Good Morning #Chitown Abandoned Lake Sho

Good Morning #Chitown Abandoned Lake Shore Drive. This would be a fun #snowday http://ow.ly/3OVvH

As much as I like the #SF weather, I got

As much as I like the #SF weather, I gotta admit to missing #chitown somewhat when I see this. http://ow.ly/3Osg8

testing this Hootsuite stufff again…

testing this Hootsuite stufff again…

Sony (quickie) Review: Sony Ericsson Wireless Stereo Headphone

As you know, if you have  ever bought anything on Amazon, they alway send emails asking you to write a review of your purchase.  I have gotten a lot of these emails lately so I finally caved and punched out a “quickie” review of  some wireless headphones I bought a couple of months ago.  More to come (as time allows) on other things I bought, here you go:

Go ahead and buy these headphones, it will not be a waste of money.  Just take into account two things that turned out to be major for me.  I have made adjustments and now I’m happy again.

1) Bad battery life.  With a full charge, its perfect.  The sound is clean and clear.  After about 30mins of continuous use the noise cancelling feature noticeably fades along with the quality of the sound.  The lesson there is, don’t use these headphones for listening to music for more than an hour.  You will get a good 2.5 hours then you’ll hear a pleasant chime and the headphones will turn off and disconnect.  It’s unfortunate, these headphones seem to work best if your taking calls or listening to music for short periods of time.  For long trips, use standard plug in headphones, yes you will be defeating the purpose of having wireless headphones but you will be happier in the end.

2) Reconnecting with your phone.  Before I bought a Sony Ericsson X10, I had a HTC Hero and when the battery of the headphones died (while in use), I would have to go through all the initial setup steps to reconnect my headphones to my HTC. It was a pain and for a while I thought I was just doing something wrong.  Once I got a Sony Ericsson X10 the headphone would still disconnect when the battery died but the phone would have the headphones saved as a bluetooth device and reconnecting once I charged the battery is now a snap.  The lesson there seems to be, Sony Ericsson products like each other a lot more than they like non-Sony Ericsson products.  There really isn’t a fix for that one.  Depending on the devices your using you may experience the same thing.

So there you have it.  I have no problem recommending these headphones in the future, its just that my selling pitch will have a few asterisks attached to it.

enjoy.

How to win something online….

…enter a contest for something not a lot of people want.

It’s not that I really believe people didn’t want the Chrome Water Bottle, I’m thinking I just got lucky.  This morning Chrome Industries tweeted and I assume Facebooked (I know “Facebooked” is not a word and neither is “Tweeted”) about a contest to win one of their Stainless Steel Chrome branded water bottles.

The rules were simple, Go onto their website, pick your favorite Chrome product, write a review and hope you are one of the first 100 people.

That’s what I did and here is what I wrote:

I bought the Cobra hoodie (in brown) a few months ago and as my 1st official piece of Chrome gear I was somewhat nervous about actually wearing it. Why? Well because since I’m not a hardcore biker I figured the real bikers out there would just point and laugh. That didn’t happened, of course.

The Cobra is extremely comfortable to ride in. For the first couple of weeks I wore it all the time to and from work. Although it resisted retaining most of the funk I put on it, after sitting out for a few days, I could smell it needed some washing in the arm pit area. I hand washed the areas, laid it out and the next day it was all good again. So the lesson there is to be more strategic about when and how long to bust a sweat in the Cobra.

The next part I have to mention is the thumb holes…good for riding not so much for just chillaxtin’ at the bar. The sleeves are just the right length when you are cruising around but just hanging out you find yourself having to pull them up to free your hands to grab something. Not a deal breaker but you’ll be more conscious of it than you should.

The small pocket on the right sleeve has become one of the best features for me. Although it comes with a key loop, I use it to store tissue paper for those chilly morning rides where a running nose is very annoying.

The Large pocket in the back…awesome and funny! Awesome because its big enough to carry a cap, scarf, gloves, camera, Moleskin, pens, etc. Funny because the more you pack it, the more it makes you look like you got a lot of ‘junk in the trunk’ and that always starts a conversation.

In all I am very happy with my purchase and have recommended it to a few people that have stopped me on the street asking about it. I will admit that I somewhat baby it now and never really do any hard riding with it, mostly chill cruising when I know I will not sweat too much.

Well played Chrome, well played indeed!
DjD808

And just like that I went on about my workday and a little after lunch time I got an email saying I won a water bottle!  Now, do I need another water bottle, no but it’s free and its a cool little story.  Look for pictures of the real thing when I actually receive the prize.

DjD

UPDATE: And the free water bottle came today all metal and stuff…

Hootsuite test flight….HHOOOTTT!!

Hootsuite test flight….HHOOOTTT!!

In this situation, do you call 911 or answer Nature’s call?

Why I thought of this story/question on the way to work this morning,  I will never know…Enjoy

You wake up this morning with that special feeling that can only come from last night’s beer/super burrito extravaganza. You make your way to work knowing that at some point you are going to have to release hellfire from your backside. You are in early as this is your M.O. and you feel that pinch that tells you it’s diarrhea, explosive diarrhea. Buttocks clinched you run to the restroom burst open the door and there lies the janitor, dead.

A. Call 911
B. release the hounds of hell THEN call 911
C. poop hard AND call 911 simultaneously
D. ???

Mid-morning Follies

Soto vs Angry Robot Boy

Lunchtime Rant

Ranting begin.

You want to know what sucks? Figuring out you have to take a career break while you are out on assignment and can’t get back to the office because the crappy mass transit system has you stuck on the other side of the Bay.

Ranting end.
DjD

Can’t Focus at Work? Me either and here is what I have to say about it.

Need a lunchtime challenge? Try writing a post “top-of-mind” style.

Here is mine entry:

Topic: How to focus at work.

Step 1: Find one thing to focus on.

If you have gotten to the point in your workday where you are fighting an uphill battle with your motivation, then there is no point in actually believing that the “To Do List” you put together is going to be accomplished.   So screw being a hero, find one thing you can get done before quitting time and focus all your Chi on getting just that done.

And if you don’t finish before quitting time, don’t worry about it, the idea is to focus on one thing, not the 12 things you wrote down.

Step2: Time IS your friend.

Everyone says this when they are bored at work: “When will this day end?!” and everyone says this when they have too much to do before the day ends: “There just isn’t enough time in the day!!”

If you believe that time is a constant then you are more than likely to feel that the perception of time is not.  That’s why when you are finding it impossible to focus at work, you allow yourself to forget that 60mins still equals 1-hour.

To fulfill this step is easy.  Take off the watch, set your notifications to “not” vibrate and turn over the iPhone (or insert your cellphone here), cover the clock on your desktop with your minimized iTunes application after you have fired up genius and don’t look up at the wall clock in your office.  By the way, if your office still has a wall clock look around and make sure you are not working in the 50s or 60s, your lack of focus maybe coming from a more complicated situation than my words can help you with.

In any event, this step is about removing time from the equation.  If you are not thinking about it and focusing on just one thing, before you know it, it’ll be time to leave.  And there is no better feeling than being pleasantly surprised by quitting time than being horrified because if you didn’t get those TPS reports emailed out to people who wont even look at them till sometime mid-day tomorrow.

Step 3: No matter what you think, the sun will rise in the morning.

You have gone through steps 1 and 2 and you are saying to yourself: “why in the hell did I  read this, I could have been daydreaming for 20mins and probably would have had the same results?!”

TOO LATE 🙂

Now that you are here, take a moment and think about your job.  If you didn’t accomplish one thing today what will honestly happen?  Quitting time is going to come whether you finish or not, other people in the office are going to go home to their families or kick it with their homies.  You deserve that option too.  You have already proven yourself as a hard worker and a dependable person to have around (if you haven’t done this yet, disregard this entire post, you are sooooo screwed right now, get to work!).  Not being able to focus is as natural as passing gas.  Unless passing gas makes you unable to focus, in which case you should call your doctor.

What I am getting at is it’s not the end of world if you have an off day.  Even if you were able to focus and you got it all done, by tomorrow there will be more and the day after that and the day after that.  So I say go home, go kick it, go recharge.

I wrote this post in about an hour and a half  because I couldn’t focus on anything today.  I have a conference call and a lot of drawing to do before the day ends but all that drawing is not going to happen and if my attendance on the conference call was optional, I would be ditching that to.  So I’m focused on being ready for the call, I am going to use the time between now and then to read over the materials for the call and since the call is at 3:40pm (why 3:40pm, I have no freakin’ idea), I am not going to promise to get anything out till sometime tomorrow.  Steps 1, 2 and 3, done!

Enjoy,

DjD