Day In The Life of Baz

Now I’m not usually the self-help type, however this book has been getting a lot of press during the past year, so I figure, what the hell, let me give it a try. I was just disorganized enough to make good use of the thing.

In a nutshell, Mr. David Allen does a few things differently from the classic organizational tips that we’re all used to. He hates the traditional todo lists. He figures that listing everything you need to do on one list makes you "go numb" that the list rather quickly.

An Empty Head is a Happy Head

I think this is my favorite of all his philosophies. Generally, we’re not supposed to try to keep any bits of information in our head. That’s why he advocates things like planners, notebooks, PDAs, etc to keep track of everything. You collect everything into your inboxes . This is basically for dumping place for any loose bits of data that have had to be processed or organized. It takes the stress out of a lot of things. Even though I’m far from perfecting his process, just having an inbox has already done wonders for me. You remember something that needs doing, you scribble it down on a piece of paper or a notepad and you throw that in the inbox and you’re done.

OK, so I guess I’ve been living under a rock for most of 2007, but I just stumbled onto this guy. I stumbled up Clipperz just this morning from reading a comment on someone’s blog (sorry, the source escapes me).

Here we have a snippet from Clipperz.com

• Clipperz is:

  • a secure and simple password manager
  • an effective single sign-on solution
  • a digital vault for your personal data

• With Clipperz you can:

  • store and manage your passwords and online credentials
  • login to your web services without entering any username or password
  • protect all your sensitive data: codes for burglar alarms, PINs, credit card numbers, …
  • share secrets with family members and associates (coming soon)

• Clipperz benefits:

  • free and completely anonymous
  • access it any time from any computer
  • no software to download and nothing to install
  • avoid keeping secrets on your PC or on paper

Now, in the past, I’ve frowned upon online password management. They seemed like glorified excel list. Yeah, it’s secure, but who cares.

I’m An Idiot

I had my secondary HD (120 GB IDE) partitioned with 2.8 GB FAT 32 and the rest NTFS. I think the smaller partition was what I used to use as a bridge for when I was interested in running linux. That ship had long sailed and I no longer needed it. Also, I was doing some stuff and got a low disk warning. So I decided that that extra 2.8GB would do me well. Also, I had plans on partitioning my main HD (250 GB SATA) to have a 100 GB section, because this is the faster drive. All this goes into modifiying my ideal system setup.

So I loaded up my trusty GParted Live CD in the DVD Drive and booted up. So my tasks were simple:

1. Delete the 2.8 GB partition on the IDE Drive
2. Resize the rest of the partition to fill the empty space
3. Resize the 250 partition on the SATA drive
4. Create a new 100 GB partition on the empty space.

I’m not sure what sort of experience that you guys have had with Windows in the past. But it seems that every few months Windows gets finicky. No matter how many programs I uninstall or stuff I delete it runs slow, crashes, etc. Instead of trying to figure out what the problem is I usually prefer just reinstall Windows. Reinstalling over an existing bad install, of course, isn’t the greatest idea. So as a result, I’ve devised a perfect drive set up.

Small C: Drive (Partition) - Essential Files

My boot drive or partition is usually the smallest on my system. On this drive I have the Windows operating system and my Program Files folder, where all my programs are installed. I don’t see any reason for this to be more than 80 GB. This drive also has the Documents and Settings folder which have your user folder (username or Administrator). This folder contains a bunch of folders with settings, etc. But a few of them are important to my set up:

• My Documents
• Favorites
• Desktop

First of all we need to pick a car wash. There are drive throughs with brushes, there are drive throughs without brushes, and there are the self service car washes. I’ve tried all three and I’ll have to go with the last one. When I was in the drive through with the brushes, it sounded so violent when I was in there. It seems that even the soft touch car washes are hard on the car. The brushless wash or laser was as they called it was interesting. First of all, it was ridiculously expensive. Also, when I got done my windows and mirrors were still dirty.

This leaves me with the self service hand washes. I love these, except for the foaming brush, but I’ll touch on that later.

1. BYOS - Bring Your Own Supplies

Don’t rely on engine degreaser and tire cleaner from the hose. First of all, they shoot mass quantities of it out from a hose, how effective can it be? You’re much better off grabbing some supplies over the counter at your local Auto Zone or my personal favorite, Walmart.