Productivity and Self-improvement by Gutata

Reading this forum about bars and restaurants changing the tip amount on your receipt reminded me about the one time I was mischarged by the Islands Restaurant in West LA. They increased the tip by $1. I didn’t dispute it with my credit card, but thinking back, I should have. You might think this is no big deal, but it adds up. For example, in my roommate’s small hometown, a waiter increased the tips on all of his receipts by a buck or two. A few months and several thousand dollars later, he got caught. Lesson learned.

One thing you can do is write your numbers big so that there’s no room to cross out or modify the receipt. Another suggestion from the forum is to add a tip so that your bills are always dollar amounts, no cents. That way, it’s easy to see if any fraudulent charges were made. A more complicated but interesting suggestion is to make the dollar digits add up to the number of cents. For example, if your bill is $21.56 and the 15% tip is $3.23 for a total of $24.79, add another 7 cents so that bill is $24.86 and 2+4 = 6.

If you use Microsoft ActiveSync for your mobile device, you might have noticed constant clicking sounds coming from your computer. That’s the sound of ActiveSync doing something - who knows what - on your hard drive. It won’t do anything bad, but it’s really annoying, and if you’re using a laptop, it drains the battery life. To stop it, you have to kill ActiveSync (aka wcescomm.exe) through the Task Manager. Then remove it from Microsoft’s Registry so that the process doesn’t always start up:

• Run regedit.exe
• Delete “H/PC Connection Agent” entry under My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

The trouble is that you’ll have to restart wcescomm.exe manually the next time you want to sync. By default, it’s installed under C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync.

Was that confusing? Yeah, I thought so. Shouldn’t things be getting simpler as software gets better?

Argh, I haven’t been posting here as much lately, mainly because I’m lazy and work is killing me. I need to set a goal and work my 8 hours, do as much as possible in that time, and not bring it home. Parkinson’s law - “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” - can only be ended by discipline.

Don’t worry though. I’m still working on Squinto and plan to write more frequently.

I just released a new Squinto API for remote access to your lists. Take a look at the announcement in Squinto Support. I’ll post some official documentation, but for now, enjoy!

I find this company’s product description very inspiring:

“Our programs are affordable, fully supported, well designed and carefully crafted to bring a smile to your face when you use them.” -Shirt Pocket

This is a statement that all great software companies (and any company for that matter) should live by.

There have been a few updates to my todolist application Squinto and I’ve posted about them in Squinto Support so that they don’t clutter up the entries here. Squinto is becoming pretty stable and highly recommend that you try it if you’re looking for a way to better organize your tasks, travel plans, strategies for taking over the world, life, etc. I haven’t been posting much on productivity or self-improvement because I’ve been busy fixing and adding features to Squinto, but don’t worry, I’ll put out some articles soon.

Argh, sorry again everyone! I deployed some fixes and new features that will make Squinto great, but ended up breaking the site. Things are fixed now. Enjoy and have fun creating todolists.

Sorry guys, I broke Squinto when I updated Django from version 0.96 to 0.97. It’s fixed now and you can continue to make todolists and make your life more efficient.

The reason I updated Django was to get the newforms library and use it for Prrice.com, which itself has been updated to list the best sales for this shopping season. So before you go out shopping, check Prrice.com to see if there’s a deal or a sale happening.

Jerry Seinfeld has an interesting strategy for boosting productivity. When coming up with jokes, he made sure to write one every day. He would cross out that day on a calendar with a bid red “X.” Soon, he had a “chain” of days that were crossed out. He pressured himself to maintain the chain.

“Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day.”

Have trouble sleeping on a plane? Here are some tips to help you sleep.

Tags seemed to gain popularity from del.icio.us. According to blink’s founder, tags were the reason for del.icio.us’ success where blink and possibly others failed. There is no doubt that when it comes to organizing information, tags are here to stay.

The problem I have with tags is the terminology. Why do we have “tags” when we have “categories?” Google calls them “labels.” For a long time, Outlook has called them and still calls them “categories.” I think most people would understand “category” and fewer would understand tags and labels. So unless you’re short on space and/or need shorter terminology, let’s stick with categories and try not to confuse our users.

Ok, another Squinto update. I’ve added import and export features. You can backup your todolists, import them from other software, or synchronize them to your desktop applications. With new time fields, you can record how much time a task will take and how much time you’ve spent on it. Finally, I’ve cleaned up the navigation quite a bit. Before, there was a lot of scrolling to view or edit a todo. Now, we keep your todo in focus. Try it out.

Shared hosting with Webfaction has been painless and uptime has been great. With Dreamhost, things were slow and their servers often unavailable. I strongly recommend them if you’re looking for Django hosting. The owner, Remi, responds quickly to support issues and forum topics. He also provides tips and screencasts to get up and running quickly.

About a month ago, I wrote about Firefox bloat. Guess it was pretty obvious. A related story made it on Slashdot.

Squinto’s hierarchical todos are great for breaking things down, but once they’re completed, there’s no summary of what you learned or what was done. Just some loose notes on vague ideas and the process taken to finish your task. Most likely, the completed todos are deleted.

To help collect information from your todos, I’ve added a Notes section where you can keep notes on… well, anything! Think of it as a Wiki, but integrated with todos. I think this is a powerful combination to getting things done and organizing your information. Enjoy!