tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2009:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane/237 2008-10-28T13:37:17Z Movable Type 3.36 tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.5424 2008-10-28T13:20:21Z 2008-10-28T13:37:17Z

It's been a busy busy month for me - I helped organize a Datatel users conference, went live on a new version of our HR/Payroll system, and I've been working on a large number of medium size projects for Admissions,...

Jason Ramsey article that rings very true to me about the pitfalls of multi-tasking. The idea that stuck with me is the notion of the multi-task zone out that you get when an email comes in while you're doing something else, particularly talking with someone on the phone or in person. Suddenly your mind is not on the conversation any more as your brain tries to process the email.]]> I've gone back and forth a little with James here in User Services about email, both verbally and in my mind, as both of us have wrestled with how to deal with email. The one extreme is to compartmentalize your email so that you are only checking it at certain times. Set it to check once an hour, and suddenly you have your work life back to pursue completion of projects. However, then you miss out on developing conversations that often happen these days completely over email. It's one thing to assume your input in these conversations is so valuable that those involved will await your answer. My experience is the opposite. Chime in fast, or your input will be too late. I lean towards the opposite extreme - checking my email at every minor break. I've checked it three times while writing this post, and responded to one email already, which involved going to another website and thinking about a response. So what to do? 1. (I already do this.) I physically turn myself away from the keyboard and mouse when someone enters my office, so I can give them my undivided attention. If anything breaks that attention, I power off my monitor, so as not to let it happen again. 2. When someone calls - I will try harder now to focus on the conversation and ignore email. I've often heard that multi-task fade out, when a conversation turns into uh-huh, yep, yep on the other end, and now I'm certain I've been guilty of it as well. And I'll see where else I can work to avoid multi-tasking. Doing two things at once, not so well, can sometimes create MORE work later on. Some folks are just going to have to wait. :( tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.5257 2008-10-02T19:35:34Z 2008-10-02T19:38:40Z

Here are some neat tips and tricks, some of which I didn't even know and plan to start using! David Pogue's articles in the NY Times are diverting - Even though I love my iMac, I find his obsession with...

Jason Ramsey tips and tricks, some of which I didn't even know and plan to start using! David Pogue's articles in the NY Times are diverting - Even though I love my iMac, I find his obsession with things Apple a little overboard, but when he's avoiding Apple topics, I think he's dead on most of the time.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.5194 2008-09-25T12:47:59Z 2008-09-25T12:55:49Z

I have been bad at posting again - this past week has been very hectic, really ever since I cleared my desk before my last post. It's very easy to slip into bad habits and my worst habits are: 1....

Jason Ramsey I have been bad at posting again - this past week has been very hectic, really ever since I cleared my desk before my last post. It's very easy to slip into bad habits and my worst habits are: 1. Letting work pile up on my desk with no organization. 2. Letting email pile up in my inbox with no organization. When these two things happen, I start to spend more time trying to figure out what I need to do than actually doing it again. Not good. And what is the point of staying organized when if the chips are down and it's crunch time, it doesn't help anyway. However, I find myself falling back on one BIG tip that keeps me sane during the very disorganized times, and that's free text search, Ctrl-F, either in Eudora, MeetingMaker, on web pages, or big documents (Word, PDF). When I'm in a hurry, I press Ctrl-F and search for a word in what I'm looking for. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people panic and search through their email, email by email, instead of just using Ctrl-F and searching for a key word. I've even found something similar in Datatel that unfortunately won't apply to 99% of the people reading this post, but maybe take an opportunity to think more about how you can quickly find things in the programs you use, instead of hunting and searching line by line, or screen by screen. Yep, this is a repeat idea, but I wanted to at least post something to prove I hadn't forgotten about you guys. tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.5116 2008-09-16T12:31:25Z 2008-09-16T12:57:21Z

I recently cleared my desk and it feels great. For those of you who don't know my office, let me step back. There are three types of offices in my opinion. The sterile office, the trashed office, and those in...

Jason Ramsey I recently cleared my desk and it feels great. For those of you who don't know my office, let me step back. There are three types of offices in my opinion. The sterile office, the trashed office, and those in between. I fall in between for sure. I won't suggest what's best, because what's best is what works for you. Permit me a story about retired professor James Lombardi. (Not the current Lombardi, but his dad.) He got a call from security one night saying that Carr Hall had been broken in to. The intruders got into his office and absolutely trashed it. James hurried over that night to inspect the damage to his office, looked at the horrified security guard, and said something like "What? It looks fine to me!" On the opposite tack, my boss at my job prior to coming to Allegheny told me not to handle a piece of paper more than three times. You should read it, act on it, and then put it in its final home. He also had people working for him that could help him achieve that goal. Not all of us are so lucky. But, thinking about that strategy can help you attack the day's work in a more efficient way. My old boss was a neat freak, and that worked for him. He had an inbox, what he was working on at that moment, and then a filing cabinet. Jim Lombardi was a disaster, but it worked for him. His office was his filing cabinet, but he didn't spend much time worrying about that and focused on what he was working on at that moment. It's the people like me who fret over the piles of stuff around them and what to do that have the problem. The key is to focus on completing your work, not on what you still have to do. When I cleared the piles of papers on my desk, a full 50% of them were issues that had fallen to the bottom of the pile for a reason. They just weren't that important. If I had been organized, I would have categorized them as such immediately and filed them, but instead, I needed time itself to set the priority for me, and relying on external influence to keep you organized is a bad strategy. So, after clearing the 50% of files that were outdated, irrelevant, or duplicated, I took what was left, put them into project folders, and I won't look at them again until they are important issues once more. And I expect they will be, or else, I would have trashed them. But, for now I have bigger fish to fry. Maybe this is common sense to you, but I wanted to share another daily experience that maybe you can apply to your own situation and consider. tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4910 2008-09-09T12:54:26Z 2008-09-10T23:15:07Z

Yeah, the title doesn't make sense unless you are picking up on the John Lennon lyrics. But, this is a continuation of last week's post about resources available from off-campus "getting you through the night". The rest of the resources...

Jason Ramsey Yeah, the title doesn't make sense unless you are picking up on the John Lennon lyrics. But, this is a continuation of last week's post about resources available from off-campus "getting you through the night". The rest of the resources are a little more self-explanatory. Webmeet is your calendar, from off campus. The nice thing about webmeet, is that unlike webmail, it's a live look at your real calendar. If you update something via webmeet, it updates on your calendar, it updates other people's calendars. It acts (and for the most part, looks) just like MeetingMaker from your office. Informer and WebAdvisor are both windows into the Datatel system that are available interchangeably on and off-campus. Similarly, other web based systems like Sakai (learning management) and Scheduler (room reservation) are available the same way. And if you do your FTP backup, you can get to your files from off campus and away you go!]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4909 2008-09-04T12:43:01Z 2008-09-04T13:45:56Z

This is a basic post, but sometimes it surprises me the number of people unaware of the computing resources available to employees off campus, so I thought I'd catalog them over the next few posts. Today's post is about email....

Jason Ramsey This is a basic post, but sometimes it surprises me the number of people unaware of the computing resources available to employees off campus, so I thought I'd catalog them over the next few posts. Today's post is about email. webmail.allegheny.edu. What you're seeing is the email that hasn't been deleted from the server yet. Email at Allegheny is set to delete from the server for employees two days after it has been read on your office PC, so you'll see email dating back to two days before your last check at work, plus any new messages that have come in. Webmail also has relatively recently added functionality of being able to store sent email, but this is only email sent via webmail. Also, some important settings are under Options. If you want to have webmail delete messages permanently (to save yourself from having to re-read them in the office), you can set that. The other three checkboxes, I really recommend checking. This will store deleted messages in the trash, store sent messages in "Sent", and empty your trash when you exit. (This last bit is critical to deleting messages permanently - they never get deleted if you don't empty your webmail trash!) I try to only dip into webmail when I want to get ahead of my email from home. I am kind of a home is home, work is work type, so my method of staying sane doesn't normally include checking email from home. But if yours does, webmail is a somewhat functional way of doing that.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4908 2008-09-02T12:28:19Z 2008-09-02T12:41:42Z

So, I'm scrounging today - first time in a while I haven't had a post lined up and ready to go ahead of time. And I'm thinking of things I did today, since it was the first work day (for...

Jason Ramsey So, I'm scrounging today - first time in a while I haven't had a post lined up and ready to go ahead of time. And I'm thinking of things I did today, since it was the first work day (for me) of the month, and I thought of something very useful. Stationery in Eudora! Stationery is a great way to save yourself from having to retype the same, or similar emails over and over again over time. Read on... I have a monthly report that gets sent to me, that (to make a long story short) I have to break out into about five pieces, cut and paste into five emails and send. To save myself time, I wrote a single email a long time ago with all of the description and explanation, which I just bring up, change the name and address on, paste in my details from the report, and then send via Eudora. It saves a lot of re-inventing the wheel every time I have to send it. To create Stationery (or what I like to call a form letter) in Eudora, write a standard email that you want to save and instead of sending it, go to File, Save as Stationery. (You'll have to save it with a file name, but it saves in your My Documents, so it does get backed up...) Then, if you go to Tools and then down to Stationery, there it is. If you double-click it, you have another copy of that same email ready to go. (Just remember to fill in the To: address, and change any appropriate information in the body of the message before you hit Send!) I've used this trick for a long time - it's great for canned responses for questions you get asked a lot and find yourself having to retype every time, or if you're a step ahead, searching through your outbox and forwarding a previously written message. (I do that sometimes, but only if I'm reminding someone I sent them the answer a while back, and they just don't remember!) tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4901 2008-08-29T12:10:58Z 2008-08-29T12:16:41Z

Thanks for visiting, if you've popped over because of the link from the help desk! Feel free to peruse the past articles, comment, and if you want to know more about a topic, let me know. I had to post...

Jason Ramsey link from the help desk! Feel free to peruse the past articles, comment, and if you want to know more about a topic, let me know. I had to post this though, because I've tried hard to average TWO posts a week (rather than the advertised "one post" on the help desk), and for the most part, I've done it. I guess that's what I get for free advertising... I do try to schedule posts to hit Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but if you do want to add my little old blog to your reading cycle, I really recommend an RSS reader, like Google Reader.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4892 2008-08-28T12:40:38Z 2008-08-28T18:09:46Z

So I promised to explain the holy grail of a clean backup, especially in the context of the last post regarding massively changing the location of all of your documents. Stick with me on this one, since it's conceptual, but...

Jason Ramsey So I promised to explain the holy grail of a clean backup, especially in the context of the last post regarding massively changing the location of all of your documents. Stick with me on this one, since it's conceptual, but hopefully will help you understand the intricate gears of our backup plan for users. post about this... Making a copy is great when you make a new file or change an existing file: A new file just gets copied up to FTP. It's a new file there too. A changed file also gets copied. Depending on your settings, FTP might ask if it should Overwrite, or Overwrite all. This is FTP checking to see if it should overwrite your backup with the changed file. As long as you're copying TO your FTP (not FROM), left to right, you want to overwrite. Where this system breaks down is if you move or delete a file: If you delete a file, nothing gets sent up to FTP, since there's no file anymore. However, since you aren't overwriting anything, since there's nothing left on your computer to overwrite with, the old file sits up in your backup. This can be a good thing if you accidentally deleted something, since it's on your backup still. However, just copying your My Documents doesn't give FTP a way to know to delete files that didn't get copied. You're just copying. If you move a file, it's a "new file" in its new location. Therefore, it gets copied to the backup in it's new location. However, it's also a "deleted file" in its old location. So the old copy just hangs out there too just like the previous example. This really isn't a good thing in any scenario. Like backing up in general, none of this matters until you have to restore your backup if your computer dies, and your backup becomes the only copy of your electronic work. If you restore with all these deleted and moved files every which where, you are well on your way to insanity and disorganization. So what do you do? Make a clean backup. I only do this after I make substantial changes to my documents, because if you tried to keep up all the time, you would drive yourself equally insane maintaining two sets of your documents. I also explain this with a disclaimer to be careful when doing mass file moves via FTP - It is easy to delete things and User Services will smack me around, hard, if you tell them I told you to do this and you deleted everything. But what I do on occasion is this: Login to FTP and on the right/server side rename the My Documents to Archive. Then I do my backup. This backup will take a long time, because when we renamed the backed up My Documents, we've told FTP that every file we're backing up is new. (FTP normally skips unchanged files...) However, when this is done, we have an exact copy of our documents - no phantom deleted or moved files. When you are done with this and you are sure it worked, you can delete the "Archive" folder. ]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4891 2008-08-26T13:26:40Z 2008-08-26T13:40:28Z

It's a new academic year and the kids are back. I always love this time of year because I don't work directly with the kids, so my work load is roughly the same, but everyone seems so much more urgent...

Jason Ramsey It's a new academic year and the kids are back. I always love this time of year because I don't work directly with the kids, so my work load is roughly the same, but everyone seems so much more urgent and energetic around me and it rubs off... It's a good time to make a "new academic year's resolution", and here is mine. We have a shared folder our department uses to keep track of stuff, but it's grown by leaps and bounds and there are a ton of things in there. I've had cause to look for a couple of things recently and found I couldn't tell where things were, then once I found them, I wasn't sure if what I had found was accurate documentation. What should we do? Well, I made a proposal which I think was well received. It's a strategy that works best in a shared environment, but also makes a lot of sense if you've inherited documents from a prior employee, which many of you may have done as well. You start over. What we plan to do is put the entire contents of the shared folder into an "Archive" folder. When something is needed, the person using it will retreive it from the Archive, put it in the new shared folder and hopefully spruce it up and improve it. However, just the act of moving the document back out of Archive will indicate to the rest of our group that this is recent and valid documentation regarding something. In a year's time, we'll have a living, breathing shared folder again. At that point, we can pitch the obviously old stuff if we want, or just burn it off to CD or even just leave it in Archive. You can use the same strategy with your My Documents. Just be careful not to move any of your system folders in there, specifically "Mail", "Favorites", "wIntegrate" (that's a Datatel preferences folder), or "Firefox". If you move these, you will break something on your computer!!! Most everything else can be moved into Archive. Two final tips: 1. If you still have an MMCLNT32 folder in your My Documents, you can delete it. It was for the old version of MeetingMaker. 2. You'll want to do a clean backup, since you've just made a fundamental change to your My Documents. I plan to explain that in the next post. tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4872 2008-08-22T18:00:00Z 2008-08-28T20:42:37Z

Well, I made it to the beginning of the semester, still somewhat regularly posting. A lot of you quit commenting, and it's probably because life has gotten less sane with the kids coming back, and that's understandable. (Also, I think...

Jason Ramsey Faygo Rock & Rye and get back to working, hopefully in a more organized fashion than when I started this blog.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4871 2008-08-21T12:08:44Z 2008-08-21T12:44:17Z

I learned this project organization method from my boss, and it appeals to my obsessive compulsive nature.......

Jason Ramsey I learned this project organization method from my boss, and it appeals to my obsessive compulsive nature.... I'm using it to keep track of individual pieces of a project that need to be done by me (in yellow), by the vendor (in green), and then moving them over to the third section when they are done. (Lots to do next month!!!) It's useful as a visual reminder and work calculator, both for me, and to emphasize the importance of a project, more for other people. It also addresses one of the drawbacks to my "Email as to-do list" strategy, which is that one email might represent a 5 minute fix, whereas another email might represent multiple weeks of work. Forty-seven post-its are attention catching.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4858 2008-08-19T12:32:44Z 2008-08-19T12:51:45Z

Do your backup. I don't care how....

Jason Ramsey Do your backup. I don't care how. WS_FTP to do your backup. I think this is a fine recommendation. When you follow the instructions, you've made a copy of your My Documents to a server down here at the Computer Center. It keeps the backup in a secure location that you can access from any computer. The backup is also being backed up, so when you do your backup, you're essentially making two backups. The only thing better than having 2 copies of your data, is more than 2 copies of your data! However, if FTP isn't really your thing, or if you're looking for a way to backup at home as well, go buy a thumb drive. You can get a 2GB drive these days for under $15, and believe me, if you lost your critical data, you would gladly pay $15 to get it back. I lost a week's worth of email and probably would have considered paying that just to get that back. Thumb drives are easy and portable. (A side note, if you're buying one, look for something with a retractable or built in cover, rather than one that comes off. I've lost every cap I've ever owned.) The bad thing is that you are now responsible for keeping tabs on that thumb drive, and they can be EASY to lose. (They go through the wash pretty well though, but that's another story...) Data gets stolen so often these days, if you put work data on the thumb drive and it contains confidential data, your situation could be dire. Hence, the official recommendation to use a more secure backup method, such as FTP for work. How much data do you have? How big of a drive do you need? Well, if you store everything in your My Documents, that's easy to determine. Right-click on My Documents, go to Properties, and then click the General tab. As you can see I have 2.37GB of data on my work machine. I would need a 4GB drive if I wanted to back that up, but I use FTP religiously. At home, I use a 500GB external drive to backup all of my music, movies, and crazy amounts of home data I have. If you're not into multimedia, or don't care to back it up, a thumb drive will do just fine.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4855 2008-08-14T12:01:18Z 2008-08-21T12:46:32Z

We've all done it, browsing the internet while you're at work. Some of us have done it a little, some of us have done it a LOT. I'm probably in the middle... the worst for me is that a lot...

Jason Ramsey We've all done it, browsing the internet while you're at work. Some of us have done it a little, some of us have done it a LOT. I'm probably in the middle... the worst for me is that a lot of the things I do at my desk require waiting at times for longer than I'm patient enough to wait. It's far easier to read a quick article somewhere than try to work on two or three projects at once. (I know this sounds dumb, but in programmer terms, think of trying to write three essays, one in French, one in German, and one in Mandarin... It's tough to switch gears.) MeeTimer. It tracks websites you visit in groups and if you've marked a website as a "procrastination" website, (for me, wikipedia - I am such a nerd...) it will warn you that you are about to procrastinate, ask you to click to continue, and tell you how much you've procrastinated that week. I wrestled with even writing a post suggesting that I occasionally surf the web at work, because it puts me out on a limb a little. Yes. There are occasions when I should be working that I have browsed the internet instead. But, from my experience working with users at Allegheny and having been a technical support manager in my prior life, with 10-20 low paid techs with free high-speed internet at their disposal, I think I've been an eyewitness to the worst of what unfettered internet access to do to someone's work. It's something that needs to be talked about more. There have been stories written about the benefits of allowing personal web surfing at work. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't surf at work. Treating as a black and white, all or nothing issue isn't productive in my humble opinion. It forces most people to either lie or admit to some great downfall they have, when most often, the truth lies somewhere in between. But, thinking in terms of shades of grey, the more personal web surfing you do, the bigger deal it becomes. At first, a little is fine. Then, it starts to interfere with your ability to keep on top of things. Then, in the addiction stage, it can be dangerous for your continued employment. If you're trying to "stay sane" and you're looking for a way to squeeze more time out of your day, look towards at least lowering the amount of personal surfing you do. If you're addicted, you need to really do something about it fast. If you're wondering why anyone would even do non-work related things on the internet, then you're already two steps ahead and you can stay tuned for more tips and tricks, as this one doesn't apply.]]> tag:webpub.allegheny.edu,2008:/dept/computing/blogs/stayingsane//237.4849 2008-08-11T10:11:40Z 2008-08-11T10:17:49Z

Sorry for the gap in posts, I'm out of the office right now, back tomorrow. However, I was reading this interesting article in the New York Times and I wanted to post it....

Jason Ramsey article in the New York Times and I wanted to post it.]]> I get nervous when people start taking away passwords and telling us to rely on a key or a card, or a thumbprint to get connected to our websites. However, from an IT perspective, there is so much wasted manpower on remembering and reassigning passwords, that some kind of solution would be very nice. I'd bet good money that hacking a protected key is a lot less common than hacking an easy to guess password. And restricting the number of people who have access to change passwords, something I'm typically against from a customer service standpoint, is always better from a security standpoint. With digital keys, presumably you'd need far fewer "password changers". That would be a good thing.