Productivity

CY2014 Quarter 1 Financial Review

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Chrissy and I review our spending on a quarterly basis. Updating every 90 days isn’t too long to correct mistakes and remember purchases, but it also allows for the busy multi-week sprints that life presents us. While we have used every financial management program available, I’ve found the most straightforward and flexible solution is to … Read more

Excel Sorting and Grouping

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I had two tables downloaded from Amazon: Items Order Date Order ID Title Category 1/26/14 102-4214073-2201835 Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book A 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book B and Orders Order Date Order ID Subtotal 1/6/14 102-6956821-1091413 $43.20 1/13/14 115-8766130-0234619 $19.42 1/16/14 109-8688911-2954602 $25.86 I’m building our Q1 2014 taxes and needed rows … Read more

Practical Cutting Stock Problem

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Warning. This post is for an audience of close to zero. My technical friends will find this pretty basic, and my non-technical friends will find this too technical. Welcome to the middle space that I occupy between these two worlds. I wanted to build this series of retaining walls to replace the overgrown ivy and … Read more

“I’m Busy”

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As we enter the Christmas/holiday season, I’m asking lots of friends how they are doing and how their year has been. Almost everyone says “it’s busy”. This takes many forms, from “crazy busy” to “absolutely busy” or “scary busy”. Since words often lose their meaning, I’ve thought about a scale we could use to better convey the level of busyness in our lives. I think the best way to delineate levels is by the loss of freedom that occurs at each inflection point.

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WordPress Development Workflow

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When I work with WordPress, I am still a ruby coder in a PHP environment. I spent several years doing PHP only and have watched the language develop nicely, but still like to focus on Concept/Design, CSS3, Ruby and JavaScript when I’m doing web development work. In the hope that someone might benefit from my workflow, I’m sharing my basic setup.

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Daily Morning Routine

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One of the most undervalued skills is the ability to set a routine and stick to it.

Modern workflow is constantly inundated by distractions which can knock us off our game. I know a lot has been written about email, how to shut it off and keep tasks and priorities aligned, but phone calls, and the raw ability to go down any rabbit hole you want to is incredibly dangerous to both getting things done and enjoying life.

Even as I tried to write the content above, I was distracted to send out an email, update my books read on shelfari and start building gift lists for Christmas. I also opened four tabs that I want to look at when I’m done with this post.

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Information Dieting Plans

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Read not the Times; read the Eternities. Henry David Thoreau I’ve always struggled with how I process, manage and output information. I am basically an information junk food addict. I love consuming new and shiny bits of history, philosophy or modern commentary. A teaching company course catalogue is like a smorgasbord to a junk food … Read more