I was going to post something today
Really, I was. But, instead, I spent the better part of the day fixing up my new laptop* and setting everything up just like I like it. I’ve had my desktop since the summer before I started college (2002), so there’s a whole mess of things on there that isn’t particularly well-organized. I am a digital packrat**. When I opened this one up and saw the shiny new almost-blank desktop, I decided to make a fresh start. The only thing I copied over was My Documents, and even that has been quarantined; I’m selectively moving things into the new My Documents as I use them.
It’s amazing how few programs and files I actually use on a daily basis. There’s AIM, Firefox, Notepad***, occasionally Word or Excel, … and that’s about it*^.
I spend most of my computer-time on the interweb, of course, where I’m also trying to whittle the information and tools I need down to something more manageable. My old list of bookmarks was the biggest problem: long, unwieldy, disorganized, full of crap I’ve never looked at more than once but saved anyway because it might come in handy someday, somewhere. No more! Now ‘Bookmarks’ is only for sites I pull up several times a day (cnn.com, m-w.com, bloglines.com). I remember the URLs, but I have them bookmarked because Ctrl+click is faster and easier than opening a new tab and typing in the address. For things I don’t need every day but want to remember, I use del.icio.us tags: tags are a more intuitive way to organize things than folders, I think, and the searchability keeps irrelevant items from getting in the way of whatever it is I’m looking for. Yummy yummy.
Part of the reason this has taken me all day (besides having to go back through and tag every site I can think of) is that I’ve been reminded of just how many ‘productivity‘ sites there are out there, and just how addicted to them I can get. Efficiency, lifehacks, timemaps…*drools*. Funny how reading about “next actions” and “do it now” for hours on end translates into precisely no actual productivity.
Hmmm. This “excuse for not posting” has now become at least half as long as the post I’d originally intended to write and thus probably hasn’t allowed me to get to bed much earlier, which was really the goal in throwing up a cop-out post. Also, I imagine an uber-detailed description of the several hours I’ve spent fiddling with my computer is not the most riveting of topics: if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. I done ate up all the cookies, though—’pologies.
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* Did I tell you I got a new laptop? Because I did. It was a Christmas present, or at least the first thousand dollars of it was.
** I am also a non-digital packrat, but that’s beside the point.
*** I love text files. I also love lists. I have a folder called “Notepad files” full of every sort of list you can imagine: shopping lists (grocery, clothing, household, toys, etc.), to-do lists (GTD-style), wishlists, reading lists, and of course a ‘Lists’ list.
*^ I used to use Eudora to read my email, but it suddenly stopped working back in September, and I never could figure out why. Since then I’ve just been SSH-ing into the server at Mudd and reading it there, which has been a minor annoyance but not too bad. Now that I’ve got a do-over, I’ve installed Thunderbird instead. I’ll only be using that to archive the old mail that’s been piling up, though; as of today, my Gmail address is my primary personal account. Woo mail-that-works!
Tags: miscellany