I have a handful of friends who, despite numerous pleas and death threats, refuse to carry their cell phone with them. They’re perfectly willing to leave it in the car while out somewhere, or leave it in their bedroom while watching television in the living room. Personally, these are stack-blowing, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you-types of behavior, but that’s another rant for another blog post.

So, as you can imagine, I generally get sent to voicemail when calling said friends on their cell phones. Now, granted, I’m not usually calling to tell them their house is on fire or that I just scored the Def Lepard tickets they had been frothing over. But I would like to talk to them about something. The phone will ring a few times and then I’ll hear something like this:

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Doing the kind of work I do, I’m often asked questions like “Do you know if the changes to suchandsuch.com were pushed to the live site?” or “Did Timmy get those edits done?”. Hell, even in my own house: “Did [mother-in-law] give [son] a bath?”. Questions to which, most of the time, I don’t have [...]

I consider myself to be pretty easy-going most of the time. I tend to get along well with people and I find it pretty easy to talk to most folks that I come in contact with. As to why I’m a nice guy, that you can attribute to my parents. My father was a hardass [...]

As many of you probably already know, today is Blog Action Day! Today, we’re charged with discussing the environment… I have a confession to make – I’m not what you’d call “environmentally conscious”. I don’t recycle. I drive an old, gas-guzzling car. I go through index cards like there’s no tomorrow. I don’t go out [...]

A word of warning: This post is about going to the bathroom. Some of the more intimate details of the activity are discussed in detail. Despite my attempt to veil some of the more colorful aspects of using the can, this post really is a bit gross. Continue at your own risk, as you’ve been [...]

Throughout the many iterations of my personal GTD system (from all-digital to purely analog to a hybrid of the two), the handling reminders has been the one component that’s been the most prone to drastic change and restructuring. There are several ways one might deal with this problem, with each one’s success depending heavily on [...]

My Wife and Daughter Just about every Thursday of every week, I get together with my brother to roast coffee, drink beer and have a few laughs. We hang out his house, are accosted by his two Bassett hounds and just sorta chew the fat and hang out. We always have a good time, indeed. [...]

For the last year or so, I’ve been carrying around a Motorola RAZR as my primary mobile communication module (what mere mortals might call a “phone”). Honestly, it got the job done, but I was never in love with it. The form factor was awesome if you just kept in your pocket the whole time [...]

Living in southern California, traffic is as common and everyday as the sunrise. Assuming normal “work” hours (9-5, so to speak), just about any freeway in the land will be packed to the gills with cars during rush hour (which is a funny name, if you think about it – nobody is actually rushing anywhere). [...]

Every so often when I’m out running errands on the weekends, I’ll catch a radio talk show dealing with technology (users call in with questions, etc.). I swear I can’t get through an hour of this show without the subject of data backup coming up at least once (or perhaps the entire hour will be [...]