shahine.com/omar/

Some of you may recall that I’ve blogged a bit here and there about Backpack, which is sort of a personal WiKi etc. My Wife and I use it as our personal dashboard for domestic chores and notes that we need to share. To find out how Backpack can relate to Getting Things Done I’d recommend reading Backpack and GTD on the What's the next action blog.

While I’d love to use OneNote for this type of thing, Backpack is pretty rich and allows access from anywhere including mobile devices. For that reason it wins for this sort of thing.

Another good site to check out is Remember The Milk. There are some things I prefer about Remember the Milk like being able to assign tasks to different people, but it doesn’t have any real notes support for dashboard type information.

Over at the excellent Thinking Faster blog, there is a post on Meetings which I found interesting. I often ponder about how work days at Microsoft are fairly broken. Between email and meetings it’s amazing that I can actually do any work. If I go to meetings, I get behind on mail. If I am not behind on mail I am behind on work or late for a meeting. Invariably everyone in the meeting is doing mail so that they don’t get behind on mail.

We’ve tried some things at work like meeting free Tues/Wed for the development team, but I don’t think it works very well.

“I find myself saying this more and more, as my calendar becomes more and more crowded with events, meetings and conversations put there by other people.  Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons for meetings, but I feel like my work life is becoming secondary to my meeting life.

Getting a meeting request used to be a sign that you were somebody.  Someone wanted your opinion on a matter of great urgency for the firm.  Now it seems that the email CC: phenomena has migrated from email to meetings:  the basic rule of thumb - invite everyone to every meeting.  It's a wonder anything gets done during "normal" working hours.”

Thinking Faster: Do we really need to meet?

Well, the folks who create ClearContext have announced a beta of version 2. I've been testing it now for a few weeks. Before that I exchanged quite a bit of mail with Deva, Brad and Frank (as well as some brunches and dinners!). They took a lot of my feedback, suggestions and bug reports to heart.

There are quite a few new features in this version, but probably the biggest changes are targeted at folks who use some form of Getting Things Done. However, the product is very generic by not adhering to some of the more unfortunate aspects of GTD that the Netcentrics software is unforgiving about.

I'll highlight some of the feature's that I've found myself using the most:

Defer

In Getting Things Done you learn about the tickler file. Well the NetCentrics software doesn't really even attempt to solve this problem, it only allows you to snooze a message for a certain number of days. ClearContext v2 allows you to defer a message by a number of days, or to a specific day and time. This has come in really handy for me for the following types of emails:

1. I have to follow up on something at a certain date/time. I've either asked some one else to do something or I just won't get to something till later. This acts as a great reminder system. Since my inbox has few few messages in it then I notice these reminders quickly.
2. Shipping noticed and the like. Typically I want to discard these emails, but I need them for a short period of time. This way I can just make it go away for a while and when it comes back I can defer it again, or delete it.

This feature helps me keep both my inbox and my task list clean of clutter. In the "classic" GTD way, you must add such an item to your calendar or task list. No thanks, because I am poor about doing my weekly review, these things get lost in my task list.

I think this feature alone is worth the upgrade. It works well, and helps me manage my inbox.

Task

This feature is almost 100% identical to the program I wrote to simply create a task from an email. The method is far cleaner than the NetCentrics GTD addin for the following reasons:

1. The original email is attached to the task. This allows you to later reply or reference the email from within the task. No funny linking stuff that Netcentrics does.
2. A small snippet of text from the email is included in the body of the task. This allows you to quickly understand the context. Also if you sync tasks to your Pocket PC/Smartphone you can also get an idea of what the task is.
3. You can assign a topic to a task. I then use categories to assign the Action like @Home, @Office etc and use the standard Outlook views to see your tasks grouped by Action.
4. The subject of the task is canonical (stripped of RE:, FW: etc).
5. You can optionally then delete the email from the task, or file it to the Topic folder.

This feature is pretty much implemented the way I want. All that is needed is a few small tweaks (I would like Topic to be replicated to the Category field as well so it appears on my Pocket PC.

Schedule

Like task you can turn an email into an Appointment. I don't use this much (never have). My Calendar is way to busy, and blocking off time to do things never works at Microsoft.

Action View

This is a huge part of the upgrade. I haven't really spent enough time in this feature yet as it's incredibly feature rich. I plan on doing so in the coming weeks.

Misc

Other than the things I've mentioned, there are many bug fixes, and changes under the hood. I've found CC v2 to be as stable if not more stable than v1. The Views support was beefed up, and I have access to more reliable and desirable default views. I haven't had to mess with them at all yet.

The bottom line for me is that this upgrade has allowed me to completely ditch my own GTD software that I wrote (I didn't need yet another piece of software I developed to deal with) as well as the Netcentrics GTD add-in which I stopped using long ago (I find it overbearing and too prescriptive for how I work).

If you are a current ClearContext user, try the beta. If not, there will be a few different versions of the product to chose from in the future, and one of them will be free!

Thanks to Scott Hanselman, I have put Adobe Acrobat reader out of its misery. Good riddens! I won’t miss your long boot times, amazingly bad updating story, and endless prompts to download other random Adobe software I don’t want. Plus I won’t have an aggravating experience viewing PDFs in IE.

Foxit is great.

Ever since I built my new Silverstone pc, I’ve been struggling with a really bad problem. My Pentium D 820 is HOT, and I mean HOT. The poor Intel Heatsink is noisy and constantly revving from idle to 2000–3000 RPMs. Since it has a small itty bitty fan on it, this can get quite loud and annoying.

Over the past few months I have tried 4 different cpu heatsinks. Each was a disaster. Some were too loud (louder than the stock Intel) and others were ineffective allowing my CPU to overhead and the motherboard to shut down the machine.

The problem I have is that my case is rather small and will not allow for some of the monster heatsinks out there that operate at very low dBA (under 20 dBA). A few months ago I was researching a new Power Supply as my brand new el cheapo started clanking, and came upon a new CPU Heatsink from Coolermaster, the Hyper L3. This is a “low profile” heatsink meaning it’s big, but not huge. Also many heatsinks out there require you to even remove your motherboard and mount a supporting plate underneath. Since the Intel Pentium D uses the LGA775 mount (a clip in) this is an extra pain. So the good news was that this new Coolermaster used the existing LGA775 clip system (no motherboard removal) and was short enough to fit in my case. On top of that it uses the Intel 4 PIN power connector allowing the motherboard to control the RPMs.

Anyway, this new heatsink is the bomb. It’s so quiet I can barely hear it. The only other fan in my PC is the one in the Power Supply, and that’s ultra quiet running at 16 dBAs. The Coolermaster Hyper L3 runs at 18 dBA making my PC really silent. Just for fun I ran maxcpu to stress both processors and while the fan kicked in, it’s much larger than the Intel fan (80mm fan vs 60mm) so it produces much less noise and it kept the temp under 70 degrees C. I bet I could get a fanless CPU but the one I got pushes hot air off my cpu fan so that helps cool the PC, which is a good thing for me.

Here are my updated specs:

• Silverstone SG01 $188.00 
• RADEON 550 256M $79.00 
• DVD+/-RW 16X Sony DRU800A $84.99 
• Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHZ) $245.99 
• Intel 945G D945GTPLKR $126.00 
• Nexus NX-4090 400 watt PSU $94.95
• Coolermaster Hyper L3 $34.95
• DDR2 1 GB Kit (two 512 Dimms) $173.43 

Eric Lawrence has updated my favorite windows application with some great little tweaks. If you aren’t using SlickRun you are missing out. Slickrun is like the “address bar” you can enable in the task menu but far more powerfull. I use it dozens of times a day.

+ Autocomplete of filenames as parameters to MagicWords
+ Hit CTRL+F or CTRL+I to insert filename(s) in command line
+ ESC (or ESC,ESC) activates last active window instead of no window
+ Added SmartPaste (trims pasted text, removes crlf,etc)
+ Prompt before "Undo changes" in Jot
+ _STARTUP MagicWord executes on startup
+ _DISPLAYCHANGE MagicWord executes on display resolution change
+ New NoMouseActivation setting in [General] section of SlickRun.ini for those who don't want to be able to Activate Slickrun via click

Bayden Systems: Minor new SlickRun Beta.

New TSA Rules finally bring some sanity back to air travel.

Now if they would just get rid of the retarded laptop removal and shoe removal policies. Maybe I should print this out and show it to the next Security Screener that asks me to remove my shoes?

I feel like going and getting a small swiss army knife tomorrow just so I can take it through security again. Or maybe some nail clippers! Oooh ooh, can't get too excited.

updated: thanks to all who noted, knives are still not allowed, making the swiss army knife contraband... darn.

Clemens Vasters just announced that he'll be joining Microsoft. For those of you that don't know, Clemens is the "papa" of dasBlog. There is an eweek story covering the announcement. I'm sure he is excited, but Microsoft is very lucky to have him.

This is a pretty eerie picture. Madison Avenue w/o any cars. It was closed yesterday, along with 5th ave, for emergency vehicles.

According to the Transit Union Head, at this point the main "sticking point" are the pension issues. Just to recap:

• MTA wants employees to retire at 62 with full pension and wants new employees to contribute 6% of  their salary toward the pension (currently they contribute 2%).
• Union wants to maintain retirement with full pension at 55 and does not want a change in contribution.

I'm sorry, but I can't have any sympathy for the strikers. Retire at 55 with full pension? Meanwhile they say this is an issue about respect? I don't believe that most Americans are so lucky to retire at 55.

I'm lucky I'm on vacation in NYC right now and not working, cause getting around is a pain. Given the way things are going, I think this strike will last a few days or more. Roger Toussaint is starting personal attacks on the Mayor. The press isn't really having any of it. I suspect he will see the inside of a jail cell or bankrupt his union before the strike is over.

For some reason, the arrogance that is fuming from this post bothers me (which is in response to Scoble's Post). I think because I feel a bit the way that Tom Harpel does. He wrote in the comments:

"Every employee of every company (I work at Microsoft) has an opportunity to make their company better by respecting its customers. If your customers are stand-in-line types, respect and embrace that. Writing off your customers because you do not relate to them will make it harder for you to design and deliver products that your customers want."

Chuq, I have been to almost a dozen Macworld Expos where people waited hours and hours in line to watch your boss give a keynote speach. I will most definetley never wait in line for a movie or a product (just cause I don't care enough), but I won't bash folks for waiting in line to anxiously get their hands on a product.

BTW - I have a iPod Nano on backorder from Amazon.com for my sister. I ordered it a few weeks ago and estimated delivery is mid January. What's that about "delivering new hardware (in volume)"?

Jimmy Grewal (my former roomate) and I met the day he was interviewing for a Program Manager role on Mac IE 5. We were roomates for over 2 years and he is one of my dearest friends. He moved back to Dubai and left Microsoft a few years ago, long after MacIE was "dead". He has a great post covering the slashdot article and I highly recommend reading it if you are at all interested in some of the politics around MacIE and the Apple/Microsoft relationship. You don't get this kind of information often (usually in books).

I really cherish the years I spent working on MacOE 5 while he worked on MacIE 5. What kind of a company gives two 22 year old kids the opportunity to lead the effort for two products they are incredibly passionate about? It's one of the reasons I love Microsoft so dearly. We were empowered to build the best email and web browser for the Mac, and both products turned into best of class software applications. Those were amazingly fun times. It's sort of how I feel about working on Hotmail Windows Live Mail, except the challenge is bigger and Jimmy is not around :-(.

Slashdot has an article about Microsoft ending MacIE support.

Of course, since I used to work on MacIE’s twin sister, MacOE, I was looking for any good nuggets or posts from former MacBU folks. I figured Jorg would write something. He paints a rather interesting history of what happened to development of MacIE after 5 was released.

MacIE 5 was developed by an amazing team of folks. They paved the way for many features that were later hacked into the browser via add-ins (Forms Autofill which is now in the Google and MSN Toolbars, but not IE Proper) and some which have yet to make an appearance (web scrapbook). I had a lot of fun working with those folks as they worked tirelessly for many months (I remember when MacIE 5’s release slipped 6 months for a 1 year project). Tantec was relentless in pursuing full CSS and DOM compliance, and got further than anyone else at the time.

The best feature of Mac IE 5 never shipped. We had to remove it from the product 2 days before releasing it. For many months there were two builds of MacIE 5, one with this feature and one without. That was also true for the new Mac IE “chrome” which was a guarded secret, till, well, Apple also happened to have the same idea and they called their’s Aqua . Those were strange times.

So I’m sitting her pondering with my wife, why the heck do I need to bring my laptop to NY? So far this year I have spent about 3 weeks without my laptop, and it’s been great. Here is what I don’t plan on doing for the next 6 days:

• Looking at work email
• Writing code (this pretty much requires I bring my laptop).
• I usually enjoy writing code in my off time, but I’d rather read a few books this time.
• Doing other work related activities

What the heck do I need to lug 6 lbs to NYC and back for? It would be nice to go through TSA security w/o one (btw, every airport I’ve been to outside the US does not do the ridiculous laptop stuff).

What I do plan on doing the next few days:

• Shopping in NYC
• Cultural Activities when I’m not freezing
• Hanging with my family
• Seeing a Broadway show
• Blogging
• Reading RSS Feeds
• Reading a Book
• Playing with my PSP

With my k-jam, wifi, parents computer etc there is really no need to lug a laptop around these days. Now if I had a sub 4 lb laptop like my wife’s tiny white Vaio that wouldn’t be so big a deal, but my big fat Dell. Bleh.

This post is even later than Scott’s… Geez I suck. Joe Stagner (fellow MSFT employee) did a very informal podcast with Scott and me a few months ago where we talk about how we both got involved in dasBlog… It’s my first podcast .

A few months ago Scott and I started getting emails from Tom Watts. Neither of us knew him, but over the past few months has put together an excellent effort to expand our community support for dasBlog. Both Scott and I can barely find the time to get some code in here or there, and have always put docs, forums etc on the back burner. Scott covers the work in more details, but the short of it is we know have real forum support, and a real community web site (powered by dasBlog of course).

To paraphrase a bit from Scott:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dasblogce 

• is still the home for the code and all bug reports go here and feature requests go here.

http://dasblog.us

• For "us" and again thanks to Tom these are the new User Forums, replacing the lame forums and discussion tools at SourceForge. There's already great content here.

http://dasblog.info and http://dasblog.net

• For "info" and also thanks to Tom, soon this will hopefully handle all documentation and FAQs and the Wiki will be retired when the content has been moved.
• dasblog.net will take you to dasblog.info after a splash screen.

Thanks Tom!!!