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At some point in the last year, I decided to focus strongly on my own personal finances. In the past, I’ve never considered myself to be “good with money”, and somehow, for one reason or another, I always found the lack of money to be a major roadblock in my life.

Now, I have everything under control, and I have a very accurate idea of how my money is being spent. More importantly, I’ve figured out how to save money, while still maintaining my current lifestyle. The details of how I did it is another story altogether; but since I’ve been able to take control of my finances, I’ve also been able to share my experiences and methods with other people. After doing much reading to understand the flow of money, creating my own plan, and sharing these ideas with others, I have gotten a lot of positive feedback.

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Two years ago, I discussed a shared calendar solution called Monket Calendar. In the discussion I mentioned that I was considering Monket Calendar as an alternative to PHP iCalendar, which was another (read-only) web based calendar solution I was using at the time.

I no longer use PHP iCalendar, and I haven’t since looked at Monket Calendar. The only calendering solution that I use now, and that has all the features I need, is the absolutely wonderful WebCalendar by k5n.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday March 16th, a good friend of mine met an untimely demise when the single engine plane he was piloting crashed into a highly wooded area of South Western Virginia.

With great sadness in my heart, I attended his funeral, and fought hard to keep back the tears. As I touched his coffin, reality set in, and I couldn’t hold them back any longer.

Before going to his funeral, I had written a eulogy which I wanted to share with his friends and family. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity.

However I would like to share that eulogy here on my blog, so that those who knew Roy could understand what he meant to me, and why I cherished our friendship so much, so here it is..

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I’m currently using CVS as my revision control system for personal and work related projects. As of late, I’ve been feeling the need to look into alternative RCS systems, such as Git, GNU Arch, Subversion, and Bazaar.

I feel the need for change for many reasons related to the way I personally work with CVS, but mostly because I’ve never really given myself the chance to try something new or different. I fell into the CVS camp back when it pretty much was the only option, and when it definitely was the most popular.

However, I find that simple things like creating and deleting tags and branches, branch locking, and updating branches with changes made in another branch to be unnecessarily difficult, even with custom written scripts that I’ve written to compensate.

I think it’s time to try other RCS systems to see what they have to offer. Bazaar seems to be one of the more interesting projects, so I think I may try it first. I’d like to learn from the experiences of others who have taken the plunge and started using an open source revision control system besides CVS. If you’re one of those people, and have found your switch to be a positive one, please comment on your experiences!

For many Internet power users, using Internet Explorer, Opera, or even Mozilla Firefox to handle many concurrent website sessions can often result in a very frustrating and paralyzing web browsing experience. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of ear plugs. I use them while working, reading, and sleeping. When I wear them, I find it takes very little effort to concentrate on what I’m doing. Using ear plugs while sleeping helps me fall asleep faster, and allows me to get a full night’s rest while almost never waking up in the middle of the night.

Being a big fan, I’m always on the lookout for better ear plugs, such as plugs that block out more sound, are more comfortable, or even more portable. Part of my search lead me to an article (2005) by Ulrich Boser for Slate Magazine which gives a great overview of the different types of ear plugs available, and a rating as to how effective they are in comparison to each other.

If you’ve ever wanted to increase your concentration at work or at home, or have had trouble getting a full night’s sleep, you should read the article above. A simple pair of ear plugs could change your life!

After taking some time to carefully construct a disclaimer for this site from various other disclaimers I’ve found on the ‘net, I started to wonder “How Enforceable is a Disclaimer?” Can it actually protect you from being prosecuted if some individual or company deems it necessary? Has anyone had any experience with legal issues surrounding disclaimers, or seen situations where the lack of a disclaimer resulted in legal action which could have been prevented if a disclaimer was present?

I’m currently working on an article to introduce one of the productivity tools that I’ve been working on for a while. I’ve come across many different types of tools for various purposes, such as Freemind, Cmap Tools, iGTD, Google Calendar, etc. I currently have a set of tools which I use regularly (some of which I developed myself) and was curious what others out there are doing to manage their time and the large amount of information they have to process on a daily basis.

Along with PIM¹ tools, what productivity methodologies (if any) do you follow? I’ve found that a mix of ideas from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”² and “Getting Things Done”³ works well for me. However, I know there are other, potentially better systems out there⁴, and I’m sure my system could be improved by methods I’m not currently aware of. For example, I recently came across an article on Lifehacker⁵ by Brad Issac which discusses how Brad received productivity advice from Jerry Seinfeld. The advice Seinfeld gave Issac outlines a simple, but brilliant way of motivating yourself to get things done.

Jerry Seinfelds advice is one I’m sure I’ll be trying out as part of my own productivity system; but I’m sure there are also many other tips and tricks out there. Whats in your productivity toolkit?

1. Personal Information Management [↩]
2. Book: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Dr. Stephen R. Covey [↩]
3. Book: “Getting Things Done” by David Allen [↩]
4. I say “potentially better” since what might be better for some people may be worse for others [↩]
5. Lifehacker is an excellent blog/website created by Gina Trapani which focuses on productivity tools and processes, with a slant towards computer power users [↩]

After a long and unscheduled hiatus, I am slowly influencing myself to re-engage the personal website and blogging scene. Yay!

It’s been a while since I’ve last maintained a personal website regularly. Since I joined VMware, I’ve kept myself quite busy with what I like to call “money work”. “Money work” or “work work” is work done purely for the acquisition of money in order to maintain (or increase) a standard of living. This is of course in contrast to “mind work”, “love work”, “curiosity work” or “my work” which I would collectively define as work which is done purely for its own intrinsic joy. Read the rest of this entry »

So after having this site down for a long time and for several reasons (all boring, trust me), I have decided to bring the site back online.

My passion for the MindNet.ca domain has been dwindling slowly over the years, and finally, in March, I decided to let the domain slip out of my hands and away into the depths of the Internet. (Most likely into the hands of an aspiring domain squatter)

I’ve had the JBLData.com domain sitting for a couple of years now (and I just realized it was actually that long), and haven’t really decided what to do with it. So, I decided to convert MindNet.ca to JBLData.com. And voila! Here you have it.

Enjoy!