On my way back to the office this morning, I decided to stop and take a picture of the sunrise over the lake. I missed catching the morning mist due to having to make a U turn and find a place to park first. Oh well.

I also managed to shoot this at 1600 instead of 200. My own fault for not checking it and not setting it back to 200 after getting some hummingbird pictures a couple days ago.

Even with all of those “issues”, I still like this picture though. It’s peaceful.

She told me to post this.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, head over to LFGComic and start reading.

This got me to thinking. Not about myself writing a book, I know I don’t have a story that I want to tell that way. But just about writing. The process of it, the drive to do it. All three of these individuals can be very highly motivated and VERY creative. Not the single dimensional creativity that many people display from time to time. The world changing creativity that they bring to every aspect of everything they do.

All three are entrepreneurs, or have been at some time in the past. All three have a technical bent of some kind. (To be honest one is more of a technical pretzel, his interests and projects look more like a sick form of the game Twister than anything else.)

I find myself wanting to read whatever it is that the three of them write. I even find myself wanting to provide feedback for them as an early reader of their manuscripts. But for selfish reasons. I want to be able to tell people that I read that book before it was even published and now it is on the New York Times Best Seller list, or won a Hugo, or some other award.

Is that wrong?

Tools that we talked about:

Remind – Calendar

todo.sh – Task list

The books we had were:

“Getting Things Done” by David Allen

“Time Management for System Administrators” by Tom Limoncelli

Websites:

One of the websites we mentioned was 43folders. This has ceased to be the “Productivity Pr0n” that it used to be, but still contains lots of good information, tips, tricks and ideas. It may be easier to just start from the beginning of the blog and work your way forward to the present.

Inbox Zero Videos and info on the how and why of getting your inbox cleaned out.

LifeHacker Also a good productivity site and good source for ideas.

We also referenced back to Franklin Covey a few times.

Just remember, the best tools to get organized and keep on top of your tasks, projects and other commitments is the one that works for YOU. What anyone else does, while it may be helpful in showing what is available, may not always be what you need or want.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it is, diagnose it and get back on track.
The hardest thing about getting and then staying organized is the discipline to do whatever it is that you need to do, and do it every day.

Below are some shell functions and aliases that I use to make remind and todo.sh a little easier.
This should be able to be copied and pasted directly into a .bashrc

# GTD
alias t='~/bin/todo.sh -d ~/.GTD/todo.cfg'

# print out the todo list and 2 weeks of the calendar on login
echo " -- TODO --"
~/bin/todo.sh -d ~/.GTD/todo.cfg ls
echo ""
remind -w$(echo ${COLUMNS}) -c+2 ~/.GTD

# put the above in an alias
alias gtd='t ls;remind -w$(echo ${COLUMNS}) -c+2 ~/.GTD'

# my remind and todo.sh data files are stored in ~/.GTD and managed
# with subversion.
gtdcommit() {
    cd ~/.GTD
    svn commit -m 'auto commit'
    cd -
}

gtdupdate() {
    cd ~/.GTD
    svn up
    cd -
}

FACEBOOK has agreed to let a third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. (also known as “opt-out”) Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the Log out link. Select Privacy. Then select NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACEBOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST to let your friends know!)

When I asked him for a source, he responded with:

Just saw a friend’s face in an ad on facebook for “singles in your area”….she is most definitely married.

Fun stuff.

Update! 2009-08-05

According to http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=110636457130 this was all a non-issue.

But apparently the only thing keeping third party applications from doing this is the AUP. Just another reason I don’t like most of the 3rd party apps on fb.

I stopped and called the Dane County Sheriff’s non-emergency number, and let them know. Of course as soon as I stopped my van, turning on the hazard lights so no one else would hit the debris, cars started to pull up on the road ahead of me. They came over and wanted to know if I “was all right”. I had to laugh, it seems they didn’t bother to look at my vehicle and notice that there wasn’t any damage to it.

A few minutes later two Fitchburg Police officers arrived on the scene, took down my info, and started cleaning up the mess.

Hopefully that is the most exciting thing that happens to them today.