excessive email and text are ‘mental illness’.

The following is from the news.com.au story on Excessive emails and text are a mental illness

As more people leave the office computer, only to log on as soon as they get home, the American Journal of Psychiatry has found addiction to text messaging and emailing could be another form of mental illness.

Guilty!

Read more here...

I can has 8 trillion bits per second?

This is pretty amazing stuff, if only Verizon could use it to decrease the time it takes to redraw the image when you cycle through channels...

IBM Network Prototype Promises 1-Second Movie Downloads

IBM thinks the technology -- dubbed "green optical link" -- could spark a revolution in high-def content. For instance, Web sites that offer movies could use it to access libraries of millions of high-definition videos in seconds. And laptops equipped with optical data ports could download such content in an instant.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind. My photo project

I saw this book "Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain" in the pile that my wife got from the Library, "Cool, what's this one all about", I said as I totally judged the book by its cover. She went on to describe one of the exercises. It went something like this. Walk around your house and take 20 pictures of things that make a circle and make sure that circle is about the same size in every picture.

1. Cup of orange juice in a red plastic cub
2. Small glass milk jug
3. Stained Glass window
4. Simon Pierce bowl
5. Top corner of a antique bookshelf in the living room.
6. Fake flower
7. Light in the Den
8. Logitech WebCam
9. Northeastern emblem
10. Boston University emblem
11. Hose/Floor toggle on the vacuum
12. License plate
13. My oldest Son
14. My oldest son's cochlear implant
15. A shell
16. The back of my daughters head
17. Clementine
18. Clock
19. Wreath on the exterior of the house taken through the window.
20. Top of Lamp

Now I have to check out the 249 other projects .

Drum solo for Bruce

The amazing Joey Jordison

Ironman World Championship – This Sat. at 2:00p EST on NBC

Check your local listings! I've been burned by this and missed it more then once!

If you're looking for any motivation this weekend, you'll find a ton in this broadcast. Even if you're not into triathlons the production quality, editing and the personal interest stories will win anyone over.

They've posted a teaser on youtube.

Monster.com: Find your own path. Your calling is calling.

Monster.com doesn't seem to put out that many commercials but when they do they're on target and hit home. In their newest campaign; to me, they once again nail it. The focus this time is our routine of getting to work. They don't focus so much on the auto pilot behavior that we all exhibit instead, how we seem to do it as if ‘trapped' on rails. We are locked into the commute as apposed to willing knowing participants.

The spot is easy on the eyes and the music sublet so as to put you in the mood of those following the path, dreaming of a better tomorrow, making it easy to relate. What also impressed me about the visuals was how they were able to portray a big city mass commute without out one thinking “rat race”.

At the end, of course, you see the one that defied the path, found his calling and is of course a Monster customer. He found his dream, his calling, by going to moster.com, how about you?

Overall an excellent commercial, two thumbs up. I didn't much care for "Don't fight Mondays". Using Mondays suck as a back drop is too easy. Lastly the new tag line, Your calling is calling. Nothing short of brilliant and on par with “Shop Victoriously”, more on that one in a future post.

Find your own Path: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XQAkwPgpsAM

Don't Fight Monday's: http://youtube.com/watch?v=npQC7v73TXg